Alumnus, David Airey, has forged a successful career as a graphic designer, writer and brand consultant by fearlessly following his own advice.
Having originally studied for an HND at college, David got direct entry into second year of the Graphic Communications Management course at Edinburgh Napier. After graduating in 2002, David took his first job with Edinburgh-based cancer charity, Myeloma UK. He was responsible for print design and website management and while overseeing these areas, he built strong relationships within the organisation. After a couple of years of developing his skills and his network, he left the role to go travel the world.
Upon returning to the UK, David was determined to start his own design studio. Through the relationships he built at Myeloma UK, he discovered that his position at the charity was currently vacant. He pitched an idea to take on his previous employer as the first client of his independent studio – and was successful! The security of this partnership enabled him to build his business and his client base. That was 2005. Almost twenty years later, David has clients based in more than 30 countries around the world and has collaborated on more than a hundred visual identity projects.
David strives to inspire others to follow their passion, whatever the path may look like. He regularly makes time to give advice to student designers, mostly on topics related to logos and visual identity design. He highlights curiosity, patience and empathy as the skills most valuable to have for a graphic designer.
In addition to running his own graphic design studio, David is also a successful author, with his latest publication, Identity Designed: The Process, currently available for pre-order ahead of a June 2024 release date. David didn't set out to be a writer. A fan of good design work, he founded two blogs dedicated to the subject: Logo Design Love in 2008 and Identity Designed in 2010. The blogs are tremendously popular and have received millions of hits. This prompted a publisher to contact David out of blue to ask if he’d be interested in turning his blogs into a book. Logo Design Love was released in 2009. It is available in 13 languages and is a staple in many college design programmes’ reading lists around the world. In 2012 Work for Money, Design for Love was released and Identity Designed was published in 2019 – this book was a branding bestseller with its first two print runs completely sold out. As well as giving David an outlet to write about his passion, his design books are also a great way to expand his business, as many of his clients found him through his publications.
David’s new book, Identity Designed: The Process will guide the reader through the four fundamental stages of the design process: research, strategy, design, and implementation. David draws upon his expertise and extensive knowledge of the profession and shares lessons learned from projects he’s worked on as well as features compelling case studies from top-level design studios. More information about David’s projects can be found below.
Check out David’s work: