Helen Butterworth: Ex-D&AD student

Ex Design and Art Direction student Helen Butterworth came to talk to us about her experiences on the course, and since leaving university.

Helen graduated with a first class honours degree, which is excellent, but what I found to be more inspiring was that she considered herself to not necessarily have the best graphic design skills, and it was her actually ability to work well with other aspects of the course that enabled her to achieve such a brilliant result. I found this to be quite a reassuring and interesting point; after all, being a designer isn't simply about putting text and image on a page in an aesthtically pleasing manner. Helen was good at conceptualising her ideas, and developing them until they become incredibly complex, yet well-considered pieces of work. One piece that really stood out was titled "Viseme" in which she explored lip and mouth movement in order to visualise our verbal thoughts. Helen "graphically developed shapes to form avisual language, which stems from the eighteen positions formed by the mouth within the phonetic alphabet." It was an extremely long project; Helen was able to develop this project for a longer amount of time than was originally set, as it was such an intricate and complex topic. The final outcome is fascinating, the shapes she has created are visually beautiful and intriguing.

Above: a section of Helen's Viseme piece.

Helen was brilliant at offering advice about how to approach our time on the course, as well as what to expect when leaving. Another advocator of gaining work experience, she told us about the work she entailed on leaving uni and how she managed to gain extra time working at her her first role, which was inspiring and slightly reassuring (it was originally only meant to be a 2 week placement). She also gave us advice about how to raise money for our degree show, which at the time was a daunting concept for us. We hadn't yet begun our fundraising, and there had been discussions about what would be the best options but nothing had been planned. Helen gave us more insight into what worked well and enabled us to then feel inspired to do the same. A good talk, from a great girl, see her work here.