Georgia Ragnall

Georgia is an illustrator and designer.

She took a BTEC Art & Design course at Nelson & Colne College. Her specialisations were Textile Design, Graphic Design, and 3D Design.

She said that textiles has always piqued her interest, in both fashion and interior design. Surface Pattern drew her in because it taught her how to design prints for fabrics. This was her favourite part of the course; “I remember trying out screen-printing and being so excited to see a design I’d drawn end up printed on fabric and then being able to make things with it. Learning graphics and combining textiles and graphic design helped me figure out what I wanted to major in at university.”

She now works full-time for UK Greetings, the UK’s largest distributor of greeting cards, wrapping paper, and gift bags. Tesco, Waitrose, Oxfam, Sainsbury’s, Boots, and many other high-street retailers carry her designs… On the side, she runs Ramble & Bramble, a small business where she designs prints for children’s clothing, babywear, and even now doggie accessories!

Ragnall chose to study art and design at college, as art was always her favourite subject in school. This passion continued onto university where she was keen to continue learning everything she had loved and enjoyed so much about the college art course. She got to partake is a wide range of different media at college, and learn new skills throughout her time, she got to study painting and drawing, as well as textile design, and graphics. Her interest fell particularly into the realms of textile design, where she got to explore designs, printmaking, and patterns. For her college end of year show, she designed gift bags, notebooks, and her own screen printed fabric bags.

After college, she went on to study Textiles & Surface Design at The University of Bolton. Her course was a three-year course, and she loved every second of it. Throughout her first year at uni, she got to trial a lot of different things, enabling her to find out exactly which path she was keen to go down as a career. In her second year, she got to focus in a lot more on the digital side of the course, this included getting to learn how to create designs and patterns digitally.

After graduating from university with a first-class honours degree, her and her class got to partake in the New Designers show, based in London, which is where universities can show off their 3rd-year students, and designers and companies can see what the new wave of designers are like, and what they have to offer. Once Ragnall graduated, she felt thrown into the world of work, and had little clue of where to go, or what to do next. She looked for design jobs all across the UK, and gained some un-paid work experience which she says was very useful. She then later applied for a job at Uk Greetings (the Uk’s largest card company), she got accepted for an interview, and brought all her work to showcase her skills, all this hard work had paid off and she now had a job designing cards.

She enjoys and loves her design job, but says it can be a bit chaotic at times, her day to do routine when she gets to the office, would be where the directors will hand out 2-3 new designs every day that they want and when they are going to be released, (which is usually a year in advance). Ragnall says that although she loves her design job and UK Greetings, it can be hard sometimes, as to them you are just producing designs on cards for them, and you don’t even gain the credit for the designs. So during the 2020 lockdown, Ragnall decided to start her own design business on the side of her card job. This is where she gets to create designs for kid clothing, and she sells those designs through Instagram. She says she loves this as well as even as a student at NCC, she always knew she wanted to work with kids, and she loves to create these designs, as she gets to see her work on something other than cards.