The Dutch Connection

There is something about Dutch graphics and design that we’ve always liked. On our shelves you will find books about Theo van Doesburg and the De Stijl movement and a more recent volume called False Flat: Why Dutch Design is so Good. Our own logo uses Jigsaw one of the fonts designed by Den Haag based foundry Typotheque.

So we were intrigued when Katie Finch from Bournville College asked us if we wanted to take a Dutch graphic design placement student. Now we are very careful about placements. With a few honourable exceptions, it has been our experience that work experience at school age seems an afterthought and is often not that well planned. And even at college level it is patchy with placements not always matching students and companies well.

And post-graduation there has grown up a culture of unpaid internships that many companies seem to use to get cheap labour, but which we have always been very doubtful about. So we needed to learn more about the Dutch graphic education system and found out that work placements and developing practical skills is an integral part of the way they train – so we decided to give it a go.

Kirsten Bangert from Deltion College in Zwolle joined us in September 2011 and the experience was very positive. Her technical skills were ahead of what we have come to expect from UK students at both College and Degree level. We found that she was able to contribute a lot to live work with supervision. The Dutch graphic design education system certainly seems to provide students with much better appreciation of technical skills and the world of work than here in the UK, through structured and lengthy work placements.

Kirsten left us in early February 2012 to finish her course and do her exams. We think she will be back! You can download and read her quirky story about her time here in Birmingham and about how she found Homer Creative below together with a set of her photographs.

Meet The Bull download Kirsten’s story here

Kirsten’s photographs download here

And now Nathalie Hop also from Deltion College has joined us and we are looking forward to another good work placement experience.