Art, Design and Media personal statement example

Personal statement example

Three afternoons a week I collect my twin sisters from primary school and look after them until my mum finishes her shift. For a long time the hardest part was homework. They are eight, and every evening began with an argument about whose turn it was to use the table and which task came first. Last spring I made a chart for the fridge: two columns, one in teal and one in orange, with small pictures instead of words because one of them was still a reluctant reader. The first version failed because I used too many symbols. The second, with just four icons and a sliding paper clip to show progress, has survived over a year. It is a small thing, but it was the first time I noticed that a design could change how people behave without anyone being told what to do.

That interest in how images guide people has shaped my A level Art coursework. For my personal investigation I spent several weekends drawing in the laundrette at the end of our road, where people wait with nothing to do for forty minutes. I asked permission from the owner and the customers, and I drew hands folding sheets, the queue of machines and the handwritten notices taped to the walls. Those notices became the focus. Some were clear; others, written in capitals with several underlinings, seemed to make people ignore them. I turned the drawings into a sixteen-page risograph-style zine, printed on the photocopier at school, and left copies on the laundrette bench. The owner later asked me to redraw her opening hours sign, which now hangs in the window.

Media Studies has given me language for what I was doing by instinct. Studying semiotics, I learned to separate what an image shows from what it suggests, and analysing magazine covers made me realise how much a page's layout depends on hierarchy and white space. I have also been reading Ways of Seeing by John Berger. His argument that the way we see is shaped by what we already know and believe made me reconsider my laundrette drawings: I had treated the customers as interesting shapes rather than as people with their own reasons for being there, and in my later sketches I tried to include more of their faces and belongings.

On Sundays I work at a print-and-copy shop in town. Most of the job is routine: binding dissertations, laminating menus, fixing paper jams. But customers often bring in files that will not print as they expect, and I have learned to explain bleed, resolution and why bright screen colours look duller on paper. Helping a retired man adjust a poster for his model railway club taught me more about CMYK than any tutorial, because I had to make it make sense to someone else.

Not everything I do connects to design. I play futsal twice a week with a local team, mainly because I enjoy it and it is the one time I am not responsible for anyone. Even so, caring for my sisters and working weekends have made me disciplined about time. I plan coursework around school pick-ups and usually finish drafts early because I know an evening can disappear if one of the twins is unwell.

I want to study Art, Design and Media because I am curious about the space between making something visually strong and making something that works for the people who use it. I would like to develop my skills in typography, moving image and digital tools, which I have only explored with free software, and to work alongside people whose perspectives challenge mine. I am ready to take my ideas seriously, test them and start again when the second version is better than the first.