Grethe Bredenkamp recently graduated from Design Academy of Fashion (DAF) and won the academy's award for the most commercially viable range. She describes her collection:...
Having recently graduated from Stellenbosch Academy with a BA in Applied Design, majoring in photography, Megan Mitchell is looking forward to next year when she plans to be doing freelance work, assisting and building her portfolio. ...
Tyler Dolan recently received his degree in Graphic Design specializing in photography from Durban University of Technology....
The latest addition to our Graduate Series, Graham Wiles, is graduating from DUT with a B-Tech Honors Degree in Visual Communication Design. The title of his study is Cut, Score, Create! A South African Paper Toy Experience....
After getting his diploma in graphic design and working in the industry for 6 years, Mike van Heerden decided to quit his job at the beginning of this year, and return to student life. He enrolled at Durban University of Technology to complete his degree...
Twenty year old fashion design graduate Chelsey Wilson has created a fashion video for her graduate range called The Story of a Girl....
Nina is a design graduate from AAA Cape Town. Featured are two of her final year projects. The first, V//SU (vee-zoo), is a local magazine that aims to discover the small treasures and interesting characters of the often forgotten small towns of South Africa.
Her second project works similarly to PostSecret but is South African based and is inspired by the ever-growing online social interaction systems that allow people to share their most intimate secrets with people they've never even met. The project is entitled Telltale and is aimed at exposing the strange and sometimes scary secrets of the people of South Africa. It also brings the anonymous sharing of intimate information online into a real life situation. 
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Hilde is a 4th Year Graduate at the University of Stellenbosch. This body of work, undertaken this year, has its roots in her previous three years of Fine Art studio practice.
She tells us about her process and style, "Originally I worked with natural forms found in botanical subjects and the nude female figure. These subjects, through the media of painting and drawing, provided me with subject matter, form and content and I increasingly gravitated towards painting as my medium of choice. It provided the expressive freedom, fluidity and chromatic ranges that allowed me to progressively distil and abstract my subject matter. By the beginning of this year I reached a point where the gestural action and spontaneous processes of painting became more important than mimetic representation.
My biggest challenge this year has been that of intuitively understanding the nature of my process. Balancing between the chance-accidental elements and conscious intervention remains a strong theme in my paintings – especially when such intervention also involves grappling with issues of beauty in art. Trying to discover and affirm beauty through abstract painting is a very difficult task; especially when contemporary theories of beauty seem divergent and sometimes even contradictory. I am very aware of the long and well-exploited tradition of abstract painting in the Modernist and Postmodernist worlds, and hope to develop my painting style in way that is truly personal, honest and expressive without submitting to artificial trends.
Painting has become a process of self-discovery and given me the opportunity to paint who I am."
Contact Hilde at hildealetmalan88@gmail.com
Kirsten is a graduate from the Stellenbosch Academy of Design and Photography. She studied applied design majoring in graphic design and art direction. Her Bansky-inspired campaign above was her take on a band poster for This Quilt's album Popular Pollution. The project was timed to go out at the same time as the 2009 elections and attracted quite a lot of attention. Kirsten's product design project Chuck Ups was initially a brief to create packaging for shoes. Instead, she created cardboard shoes and packaged them in a book along with colourful laces and marker pens. The cardboard sneakers can be removed, customised and then chucked up to land over telephone wires in true 'shoefitti' style. The book also comes with instructions on performing the art of Chuck Up.
Other projects in Kirsten's portfolio include packaging for a coffee label, branding and brand activation for the Stellenbosch Academy along with fellow students Jeannie Sherwood, Richard Moir, Francois Nel and John Second. And another collaboration with Jeannie Sherwood on a corporate identity for a laundromat called The Lost Sock. This project became inspiration for their Mills & Boon trailer designed for the Old Mac Daddy luxury trailer park hotel in Elgin.
Contact Kirsten at design.kirst@gmail.com
Jane is graduating from Elizabeth Galloway Academy of Fashion Design this year. This is her graduate collection entitled &Then. The range is all about nostalgia and the optimism and joy of childhood. All the fabrics, except the shirts and denim jeans, are reclaimed and reused...
Mieke van der Merwe is a graduating graphic design student from the Univesity of Stellenbosch. She loves drawing, illustration, making journals and collage....
Matthew Britten is the first graduating creative to be part of our Graduate Series. This year he completes his BA degree in Fashion design and design business management at FEDISA....
