Cape Town · Graphic Design Education
Benchorchardwood Where design thinking meets practical skill
Have you ever looked at a well-designed poster or a polished TV studio design and wondered exactly how those decisions were made? Benchorchardwood exists to answer that question - through live webinars that connect Cape Town learners directly with working designers.
Television studio design as a teaching tool
Television studio design and broader graphic design share the same core discipline: arranging visual elements so they communicate clearly under specific constraints. Benchorchardwood uses real-world TV studio design examples in its curriculum because they make abstract principles tangible.
When a learner studies how a news set balances depth, colour temperature, and typography on screen, they are practising the same spatial reasoning that applies to a brand identity or a printed layout.
Curriculum areas
- Colour theory and application
- Typography fundamentals
- Layout and composition
Production and output
- Digital and print production
- Broadcast and screen graphics
- Brand identity systems
Live sessions with real feedback
Each webinar runs as a live broadcast. Participants submit work-in-progress and receive on-screen critique from the presenter during the session itself.
Structured around local context
Content references South African educational standards and regional design industry expectations, so learners are not adapting foreign curricula to local conditions.
Practical tools, not theory alone
Sessions cover software workflows in Illustrator, Figma, and InDesign alongside conceptual material - because portfolio work requires both.
A note on pacing
Benchorchardwood webinars are not recorded courses. The live format means the presenter adjusts depth and pace based on questions in the room. Learners who attend regularly report that this makes difficult concepts - like grid systems or colour harmony - easier to absorb than self-paced video.
by numbers
People behind the sessions
Benchorchardwood's presenters are practitioners, not full-time academics. Liesel Odendaal leads the typography and layout curriculum; she works in editorial design for Cape Town-based publishers. Thandi Vosloo covers brand identity and digital production, drawing on eight years of agency experience across Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Neither presenter claims that attending webinars replaces a design degree. What they offer is direct access to how decisions are made in practice - the reasoning behind choosing one typeface over another, or why a particular television studio design uses a specific depth of field in its background set.
Case studies and session notes, delivered directly
After each webinar series, Benchorchardwood compiles annotated case studies - including examples from editorial layout, brand projects, and television studio design work. These go out to subscribers only, not published publicly.
No promotional email, no third-party sharing. One dispatch per completed series.