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.

Contacting Agencies

This year I was on a mission to try and engage with the industry more as this was something I really struggled with last year. I worried about sounding inexperienced when commenting on their work or appearing forward when asking for portfolio visits, so I decided to begin contacting agencies quite early in the year, to attempt to form relationships, not just to ask about portfolio visits but to try and gain advice and contacts.

I contacted quite a few agencies and didn't receive any replies, which is disappointing but it did also push me to plan the walk in visits with stacey, I think agency's just get so inundated with emails from students, all asking for the same thing that they probably just don't have time to email them all back. When Chris Conlan from Love gave his talk at The Design Symposium, he proved this fact by showing an image of his inbox, the page was full within the hour, not just from students but clients as well. I suppose whereas I used to take it personally if a designer didn't reply to my emails I know realise that they have priorities and busy schedules and they basically just don't always have time to email back every single student who emails them.

I did receive  replies from a couple of agencies, one which was Reform, based in Manchester. I had emailed them with a genuine comment about a piece of their work which sparked an idea on a brief I was doing for ProPlus. It is so confidence boosting when you receive a reply from a designer, but I have now come to realise that instead of getting disheartened when I don't receive a reply, to think of a different more creative way of contacting the agency instead of just contacting a different one and hoping for the best.

This proved to be the case as when I had previously contacted Creative Spark by email, I had not had any response but when visiting them in person, they couldn't of been more helpful. I think the main thing I have learnt is to keep trying.

Freelance

During the summer I wanted to continue doing some form of design work and after looking at David Aireys Blog and reading various books, the phrase Pro Bona kept popping up, the thought of working on a design project for a charity or organisation really appealed to me as I thought it would not only be good practice but also an experience of working on a 'real' project.

After searching various charity websites I came across a local charity The Cheshire Academy who were looking for someone to help them with the designing of a new logo, promotional materials and ideas for promotional activity. 

After applying with the charity I was invited to go along to the centre to see what they do and have a look at their current branding. I arranged to begin working on the logo and put some ideas together which I emailed to the organiser, they had a discussion about it, then got back to me to discuss the ideas they liked and asked me to work on a promotional booklet and flyer,advertising upcoming events.

Sadly I have not had a chance to work on much for them over the last couple of months due to college workload but plan to continue working with them to complete the rebranding. The experience has been really good, to see how things can change quickly, for example details on promotional material may need to be altered which doesn't necessarily fit in with the original design or differing views within the organisation may cause conflict with ideas. 

The main thing I have learnt is that the main thing a client wants on their material, especially a charity is the information they are trying to promote, they are not always worried about the design, it is important to listen to what they actually want and not to do your own thing. This was something which Neil Marra from Creative Spark also spoke about when he was looking at my work for the Together Trust, he said that sometimes we may think we know what the client wants but they may not agree, which is something which I have come to realise whilst working with 'real' clients.

Collaberating

This year has been really interesting for me as I have worked on most of the briefs as a pair with Juliette Brooks. We each began the first brief individually, then when we chose the second brief we found we had chose the same one so decided to work together. We chose to rebrand ProPlus, then went on to work on another two briefs together, repackaging Body Shop and an Integrated campaign for Ted Baker.

The experience has been interesting as myself and Jules both work very similarly, we love the ideas process and found we bounced off each other, sometimes coming up with really elaborate ideas which had to be reigned in a bit, but we both were motivated and exited by this process.

We both found that when it came to producing the final product for the exhibition though we lost slight interest, there was a week where we just couldn't move it forward, the idea was there, we knew what we wanted to do, but because we couldn't make it look as good as we wanted we became slightly frustrated.

After a discussion and kicking each other to get going again, we worked really hard to get some final pieces, which although wasn't up to a standard which we had hoped for, they did portray the idea.

I have learnt so much in this process, about how I work as an individual and also how different it is working as part of a team. I had not had particularly good experiences when previously collaborating, mainly on the cross pathway project, so had usually opted to work individually, but the experience of working with Jules has opened my mind as to how if working with the right person it can be a good experience.

I have picked up new ways of thinking during this process and I think it has been more motivating to work harder if working as part of a team because the pressure is on and you have a responsibility to other people not just to yourself, I would definitely work with Jules again and I think the lessons we have learned about time management will be beneficial for the future, and has been a good insight into our own strengths and weaknesses which we can work on.

