Collaborâte with Alix Pashley & Felicity Farncomb
Collaborâte
Welcome to the Collaborâte blog. A series of interviews with graduates and friends of C3 College. We're firm believers that creativity works best in community, so we've selected a bunch of creatives connected to the C3 College community to learn from their experiences. Our hope is that these blogs will be useful to you (or a friend) as you continue on your creative journey.
Today we'll be interviewing Alix Pashley (Graduate of our Visual Arts course in 2013) & Felicity Farncomb (our go to graphic designer). Alix & Felicity are both graphic designers at the highly esteemed Sydney branding agency, Smack Bang Designs.
We'll be sharing this interview over three different posts (these girls had so much to say!), let's get into it.
Tell us about yourself.
What do you do for work?
Alix Pashley (AP): I am a mid-weight designer at Smack Bang Designs. My days are spent designing for all kinds of clients. I get to be on the journey with a client from the beginning to the end of the process, ensuring their brand is looking ace and making their vision come to life!
Felicity Farncomb (FF): I’m a senior designer at Smack Bang Designs. So I do a lot of designing, a bit of checking creative concepts and final art, dabbling in some styling and art direction and many hours of drinking coffee and lunchtime chats with the girls.
What's the dream for you?
AP: I feel like I am currently living the dream! I want to continue pursuing design and learning along the way as I feel like it never ends. I would love to extend my designing into fashion one day, but we will have to see!
FF: I don’t really have a career end goal. I want to keep doing work that is challenging, making a difference in the world and work that is fun! I want to keep learning and making beautiful things.
Let's talk about creativity and collaboration.
Why is collaborating important to you?
AP: Collaborating is awesome. It's important to me because I always learn from it. It opens up your thinking and allows you to step out of ways you usually do things. You learn others strengths and it teaches you to lay down your own agenda.
FF: Collaborating means getting out of my own head! It’s so important for creatives to get out of the bubble we all (unintentionally) form and choose to experience what others have to offer. It’s also super humbling to let go and trust that someone else can bring something to the table that you can't.
How has working with friends who are creative helped you?
AP: It is the BEST. I feel that being open in creativity is key and being friends makes that easy. I have found that you don’t really need to explain much and they get it!
FF: Like any area of life, I think having people around you that ‘get’ you is super important. On a really superficial level... having creative friends is awesome ‘cause they want to also spend an hour in a bookstore or go to a specific cafe just 'cos it has nice branding!
How do you collaborate well with people who have different creative strengths to you?
FF: I think the biggest part of this is realising your strengths and your weaknesses. To be able to let go of what you’re not great and/or passionate about is really liberating for a creative! My personal slant is to control and organise, so learning how to delegate, trust and communicate with other creatives with other strengths has been a huge learning curve for me.
AP: Big time {agreeing with FF}! Being aware of both your strengths and weaknesses is super important. A massive part of collaborating for me, has been leaning on others when I know they have way more strength in an area than me. That then allows me to work in my own strengths. That really is the purpose of collaborating. I love diving straight into things and going for it (without much organisation), so people like Flicky {FF} haha are great for me, as they always get my scatter brain in order!