Lara Shipard | My Story
I began freelancing as a Graphic Designer during my last year of study at the University of Newcastle (2015). But my creative journey didn’t start there.
I started kindergarten in 2000 a year younger than the majority of my class. There isn’t a lot I can remember from my early days in Primary School, but what I can piece together is that I was always considered the ‘creative’ one. My love for holiday craft and new subject title pages was blatantly obvious.
In 2006, I was asked by my teacher to draw two different designs for murals to be painted at our school by the whole class. My very first mural project. I was to do one design as a jungle theme, and the other as an underwater theme. I can remember asking my insanely talented older sister (Amber) to help me with the drawings. They were projected on to big planks of wood by our teacher, then traced with pencil. All Year 6 students had a turn to paint a section of each mural, saving the trickier parts (like blending the sea water) to me.
From 2007 to 2010, my love for creativity grew. I was lucky enough to have very supportive Fine Arts teachers (who had adored my sister in previous years). For my friend’s birthday presents I use to create things myself, some were really weird like gluing 2 small teddy bears holding hands on a piece of wood shaped like a love heart, others were small canvas paintings or illustrations. During my time at High School, I distinctively remember being very vocal about not selecting Graphic Design as an elective in years’ 9 and 10 because “I hated computers and only wanted to paint”.
2011-2012 I attended St. Mary’s in Maitland as a year 11 and 12 student, I selected Fine Arts and Industrial Technology Graphics as my electives, both having a major works. While I was still being creative at school, it was during this time that I worked at my local basketball stadium - creating posters and game day programs for the club - my first taste of being a Graphic Designer in a professional sense.
When it was time to select a University course, I can remember flicking through the University of Newcastle Course Handbook reading about the Fine Arts course and thinking “how was I going to support myself (make money) studying art or being an inexperienced artist?” I reached the very end of the book and started reading about the Visual Communication Design course, the word ‘creativity’ was mentioned so many times that I couldn’t not consider it. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to be, but I was convinced that I could turn my passion for creativity into a professional career.
You know that feeling when you have absolutely no idea how to do something, you are way too scared to ask for help and you’re trying not to freak out? This was me sitting in a computer lab at University trying to use a Mac computer for the first time. I swear I sat there for half an hour trying to find where to log out of my student account. I do love looking back and seeing how far I’ve come…
I made some amazing friends in my course, incredibly nice people who had used Photoshop before and would help me if I ever asked. We had two compulsory life drawing classes in our first year that I achieved high distinctions in, so this gave me the confidence to major in Graphic Design and Illustration.
In 2015 I visited Maitland Regional Art Gallery with my mother and sister. This was something we did often. On this particular visit, we spoke to a lady who was working there and I had mentioned that I was in my final year of studying design, she told me that the Gallery’s Graphic Designer (Clare Hodgins) was potentially looking for interns. I emailed her that week, she asked for my portfolio and CV (I think it helped that I had chosen the gallery to do a previous assignment on), then she asked me to come in every Tuesday and Thursday for a few hours. I couldn’t believe how simple the whole process was.
Side note: I highly recommend any student studying design to reach out for internships at places they would love to work!
I am so grateful I had the opportunity to work with Clare, she was incredible and taught me so much about design for print, photography staging, InDesign tricks, and the fact that you don’t have homework when you work full-time…yeah I asked that…how embarrassing. She also introduced me to The Design Kids.
While I was a graphic design intern at the Maitland Regional Art Gallery (MRAG), I purchased my sole-trader ABN to work part-time for a lady who was a Marketing Consultant. This is where I learnt how to present my design concepts to a client, how to have catch-ups in a cafe and communicate online when we needed to.
2015, I was in the back half of my final year at University, and the class received an email about a job opportunity in Newcastle to be the Graphic Designer for Yogurtland Australia. It was that word, ‘creativity’ in the job description that resonated with me again, so I put together and basic portfolio and CV to submit.
I can remember being in a paper-making class at Uni when I got a phone call from Elyse (Yogurtland Australia HR Manager), asking when I was available for an interview. Sheer disbelief!
As many of you would know, Yogurtland Australia is no longer with us (RIP…thanks COVID…she says with sarcasm), but as they say - one door closes, another opens - now I am exploring the scary world of self-employment and I couldn’t be more excited!
However, this is not completely new territory for me. Since purchasing my ABN (2015), I kept freelancing in my spare time while I had my full time job, a side hustle if you will. This gave me the ability to take on creative projects that I wouldn’t normally do in my everyday job (like painting murals, wedding stationery and designing logos for small businesses), and since this wasn’t my main source of income, I was able to choose what projects I wanted to take on.
Here we go! My next creative pursuit! I am certainly the type of person that can’t sit still, and am always looking to try new things - especially ones that involve any kind of creativity.
