AOD Graduate and Lecturer, Chani Perera; influencing the new generation of Visual Communication Designers

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After Leo Burnett, she embarked on setting up Riot House, a zine dedicated to Graphic Designers to showcase their own designs. This was a venture by Chani when she noticed that other designers as herself lacked a platform to display their personal designs, and she wanted to create a place where they could show their own work away from the client work. She personally funded the creation of a website and a magazine that was sent out to subscribers completely free. Currently, Riot House is a design incubator connecting various designers of different expertise with clients with specific needs providing a harmonised client/designer work experience.

In the last few years, she has worked at Dentsu Grant (Former Grant McCann Erickson) as a part time designer, and specialising in design in advertising working on packaging, editorials, company profiles, annual reports, and branding. Again, she emphasised that the same process she learnt at AOD was utilised, and that it was stronger as she had added thing to the base skills.

Chaniis also an Associate Lecturer at AOD teaching for 5 years in the Foundation Programme, Portfolio Programme, and currently, in the Visual Communication Design Department. She firmly believes that every designer is always learning something new, and that by being at AOD brings in new ideas and methods as well as keeping her brushed up on her process. By being around many students with various talents, she sees that completing a Visual Communication Design degree at AOD builds their confidence. It’s not just an attribute of having a degree, but by going through the curriculum, leaning the design terminology, covering a range of graphic design disciplines such as packaging, branding, editorial and publication and more gives the students the ability to confidently take their next step into industry armed with a respectable knowledge and skill in the subject.

Speaking from her experience as a student, Chani also mentions that the students at AOD are also equipped with a certain discipline which prepares them to ask the right questions and extract the right information. ‘Doing a degree is not easy. It requires a certain discipline. Doing a degree makes you makes you ready to take on that new world. There is a transformation that happens from Foundation to a third year student that is wonderful to watch. They become aware of life skills such as time management, figuring things out for themselves, being responsible, and being independent’.

Sri Lanka, which Chani states is at a peak in Visual Communication Design with new businesses, old companies rebranding identities, and many job opportunities in various industries, is an ideal hub of prospects for AOD graduates; ‘ We also have the perk as Graphic Designers to work in any industry from fashion to interior to motion graphics... everybody needs a Graphic Designer’.

Call 0775727772 to learn more about studying Visual Communication Design, Fashion Design & Marketing, Fashion & Textile Design, Interior Design or Motion Graphics & Animation Design with 100% internal design degrees from Northumbria University UK, stay tuned to AOD’s official digital channels AOD Sri Lanka on Facebook, aod_design on instagram, www.aod.lk or contact AOD on 011586772/3 or email info@aod.lk