Arno Hattingh arrived from South Africa to join us for the IDI Graduation Ceremony 2016. Arno traveled to Edinburgh Castle for a once in a lifetime opportunity, Graduating with a BA (Hons) Graphic Design. We talked to Arno about how he balanced his coursework with working full time as well as how much he learned from the course.
Arno’s Design Work
“As a designer, I do a lot of user experience related work, where I constantly communicate with our users to design the best possible working experience.
“From time to time, I work on freelance projects to improve brands, and my primary objectives are always to look for new ways that a company can market themselves toward their customers, and stand out from their competitors.
“I have a very minimalist approach when it comes to design, and I believe that a design with lots of negative space can often say more than a busy design with lots of graphics. I get bored easily, but to me it’s a good thing, because it allows me to test my limits and do much more each time that I reinvent myself.”
Interview Transcript
My name is Arno Hattingh and I studied the BA Honours Graphics Design.
Where have you come from to be here today?
I travelled from South Africa.
What brings you to the graduation ceremony today?
Well, first of all the graduation is in a castle, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, so that’s not something I could have said no for.
What made you chose to study online with IDI?
Probably for the reason that it’s one of the best institutions that I could find that does it online and, I think, for what they delivered it was also the best for the price.
What were the worst moments?
Finding time to do it. I think that was the worst. Finding time to actually do my studies and also I was working full time, so working full time and then going to sit down each evening and trying to manage to do what was necessary. If you’re working full time, you actually get tired as well, and then in the evenings you get tired and try to figure out what to do, reading, the words just start swimming on the pages.
What were the best moments?
The learning experience in total was actually the best. I’ve learned a lot more than I thought I would have learned, very interesting things and communicating with IDI staff and the Hertfordshire staff as well was actually very good for me too.
How would you describe the peer interaction?
From what I’ve seen it was actually quite good. I didn’t communicate with them as much as I could, because I was again working full time, so I didn’t always have time to communicate or reply on messages but from the communication that I had it was very good. It was very fun.
Do you have any advice for people thinking about studying online with IDI?
Do it. There’s no better advice than just do it. It’s the best experience that I’ve had studying, I could have done it on my own time, I’ve learnt a lot and it also helped me to delve a little bit deeper in what I needed to do.
So, what’s next?
I don’t know. I haven’t gone that far yet.