5 years since Shillington Sundays: Manon Prost

It's been 5 years since Manon Prost studied on Shillington's Sunday course. Our Director of Teaching, George Simkin, caught up with her on what she's up to now, why studying on Sundays was her preference, how she stays creative and what the plan is for the future. Happy reading!

George Simkin: When did you know you wanted to pursue the creative field of graphic design? When was that something you thought of and wanted to do?

Manon Prost:

I've always wanted to be a graphic designer, pretty much. I remember when I was at school, obviously, the very cliche story but I loved to draw. So i've always been very creative and everything. I'm French, and in France—it's very different to the UK landscape where in France even if you are creative you need to have like a master degree, five years studies and basically I needed to go to art school and everything. I guess I don't want to say that my parents were supportive of that. They were quite worried about what I could get out of it. It's kind of scary to say: “I'm going to go to art school” and you know, maybe that sounds unstable.

And so I was like, OK, so I won't do that. So I did master degrees in Digital Marketing and went in the Marketing direction. To me, this was okay as it was still creative, but not in the way I wanted initially. And then I moved to London. And obviously, London is a very creative city.

But it was always at the back of my mind to be a Graphic Designer but it felt so daunting and it felt like it was too late.

I remember when I was little I would eat my breakfast and I would see the box of cereal and I was like... “this is so cool” — the illustration and everything makes sense, even as a four year old.

I think there's a thing that's quite nice where everyone who's creative feels they're creative deep down. If you're creative you know you have something in you that's like: “I'm a creative person”, there's something inside you that's eating you up. They're like: “I want to do something, I want to make something”. That's always exciting.

GS: What led you to Shillington?

MP:

There was a moment where I working in the ad-tech industry, which wasn't creative at heart. I’d take the tube every morning and I remember one day there was this massive billboard. I can't remember where, but it said “Get paid to daydream”, and it mentioned studying design part-time. I took a picture of it and I was like, wow, like, you what is it?

It felt like it was an angel, you know, coming to help and I was like: “my God, I want to do that”.

I went to the website and I saw the amazing portfolios, and I remember I booked an appointment with Clay. He showed me all the work and I was amazed. It was like a dream, and just what I needed.

I had to wait maybe a couple of years to be able to afford it. But to this day, it's one of the best investments I've ever made because it was truly what I needed at the time.

GS: What do you do now at the moment? So you graduated Shillington five years ago?

MP:

Yeah, in 2020. I was working in a design studio at the time but as a project manager and actually it was a very bold and very reckless decision to give my notice the day of the graduation without having any plan B.

GS: You went for it!

MP:

Yeah, I was like: “I'm now a designer”. Luckily it went well because, even though it was at the middle of the pandemic, I was able to find freelance jobs. I wanted to find an internship and then find a job in a studio. But because it was at the middle of the pandemic, no one was hiring. So that's why studios would prefer hiring like freelancers so that they don't commit too much on something. I've always wanted to be involved in freelance—it came pretty early in my career and I am very lucky.

GS: Let’s talk about the Shillington experience. What was your Shillington experience like?

MP:

It was so exciting. I remember the first few days, it felt like a dream really. I remember thinking that I can't believe that I'm here with other people that are there with different backgrounds and everything. But we are all here to learn new skills together, and eventually a new career. It was very exciting, and all the teachers were amazing as well.

I really liked the fact that all those teachers were actually graphic designers and they weren't there just to teach the theory. I liked the fact that every teacher showed their portfolios during the introduction. I remember this feeling of amazement and inspiration.

The community aspect of it was obviously very important too because there were some briefs that we needed to do as a group and it can feel a bit overwhelming because you don't know everybody. But it was great to connect with other people.

GS: So when you were doing the course on Sundays, how did you manage to juggle what you were doing on Sunday and with your working week?

MP:

I was working a full-time job in a studio. It was intense because I was working from Monday to Friday and then on weekends or on Sunday I was doing Shillington and on Saturday I was doing the homework. I couldn't have done the other part-time course at Shillington because to me it was even more intense for some reason, doing it after work.

My brain works in a way that, you know, every thing has a slot. So with working Monday to Friday I knew that my weekends would be for graphic design.

GS: Did you think of any other ways to learn design?

MP:

Prior to Shillington I tried to I tried to follow YouTube tutorials. I know that there are amazing designers that haven't been in a graphic design school and they do amazing things in their career. But I knew that I wanted to have this kind of system that I could rely on, you know, teachers that have been in the field for years and years. I didn't even know where to start. I would follow tutorials to things like ‘how to be good graphic designer’ & ‘5 tips to learn to use Photoshop’. But you can learn those things but then you don’t learn the the creative process, how to digest a brief, to find inspiration, how to create strong brand concepts—everything that I learned at Shillington.

