Sarah Jones - Adidas

Sarah Jones is a graduate from Stockport college who took part in the Come Design With Me event at the college which involved previous students to come and discuss their experiences since leaving college and to give advice about entering the industry. Sarah was honest about her experiences and gave some great advice so I was looking forward to meeting her again.

Jules contacted Sarah and asked her whether we both could go to her office to discuss our portfolios, we was worried about whether she would be happy to see us both but Sarah said it was fine and we arranged a suitable time. The Adidas offices were amazing, beautifully designed and the staff were professional and efficient, she met us with the current intern called Christina, who was a recent graduate from Manchester Met. 

After a general discussion about our work and college, Sarah looked through our portfolios, I showed mine first but was a bit worried because some of our work was similar but Sarah discussed each piece and brought us both into the conversation, asking our different opinions about the work which was really good as it made us both feel relaxed and involved.

Sarah gave us some great advice about the realism of entering the industry, and how a lot can depend on your personality as well as your work. She discussed various options and different sides to the industry and how important it is to aim for what you really want to do, however difficult it is. She gave some great tips on how to get yourself known to potential employers, telling us about her own ideas, including a tea bag with contact details on. This has made me and Jules really think about how you can use creativity to show your skills and personality as well as getting you noticed in a unique way. 

We discussed the importance of understanding different technology, especially web design and she encouraged us to learn as much as we could and to keep up with new design trends. She also told us about various ways of getting placements, Christina also gave us her advice about how she had juggled paid work and placements to eventually get a permanent position.

It was interesting to hear two points of view about entering the industry and Sarah offered some great practical, realistic advice which myself and Jules have took on board and want to put into practice. We talked about the various agency's and aspects of design which was a real eye opener to myself and Jules, Sarah told us how some designers work together in teams, combining their skills to be employed as a team, which is something we are looking into further. She explained the different aspects of design and discussed which we preferred, which made me realise the importance of understanding what you personally want to achieve in design and ensuring that your approach to agencies portrays that message.  

Andy Mairs - The Chase

After Christmas myself and Juliette Brookes had the opportunity to continue working on a competition brief for The Roses Awards. We had chose the brief, Supermarket Sweep, which involved rebranding and repackaging a supermarket brand of your choice. 

We really enjoyed the challenge of working with packaging but were inexperienced in developing 3D models and wanted to produce a professional model to send off for the competition. The box involved a complex net which included a sliding mechanism which opened to display wide awake eyes as we had chose to rebrand ProPlus, which is a caffeine stimulant. After making possibly 100's of nets and dreaming about eyes popping open, we eventually decided on a working net but was struggling to create the final product to a professional standard. Our tutor Guy Lawrence came to the rescue by advising us to contact a good friend of his, Andy Mairs, an iconic designer from the chase. Guy kindly gave us his Mobile number and told us to contact him to see if we could arrange to meet up as he lived near jules. We were very nervous about contacting him as we felt incredibly cheeky as we were asking a lot from him, eventually we took the plunge (with a bit of encouragement from guy) and contacted Andy. He couldn't of been more helpful and arranged to meet us later that week, we met him in a bar near to where he and Jules live and were physically shaking by the time we were due to meet. We was both in awe of him as we couldn't believe that he was actually taking the time to talk to us about our project.

Guy had advised us to take our portfolios, but we were worried about taking up too much of his time, but he was extremely patient and after discussing how he could help us with our Proplus packaging, he took the time to go through both our Portfolios. His attention to detail was amazing and he raised valid points about the importance of not only the work within the portfolio but also the spelling, type and attention to detail which can be as important as the work your displaying. He gave us loads of advice about what we could change and brought up some small details, which was really good as it made us think about the impression your giving by not paying attention to the finer details.

We discussed how important it is to make sure your portfolio is 100% and how it portrays you as a person, he also made a point of trying to change your portfolio to suit the agency you were showing it to and how important it is to understand and research the agency you are visiting. He gave some realistic advice about how to stand apart from competition and to make sure you leave something behind for the agency to keep, he advised producing a disc of your work so that they can look through it in more detail or in the future.

