Bachelor of Design/Bachelor of Fine Arts personal statement example

Personal statement example

A woman came into the framing shop where I work on Saturdays carrying a child's crayon drawing of a dog. She wanted something expensive, with a wide gold moulding, because she said the drawing mattered. We tried it, and the gold swallowed the picture. In the end she chose a thin white frame with a deep mat, and the dog suddenly looked deliberate, almost confident. I think about that exchange often, because it showed me that design decisions are not decoration added afterwards. They change what people see and how they feel about it.

I have worked at the shop for nearly two years, mostly at the counter. I measure artwork, cut mat board under supervision, and help customers compare mouldings and glass. The job has taught me to listen before suggesting anything, to explain options without jargon, and to respect that the work belongs to the customer. It has also made me notice proportion in a practical way. A few millimetres of extra mat at the bottom of a frame really does make an image feel settled, and I can now see that before I measure it.

At school my strongest piece of work this year was a design project for our library. Students kept asking where things were, so I proposed a new set of signs. I spent a week watching where people hesitated, then sketched icons, tested three typefaces on printouts taped to the shelves, and asked Year 9 students which versions they could read from the doorway. The thin, elegant font I preferred lost badly to a plain, heavier one, and the results changed my mind. The librarian has kept four of my final signs in place. It is a small thing, but seeing people use something I made without needing to ask anyone was satisfying in a way a grade is not.

Alongside design, I care about making images by hand. For the past eighteen months I have been a member of a community printmaking club that meets on Tuesday evenings in a church hall. Most members are retired, and they have been patient teachers. I work mainly in linocut, and I like the way it forces decisions: once a line is cut, it stays. My recent series shows the backs of houses on my street, with washing lines, water tanks and fences, printed in two colours. At the club's annual exhibition last spring I sold three prints. The money was modest, but it was the first time a stranger chose something I had made to live with.

I want to study design and fine arts together because, for me, they keep feeding each other. Printmaking has made me more careful with layout and contrast in design work, while the library project made me think about who my prints are for and where they will be seen. I am interested in how communication design can be clear without being bland, and in how studio practice can be personal without shutting the viewer out. I do not yet know which direction I will lean towards, and I would value the chance to develop both seriously before deciding.

Outside art, I play netball socially and help my younger brother with his reading homework most weeknights, which has taught me some patience and a lot about how differently people take in information. I am not the most naturally gifted drawer in my class, but I work steadily, I test my ideas on real people, and I finish what I start. I would bring that habit, along with a sketchbook that is rarely out of my bag, to a degree where I can learn to make work that is both thoughtful and genuinely useful.