Ritta Ikonen

The guest lecture by the London based artist Ritta Ikonen was an interesting insight into an artist I would not of probably looked into before I saw her lecture. Originally from Finland, Ritta's work is original and quirky, she describes some of her projects as 'performed photography' and her work involves putting materials or subjects into situations which wouldn't naturally belong there, creating an almost surreal angle to her work.

She originally studied illustration and then communication at The Royal College in London, then began freelances and promoting her own exhibitions. She talked about how her projects progress and how she prefers to get a 'real' image rather than using too much Photoshop, which is interesting as you are even more surprised by her images when you know they are taken in real situations.

The Bird and Leaf project is particularly interesting as she collaborated with the photographer Anna Schaffner and placed herself in leaf and bird costumes in natural environments but appears surreal as it is obviously a person, the images were attempting to reflect on the artists sentimental yearning to 'get back to nature'.

A lot of Ritta's work involves placing herself in the character of something else, into situations which would be natural to the chosen subject but totally unnatural as a human being, which makes you think about to understand something you must put yourself into that situation - although not literally, but this does compare to design as to understand a brief you have to get into them mindset of the brand or client you are representing. 

Brand Orienteering Workshop

I was looking forward to the Brand Orienteering workshop which was hosted by Owen Stevens as I was working on A D&AD brief for the Body Shop, and although it was based around packaging design I felt that the workshop would help me to understand the Body Shop brand better.

I sadly missed the beginning of the workshop because my train mission from Crewe to Stockport was delayed by a cow on the line! On arriving late I explained the reason for my lateness to Owen, who was very helpful and gave me the information I had missed and a quick catchup on what he had been talking about.

Owen Stevens is the founder of Brand Orienteering Ltd and works with companies to understand branding and to create strong branding solutions. His workshop was interesting as it made you look at the brand as a personality, a character and to make associations as to how the character would behave and what their beliefs and thoughts would be. 

Working in groups we discussed a brand (Body Shop) and spoke about which character traits we believe the brand would have, choosing from 5 main categories, Trusted, Exciting, Leading, Sophisticated and Rugged, we chose sub words within these categories which we felt described the brand. This exercise made us look at the brand differently, allowing us to think inside the brand. After choosing the words which best described The Body Shop we were asked to think about their core values and compared these to the words we had chosen scoring them to find the strongest character category.

I found the workshop very helpful and I found that sometimes you become to involved in the details of the brief and lose the personality of the brand, whereas the workshop brought this to the forefront. We were each given a work sheet called the Brand Journey Planner which I will definitely use when working on future briefs to try and get inside the brand before I work on the details of the brief.

Jonathan Barnbrook

The guest lecture by Jonathan Barnbrook was really interesting as he talked about a different viewpoint of design rather than the comercial aspects. Talking about his work for Adbusters and their philosiphies was interesting to me as this is an area which I had been studying as part of my dissertation, it was good to hear the view point on these issues from a talking designer instead of views taken from books and essays.

Founder of Barnbrook Studios, his work is unusual and original, Jonathan talked about how he made a decision quite early in his career to not work for clients where he didn't agree with their ethical values, which means he doesn't really work for many corporate companies, his work is mainly books, typography and charity design.

He talked about how his career began and advised that although it can be a risk, setting up on your own, can work quite well when you graduate as you have new ideas and are still learning so are not as prohibited in your designs. He spoke about how he became interested in Adbusters and how he believes in having a social responsibility as a designer, He showed images which he had worked on for Adbuster campaigns and explained the thought processes behind them.

He was honest about the problems he faced on various projects, including the collaberation with Damien Hirst to create his Monograph book, and the problems with a typeface they designed originally called Manson which had to be changed to Mason.

His work varies and he also works on short films and collaborations, mainly involving typography and pictogram's, the film Klint was released as a promotional film for Monotype imaging.

He talked about how you didn't have to just work for corporate clients to make money and said he was funded mainly by galleries, occasional grants, commissioned work and typography design.

The lecture was interesting and it was good to hear about another type of design which is not often promoted, speaking about his association with the First Things First manifesto, he explained his motivations for choosing not to have associations with unethical promotions, but also explained that to follow this route was something personal and was not a decision to be taken lightly as this predicted your career and you could not just suddenly change your mind and start working for consumer led projects.