Meet AIU Faculty/Staff
Dean Gill Coupland M.A
Dean of Visual Communication
Associate Vice-President of Academic Affairs
Phone: +44 (0) 207 467 5680
Email: gcoupland@aiulondon.ac.uk
Subjects taught at AIU:
Advertising Art Direction
Senior Design Project
Final Portfolio
Gill was trained as a Graphic Designer and began her career in advertising in London as an Art Director, working for over fourteen years with several prominent multinational advertising and marketing agencies including McCann Erikson, Benton & Bowles, Young and Rubicam, Ted Bates and Triangle Communications. These roles provided the opportunity to work across a wide range of her clients' UK activities, including Esso petrol and oil, Courage breweries, Johnson & Johnson toiletries, Dairy Crest and St. Ivel, the Co-op, Corning, Typhoo tea, and Cadbury's. Gill's career also took a two-year diversion into publishing where she worked as a senior designer with Mirror Group Newspapers.
Gill later became an independent creative marketing consultant working with clients directly as well as through advertising agencies to assist with new product and business development, specializing in the food and drinks industry. Her work has also involved fund raising, graphic design and marketing for a number of charitable organizations and developing a publishing company with her husband, Shaun.
In 1989, after starting a family, Gill joined AIU London as a part-time member of the Visual Communication faculty and became a full-time and Assistant Programme Chair in 1994, meanwhile she earned a Master's degree in Art and Design Education at the Institute of Education, University of London.
Today, as Dean of Visual Communication, Gill maintains her consultancy work with long-standing clients, namely, an Italian importer establishing their UK market base for a number of products. Gill also acts as a design and marketing consultant to a number of Polish and Turkish food companies seeking a UK market for their products.
Gill is also known around AIU London for her efforts to organize fund-raising events, in collaboration with her students and colleagues to help charities operating in other parts of the world, India in particular...
The Karjat Village Schools project was born in 2001 through the initiative of AIU London students and faculty in partnership with Rotary International.
Karjat is about 40 miles from Mumbai, India, and is an agricultural area with over 50% of the local community living below the poverty level.
Money has been raised at AIU towards this project and has been used to upgrade the basic school buildings including the building of bore wells to provide pure drinking water and washing facilities for the children. Also desks, library books, compound fencing to keep the animals from straying into the classrooms and trees for shelter from the searing sun.
AIU students and faculty travelled to India on the 2004 and 2007 International Study Tours visiting Karjat and the village schools. They saw some of the work in progress and spent time with the children at work and play. We will see them again in March 2009 whilst visiting some of the 20 plus schools that have now been upgraded.
Fund-raising for the India project goes on at AIU London, year after year, through ticket sales at fashion shows and donations from art & design exhibitions, art auctions and media showcases.
Awards and Recognition
- Outstanding Faculty Member of 2000 – presented by the Student Government Assoc.
- Visual Communication 'Excellence' Award 2001 – presented by the SGA
- AIU London 'Educator of the Year' 2007
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