Against Mediocrity: On Education, Design, and the Rooms That Matter

Three educational rooms that changed me, and how I think about learning and teaching because of them.

I had three major learning experiences, and each one taught me something different about how I work, what I value, and what it means to grow.

The first started in high school. I’d been at a co-ed school for a year and hated it. Enough that my parents moved me to an all-girls private school. That shift was jarring. The school was religious, a bit rigid, and didn’t offer manual arts, which really pissed me off. It wasn’t quite indoctrination-level, but it left a bitter sweet taste in my mouth. After all, I had asked for this, and it was a huge privilege to even have the choice.

Something I found out after I’d moved was that my old co-ed school had an Arts Academy attached to it, an extracurricular program that offered scholarships to its own students. My best friend had been going for a year already by grade 10, and eventually I joined her in grade 11. I went every Wednesday from 3 to 6pm, and it quickly became the highlight of my week. It also meant I could skip Wednesday afternoon sport - a school requirement I was glad to shake off.

I paid for the classes with money I had earned working at my cinema job. That mattered. It was probably the first time I consciously chose to invest in myself. Arts Academy was more than a series of classes, you could pivot your learning at any time, didn’t feel like colour theory today? All good, go jump into cartooning in the next room with Phil. Life drawing? Sure, Kaye was in the other room. If you needed help with a school assignment, they’d support that too. It was structured but fluid, open without being aimless. You were always learning something. You were supported, not herded. Arts Academy actually taught me how to draw, these skills weren’t taught in the school art class.

Naturally, I loved it. I planned to keep going after high school, however the government pulled their funding, and the whole thing was shut down. It’s a loss that still stings. It was one of the few places I experienced open-format learning done well- scaffolded, generous, and genuinely led by curiosity. I think of this space and time often.

The second formative experience was my apprenticeship in hairdressing. At the time, I wasn’t exactly timid, but I wasn’t confident either. I’d talk around things, afraid to be direct. It felt easier to soften the edges than to say what I meant, to ask for what I wanted.

I ended up in hair by chance, through a school friend. It wasn’t something I’d considered before. I wasn’t particularly girly in high school, hairdressing and nails - it all didn’t make sense to me but I’d just finished studying makeup, so it felt like a logical next step. My boss almost didn’t hire me, citing my stacked résumé, thinking I’d wouldn’t have the level of loyalty required for the long haul and jump ship at the first sight of difficulty. Truthfully it was because my previous hospitality jobs simply didn’t offer any growth- when I told her that, she visibly softened.

The salon was a Toni&Guy franchise, which surprises me even to this day. I usually resist big institutions as they tend to be bloated, slow and allergic to change. Toni&Guy had structure and legacy, which turns out makes a world of difference. Despite the general notion of franchising feeling rigid and stuck, it actually somehow successfully gave each salon owner a level of autonomy and flavour, which meant it could carry the strengths of a large brand; rigour, standards, reputation, mastery, excellence, while still being led by the creative pulse of the team.

I learnt to dress hair, sure, but the real education happened in the back room, between clients and the floor, by osmosis. I still find myself unpacking things I absorbed there some fifteen years on. A lot of that has to do with my mentor, Jhanda, the salon owner.

She was a force. Raised in regional Queensland, she could charm the wealthiest women in the front room, then swear like a sailor out the back. The height of duality. She was tough, brilliant, and completely herself. I admired the hell out of her. She’d lived her dreams and hit her goals, and because of that, she had no problem championing mine. There was no envy, no weird energy- just a woman who wanted to see me thrive, and knew how to help me do it.

That’s so rare. When you meet someone like that, especially early on, they imprint on you. She taught me how to hold standards. How to shift registers. How to be both sharp and soft. I learned hair, yes, but so much more than that, I learned how to become more of myself.

The third defining experience was studying visual communication design at a boutique college that had been around since 1989. Small, independent, and run by people who gave a damn. Sadly, it doesn’t exist anymore.

When students tell me their full-time load is four subjects a week, I try not to balk. We did eight. Every subject required an art journal, with print outs, mood boards, sketches, briefing notes, annotations. By the end of the first month, I think most of the cohort and I were treating college just like a full-time studio job, I certainly found it easier that way. I’d show up every day, regardless of whether I had classes. It wasn’t about passing the time, it was about making valuable work.

We were taught by a handful of teachers, maybe six in total over the years, but each of them brought real depth. We studied typography, letterpress, branding, storytelling, marketing, value—and what it actually means to create value. It wasn’t surface-level, either. This was education built from industry, not bureaucracy.

Our classes wove lectures into studio time, a rhythm that made sense to me then and still shapes how I teach now. Passive theoretical learning was never the goal. Knowledge doesn’t mean much until you put it into practice. That place understood that. We watched, made, talked, critiqued, discussed, shredded, sketched again. We learnt by doing, and by doing again.

Design College Australia taught me that rigour and creativity aren’t in opposition. That good design is about how you think, not just what you think and make- and that being a student never really ends if you're doing it right.

Lately, I’ve been neck-deep in an e-commerce mentoring program. I can already tell it’s going to join my specialised list of learning experiences. When I told one of the managers at my job about it, she asked if I was doing a graduate certificate. I must’ve pulled such a face. A grad cert? Why would I funnel my money, time and energy into an institutionalised theory-slog when I could learn directly from people who’ve actually built multi-million dollar businesses, who've tested their ideas in the market, and then built a whole ass school to teach other women to do the same thing? Make it make sense.

