Getting in contact with Craig Oldham

Craig is someone who I came across when I found out about his book In Loving Memory of Work which is a visual record of the coal pit strikes that took place in 1984-85. His work immediately struck me because of the amount of passion and effort that's been put into every aspect of this book. The strikes and the events that followed is something very personal to him, considering that his dad was himself a coal miner who lost his job to the closure of the pits, which ultimately led to some tough times that followed.

I could instantly tell that he was passionate about this through his work but also through his tone of voice during his talks. This I would say is partly due to the amount he swears, which is entirely appropriate given the context of his talks.

During his talk for Nicer Tuesdays, he makes a big point about how design shouldn't be for the sake of design, instead it should have a purpose, have a meaning, it should be communicating something. His strong opinions on this are evident through his work as his work has a clear obvious point he's trying to communicate. This is why I'm so interested to find out more about him and his views towards design, because I myself, like to think that I design for a reason.

I wrote up a letter explaining my reason for wanting to chat with him, I think that a letter is much more personal to the recipient but also because back in 2012 Craig did The Hand Written Letter Project which was based around how personal a letter can be in this day and age when our inboxes are filled with spam, junk mail. I think that sending a letter is definitely a much more personal form of communication, it requires a lot more effort to hand write a letter, buy a stamp and post it off than to send a quick email.

S.O.D Collective Pitch

For the third brief within this module, it was to form a collective of up to 6 people and to pitch an idea/concept for a collective group of work. The output could be an exhibition, publication or online presence , or perhaps a combination of these. Given that both me and Jon are already a part of S.O.D it made sense that we pitch this already existing collective and to push the group further so more people become aware of it and have the chance to join in as well.

'Through research and planning you will explore the basics of how to identify an appropriate venue, audience and market, structure your team to optimize your individual and group skills and knowledge, investigate the legal and financial obligations of developing and launching a creative initiative, seek appropriate professional support & advice, plan and control finances and effectively promote, brand and communicate your presence to external parties and partners.'

This is something that has already been considered that we've help to develop also for as long as we've been a part of the collective which is all included in our presentation.

Questions to consider:

• What skills and services do you have to offer individually and as a group?
• Who is your target market?
• What form will your showcase take?
• What are your costs, charges and financial considerations?
• How will you structure your collective?
• Who will be responsible for what?
• How will you promote your showcase? To who? Using what media?
• Is it set in a physical location ? then where?
• How will you manage communication through the group?

Presentation

My PPP Presentation

Presenting in front of people has never and probably never will be my strong suit, but it's something I've always tried to improve mostly because it's something I'll likely have to do a lot in the future, so there's no avoiding it. Also doing presentations like this on a regular basis will increase my confidence, both talking in front of people but also in myself and in my work.

One thing I picked up on last year from Stefan Sagmeister's Happiness by Design talk was making the presentation flow, with one thing leading onto another and not jumping from one topic to the next. I think this helped me hugely in my first year presentation as I would typically have a very choppy presentation with each section divided up by a separate title slide but is something that definitely stuck with me into my second year PPP presentation. Making use of every slide as almost a visual aid to my speech also helped me a lot this year, I aimed to have little to no words on the majority of slides so that the audience will be taking in by the picture, taking the focus off me a little bit. But also so that if I do happen to forget what I'm supposed to be talking about at any point, the slide itself will give me a hint and hopefully get me back on track.

I feel like my presentations are always on a very personal level, often using pictures of my life and on goings not just always my work. This gives me much more confidence and fluidity when I'm talking, but can hopefully inject some humour into the talk.

Within my talk, I began chronologically at the beginning of the year as this made most sense to me; starting in Oslo and finishing with what I learnt from this year. A lot of my presentation talked about my Erasmus trip to Norway for the first semester as this is what I would consider a big step up in my life. Moving to a different country, experiencing a whole new culture and with that new people was a challenging thing to do for me, especially considering I'd never lived in another country before, let alone on my own. Also getting involved with a collective over there was another big thing, being a part of something much bigger than just my own work within university meant that I had to the chance to do good with my design work and to have it displayed in exhibitions in other countries, this was something again that boosted my confidence.

Presenting in groups also means that I was able to see other people's presentations and their way of presenting things, which helps me in some ways. Some people have clever ways of presenting which helps give them confidence, this ultimately gives me a better idea of how I should be presenting and ways in which I can improve.

