27 Jul BWD Marketing Podcast – Zwelethu Gamede & Alexia Cost
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-O6X2T3lcQ
Overall Look & Feel: We decided to revise our BWD Marketing Podcast’s look & feel with a fresh modern design. We chose to keep it out of the box with our stunning 3D intro and then keeping it clean with our choice of minimalist lower thirds. We also took the opportunity to keep our viewers up to date with whats happening at bwd by dropping interesting links throughout the video.
Description: We interview our super talented graphic designer Zwelethu Gamede to find out what he does at BWD.
Credits
Video Editor: Venus Bambisa
Director Of Photography: Sibusiso Radebe
Camera Men: Venus Bambisa, Thabelang Shane, Sibusiso Radebe
Video Transcript
Lexi: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the next edition of the BWD Marketing podcast. Today we’re going to be speaking to Zwelethu Gamede. Hi, Zwelethu.
Zwelethu: Hi Lexi.
Lexi: How are you today?
Zwelethu: Fine, thanks. Yourself?
Lexi: I’m great, thank you.
Zwelethu: Excellent.
Lexi: So, Zwelethu, tell us a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up and where did you study?
Zwelethu: Yeah, Soweto [00:00:40] born and raised. Very passionate about the arts. Always will be found with a pencil and a sketchbook from the age of, I think if my mother described it, from four years old. So, yeah, that’s a bit about me, but I’ve always been focused and had a great attraction towards anything creative.
Lexi: Uh huh. And where did you study?
Zwelethu: I studied at the design school of southern Africa. This was my tertiary education, but that’s not where I realized that I had what most people would call a talent or an inclination towards the arts. I picked up at, I think, at high school in Glenvista during my second year there. That I might end up taking a career in the arts.
Lexi: Oh, good. So, after finishing your studies, what did you pursue as a career? What do you do now?
Zwelethu: Currently I’m a graphic artist and an illustrator. A creative, and I think I prefer saying storyteller, but if you can’t describe your career in five words, you don’t have a career, so I’d say that it’s graphic design.
Lexi: Okay. As a graphic designer, what is a typical day involve for you?
Zwelethu: A typical day for a graphic designer is anything from sales, which is meeting your client, collecting a brief, to conceptualizing the brief, and straight to execution. And at the end of the day, most of the time you would have to deliver an output. Either be it creating a website or printing a final document.
Lexi: Tell us a little bit about your favorite projects in the course of your career.
Zwelethu: Some of my favorite projects, I think my first one was working on a illustration project where we created about 60 books, which amounted to close to a hundred thousand and a half to about 2,000 illustrations. I don’t remember the exact number, but I do remember that there was a lot of sleepless nights.
Lexi: I’m sure.
Zwelethu: Yeah, the other project that I worked on that was very rewarding, recently, was…and it’s a miscellaneous project because it’s not necessarily things I would typically do in south Africa as designers and illustrators, was being part of creating some concept art for a production car for motorsport racing. So, yeah, that was pretty interesting and also, I guess, one of the things on the bucket list that chipped off, I guess.
Lexi: What do you think is your defining factor as a creator? How do you sell yourself?
Zwelethu: Well, I’m multi-faceted so that means I do a lot of things from your photography straight to your illustration. And being able to respond to any creative brief with a lot of versatility is usually a very good sell to any client ‘cuz most of the you find that you would start off doing one thing and end up receiving a lot of work because you can cover a lot of their requirements. Also, having the ability to tell stories through some visual form is also very good and I think a strong point, so being a good storyteller.
Lexi: What do you practice on a daily or even a weekly basis that you feels help you grow and the industry grow?
Zwelethu: I think one of the things that I do pretty often as an illustrator is to sketch and to collect a lot of visual reference. It doesn’t necessarily have to be drawings or drawings of other people. It is more an exercise. The more you do it, the more your momentum builds and the easier it is to execute at the end of the day. So, that’s one of the things that I do. The other thing I do is to take up one proficiency every year. It will be something necessarily not related to the industry, probably taking up pool and trying to really understand and master maybe that. Or even something within the culinary arts. So, it’s always something creative, but not necessarily things you do at work here.
Lexi: Where do you see yourself in the near future?
Zwelethu: I’ve always been interested in bridging the gap between creativity and commerce. The other thing that I’m also interested in is becoming a social entrepreneur. So, i wanna pursue that once I’ve actually reached what I would define to be my success. Yeah.
Lexi: Uh huh. Well, I’m sure we all look forward to seeing you progress in your career in the next few years. Thank you so much for talking to us today and letting us know a little bit about yourself.