Alumni Stories- Conor Merriman
"NCAD was a liberating opportunity. You learn best design practice. You learn about better decision making. So far, I have steadily developed my career and tried to fine tune my diverse skillset"
Name: Conor Merriman
Current Career: Freelance Artist, Art Director, Illustrator & Designer
Graduation Year: 2016
Discipline: Communication Design
Location: Dublin
What career path did you want to follow as a child?
I always wanted to be an artist and to create drawings for people. It was either that or try to be an X-Men superhero. Drawing seemed more achievable! I knew from a young age that I loved art and creating things. I was encouraged by my family and school to keep working at it. I suppose I always enjoyed a positive response to my childish drawings. As I didn’t play sports or have any other hobbies, I latched onto the thing that I loved the most. I remember being asked in school what I wanted to be when I grew up? My answer was always to be an artist. Today, I am very fortunate to say that I have developed an exciting career as an artist and designer.
Why did you decide to study at National College of Art & Design?
Growing up in Dublin, there was only one important decision to be made. As I wanted to go to an art college and NCAD was the best art college to go to I wanted to go there. When I was 16 years old, an opportunity arose to have a guided tour of NCAD. I jumped at the chance. After that visit, I knew I wanted to study at NCAD.
After completing my school leaving certificate my original plan was to take year out to work on my NCAD portfolio application submission. A few months before the application deadline, I threw myself into the NCAD portfolio brief and created my submission. I was very fortunate to be accepted on my first try.
Poachers Packaging Design by Conor Merriman
How did you develop your career towards your current job or practice?
I specialized in Visual Communication design at NCAD. Throughout my studies, I was also working semi-professionally as a freelance graphic designer and event illustrator. At that time, it was the early days of Instagram. Using social media it is so much easier to share your work and be seen. Employing social media marketing was how I got many of my jobs. By the time I graduated three years later I already had extensive work experience. By that stage, much of my work was a portfolio of referral jobs for clients. Many were generated by client word-of-mouth. The work was quite varied.
In 2016, after graduation, I went travelling for three months. When I returned, I put together a five year career plan. Over the next five years, I developed a lot of work experience. I developed a much greater capacity to work with large brands in communicating their activations and campaigns.
I have now broadened my practice quite considerably. My work spans many different sectors from the fashion industry to film, from hospitality, food & drink, to tech and so on. Throughout it all, I have tried to make sure that the current job I am doing is enjoyable but that it also incrementally adds something new to my skillset.
Barbie- Illustration by Conor Merriman
What is the one experience during your time at NCAD that has informed you most in your career and work to date?
It was more a slow build of collective pieces of advice and experimenting across the board at NCAD that had the biggest impact on me. The intensive three year degree was formative. It informed me of what I liked to create and what materials I like to work with. It also informed me about what I didn’t like to work at, which is just as important.
NCAD was a liberating opportunity. You learn best design practice. You learn about better decision making. So far, I have steadily developed my career and tried to fine tune my diverse skillset.
If you were chatting with current NCAD students today what is the one piece of advice you would offer?
NCAD students should first to try to create work that they enjoy making. Your degree and time will go by quickly. Try to use this short lived period to be experimental in your approach to art and design. Try to grow creatively. Honestly, you will find out soon enough that the professional world is much more intensive and pretty unforgiving. There is little or no time for trial and error in the design industry.
What new opportunities have developed for you as a result of changes in work practice during the Covid pandemic?
Surprisingly, there have been huge opportunities for the creative industries during the recent pandemic. Unlike when the recession hit in 2008, when many creative jobs disappeared over night, during the Covid crisis many brands and companies had to invest to survive. They did this in part by using better design. Website redevelopments, brand redesigns, art campaigns and everything in between have all soared during this time. Illustration-led packaging is huge at the moment, as is creative photography. If a brand is bold enough to step out of its comfort zone the creative sector can truly add value.
