Reflecting on your summer

• What was the most influential experience and why?
• Did you make any contacts that you feel are beneficial and may be useful for this year and why?
• How did you meet and how did you contact them?
• If you didn't for whatever reasons was there anything that you experienced that made you think about your career?

Over the summer, I didn't do anything major or really amazing, there were no abroad holidays involved and I didn't really see anything that life changing. However, I did take advantage of being back home and being so close to Manchester and Liverpool, I certainly used my railcard to go on days out. Visiting the True Faith exhibition in Manchester was probably a key memory for my summer, the exhibition was about Joy Division and New Order. It featured work from Peter Saville, one of my favourite artists, I always seem to look to his work for inspiration so to see his work in the flesh was quite special. 

Despite not gaining any work experience or completing much work related to graphic design, I had plenty of days out and took lots of photographs of what I did and what I saw that would inspire me in my work. In June I went to see my favourite band The Maccabees play their final shows, although this is unrelated completely to any design work it really did inspire me and give me ideas with what I want to do in the future. Their farewell programme is full to the brim of photographs and album artwork rough sketches and ideas that they had designed over their 10 years of being together. 

I think the biggest thing that happened over this summer was my close friend finishing his cancer treatment, this meant more to me than any other thing happening over summer and it has definitely put me in a much more positive mindset for starting Level 5 compared to how it made me feel last year being away from home with all of this happening. Having something like this happen to a close friend at only 20 years old really does put life into perspective and makes you appreciate everyone and everything around you. It has been a massive life adjustment and has definitely forced me to mature even further and really love and care for everything.