G, the 7th letter of the alphabet
New talent on the horizon
Written by Georgia Williams
Creative Intern at VBAT
About me
I’ve most likely have been introduced to you as Georgia, but most people call me G and I am from Bolton, Greater Manchester. I studied Graphic Arts and Design at Leeds Beckett University and graduated this May. Throughout my degree I was hugely interested in society norms and issues, and thanks to the freedom of the course, I was able to explore these topics while focusing on image and type.
My inspiration for one of my favourite pieces “Not A Fucking Girly Mag” came from a friend of mine, Jess Yates a graphic designer who studied in Sheffield. Her final project was focused on women in design. This project along with my interest in sport inspired me to learn more about the gender divide in sport.
Whilst researching the topic, I found statistics like “Women’s sport only makes up for 7% of all sports media coverage in the UK”.
These figures really surprised me and so, sport and women became the focal point of my graduate brief.
I am fascinated about development and change within all parts of society. As I started to introduce myself in this blog, I thought about my nickname G and found an interesting history. ‘C’&‘G’ used to be represented by the same symbol, the Phoenician letter gimel ‘ג’, which according to my research, meant benefactor or someone who gives to others or camel. The use of the gimel has changed shape and meanings throughout the years.
I found that symbols can be beneficial and problematic at the same time due to the changing world we live in.
Many years ago, the Greeks took the gimel and renamed it ‘gamma’. The Romans also used the letter ‘gamma’ but to indicate two sounds, the sound of ‘K’ (as in “compare”) and ‘G’ (as in “go”).
There was no graphical change made until the Romans decided to change the shape of the letter ‘gamma’ by softening the sharp angle of the gamma to a curve to make the ‘C’, and by adding a bar to the bottom edge to make a ‘G’. Ultimately, the Romans developed a graphic differentiation for the two sounds. After spending much time sharing the same symbol, ‘G’ and ‘C’ came to be the two separate letters that we know them as today.
The result was the modern G.
Recent work
Being a designer, I need to understand the impact the materials I use have on the environment around me and others, and make sure they are disposed of correctly. Eleven Leeds based graphic designers and I worked with Leeds City Council on the OPT IN scheme. We worked on a way to make recycling stand up tall around the city’s busy everyday life. The council took away all the residential green recycling bins due to contamination issues.
The brief was to create a sculpture that will stand for 2 months, to coincide with the campaign ran by the city council. The contamination took place as students were moving from all over the world, to study or live in Leeds and were not using the recycling bins as they should be.
We discovered that each area throughout the UK used different colour bins for different recyclable materials. The green bin became the issue instead of a solution to get residents recycling.
My expectations
I am looking forward about starting my career path with VBAT, working with an established agency, fresh out of university, learning how to work with brand limitations and guidelines. It’s an amazing opportunity to learn and experience a new city and way of living.
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written by Georgia Williams, Creative Intern at VBAT
edited by Connie Fluhme, PR at VBAT
