Ms Donna Williams MA, SFHEA

Donna has the role of Course Director for the BA & MDes Graphic Design. This means that she looks after the management of Graphic Design and keeps an eye on all of our fabulous students. She teaches across all levels, from first year’s to fourth year’s and absolutely loves the challenges of her role. Donna specialises in how Social Graphics impacts on our environment and how this influences the individual and the collective community.

The BA Graphic Design course has evolved over a 25 year history with a huge and successful Alumni. Many graduates return to be part of our dynamic ‘Design Week Festival’ and part of our teaching on the Degree programme. This is a celebration and a platform of shared practice where our graduates share their wisdom and skills with our current students.

Donna also offers several annual awards of excellence to Further Education and Schools and maintains a desire to continue to have meaning in her daily life and career. There is no greater privilege than helping our students to get to where they want to be in their creative careers.

唐娜经常发现呼啸而过的corridors and working in the studios. Thoroughly enjoying her role and responsibilities in the University. She is always up to something, as there is a belief in no limits to what we can achieve

Donna Williams is a graduate of the North East Wales Institute of Visual Communication. She has worked in top-end agencies on high profile clients, in the UK and Sydney, Australia. After several years as a Senior Designer and Freelancer in Australia, she set up private, intensive training courses for Graphic Design Students. This focused on integrating the needs of the industry with ‘fit for purpose’ training. On returning to Wales, Donna started working at UWTSD and has never regretted coming back to the joy of living in this part of the world.

• D&AD Design and Advertising Association.
• New Designers
• BACP British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists. (This seems a bit unusual for a Graphic Designer but this type of training has been integrated into Social Graphics and how we teach in a creative environment).

作为一个平面设计师d Therapist, Donna combines her two passions of how creativity is a transformative process and how it can be used for ‘good’.

The subject areas that she teaches on are Visual Studies, Typography, Other People’s Shoes –The Responsible Designer (Social Graphics), Sustainable Design, Final Graduate Projects for third years and how to achieve Self Promotion in a creative world. All of this feeds into the modules and supports the teaching in how to stay a creative person within the industry.

Donna research interests are mainly in how Social Graphics can be used for ‘good’. Her latest paper looks at how Art and Design teachers and lectures ‘help’ their students and embed counselling skill in the pedagogic process in the subject of Art and Design. This focuses on the phenomenon of reflective art and how we bring our creative self into the solutions for Graphic Design. Working with a focus on mindfulness and social integrity within the Design outcome.

A Graphic Designer today is fortunate to have the advantage of gaining a wide range of transferable skills. These are skills, which can take a designer in many different directions. This is certainly true in my own career and also evident in the careers of our graduates. After twenty years as a Graphic Designer and now as an educator, she still holds a love for the traditional creative processes of hand drawn type, letterpress, and idea formation. This combined with our modern process of digital design has a powerful impact on our visual language. Our own teaching model at Swansea College of Art, UWTSD, offers up to date skills for contemporary design, but has not lost the importance, that at the heart of all good design is a creative person.

Donna works with a variety of Enterprise projects within the University. The team hold an annual event “Design Week’ which invite alumni and significant Graphic Design Leaders to share their wisdom and skills with our students. This is extremely popular and great fun.

The Graphic design team work with many commercial opportunities. The Department is extremely popular within our Design industry and external projects are part of the curriculum of the Degree. The Graphic Design Programme has been recommended as a Degree of excellence which has been replicated in China, Wuhan University.

Donna also works across other faculties with various additional workshops in the Psychology of Art and Design, The Artist Within for creative blocks, Art as Transformation, in how ‘therapy as art’ helps us become more creative designer, Mindfulness and creative workshops in how we work with Trauma.

To train and work as a Graphic Designer, we understand that we are the problem solvers of Visual Communication.

Being a lecturer is a privileged position and each day is a creative challenge in how we support our students to get to where they want to be. We have outstanding Graduate employment and outstanding results in Student Experience all driven by enthusiastic staff and students.

Donna is also a member of the Applied Ethics in Education, which is a movement of integrating Mindfulness into practice in Schools, colleges and Universities.

If you require any further details please do not hesitate to contact Donna. There are numerous opportunities to come and meet the team. This can range from Open Days, Taster Days, After Dark classes and if you cannot manage those we can also arrange one to one appointments.