Gail Anderson talk at St Bride Library

The Charitable Trust were pleased to be able to sponsor student tickets for the talk Hard work and dumb luck: 39 years of work and play by legendary American designer Gail Anderson hosted by the Friends of St Bride back in May.

Gail generously shared projects and insights from a career across many of the most senior editorial design positions in New York. Yet her presentation never felt overwhelming or intimidating as talks by successful practitioners sometimes can. Rather Anderson opened out her observations to allow her audience to reflect with her on the many challenges a young designer now faces and offered advice and tips on how to flourish both as a designer and a human being in the creative industries.

In the words of one of the first-year design students who attended:

‘Thank you for giving me and the rest of the students the opportunity to hear from such a legend in the industry, it was really empowering and such a cool insight.

The thing that stuck with me after that talk was when Gail said ‘reinvention is personal growth’; and her advice to not stick to the current ‘trends’ but create designs that would work and look good not just today but the day after and the day after that.

Thank you again for sharing the tickets for this talk.

Nicole’