Recent company growth has engendered the need to develop a Learning Design faculty that can continue to deliver innovative and effective solutions to an expanding client list. "Offering the right mix of strategic design skills and experience, combined with LINE's particular creative and innovative approach is key to achieving our business objectives - at our heart we are a design-led company", says Andrew Joly, Design Director.

With the right skills ever harder to find, and very few graduate courses offering the mix of skills training they require, LINE has developed a unique training scheme for the industry, the Learning Design Academy.

The programme took an entire year to develop and draws on a trial undertaken during 2007-8. It combines carefully defined development and training plans with on-the-job mentoring and assessment - taking the trainees through a series of performance objectives to eventually become a fully operational LINE Learning Designer.

The Design Academy opened its doors to four trainees in mid-July this year following extensive selection procedures.

"Getting to the heart of the perfect mix of knowledge, skill, and attitude for a LINE Learning Designer was interesting", said Andrew Joly. "It encouraged us to look very closely at what we are and how we think - and made us realise that there are many different personalities within our team, all critical to our success. The group we finally chose reflects this mix. It is very exciting to be able to apply what we do for our clients to ourselves and grow the people who will influence learning design in the future."