OUGD602 - Portfolio lab

CRAFT
Portfolio Lab

This morning I drove down to the Tetley at the other end of town to attend an appointment I made with Craft. They are running something called Portfolio Lab and is an opportunity to talk through my portfolio with professionals.

I decided to make the most of this opportunity as I recently put together a PDF containing my most successful briefs to date. The PDF allows me to send it via email to people who are interested in my work, whether this be a possible employer or someone helping me out.

The Portfolio Lab consisted of two half an hour slots with two different professionals. I sat down with each of them and discussed my portfolio and the work shown. It gave me a chance to talk through projects I haven't looked at in a while and allowed them to refresh in my mind. One thing I have been advised to do multiple times is, including from today, is to make sure that I can speak fluently and concisely about my work so that if or when I get the chance to, I can explain projects to people and sound convincing, passionate and interested.

I then spoke about possible paths I want to head in after I graduate. This gave me a chance to get two opinions on the decision to possibly do a masters, as well as hear about their own journeys. What I learned from today was that a masters isn't crucial, but at the same time it can be just as beneficial. Either way, I can either decide for or against the idea and both paths will allow me to get to where I want to go.

I also discussed what my interests are within the discipline which is something I have always struggled with. However I learned a lot about myself simply by talking over it today. I have come to realise that, although I am not specifically interested in one area of design, the part of the process that I am most interested by is the beginning of projects involving coming up with a concept, and idea and developing and growing it into something bigger. When I told this to one of the professionals, he gave me some guidance as to what studio would suit me best and where to look for these.

In all, this was an extremely valuable experience as I gained more than I thought I would out of simply talking through where I am at and where I want to head. I will be looking for other opportunities similar to this in the future.

OUGD602 - Conversations with Professionals

Reaching out &
Finding Work Experience

Over the past few weeks, I have been focusing on getting in touch with professionals within the creative industry. I asked around amongst friends, family and peers to source inspiring people that I could possibly talk to and hopefully find work experience through. Currently, I haven't made any decisions on what area of design I want to work in and so I am using this to my advantage by reaching out to anyone I can in order to get a wide scope on things.

In a conversation I had with a friend about my situation, he suggested that I emailed Ray from Wieden and Kennedy. He gave me her personal email and I went ahead and contacted her. She was extremely friendly from the get-go and we began to talk about my situation and how she could help me out.

Wieden + Kennedy

"Wieden + Kennedy exists to create strong and provocative relationships between good companies and their customers"

They recently worked on the well-known Nike campaign 'Nothing beats a Londoner'

String of Emails

Ray and I have been emailing back and forth for a while now, discussing what I am up to and who else I should contact etc. When having this discussing, she suggested I contact a friend of hers who works at Wired Magazine.

As I have a keen interest in editorial design and have previous experience at a magazine publishers, I jumped at the chance to get in touch with him.

Wired

Wired is a well established magazine publishers as well as an online website and blog. I have contacted Andrew about possible work experience and he has confirmed that they can have me in for a couple of weeks once I am finished up in Leeds.