Chris Goodwin came to HeX Productions from Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies on a 10-week graphic design placement.
Our graphic design student’s placement has now come to an end. Chris told us how he got on during his placement and what skills he’s taking away with him from his time working with the HeX team.
Chris Goodwin’s placement experience with HeX
I’ve been at HeX for 10 weeks, and throughout that time, I’ve learnt a lot about the wider industry of graphic and web design and the practices that HeX takes part in to ensure that everything is user-friendly.
The reason that I chose HeX was because I wanted to get a broader understanding of an industry which hadn’t really been explored during classes and lectures.
The User Experience side of graphic design, and design in general, interests me because you are working specifically for people’s benefit. This is can be to make things easier to use, or allow someone to access content who couldn’t already. The way HeX creates websites, and web pages are like this, choosing the one area of User Experience which is probably the most important; making things accessible to everyone, especially people with disabilities – both visible and not.
What I’ve learned about accessibility guidelines
HeX achieves accessibility by following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The WCAG acts as standards that are needed to be followed to ensure that any content online is accessible. For example, including captions on images and videos to describe what’s happening. This aids those with hearing difficulties, as well as, offering compatibility for screen readers to help make sense of a website for those with visual impairments.
How to design in an inclusive way
From working on creating websites, infographics, posters and leaflets, I learned a lot about the best way to present information and images to be accessible. From the visual side, I learned which font size and font types work best, and how colours must be above a certain threshold to be legible. On webpages everything must have a purpose and must be clearly labelled, to aid screen reader users to be able to understand and navigate a website.
What I am taking away with me from my time at HeX
These are all skills that I can take and use in my future designs and in my career. Things that without HeX, I doubt I would have learned about. I can now make my design work accessible.
