Y V O N N E R A T H YVONNE RATH is PIXELPOD – alongside her husband James, they run the Wexford-based, multi-disciplined DESIGN STUDIO. @PIXELPOD
@WE_ARE_PIXEPOD
Could you tell us about your background? Where your interest in design began and how you got your start? As a child growing up in Clare I loved drawing and writing. This love grew, and when I was a teenager I realised that I could have a career in combining images with text and they called it “Graphic Design”! I filled out my CAO form and I started LSAD in 1998. (I’m immediately feeling old typing this!) I completed my degree in 2002 and after some travelling I landed my first proper design job as a Junior Designer for a Dublin Advertising Agency. In 2007 I was offered the position of Publication and Multimedia Officer for the Green Party and stayed there until 2011. I wanted my own design studio for a number of years, and after managing the design and production of large volumes of material for Local and General Elections I knew that I had the discipline and creativity to give it a shot. I completed a “Start your own Business” course in Sheffield where I was living at the time, and then in September 2011 Pixelpod was born. It wasn’t until 2014, when I moved
@THEPIXELPOD
back to Ireland and my husband James joined me, that the business really took off. We make a great team and have produced some really great work together. What were your first significant projects? How did they come about? Being a great designer alone is not going to win you projects. Networking and making connections with people is really important if you want to gain new clients and build awareness and trust. While it might be uncomfortable at first, you have to put yourself out there and build relationships with individuals, business owners and decision makers. This will afford you opportunities to be asked to tender for projects and then you need to nail it! (By the way, nailing a proposal takes practice and it will include failures but you learn and try again.) I did a lot of networking and in early 2015 we were asked to tender for a project for Hook Tourism. The brief was to create a family friendly pull out brochure with a map of the Hook
PIXELPOD.IE
Coastal Tour and it was aimed at national and international tourists. It needed to fold to DL and stand out in the Information Office and Hotels display stands. We created a paper craft map of the area and then photographed it and it worked really well. The front cover of the brochure was also hand crafted out of paper and then photographed. A second and third publication of the brochure was translated into German and then French. This project was a real labour of love we certainly underquoted for it but we have since learned our lesson and it helped us attract some new clients. Give us an example of one of your favourite projects that you’ve ever worked on and why? Can be personal or professional? All the projects I have worked on have taught me something valuable about design processes, or about clients or how to get the most out of a collaboration. The work I am most proud of are the Monart brochures. We looked at the ethos of Monart, a five star destination spa, which is harmony and tranquility, and worked through how we could create meaningful material.
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