UK (Cardiff Metropolitan University) How a Product Design project at Cardiff Met turned into my career

Since graduating from Product Design at Cardiff School of Art and Design (CSAD) in 2020, I used the key industry links and opportunities presented to our course to kick start my career.

What initially started as a 24-hour innovation challenge with an external company has now directly led to me working full-time at DS Smith, a leading provider of sustainable packaging solutions, paper products and recycling services worldwide.

During my undergraduate course, we were presented with multiple ‘Live briefs’.  One of these consisted of a mixed year group cohort working together to present a concept to an external company who had contacted the course looking for innovations.

The specific brief set by DS Smith really interested me – the challenge was simple: “Turn the Last Mile of Delivery for E-commerce into the First Mile of Recycling,” with a strong emphasis on keeping recyclable packaging segregated from other household waste.