He was very patient and gave us both some fantastic advice, not just about our portfolios and our work but also about the industry, he also produced our ProPlus box, which he delivered personally to Jules's house the following day and offered us great advice about printing and paper stock.

We wish to keep in touch with Andy and will always be grateful for the help he gave us.

Together Trust

My first portfolio visit was with Helen Bee at The Together Trust. I contacted Helen following a brief which we had had an opportunity to work on through college which involved designing an advertising campaign to encourage fostering with The Together Trust. Helen invited me to visit her at her office in Cheadle, to have a look at my portfolio and to offer advice.

Being my first visit and the inexperience of showing my portfolio made me very nervous but Helen was friendly and professional and encouraged me to talk about my work, to explain the brief and discuss my methods. She gave me some great advice, mainly about what potential employers are looking for within a portfolio and how important it is to be able to discuss my work confidently. She talked about her own career and the processes she had used to gain experience and employment. We also discussed the various types of design careers and how it is important to have advanced technical ability but also other skills such as time management and the ability to work well under pressure and to deadlines.

After viewing my portfolio, Helen gave me some information for various websites which I would find useful and some tutorials which she thought would advance my technical skills. I felt the visit went well and Helen was helpful and informative, she gave me some good advice which I have followed up and the discussions have made me think and investigate the various career paths within Graphic Design.

Uniform

Tim Sharp from Liverpool design agency, Uniform gave me some great advice about my portfolio, he discussed each piece of work and advised me on how I can develop pieces into campaigns to show more skills and how to add details to earlier work to make them appear more professional. He complemented my type layout on some pieces but was also honest about which pieces he thought shouldn't be in my portfolio.

He also made a valid point about not having anything in my portfolio which was too 'stand alone' or which I didn't feel comfortable talking about. He spoke about the importance of having fewer good quality pieces rather than lots of mediocre work, he advised me to try and develop an idea beyond what the brief requires to show various skills and to give a better idea of the brief and how it can progress in various forms.

The visit was really informative and the advice he gave me about developing pieces I already have instead of just updating with new work is something which I have started to do, the discussion about being able to talk about my work in my portfolio has made me think carefully about the content.

He gave me some great ideas about how I can develop a project which involved using existing typography design which was just displayed as a quote in my portfolio into a series of posters, which is something I hadn't thought about but is now something I will definitely work on.

He made me look at my portfolio totally different and has given me some good pointers on how to develop it, to make it appear more professional and to give it more depth. I discussed some work I am currently doing and he said to send him a PDF of the work in the new year, which I am really pleased about, I plan to keep in contact and hopefully arrange a future visit to show how I have taken his advice to update my portfolio.

Creative Spark

When visiting design agencies in Manchester, myself and Stacey Weldon chose to visit Creative Spark, an agency which we both admired, we were very nervous about appearing unprofessional when we decided to visit them without any prior arrangement. After buzzing the studio, we briefly explained who we were and asked if it was possible for someone to give us five minutes to have a chat about our work, we knew they were probably busy and was surprised when we were invited us up to the studio. 

We were met by Neil Marra, the director, he chatted to us about the course, then looked at both our portfolio's asking about our work and gave us some great advice about how we could develop some of the pieces to make them look more 'real' and to show additional skills. He talked about the importance of understanding web based design and how this is now an important factor when looking at portfolios. His advice was interesting and specific to our work, he also advised us how using different ways to approach agencies made a big difference as to whether you will be successful. 

The visit was really helpful and we were grateful that Neil spent over 40 minutes giving us advice when he was most probably very busy, he was patient and thorough looking through our work and giving advice on individual pieces.

When we sent a follow up email thanking him for his time, he replied almost immediately which made me think that just turning up, although possibly a bit forward did mean that he remembered us, when we had both sent previous emails and had not had a reply, because he probably receives numerous emails asking the same thing, just turning up hopefully made us stand out.

The visit has caused me to analyse my previous methods of engaging with the industry and has pushed me to have more confidence in approaching agencies and designers, as this is the only way I will gain experience to enter the industry following graduation.