Amy Francis

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT EVENT:

I went along to an event in Manchester this week which was showcasing the fruits of labour from a 12 week workshop conducted by some students with some industry experts. The event focused on the ideas behind a project rather than the polished outcome to emphasise that with a  great idea the outcome is bound to be great, rather than dressing up a bad idea in order to try and make it better than it really is. It was really interesting to see some of the outcomes from the project and to think about how I might have tackled the same briefs had I been involved. 

JOB HUNTING WORKSHOP

I attended the job hunting workshop last week. 

We were asked to take part in several activities which were aimed at helping us understand the do’s and don’ts of hunting for a job after graduation. One of the activities we were asked to collate the various places and techniques that we would use in order to look for a job, and then post them on the window in order to compare and contrast our ideas with others. The main examples were things such as orchard, the drum, indeed etc, asking friends and family for freelance work, contacting individual agencies etc. 

SALS TAKEAWAY: The Event! 

The event finally happened! After what seems like an age of deliberating, thinking, planning and doing, Sals Takeaway finally became a real thing and it was great. After so much stress from the event itself and also from continuing with our NMP projects, it was great to let off some steam, have a drink and get some great feedback on our work. 

I was really surprised with how positive the feedback that I got throughout the night was. I was anticipating some uneasy looks as the industry worked their way through my work, questioning my talent and ability, however thankfully I was completely wrong. I got so much positive feedback on my work, particularly with the recent Fedrigoni brief which I originally hadn’t planned on even taking as I thought that it was not good enough. Much to my surprise this is one of the briefs that I got the most enthusiasm for as the idea behind the brief was so outside the box which shows that what we have been told time and time again for the last three years is true - Idea is everything! I gained so much confidence from this experience and now I can’t wait to rework my portfolio and take it to interviews and hopefully land my dream job! 

I talked to so many industry professionals that picking a single one out to talk about would be too hard! One of the most in-depth talks that I had was from both of the guys repping for Music - a studio that previously I hadn’t even heard of. They were really specific about things that I could do to improve my portfolio to just push it that little bit further which was great and I really enjoyed listening to their war stories about the industry. 

I needed to create some business cards for Sals Takeaway to hand out to the people that I network with. After a lot of consideration, I decided that rather than hand out small business cards I would hand out A5 prints. I feel that a business card is easy to forget whereas handing out a beautiful A5 print will not only be immediately more stand-out, but will hopefully be an object that the recipient will actually desire and want to keep and so as a result they will also be keeping my details, whereas with a business card I think that they might easily be thrown away or left behind. 

Luckily as a very small part of my NMP I have been exploring my illustration skills on illustrator within the theme of popular culture and so I already had some designs that could be readily printed which was great. The great thing about doing these prints to give out is that they are actually fairly representative of me as a person. They are a little bit different, and go above and beyond what was required. The designs themselves are very quirky and actually require some thought behind them as I mix popular culture worlds within them, which also highlights my love of popular culture itself - and so all in all, a good representation of me! 

IMAGES TAKEN FROM @annierosemiller​ !! <3

PROCON WEB REFRESHER SESSION:

We had a web refresher session with Jules where we went over some basic coding and also explored how some simple changes to code can enable a web page to be responsive (depending on the content of the page itself), which we then practiced as can be seen above with the coloured blocks.

ISLINGTON MILL: ONE OF ONE

Myself and @annierosemiller decided to venture out to Islington Mill to see the One of One exhibition/pop up which featured our very own John Powell-Jones! (It also featured Alex Frazer who has been in for a talk - you can see me perusing his lovely work top-left, and Dr Me who put out some cool collage work!) 

Progress shots taken as myself and @annierosemiller slaved away overseeing the printing of and doing the physical printing of the 100 printing boxes. 

FOLIO TALK W/JOANNE

Today we had a portfolio session with Joanne, helping use to get to grips with all things to do with physical portfolio. This session was particularly helpful to me as I have never had a portfolio and as a result am absolutely clueless when it comes to the design and content. In the notes I have taken down I listed some of the key points that I feel were made during the session.