It was great to also have this sense of community and to be a part of something—it wasn't just me learning graphic design alone, it was me learning with my peers and learning graphic design together. You create a great connection and now I'm friends with lots of practicing graphic designers who are Shillington graduates.

GS: Do you have any Shillington portfolio favourites?

MP:

Yes! The first one was Goldie. There is a cool story with this project— the brief was called Start-Up Identity and every student would get a variation, luckily I got the coffee shop brief. I love drinking coffee so that helps.

I developed this coffee shop called Goldie. I had to came up with everything from, the name to the logo, the visual identity, the copy and all the deliverables. And maybe six months after graduating, I wanted to kind of upscale this case study and to effectively work on the branding of a real coffee shop. So I rebranded Gaudi, which became something a bit more aligned to who I was as a designer.

To this date this project that brought me like the majority of my clients. The funny story behind it is that a year ago I was contacted by this couple that met in Melbourne—the girl is French, the guy is German. They were both baristas and when they moved back to Germany, they decided to open a coffee shop in Munich. They found my work online and reached out to say ‘we really love what you did for Goldie, we would like something similar to it’.

So I was like, you know what? It's a conceptual student project I did at Shillington , so I can use a lot of the same elements. The coffee shop is called the South Bank is actually open in Munich.

GS: The big question here is why did you decide to do the Sunday?

MP:

To me it was better because at the time I was working full time and sometimes I had work requirements where I would travel in Europe and everything throughout the week.

I also quite like the fact that on Sundays it's supposed to be a rest day but to me I saw the course as an investment for my future. So even though it was a lot of work, I felt like it was good to do it on Sundays because I could really commit to graphic design rather than doing my full day of work and then doing the course when I’m tired! Weekends ere for graphic design!

GS: Your rest days were an investment for your future—that's really lovely. Because, you know, sometimes we're just laying in the couch, which is fine too. B you can change your career. You’ve talked about the benefits of the Sunday course, would you tell other people to do the Sunday course for the same reasons?

MP: It's very hard for me to multitask. And so for me to imagine myself working a full day from 9 to 6 and then working on something new was too demanding. And so I like the fact that on Sundays I would wake up and be like, ‘this is a graphic design day’.

I liked the way it was structured—in the morning we would have the theory, demos & lectures and in the afternoon we would have a proper brief. It was a really practical way to learn and again for my brain—it worked well that way. So it meant you could have the time to really take on all the information and also create stuff then during the week as well. So yeah, to me, even if I had the opportunity to do it another way, I wouldn't have done.

GS: So what are you actually up to at the moment?

MP:

I was freelancing from the very beginning of when I graduated in 2020 to now. I did a lot of work with studios as well as my own clients—which is the thing that I prefer. In September last year, I decided to create my own little studio, Prost Work, which is great because I felt like it was the right time for me to do so. I've also made a lot of connections with other designers, like motion designers, also like developers and 3D designers. So the more I work with my own clients, the more try to collaborate with those people

I like building those connections and bringing other designers to the projects, so it makes sense for me to create a proper company rather than just communicating under just my name, Madame Prost. To me, it's bigger than this and it also creates more legitimacy around what I do.

GS: You’ve got your own studio, you’ve got your own set up. How do you get inspired every day to create things?

MP:

Good question. I think it's a boring answer, but from everywhere. I come from a city called Marseille which has a very strong identity. I noticed that my work kind of reflects both cities—London & Marseille as they are very you know strong and very bold. Marseille is quite rebellious and sometimes even aggressive but it's what I like it's kind of reflective on my work as well.

It can be also like from a TV show and of course from other designers. My friends that are designers as well and sometimes just having a discussion about something can spark ideas. I always have a tiny like notebook on me, I like to sketch out some ideas, even on the tube!

I think one of the best bits of advice I ever got when I started out was don't just look at for inspiration in graphic design. Look everywhere—at fashion, architecture, whatever it is, that's where you get your inspiration from.

GS: It's been five years since Shillinhyon. What do you think is going be happening in the next five years?

MP:

That's a good question. I feel like I would like to expand my studio. I'm not the kind of person that would like to create a studio where I end up not doing the design anymore. So I guess just expanding my work and working with bigger and bigger clients.

I'm not sure if I want to live in London forever, so maybe go back to Marseille, or maybe live in both. In terms of clients, maybe do something that has a bigger impact. Of course, I still love to do things for local businesses, but maybe some campaign work and maybe doing more art direction as well, which is something I started doing last year and I really enjoy.

GS: What's your favourite colour?

MP:

Blue.

GS: Nice. Thanks Manon!

Check out Manon's website here, and her Instagram!

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