Creativity and coffee all in one
The announcement of her win was made in August this year and Raff was left speechless.
There’s a story in every cup and definitely a great one for Rouxville resident Galya Raff.
Raff walked away with second place in the Design-A-Cup competition with Wild Bean Café.
The first phase of the competition was to gather authentic and inspirational South African stories that could be depicted on coffee cups.
Raff was inspired by Hope Moteane’s story, a strong believer in the rich cultural diversity of South Africa. With two young children, Moteane said she always tells them about the history of South Africa.
“I tell them those stories and explain to them what South Africa has gone through,” she said. “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.”
Raff said she was inspired by this story because it focused on many things that were important to her.
“I was inspired by Hope’s story as my parents have always taught us the importance of family, culture and tradition and to value your heritage. It is always the women in the family that are the ones to teach these and to pass on to the next generation. It is important to keep these going,” added Raff.
She said South Africa was so full of diversity in its culture and its heritage, and she wanted to be relatable in her design with the patterns, colours and textures.
“I was having so much fun creating all these different elements and I always thought to myself the more detail the better. When people go for a cup of coffee, it will be really cool to see and look at something so detailed while you sipping on your java. Every time I look at the cup it’s like a new experience.”
The announcement of her win was made in August this year and Raff was left speechless. Grateful for her win she intends on studying further and is leaning towards illustration and media design.
“Now that I have done it, it looks great on my CV so I’m hoping to land an awesome job once I’m done studying. My lecturers are very encouraging and I would like to do my honours and an internship of sorts once I get into corporate.”
She added that she would also like to go into advertising or marketing to work with young entrepreneurs.
“I would love to work with entrepreneurs or people with startups because it would be so amazing to help them grow their business. I do think that branding and marketing is a huge part of a business. So I’d like to be part of that.”
With encouragement from her family, Raff gets much of her inspiration from one of her sisters who recently moved to Israel.
“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, busy all the time and that has been very inspirational to me.”
