A Brush with Design: 10 Designers Dish on Their First Design Encounter — Becca O’Shea
In the lead up to DA’s 10th birthday celebrations in March 2019, A Brush With Design asks 10 designers who have been involved with DA at various times to nostalgically recount their first memory of encountering design. In this second iteration we spoke with Becca O’Shea, Art Director from Little Giant.
Hi I’m Becca an Art Director at Little Giant in Auckland, NZ. It’s difficult to recall exactly what my first encounter with design was. It would probably be through watching Mum from a very young age—she’s also a graphic designer. Quite often when I was very little, I’d have a play around on Freehand 8 making all sorts of vector characters then animate them in flash afterwards. She’s always had a massive creative influence on me and I naturally followed suit.
I had a sketchbook when I was 8 years old, where I’d design my own clothing (mainly t-shirts) and even branded myself as ‘Dakota Fashion’—I remember being a lot more into the idea of branding a company than designing the product itself. I think a lot of the early design influences I’ve had have been around drawing, painting or other more artistic mediums. Which is probably why a lot of my work involves illustration or a more hand-drawn element to it.
I only really got into using digital tools during high school, where we did a star course at Natcoll for Adobe Suite, through Photoshop I still did a lot of collage and scanned in illustrations, ink blots and other organic materials too. My favourite project in high school (16yrs old) was re-branding the Christchurch buskers festival, I think it really helped me hone in on my love of branding. It was the first design project where I could exercise every visual component of a brand.
