Joana Niemeyer

Joana Niemeyer was invited to come and give us a talk about her work and the 'real world'. Joana is from the design company ‘April’, which is a female based studio run by herself and fellow designer Lisa Sjukur. The lecture was very honest, informative and to the point, something some guest lecturers fail to do. 

She broke the lecture into sectors which features the different type of clients she's worked for, the first one was 'The Aurthor'. BAA - Heathrow: The Book: A week at the airport by Alain de Botton, he was given unprecedented, unrestricted access to wander around Heathrow, one of the world’s biggest airports, having been appointed its Writer-in-Residence. He spoke with everyone from airline staff and senior executives to travellers passing through, and based on these conversations he produced this extraordinary account of life at an airport and what it says about modern existence. He explores the magical and the mundane, and the stories that inhabit this strange ‘non-place’ that we are usually eager to leave. Taking the reader through the departures lounge, ‘airside’ and the arrivals hall, de Botton shows with his usual combination of wit and wisdom that spending time in an airport can be more useful and more revealing than we might think. I really liked the art direction of the pages as they were designed in a flip book style with the plane flying off and I loved the photography.

 

The next was 'The Architect'. For this she worked alongside the architecture company John McAslan + Partners. Joana helped redesign the signage to go with their new identity an individual office signage was created. The signage consists of a floor plan next to reception and is then repeated as a super-graphic on each floor. I really like the identity that she created for the company. It's simple yet effective and gives the company a brighter yet professional look.  

Another sector was 'Collaboration'. For this Joana showed us a book called Graphic Europe, It contains guidelines to 31 different cities in 31 different countries which was produced by a local designer in each city over Europe. This gives both the content and the graphic identity unique and distinctive character.
It was great to have someone come in and tell us all the things that we really need  and want to know about the industry and design.