Three of our grads work at Vancouver’s One Twenty Three West. Thank you to our talented alumni for the great group photos and career advice for our 4th-year students!

Shown left to right above: Kim Ridgewell, Creative Director (IDEA Grad 2007); Taeyeon Kim (IDEA Grad 2016), Designer; and John Larigakis, Creative Director (IDEA Grad 2010).

Garret Schauteet (IDEA Grad 2015) spent 3 years in Vancouver with the incredibly talented team at 123w while collaborating with partner agencies and a vast amount of freelancers from all over the world.

From there, he moved to BASIC® and spent 2018 embedded at Google in San Francisco, where he helped elevate Made by Google’s digital retail and product experiences on a global scale.

He’s recently transferred to BASIC®’s HQ in San Diego, where he continues to work on new Google initiatives and other global brands like Coach and Airbnb. Catch up on Garret!

Andrea (IDEA Grad 2008) returned to IDEA School of Design to complete her degree in 2017/2018. We recently caught up with her for an interview. Little Andrea started life in a jungle village in Indonesia. Her experience being an outsider for so much of her childhood has planted in her a deep wonder for the different ways people do life, and an appreciation for authentic diversity. She always wanted to be self-employed, so she never put much effort into getting hired by an agency. It’s not always balanced, but she loves the variety of her projects and continues to split her time between graphic design, illustration, commissioned portraiture and fine art. Check out our interview with her!

Jessica Peng (Grad 2019) interviews her practicum host and IDEA alumna Diana Castañeda (Grad 2014) about her role at TRIUMF, Canada's particle accelerator centre, and her take on graphic design as a career.

The 2nd Bachelor of Design Grad Opening Gala was held at Harbour Centre Lobby, downtown Vancouver on April 8, 2019. The show ran April 8–12, 2019. Here are some photo highlights.

Meet the next generation of promising creative professionals at the IDEA School of Design 2019 Grad Show. – Harbour Centre Lobby, downtown Vancouver April 8–12, 2019 | Opening gala April 8, 2019 from 6–9pm.

Thank you to IDEA School of Design Grad 2016 alumni Virginie Menard, Stephanie Brennan, Maria Centola, Benjamin T. Stone and Lera Nyukalova (shown above) for their words of wisdom to Grad 2019 as they approach the final weeks of their 8 week industry practicums in agencies and studios across Vancouver and embark on their careers in visual communication.

Their advice includes don't let yourself stay in the comfort of being a junior, be picky about clients and job offers, try out different places and be pleasant to work with!

Meet the next generation of promising creative professionals at the IDEA 2019 Grad Show – Harbour Centre Lobby in downtown Vancouver, April 8th–12th, 2019.

IDEA School of Design’s second-year Grad 2021 graphic design class @ideatwentyone recently spent an afternoon getting their hands dirty during a workshop at Vancouver’s Porchlight Press (@porchlightpress). It was amazing to see all the old machinery still in use. IDEA students study the history of printing and printing techniques in their first year Survey of Design class. It is these same presses—some of them over a hundred years old—that are still being used by letterpress studios today!

The team at Porchlight made us feel so welcome and provided us with such a great experience.

Joelle really enjoys the general atmosphere of Will the most. Tucked away in the DTES of Strathcona, Will is a mid-sized creative studio that focuses on branding.

For the past few weeks Joelle has been working on creating a brand audit presentation for a university among other projects including creating accessible documents.

She says it's given her good practice at presenting and learning how much information to go over depending on your audience. She has learnt that it’s valuable to be extra clear and concise with what you’re saying, and check in with the client to make sure they’re following along. "It’s also valuable to be able to adapt and remain professional because shit happens!" she writes.

Read her story!

One of the reasons Natalie Heaman chose to do her practicum at Citizen Relations is because it seemed to be the farthest out of her comfort zone, but also the offer with the most self-direction and room for opportunity. “Having learned about advertising in school, it was interesting to compare and contrast that to PR perspective.” she writes.

Read her blog story about her first two weeks of practicum!

Fourth-year students at Capilano University's IDEA School of Design in Vancouver, British Columbia have been placed in a wide range of Vancouver companies. They will begin posting stories about their eight-week practicums starting today on Instagram.

Stories this week include: Charmaine Cheng at Cossette (Mar 11), Jominca Engelbrecht at Porchlight Press (Mar 12), Lillian T Zhang at DDB (Mar 13), Jackie Duck at Bazoof! Magazine (Mar 14), and Malcolm Buitenhuis at BAM Communications (Mar 15).

Lillian T Zhang’s practicum is in the advertising department at DDB located in the heart of Downtown Vancouver. ‘Look at this view tho’ she writes in her blog story. Lillian is currently working on ideations and mock-ups for a SkyTrain station ad takeover for a lottery company and is loving every minute of it!

Read her Week 1 practicum story and find out more about Hot Dog day and Shout out Fridays!

Thank you to IDEA18 alumni Annie Chang, CK Papilla, Vivay Li, Danielle Vallée, Angela Schmold and Juliana Vieira for their words of wisdom to IDEA19 as they begin their industry practicums.

Their advice includes cracking some jokes, keep asking for advice, meeting new people and socializing!

4th-year practicums starts Monday, February 25, 2019! Laura Pummel will be taking Vancouver agency 123w for a spin. Practicum supervisor, Judy Snaydon, visits studios that are hosting for the first time and was especially looking forward to stopping by 123w. Read her story!

Shanene Lau’s practicum last year turned into an internship and then a job as a Junior Designer. In this Grad Spotlight, Shanene shares her advice to art school students regarding “paralyzing fears”, making decisions and concludes “Remember that you already have everything you need, in here *points to heart*”. Catch up with Shanene!

Five of our grads work at Vancouver’s Will Creative. We asked them to share some career advice for our 4th year students as they prepare for their practicums.

Shown left to right above: Will Erickson (Grad 2015), Allison Chambers (Grad 2013), Jennifer Hicks (Grad 2006), Briony Crane (Grad 2006) and Rory O'Sullivan (Grad 2005).

IDES 490 Industry Practicum is an experiential learning course that takes place primarily off campus. Students work within a studio/agency environment or with a personal mentor in a capacity related to visual communication.

We reached out to the busy IDEA19 graduating students to see how they’re feeling about their upcoming 2-month industry practicums and share a bit about the process of choosing their practicum hosts last Fall.

Feedback ranged from equally excited and terrified to SUPER STOKED!

Shown above: 4th year students prepping their business cards and grad materials.

Alex Maertz graduated from IDEA School of Design last year, got married and moved to Cumberland, BC. She is currently finishing off illustrating her first children’s book, The Girl and Her Sun, coming out late Spring 2019.

In this grad spotlight, Alex shares her process illustrating children’s books and how she is growing her own little business on Vancouver Island at her makeshift standing desk in her kitchen using a cardboard box from Costco for ergonomics. Catch up with Alex and her dog!

Vivay Li (IDEA18) is a graphic designer at Phoenix Labs for their free-to-play monster slaying game, Dauntless. She did her practicum at The Sequence Group, a boutique animation studio in Vancouver and split up her time between volunteering, freelancing, and networking during the summer.

She continues to volunteer for industry events, such as Artbreakers, Full Indie, Vault 100, and Global Game Jam, provide support for minorities in the games industry and believes “everyone deserves to be loved, regardless of what they do or do not achieve.” Catch up with Vivay!

2nd year IDEA student Alison Johnstone shares her story illustrating for student press publication, Capilano Courier. Illustration shown above for Naked and Not Afraid: Woman is a Word in the October 24, 2018 issue written by columnist Scarlett Vanderwoodsen.