Following are some thoughts presented by a previous winner of the AGDA Foundation Student Scholarship, David Trewern.

Traveling to the United States and Europe in 1995 under the AGDA student scholarship has had an incredibly motivating effect on my career as a graphic designer. The first thing that strikes you as a recently graduated student, is that Australian designers and students are at a standard that is comparable to the best on the planet. For some reason, the average Australian design student just assumes that design students in California, London and pretty much anywhere outside Australia, are by default, producing work of a higher standard. Traveling overseas and being exposed to the rest of the world gives you a different perspective.

Being a foreigner can have it's advantages too. Walking into a design studio in Melbourne with a folio can be a daunting experience. But for some reason, walking into the Neville Brody Studio in London, or Studio Archetype in San Francisco wasn't so bad. You feel when you are traveling that you have nothing to lose, and the fact that you are from another country makes you interesting, and makes your folio seem quite refreshing.

Traveling on the AGDA student scholarship did a lot more than give me a different perspective on Australian design. Exploring and understanding the visual languages of other cultures helps you communicate better at home, and exploring art and culture that cannot be explored in Australia is invaluable.

In 1995 I was in the San Francisco offices of Studio Archetype, looking at this strange new thing called the 'Internet' for the first time. From a pure design point of view, it looked like a pretty restrictive medium