Green circles expand like pulsating hearts. For a second they stay static, then they all begin to bleed into each other and suddenly, like magic, they become rectangles. Sean Reynolds, a graphic designer, is like a magician. Using a mouse, he changes a screen full of colours and shapes with the press of a button. He sits in front of his Apple Macintosh. There isn't a crayon or a marker, a rubber or a ruler in sight. Everything is done on the computer, he explains.

There is a creative element but his job today is also about understanding the technical limitations, being able to give clients a comprehensive costing list and knowing what the printer wants.

Having finished a degree course in art and design at Limerick RTC, he and a friend set up their own graphic design business. "In the early days we started off doing small stuff - fliers, we designed logos, business cards, stationary," he recalls. "Initially we were trying to get work, so anyone we knew we told them. Then we started to get contracts and building it from there."

Reynolds remembers the early days as being slow. "In the line of printing we did anything we could get our hands on. Our first colour job was a brochure for an equestrian centre. It would be fairly simple now but then it was our first. It went well. We put a lot of work into it and it was quite different."

Their biggest challenge was learning about the printing process and understanding what a printer needs. Also they had to learn how to get their designs from the screen to paper.

Gradually they learned about the technical aspects of layout, size, colour and make-up. "All of that was very new and there was a fair learning curve and there still is," says Reynolds.

The first step was to sit down together with a pad and pencil to work out a concept for their design. "Everything is put down on paper," he says. "The computer is only a tool. Essentially you are trying to come up with a creative idea. People imagine us as drawing pictures but it's really as much technical as it is creative. You get your ideas, you come up with a concept."

When the copy comes from a client, it is typeset. "Then you lay it out," he continues, "and you get photographs which have to be scanned onto the document. Then whatever creative work you have you apply that. There are a lot of different stages and potentially any small thing can go wrong. So many things have to be checked.

"When the job is finished we give the disc to a printer and we would check it. He burns in onto a plate and then it's printed."

Sean Reynolds comes from a farm in Co Leitrim. He always wanted to study art. "In primary school I loved it. Even in essays you'd have to draw a little picture. It was just a natural thing. It was almost a hobby, something to relax the mind."

He went to Moyne Community School in Co Longford mainly "because they had a very well equipped art department." His teacher, Anita Kelly, "encouraged me and anybody else who had any talent."

When he left second-level in 1988 "I had made up my mind that I wanted to be an art teacher." In the first year of the three-year diploma course at Limerick RTC there were about 120 art and design students. Initially the course concentrated on developing the drawing skills of the students. "We were trained to see something as it really was," he says. "We learned about colour and about shapes. It was a very hard year, with an awful lot of practical work.

"It's very difficult for people to change, to learn to look at things in a different way. You tend to draw things that are in your mind rather than what's in front of you."

After first year "there's a decision to be made about which road you want to go." Some students choose fine art, others decide to study graphic design. "For many people there are livings to be made," he explains. "Fine art is a much longer road. Design students, while staying within the creative area, will at some stage be working for someone else but for those in fine art it's much more a self-progression type of thing."

For those who proceed through the course, "it's about perseverence in what you're doing and trying to understand what you want to achieve in a project. Graphics is about communication - you're trying to get a message across in a creative way. There's a lot of concept solving in any project."

An important aspect of college work is meeting deadlines, says Reynolds. "Miss a deadline," he cautions, "and you were in trouble straight away."

Having completed a diploma in art and design, Reynolds was among the first group to carry on and do the degree course. He graduated with a honours degree in 1992.

Today he does work for a wide range of companies, creating material for use in engineering, education and tourism. The Reynolds Boyce Graphic Design Consultancy has designed annual reports, exhibition posters and literature.

"A typical graphic designer is somebody who needs to be visually-minded, someone who sees a lot of things happen around them and someone who is good with colour. It also helps if you have reasonable English as well."