Supporting tomorrow’s creative talent

At Hamilton-Brown, we’re passionate about nurturing the next generation of design talent. We know graduates face an uphill climb to gain the experience they need to land their first graphic design job, so we want to give the best and brightest a leg up.

After scrolling through thousands of job adverts, Bethany was intrigued to come across the Hamilton-Brown graduate offering. It offered her a way to gain the hands-on experience she needed while also delivering training across the most-used industry software. And Bethany was keen to play a part in a leading London creative agency.

The Programme

The first part of the scheme is classroom-based, covering PowerPoint, Excel, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop and Google Slides, as well as a few other programs such as Ceros and XD. For Bethany, this training – specifically on the Microsoft Office Suite – was invaluable: “I was surprised at what you could do with PowerPoint, for example. The trainer was great; he had a huge knowledge of the programs and was happy to help with any questions or problems.”

Bethany was soon putting the training into practice, working on a range of projects with her fellow trainees. “It was great to apply our learning to an active project, and we got daily feedback from our trainer which enabled us to learn where we needed to improve and enhance our skills,” Bethany reflected.

One project involved InDesign which was something Bethany had taught herself to date, like many other graphic design students. “To have someone guide you through the easiest, industry-standard ways for setting up a document was so useful!” she said.

From classroom to Studio

The group was soon working on projects alongside designers within the Studio. As Bethany explains: “We were briefed on a social media task where we worked as a group to design a campaign that advertised Hamilton-Brown’s Graduate Programme. We used a range of software to complete the task, such as Adobe After Effects for the animated and interactive Instagram posts, and Adobe Illustrator for the static posts.”

“We then worked as a team to create a pitch and present this to an audience of Senior Designers. This was really useful as we received some great feedback that we could use to develop our project, and in our further work.”

In short, the Hamilton-Brown Graduate Training Programme is about giving budding designers confidence in their skills and equipping them with the right tools to make the transition from a university to commercial agency graphic design a smooth and rewarding process. And as for Bethany, she is now enjoying her first full-time role within our Studio.