3 Years Since Shillington: Sophie Cotton.

Sophie Cotton swapped a career in the charity sector for graphic design, learning the craft from scratch on a laptop she didn't yet know how to use. Three years on, she's freelancing across two continents and chasing a niche in wine.

Before Shillington, Sophie was working in the charity sector, mostly in communications and admin. She loved it, but she noticed a pattern: she'd happily spend hours designing a social post or a flyer, and far less time replying to emails.

The nudge came from her cousin, a freelance designer who'd done Shillington a few years earlier. "You should do Shillington. I think you'd be great at it," he told her. She was ready for a change, even if the timing felt daunting.

"I was coming up to 30 and thinking, God, what am I doing, suddenly trying to become a graphic designer. Is it too late?"

It wasn't. But the leap was real. Sophie went in with zero design experience, and a brand new piece of kit she had no idea how to operate.

"I didn't even know how to use a Mac. I remember signing up, going out and buying a MacBook and being like, right, okay, how do I use this?"

Sophie's Company Rebrand project at Shillington, Fifth Wall Museum.

Sophie chose the online part-time course so she could keep her charity job while she retrained. It turned out to suit her in a way she hadn't planned for: her class spanned an extraordinary spread of time zones, with students logging in from as far as Kuwait, and Sophie herself connecting first from Ireland, then finishing portfolio time in Hawaii.

The first couple of months, juggling classes three nights a week with a job, were intense. But the evenings quickly became the best part of her week rather than another thing on the list.

Ask Sophie her favourite part of the course and the answer comes fast: branding. Not the surface of it, but the strategy underneath.

"It's not just about producing something pretty. It's what's the weight behind it? What's the context? What's the meaning? Why do we make these decisions? How's it going to connect with our audience?"

That strategic foundation, learnt through project after project of competitor research, audience mapping, naming and concept building, is exactly what she still leans on today. Her background in comms and copywriting slotted right into it.

Sophie's standout portfolio piece started life in class as a rebrand of Tetley Tea, reimagined to win over a younger audience. She named it "& Tea" and built it around a concept she called the Bonding Brew: tea as the thing that brings people together, whether that's with toast, cake or friends.

But the real lesson came after graduation. Looking back at the logo, she knew something wasn't sitting right, so she did what she still does whenever she hits a wall.

Three months later she returned to the project, reworked the typeface and kerning, and watched an okay design become a genuinely good one. Same concept, sharper execution. It's a small story with a big point: knowing when to step away is a design skill in itself.

Sophie's Handmade project at Shillington, Casa Moderna.

That Shillington process didn't just make her portfolio stronger, it helped her land the jobs. At her interview for her first design role at Hampshire County Council, she was asked to design a poster, and she walked her interviewer through every sketch and iteration behind it.

Three years on, the connections haven't faded. There was a class reunion up in Manchester, a WhatsApp group that's still going and a web of introductions that keeps opening doors. When Sophie moved to Melbourne, a fellow Shillington teacher introduced her to another, who introduced her to a former student.

"Even having graduated three years ago, I'm still meeting up with alumni and teachers, or getting opportunities through fellow students. It's a really nice network to be part of."

Her portfolio wasn't perfectly polished. It didn't need to be. The thinking was there, and that's what got her hired.

Today Sophie freelances for a creative studio in Australia alongside word-of-mouth clients back in the UK, and she knows where she wants to go next: food and beverage branding, with wine labels top of the list. Fittingly, her latest wine project reuses a handmade mark she first created at Shillington.

That off-screen, made-by-hand approach feels more relevant to her than ever.

"I think eventually people will come back to humans creating things for humans, the handmade approach, hiring illustrators and designers to do the work rather than handing it to an AI. Handmade is the way. And Shillington was probably on that bandwagon a long time ago."

Sophie's story is proof that a career change later than you planned, with no experience and a laptop you can't yet use, isn't a leap too far. It's just the first sketch. The polish comes later.

If her story has you thinking about your own, our graphic design course could be where it begins.