Hayley Leahy

Master of Design

During 2020 I graduated from Swinburne with a Bachelor of Communication Design, with minors in both photo media and branded environments. During this time, I gained and refined my key design skills of illustration, photo editing and compositing, and storytelling during this time.

Since I began my Master of Design in 2021 and I have been working full-time in the design industry whilst studying.

At the beginning of this year before I began my final semester, I began working at my dream job as a Graphic Designer for Richmond Football Club. Here I work with all facets of the business from membership and ticketing to our digital platforms, storefront and merchandise design, with our community programs all the way through to our football department and the corporate business.

At the Richmond Football Club, we have multiple charitable businesses and organisations that are educating First Nations, Muslim, and Sports studies students within our walls, and have countless outreach programs that I have the privilege of designing for and learning from. The ever-changing environment of the AFL industry keeps me on my feet and my design skills up to date with all the new technologies.

The Master of Design course at Swinburne has refined my research and analytical thinking skills and has helped me grow as a designer. This is something that I will continue doing as I move through my career in our ever-growing industry, learning from those around me and bettering my skills and growing my passions.

Industry Illustration Work

During 2023 two prominent Richmond figures retired. During the clubs campaigns I used my illustration skills to highlight these players. The Icons on the top right were used on the memorabilia for each player and the other illustrations were a set that unfortunately were not made public due to the time scheduling of our social media, however were planned to highlight the key moments across Trent Cotchins playing career.

Great Ocean Road Over Tourism

The Great ocean road Project was a large scale speculative project challenging students to tackle the over tourism issue throughout the region. Working in a group of six we explored how we could change tourist behaviours to interact in a more effective and less damaging way with the region without removing the benefits that tourism brings to the area. To achieve this we created an app that allowed tourists to more effectively plan their trips and incentivise them to explore less busy areas of the Great Ocean Road to create less stress on the infrastructure of the overly busy areas.

Final Thesis Solution

This was an investigation into how communication design can influence culture change in the Country Fire Authority, and encourage a new generation of volunteers.

This research assessed the potential of communication design to have a positive impact on the culture of the Country Fire Authority (CFA). The CFA currently has a persona of the old boy’s club, and this is restricting its growth and ability to recruit and retain new members. By examining past organisational change in workplaces, this research determines how communication design can create cohesive culture change within the CFA.
This aim of this research was to discover which communication design methods could effectively create internal cultural change to assist the CFA in retaining a younger generation of volunteers. As well as how both digital and print design methods can be utilised to communicate with multiple generations, no matter their digital literacy.
Using autoethnographic research practices as well as design reviews from colleagues, this project outlined key design requirements for the CFA to reach and impact both the internal and external market of the CFA. It and culminated in a suggested marketing strategy for the CFA broken into 3 phases to address the lack of volunteer recruitments and low retention of those between 18-30 years of age.

Biosecurity Education

The goal of this project was to tackle the lack of understanding and general knowledge of the Biosecurity issues that impact Australia.
The mission was the connect existing resources with the Australian Curriculum to engage students and teachers in enthusiastic learning about biosecurity in Australia to instil life long knowledge and routine in the next generation of Australians.

Acknowledgement of Country

The School of Design and Architecture respectfully acknowledges the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners and knowledge-keepers of the lands, waters and sky that surround us, where we work, learn, create, communicate and make place. We recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded and this always was and will always be Wurundjeri Country. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who continue to make a better world through design.

We extend our acknowledgement to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, students, alumni, real-life clients, and knowledge keepers, who have contributed to our own education diversity and growth. We will continue to ensure that staff and students respectfully honour ancestral connection to Country and Place in everything that they do.

We are dedicated to the notion of design to make a better world and we acknowledge that making tools, shaping place, sharing stories, making meaning, wayfinding and collaborating have long been and continue to be both central and integral to First Peoples' cultures. We recognize that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ cultural contributions have continued relevance to design practice and commit to: reconciling ancestries of design and contemporary practice as well as pursuing culturally and professionally appropriate ways to engage with a diverse population of colleagues, industries and clients. In a time of treaty-making and voice we understand that there are overlaps between caring for Country and the sustainable production of goods, services, experiences, products and buildings.

Guided by the principles of respect, reconciliation, and reciprocity we undertake to indigenising and decolonising design practice by dismantling colonial structures and challenging biases that have marginalised Indigenous voices and design.

As students of SoDA you will be given opportunities to both engage with and educate yourself in Indigenous creative practices and cultural protocols through a lens of inclusivity, diversity, respect, mutual understanding, inter-cultural dialogue in all aspects of design practice. Indigenous people have been telling stories, making tools, and connecting to Country through visual media, placemaking and place marking for more than 60,000 years and these practices are part of an ongoing, evolving and live tradition.