Niamh Boland

Afbeelding
Niamh-Boland
“There was so much opportunity to be creative”
Niamh Boland
Student Exchange CMD

Niamh Boland was determined to do her arts minor at NHL Stenden. As an Erasmus exchange student from Ireland she had her sights set on graphic design, but an administrative hiccup got in the way. She was offered the chance to take the minor in Art ‘n Sound which proved to be so flexible that she was able to focus on her passion anyway.

“I was really determined to do my minor in Leeuwarden. I missed out on the Branding Advertising Design minor but Art ‘n Sound was so flexible I was able to focus on branding and graphic design anyway. The programme gives you a lot of freedom to be creative, so if you’re into art or design, you can do that. Or if you like sound design, or music videos, you can do that. My focus was on graphic design and I ended up working on project for a company in South Korea. It’s something I hadn’t done before and wouldn’t have been able to do at my home college.”

Real feedback

“Working for a real company means you get to see what the working field actual expects of you as the feedback you get is a more real representation of what you can expect in a job. The client gives you more specific feedback and will tell you exactly what needs working on. This makes the process more rewarding because you know that in the end you’re giving the client something they’re going to be really happy with. The DBE sessions work really well and you do give each other feedback of course, but design is such a subjective thing. Different people have different opinions: one will love an idea, one will hate it, and one might not care, so you don’t really know what to do. The feedback is good and well-founded but what you get from a client is real. It carries more value.”

Friendly and flexible

“The art ‘n sound minor isn’t actually an English-taught minor, but everyone was really flexible and so if there was something in Dutch everyone would switch to English quickly and easily or explain what it was about. Obviously it was easy to work within our group in English and the opening sessions we had once or twice a week for the minor programme were done in English. The lectures we had were optional, so anything we signed up for was then given in English. It seemed really relaxed and flexible. That carried through to the client project. Our initial project was to do a 360-degree video and an animation, but it completely changed because of the corona pandemic. We ended up making an online magazine instead. It was a great learning experience.

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