My Dad has always been one for making and sticking to plans. If we go holiday we need to be packed the day before, at the airport at least an hour early and all the travel documents need to be in order in a plastic sleeve in case of rain. Family outings, even for a lunchtime meal, have become a very serious affair.
I guess I take after him in that respect: I’ve always been very good at planning out where I am going and what I want to do. I think I recognise that either through luck, skill or a mixture of the two, I will make sure I get there.

As early as primary school in Edinburgh, I knew I wanted to do something artistic and creative with my life. At high school at I knew I wanted to do something in design. And by the time I was studying Product Design at the Glasgow School of Art, I figured that I was doing the right thing.
But, you can imagine my dismay when I found myself a university graduate without a plan or direction. Despite this inherent design inclination, for the first time, I found myself unsure of where I was supposed to go. A summer of deliberation and escapism later I was applying for design jobs in and around the Scottish central belt looking for the next direction to take myself in. I was fortunate that this next direction became Snook.

I was welcomed into the studio on a dreich Monday in October with smiling faces and offers of tea, and over the past three months I’ve had the pleasure of picking up new skills, working on innovative projects and meeting some truly fantastic people.
I worked first on an ethnographic research project exploring the near future of personal banking and monetary management. This was a breath of fresh air to me after a summer of design withdrawal. I found myself re-finding my design footing in interviews, analyses and concept development and all within a fortnight timespan.

After this warm-up of my designer muscles, I moved onto aiding the ‘Dearest Scotland’ campaign; a Snook developed initiative to gather the Scottish public’s hopes and dreams pre, during and post independence referendum. I was given the task of further embedding Dearest Scotland into casual spaces in Scotland for which I developed and began ‘manufacture’ of a series of pop-up letter boxes to be placed around the country. Subsequently, Dearest Scotland has become a project quite close to my (Brave) heart and I am excited to see how it evolves in the coming months.

Whilst spinning the proverbial Dearest Scotland plate, I was also introduced to Snook’s ongoing work with Carr Gomm in Edinburgh. At Carr Gomm, we were working to embed service design principles and methodology into the running of their organisation and to educate and train their staff on how to identify and creatively solve problems.
The all-day workshops in Edinburgh necessitated some offensively early trains from Glasgow Queen Street but even they failed to dampen my mood; I was designing for a living and loving it.

Now, my time at Snook as a Snookster has come to an end and it goes without saying that I have appreciated my time spent here immensely. It has served as an interesting first foray into what I can expect of being a design professional. And I have to say; I quite like what I see.
On further good news, I have the pleasure of announcing that I will be joining the Snook team full time as a Junior Designer in this New Year. The part Snook plays in the evolving role of design in Scotland is so instrumental, and I feel equally excited and honored to be a contributory to it.

It seems I’ve developed a plan after all. Dad will be pleased.