ALLY INGRAM

“Great British Ideas: Royal Mail Stamps

British Governmental education policy is looking to encourage and support Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. Royal Mail have been commissioned to produce several sets of stamps celebrating the seminal ideas of British thinkers throughout history as part of a broader push to raise the profile of STEM subjects. 

You are tasked with designing a set of four special postage stamps, celebrating four thematically linked ideas or innovations. They are to be presented in a standard stamp book packet format, with a cover of your design. It must include text about the project, which will be supplied. 

You are to research historical British work in science, technology, engineering and maths and identify four ideas to be presented on the stamps. These will not be supplied and must be chosen by you.“

A list of agencies who work in creative fashion advertising. 

Birmingham based

http://waa.co.uk/

http://www.wyattinternational.com/

http://www.bigcatgroup.co.uk/

http://www.citypress.co.uk

London based

http://www.hidden-agency.com/

http://www.beloved-media.com/

http://www.oddlondon.com/work/

http://www.hudsonwrighteaston.com/

http://www.fashionworkie.com/internship-placement/graphic-design-internship-students-only-6-months

What does this job include?

Assist the team in producing highly creative designs across a variety of media – window visuals, packaging, in-store graphic treatments/POS, promotional campaigns and various other projects. To expand on this the candidate will be required to…

Assist the team in the creation & delivery of seasonal concepts.

Create solutions for packaging for products that we stock in store.

Work with the team to produce creative for both in store & press/marketing events.

Work with the team on one-off printed publications for collaborations & events.

What interests me? Press/marketing events and the printed publications. Promotional campaigns - what I want to go into.  

What skills will I need?

Proficient in Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign.

Ability to work quickly from concept creation to finished product.Detail orientated, self-motivated, organized & able to multi-task.

Ability to set up artwork for print.Keen eye for typography & layout.

Good knowledge & interest in emerging trends within design & fashion as a whole.

Ability to work as part of a team as well as individually when required.

Is it realistic? Yes, this opportunity is realistic and would be good experience in my community of practice. 

http://www.fashionworkie.com/job/digital-online-and-graphic-fashion-co-ordinator

What does this job include?

Control all accounts of social media

Continue with the outreach and advertise via bloggers

Maintain and create relationships with bloggers

Proactively monitor and track online and social media posts from influencers and bloggers

Must have knowledge of all mainstream and emerging social media platforms

Be aware of the latest trends within the fashion industry

Take and edit images of stock

Create promotional content, for example website banners

What interests me? Social media and image editing. Also keeping a close relationship with clients/bloggers. 

What skills will I need?

Ability to multi-task

Excellent communication skills, both written and oral

PC Skills, including MS Office

Experience with image editing, including PhotoShop

Photography Skills

Is it realistic? Not really, doesn’t have much of what I want to go onto and is mostly social media and online based. I do like the idea of social media being another important advertising platform, though. 

http://www.fashionworkie.com/job/retail-graphic-designer

What does this job include? As a Retail Graphic Designer at Topshop you will report to the Lead Designer working on the part of the Creative Projects Team that focuses on graphic design for our retail environment. You will work closely with our VM Team and our Visual Director. The role focuses on every printed aspect of graphic design in our Retail environment including: new store opening materials; UK & International, in-store graphics, POS and Sale graphic packages, seasonal store updates 4 times a year and printed window schemes. The role is artwork heavy, it also includes translating a design and artworking it into various sizes and formats for bespoke shop fits plus creating visuals to show how these should look in situ.

What interests me? All of it! This opportunity would be brilliant experience and just what I need to break into the fashion advertising world. 

What skills will I need?

Excellent Mac CS5 skills

Excellent artworking skills

Good repro, production & print knowledge

Team player with excellent communication skills – ability to liaise at all levels

Highly organised, self motivated, competent and can use own initiative

Good leadership skills, managing and nurturing a team

Thrives on fast past environment

Love of fashionFashion Retail experience

Proven Graphic Design experience

Over the past few days, I’ve been looking into fashion advertising and how they’re actually designed. The most popular methods of advertising seem to be either using the product to sell itself, showing the after effect of said product, letting the brand name sell itself - something higher and better known brands tend to do or creating an emotional connection with the consumer. Below I’ll show examples of all of them. 

Making an emotional connection

This doesn’t tend to be a very popular method in cosmetics and fashion - but it is effective. As you can see from this Dove advertisement and the tagline 

“Does true beauty only squeeze into size 8?”

shows you can be anything you like despite what you look like. Basically, it’s a “you are beautiful” campaign which tend to be used a lot. 

Using the product to advertise itself 

This advertisement isn’t really focusing on what happens afterwards, but the product itself. I would say it shares focus with the model - but overall it sells itself. Also, the brand name carries heavy weight in the fashion world, so it wouldn’t need much advertising. The same goes for the image below, although the poster below you could say has a stronger focus on the model than it does the product. 

Showing the effect of the product 

In this advertisement, you can see that the main focus of this is to show what the product is doing to the model. It’s making her eyelashes pop - this is the “after effect” and shows the consumer just what they’ll be getting when using this product. The product is still present on both advertisements, but not their main focus. 

Using the brand name as the advertising focus

Both of these advertisements are high end brands, the sorts “regular folk” can’t afford. These advertisements use strong imagery but no writing other than the logo/name of the company. These brands sell themselves using their own name. 

I had a few spare minutes, and decided to use www.prospects.ac.uk to see if I was on the right career path, our of pure curiosity. Now honestly, I don’t tend to believe these things work - but after asking me a few simple questions, these are the results I got... 

