Galya Raff is a 20-year old 2nd year graphic design at the University of Johannesburg. She lives in Rouxville, Johannesburg and is a product of King David Linksfield High School.
She was named the runner-up in the 2020 Wild Bean Design A Cup competition and received an Apple MacBook Pro and full one-year Adobe CC licence as her prize. The competition was won by Kabelo Diphoko, a 23 years-old 2nd-year graphic design student at North West University.
The competition, launched in 2019, was the second phase of a BP campaign aimed at enhancing the coffee drinking experience at their Wild Bean Cafés by having every cup telling a South African story. The first part was to gather authentic and inspirational South African stories that could be depicted on coffee cups and the second was to call on young artists to interpret them in their coffee cup designs.
Galya is currently studying the basics of graphic design and trying to identify a direction, but she is leaning towards illustration and magazine and newspaper design.
The biggest influence in her life has been her big sister, who is four years older than her and recently moved to Israel to pursue a career in marketing. “She always says, take every opportunity that comes your way. If you fail, you learn and, if you succeed you reap the rewards. She lives her life according to that principle and she is always trying new things and is always busy so has been very inspirational to me,” Galya said.
Her father is an entrepreneur who works from home doing computer programming and her mother is a secretary at a nearby school. According to Galya, her mother encouraged her artistic career and throughout her school life she attended extra art classes. She enjoys still life and works in oils, pen/pencil.
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She heard about the BP campaign via her lecturer and didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity. “It’s important to enter competitions as they allow students to showcase their talents and creativity and it’s good for their portfolios when applying for jobs once they have completed their studies,” she said.
The A Story in Every Cup competition invited entrants to tell their stories about Mzansi, making their unique voices heard. They were meant to highlight the goodness of Mzansi, its hopes, dreams, and the unity found within our diversity. After collecting stories on various platforms, including Twitter and texts, MetroFM selected the top five stories, each winning a Wild Bean Café hamper.
Galya chose to work with the story submitted by @hope_moteane:
“The diversity of SA is something I always tell my two babies. I tell them those stories and explain to them what South Africa has gone through. And when we attend family celebrations, I try dress them up in traditional clothing. I am trying to teach them to take pride in our culture.”
“My design is very colourful as that is what South Africa is all about – vibrant colours, many textures, detail and our different cultures have their own patterns. I also brought in animals, diamonds, drums and Proteas, as these symbolise our wonderful diverse country.”
The lockdown has been a mixture of emotions for Gayla. It was difficult to start with as she missed her friends and the university and the ability to get easy access to lecturers. It has become easier now and she has got into the online lecture routine and is still able to access everything that she had before, so she is more productive. There is less travelling time and more time to spend on projects and assignments. She is more creative, and she loves cooking so has been doing a lot of this.
“My father has been great during the lockdown. He made sure we all got up as normal, got dressed and got into a routine. That’s important in these times,” she said.
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