-Your portfolio is a narrative. The chosen pieces of design should tell a story to your interviewer rather than simply being a collection of random work that you have put together. The pieces should be coherent and work together in each brief.

-Always start and end with a strong piece of work. It is these pieces that will stick with your interviewer. If you end with a weak piece it may cancel out all of the good work that you have shown and they may not be able to remember the other work as well.

-Keep the design simple. Let your work speak for itself and always use a grid.

-Always spell check! Spelling mistakes will stand out like a sore thumb to someone else. Get others to read through your work in order to check its coherency.

-Know what you are talking about. You should be able to confidently talk about your projects in a  positive, up beat way. This will shine through and maybe even make your projects look better than they are even if deep down there are things that you dislike about them - just don’t let it show. -Update your folio regularly. As you produce new work, you should always be updating your portfolio and as a result removing any older, weaker work. Only show your strongest stuff!

-Don’t forget to add your contact details!

I attended the CV workshop last week which was hosted by a member of staff from the University. Honestly this workshop wasn’t quite what I was expecting and as a result of this there wasn’t much that I could really take away from the session. A fair amount of time was spent covering the basics of how to create a general CV, what is important to put in there, the tone that you should use and how to format it etc etc. I’m sure that this was probably useful for some people as I am sure that there are people in the class who have never had a job before, but as someone who has worked part-time since the age of 15, this is something that I got to grips with a long time ago. There was very little about creating a visual or creative CV, which is actually what I understood the session to be about, and the few examples that were given to us as “creative CV’s” were of a very poor standard which if anything told me what not to do in terms of creating my own. As the lady who was giving the talk was not from the design school, I’m sure that this is through no fault of her own and I’m sure that she thought she was giving us good examples, this unfortunately was just not the case. 

NOTE TO SELF 

I attended a Note To Self Networking Event a few days ago which I found massively interesting and informative. There were four speakers in all who had to discuss the topic of resilience within design. 

Of the four speakers, two in particular stood out to me, and inspired me so much. More than any other speaker that I have ever seen. Chris Gaffey and Lord Whitney being the parties in question. Gaffey spoke with such an infectious passion for his specialism (he is an ad director) that I felt like I wanted to go and pick up a video camera myself. His wicked sense of humour only intensified his excitement, and it is great to see someone from such humble beginnings (a Salfordian himself) and who had to go through so much (he lost eyesight in one of his eyes as a teen and was told that he should drop this idea of being creative) to be where he is today and how he has fought for the career that he loves so much - it makes me feel like I can do the same, that success is out there you simply have to find it. 

Lord Whitney enchanted me. I have felt so lost these last few months, asking myself if I have chosen the right course, if I was really meant to be a designer and where I would fit in to the world. Lord Whitney showed me a studio life that I could really get behind. They produce work that is much more adventurous and much less commercial than anything I have ever seen from a studio before, work that I would love to be producing myself. Their own tale of resilience again made me hope that I too will break through to the real world of design - they had to fight hard to make it, they worked 9-5′s and spent every other waking moment creating, and bit by bit, they got to where they wanted to be. It shows me that there are all kinds of different routes that can lead you to your goal rather than having all of this pressure to have a job lined up before we leave. If we don’t have one straight away, it is not the end of the world. 

A few pictures taken from a recent trip to Barcelona. This wasn’t a trip that I had taken purely for design purposes, however in a city like Barcelona it’s hard to miss the beauty and design that that is hardwired in to the city. 

I found the architecture massively inspiring, particularly around the Gothic Quarter which definitely lives up to it’s name. It was interesting to see what sort of things that you could spot when you took a closer look at a building or structure - the ornate arches and the sculptures that feature high up on corners and pillars. There was also a lot of interesting graffiti and large wall murals around the city - often found in the most unexpected places. Some of the design work that I came across whilst in Barcelona was very interesting, much more modern and contemporary than I had been expecting (and example with the music poster seen above which shows an interesting use of type and imagery). Overall the city was a beautiful place to visit, and a breath of fresh air in terms of inspiration and experiencing new culture.