The program had gotten its meathooks into me within the week. I’m taken, hook line and sinker now. If I want Forge Forward to do more than just survive, if I want it to thrive, then I need to be all in. No hedging bets. No part-time hustle. I’ve always had at least three things going on at once, business a, business b and side job because I’ve been so scared to put all my eggs in one basket. I’ve been out of hairdressing for nearly 6 months and I don’t miss it. I miss parts of it, sure, but it’s not what I want to be doing with my creative energy, much to the sadness of my wonderful clients.

Truth is, I’m not very hireable anymore. I’ve got too many skills, but they don’t fit neatly into anyone else’s org chart. Unsurprisingly I’m not interested in shearing off parts of myself to squeeze prettily into a role that exists to build someone else’s dream.

The above is what is really driving the energy behind Forge Forward Academy. I’m simultaneously furious and heartbroken about the state of visual communication education. It’s limp. It’s disconnected. Sadly, the smaller, more rigorous, more human institutes like the one I attended don’t really exist anymore- not in any meaningful, accessible way.

Add to that the looming shadow of AI and automation. The industry’s gutting itself for efficiency, and in the process, shaving off the nuance and soul of design. So the question becomes: where is the value now? Where can it still be found?

It’s in the things machines can’t fake. Not yet, maybe not ever.

Think about storytelling. Not just stringing words together but crafting meaning. Not content. Communication. AI can generate copy, sure, but can it make you feel something? Can it speak from lived experience? Can it move a room?

How about curation. Knowing what to look at, where to look for it, sorting wheat from chaff- what to take in, what to ignore. If your inputs are shit, your outputs will be, too. You can’t make a gourmet pie out of low-grade mince.

And pitching. Actually being able to stand in front of someone and speak clearly, confidently, about who you are, what you do, and why it matters. The art of articulation is eroding. We need to bring it back! This skill will forever be important.

There is so much opportunity right now even amidst the chaos.

I think the future of design learning is boutique.
I’ve been thinking about what kind of person would be drawn to something like Forge Forward Academy. I’d say they weren’t here to fuck spiders, they’re not here for a gold star or just a flimsy certificate. They’re in it because they want to get close to the process, to the questions, to the craft. They’re ready to get their hands dirty. They’re not afraid of depth, of discomfort, of cracking something open to see what’s inside.

These are the ones who actually do want to learn, who want to know, not just be told. Curious, open-minded, anti-passive types. The ones who know that knowing how to do something is far more valuable than having a piece of paper that says you can.

I think this the gap small learning environments fill. Not just a few sentences feedback on your work with some pithy recommendations for changes. It’s about meaningful critique, real time feedback on your work and to ask questions that matter. To build real friendships. To find future collaborators. To learn in a room that actually gives a shit.

Why This Learning Model Is the Future

Design has become too accessible. Before you misread that, yes, accessibility is important! Everyone deserves the chance to try. But that doesn’t mean everyone should stay. Graphic design isn’t a visual trend; it’s a cognitive, emotional, and cultural practice. It takes curiosity. Depth. Empathy. Taste - to do it right. Right now, we’re choking the industry with mediocrity and calling it output.

Design has become commodified, which means it’s now on the chopping block for automation. A lot will be automated, it’s already happening. I hope that pushes us toward a correction, that we move back toward design as a specialised, powerful craft. Something with energy again, with some goddamn reverence.

Boutique learning is what helps get us there. Real human logic built into the way people are taught. It doesn’t look like another lame syllabus created because it just has to exist, fitting yet another round peg into a square hole.

I don’t think you can scale that en masse either, I think we’ve been shown that. You can’t feel the room when there are fifty people in it. But what about fifteen? Suddenly a lot more achievable. You can see who’s leaning in, who’s slipping out, who needs pulling forward and who’s ready to run- and you can create opportunities to do all these things in real time.

A Better Kind of Designer

If more people learned this way, through deep, small-scale, high-intensity, high-care methods, I honestly think we’d get better designers. Not just more employable ones. Better. More thoughtful. More able to make meaning and not just deliver what the brief says.

I’d hope we’d see a return to a culture of care. Not just about employment ladders or metrics or portfolios, but care in how we learn, how we develop, and how we support each other to become exceptional, not just acceptable.

I’m sure someone will question “boutique education” with whataboutism, because it doesn’t come with the usual gold seal of institutional approval, I’d ask: what’s the gold seal worth anymore, really? “P’s get degrees” isn’t just a joke, it’s a systemic reality. My hottest take is that I don’t think visual communication degrees signal mastery anymore. They signal completion. That’s not enough.

What This Kind of Learning Reveals

I’ve learnt a lot about myself in these smaller rooms. Mostly that when someone sees me - really sees me - I rise. And that’s not unique to me. That’s human. We thrive when we’re seen, supported, and challenged in the right ways.

When I graduated from DCA, I didn’t feel like a junior. I was ready to go. And that’s because I’d had space to test things, to fail, to speak, to stretch. You don’t get that in a 200-person lecture hall. You get that in a studio with someone who’s paying attention.

It’s shaped how I teach. I watch people carefully. I look for the gaps, the moments, the friction points- and then I make space. Forge Forward Academy exists because I’m done waiting for the system to fix itself. I’m building something sharper. Something smarter. A place where people learn to wield what they’ve got with precision and purpose—and use it in the real world.

No fluff. No filler. Just the real thing, done well.

So if you’re here, I’d like to tell you about the current course I’m running Brief to Brand, the brief in question is about an Inner City Cafe. I’ve built up a process and I take you through it step by step over 4 weeks. Some of the learning happens in the room, some of it on your own time. This is a virtual school so it doesn’t matter where you are tuning in from, it’s open to you. If you’re curious, open to learning, want a project for your folio, want to spend time in a creative room with like minded people, want to make friends, and want to get sharper- maybe this is for you.