Which skills are needed for fashion advertising? The main are software skills, such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. You’ll also need a passion for fashion, per say - no point in working on something you don’t actually care about. Something which has surprised me is the use of drawing/illustrative skills which are needed in quite a few of the opportunities I’ve been looking at. 

Thinking about jobs, internships, skills and how to get into my community of practice. Advertising & Marketing internships come in abundance, so having to cipher through to find what matches me and find ones that interest me are important. Below I will list and talk about the job role plus the skills that are needed to get into it.. 

http://www.inspiringinterns.com/candidates/graduate-jobs-internships/london-south-east/central-london/creative-industries/graphic-design/internship/digital-design-marketing-agency-london/1936

What does this job include?

“You will join the design team of 6 to help support and learn from the senior members of the team responsible for creating engaging and effective design across websites, marketing material, branding and mobile app design. Tasks you can expect to learn about and undertake include: 

Learn how to understand a client brief, work creatively with the team to establish deign options and by liaising with the client agree design assets. 

Initially you will be supporting the senior designers to assemble a given webpage or piece of marketing collateral, having been provided everything you need, you will help put the different design aspects together. 

Apply design principles to a given asset e.g. once a given image, colour or font has been agreed (often all 3) you will then apply these across a client’s website or other platform. 

As the internship develops so will your responsibility in terms of dealing directly with clients with an ultimate view to you working on your own client accounts. 

As the internship develops so will your responsibility”

What interests me?  This is a lot of what I want. I want to work in a small group of other designers and work on marketing and advertising. Having to market and do different designs to meet the brief given - creative and critical thinking! This isn’t much to do specifically with advertising, more marketing and branding - but within this comes advertising as you need the website to appeal and advertise itself. Also, the mobile app design part of the internship sounds like a brilliant opportunity.  What skills will I need? 

Strong working knowledge of InDesign, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

Someone looking to work in an open and collaborative team environment.

Someone looking to learn lots in a short space of time. 

Previous work experience in website and digital design would be a bonus. 

Previous work experience in print design would be a bonus. 

Is it realistic? No, unfortunately not. While I possess a lot of the skills needed for the internship, I know nothing about mobile app design - despite being curious about it. I don’t think an internship that requires it would be appropriate.  I need to work on my InDesign skills, as while I know basic knowledge of it, I need to really practice and use it more for designs. This is one of the skills that are currently setting me back on getting opportunities I want. 

http://www.inspiringinterns.com/candidates/graduate-jobs-internships/london-south-east/central-london/creative-industries/advertising/graduate-job/digital-advertising-operations-executive/1877 What does this job include? The successful candidate will acquire a grass-roots education of the digital advertising industry. They will do some planning and buying as well as trafficking, ad-serving, and experience first-hand the innovations in the digital media buying through programmatic and technology driven decision making platforms.

What interests me? Digital Advertising and media. 

What skills do I need? While no specific skills are listed for the opportunity, you need to be friendly, open, focused and a quick thinker. They appear to value soft skills over design skills. 

Is it realistic? No, this is not my area of practice. Although aspects of it interest me, it wouldn’t help into the field I want to go in. 

Another website I’ve been using is called FashionWorkie, which is tailored exactly to designers working in the fashion industry. Most of my opportunities lie in here, I’ve found a lot that interest me and I want to apply for. 

http://www.fashionworkie.com/internship-placement/graphic-design-intership

What does this job include?  Unfortunately, not much information is given. All that has been placed in the ad is.. 

Creating graphics for email marketing

Miscellaneous website graphics

Instagram collages 

Stationery

Newsletter layouts

What interests me? This job is on a fashion based work website, meaning this could be what I use to break into the fashion advertising sector. These tasks are simple, but could be used for experience and an ice breaker into my relevant practice of fashion advertising. 

What skills will I need? 

Photoshop

InDesign

Illustrator

Adobe Acrobat

Microsoft Office 

Where do I want to be? What is my goal in life? What career path do I want to go down? These are all questions we need to think about during our module. We need to search for placements or do a live project at the end of our year - I haven’t quite decided which I would like to do yet, I think both would be good opportunities equally. The live project will be an insight into how freelancing works, whereas placements will help you understand what it’s like to be part of an agency or group.  We also need to identify six companies or more that fit into your community of practice and think of how our portfolios will reflect our chosen practice and what we will put into it or what we already have in it - how will we build on it, basically. This is a lot to think about, and my blog will become show my thought process and development throughout the year. 

We’re back!  I’m quite excited to be back and ready to get designing again, although I’m sure that won’t be said when deadlines appear. This week, we met two new members of staff who will be our tutors for year two. They seem like nice guys, willing to help us hopeless students, which is always good. We initiated our PDP brief which is thinking about our future, which is what I might dedicate my blog too this year. I had thought about my future, but not in that much detail. I know I want to go into either advertising, packaging or media. I don’t like publishing too much and I really hate logo design, I can never get it right. On top of thinking about the future, a creative CV is needed - you basically need to personal brand yourself and sell yourself well. This is terrifying as if you get it wrong, it can affect if you get jobs. As well as PDP, we also had Paul’s first lesson and he gave us a mini project on books. You can view my book covers below. We were also introduced to the rest of his brief, which was a social issue campaign and we have to design posters around them. One static, a moving and an interactive one, exciting!

Even though I dislike book covers and publishing, I enjoyed this. I guess it was because we were provided with what imagery to use - I found it difficult last year without it.  On top of this, we were also introduced to the world of stamp design - I was terrible at the mini project and I don’t have high hopes for this project whatsoever, but we will see.