Doing a presentation of this scale and importance did a lot for me and my confidence, it puts into perspective the difficulty of situations like this but allows me to tackle it one slide at a time, only for me to realise afterwards that it's not as hard or as nerve-racking as my mind often makes it out to be.

M&C Saatchi Interview & Tour

Shortly before the trip to Berlin I managed to get in contact with an old friend who moved over there about 6/7 years ago. Not knowing that he was in the design industry, I asked more about where he was working at the time, turns out it was M&C Saatchi and so I asked if it would be possible to do a small interview with him and/or another creative there and also a tour around the studio space. He said yes, woop!

Advertising is something I'm pretty interested in and so what better what to do it than with a big agency like Saatchi. Seeing the workspace and meeting the people was interesting and enticing. There was a sense of family and connectedness within the space; there was a small team of creatives which is the kind of environment that I think would be nice to be involved in when it comes to working in the industry. I took along with me Matt and Harrison as they themselves were also interested in finding out how an agency works.

The interview/chat with Timothy Cook

Somehow I lost the first 20 minutes or so of the interview (I think maybe it corrupted?) but luckily still got around 40/45 minutes of content which I think I could potentially use for PPP, although I do still intent to get in contact with a couple of other studios to have interviews with.

When we asked about how the individual job roles such as art director, copyrighter etc. and how the whole design process goes, he mentioned that the idea for a project is no one person's idea, it's the teams idea and then ultimately the agency's idea which is interesting to see how it works because I would generally see it as the more hierarchal person would be seen as the face of the idea.

"Good work get's killed all of the time"

I asked about how he copes with creative blocks since this is a common occurrence with all designers..

"Walk around, get outside, do fitness, whatever you gotta do, meditate"

What keeps you motivated to constantly want to push your practice?

"It's the drive for always wanting to produce something, I always want to make something. With solving problems, you're always working towards fixing something."

What happens in the run up to the pitch, during 'pitch week'?

"Well you start losing your mind a bit to start with"

"But ultimately you're refining ideas, the justifications for those ideas and the visuals" 

How would you recommend going out seeking out and getting an internship?

"Do you have LinkedIn? If so a shit load of stalking and trying to connect with creative directors through there, sending over your portfolio and a cover letter."

As far a portfolios are concerned how would be the best way to display your work?

"Be yourself, talk the way you would approach someone in real life within your portfolio such as slang words etc. but keep it concise, no more than about 25 pages within a PDF of work because it can get too much."

The interview was actually really helpful especially about how to seek out an internship and how to display my work, coming from someone who's done this lot in his time, which is how he got his job at Saatchi by seeking out the creative director and sending his portfolio over.

Pentagram Talk

During our trip to Berlin we had the opportunity to have a talk by one of the partners of Pentagram, Justus Oehler. Straight from the get go, I could see why and how he was in the position he was, he talked a lot about graphic design being a passion and not just something you do passively. Unlike like maybe other career choices where people's parents might have a heavy influence on what they do, he said and I quote..

"we do graphic design because we fucking want to". 

Quote of the century, surely.

The first part of the presentation was giving us an insight into his contribution to the industry and the work he'd done over the years which was interesting to see who he'd worked with. But he then moved onto more important matters within graphic design that I personally think we should be aware of when designing, mainly within branding projects.

Taste vs Timeless

Often companies can make the mistake of following trends and their own taste in design rather than choosing a design that is timeless. Trends come and they go, as does someones taste in design but what doesn't change is timeless designs, ones that will last years in comparison to ones that will fade out when the next trend comes along. Companies such as Coca-Cola and AT&T have made this mistake before. Their original logos were solid and worked perfectly fine across all mediums, but making the mistake of following a trend meant they fell victim to the other trends that followed. AT&T for example below, their 2007 logo was following the trend of gradients and transparency, which may work for the moment but again will likely change in coming years to keep up with the trend.

Coke made a similar mistake, although not necessarily following a trend they attempted to change their logo in 1985, maybe down to a change in taste. But soon realised it didn't work nearly as well as their well known original logo and so quickly changed it back a couple of years later.

Another really interesting point he made that I'd never even considered before was how there is no public debate on graphic design. Other areas of design like fashion, cars etc. are discussed on a regular basis, which means that most people have a good idea of what's good, bad or trendy within that area. But yet with graphic design, only graphic designers themselves for the most part discuss what's good and bad design meaning that when it comes to the majority of the public they don't have much of an idea of what's good or not. This can lead to bad design as clients don't know what works and what doesn't.