Craft Agency: Portfolio Lab Session

Craft Agency down at the Tetley for the first time hosted a session they call Portfolio Lab which is essentially an hour lot critique session for your portfolio but from industry professionals. This short but sweet encounter was super helpful in terms of helping me get a better understanding of what is and what's not essential within a portfolio since up to this point I'd never really sought much advice on this.

Within the session, me and a couple of others would have a sit down with two professionals individually and walk through both digital portfolio and a website. Speaking to Fionn I gained a good amount of feedback that'll help improve my portfolio.

Condense my descriptions - Studios don't have all that much time to read through a big description for multiple projects, so keeping it short and sweet (I.e using the elevator pitch method) is going to help me get straight to the point.

Only include work I'm passionate about - There are a few projects both on my website and in my digital portfolio that although might be decent projects, I'm not that passionate about. This could come across as trying to bulk out my portfolio with work I'm not too keen on and so it's best to just keep it limited to a few solid projects.

Although some people have a clear ongoing theme or style within their portfolio, not having that isn't always a bad thing. One thing pointed out to me was that my work was more conceptual and idea led than a typical portfolio and so this is something that will shine through when viewed, rather than worrying about all my work having to be similar in some way.

Few other pointers:

- Don't be afraid of white space - don't add more images for the sake of things
- Move contact details to the back of the portfolio so once they finish reading they have the means of contacting me right in front of them.

All in all, a very useful hour-long insight into what it is industry professionals will often look for which will help to elevate and hopefully give me a slight advantage when it comes to applying for internships/ jobs etc.

Response from Live brief @ The Elephant Room

After our response to the Wickes live brief, the creative director of the agency contacted us with feedback in response to our work. This was super helpful in getting a professional understanding of what went well/ not so well or what we could do to improve the piece to then have as a portfolio project.

Potential Internship @ The Elephant Room

After responding to the live brief set by Elephant Room they offered me, Luke and Jon, to go down for a couple of days in the studio. This was exciting as it's the first bit of first-hand experience I'll have as a professional.

Live brief for Wickes

During the creative convos week, the Elephant Room finished their talk with a live brief for us which was for Wickes. 

Reimagine the customer experience for selecting colour and create a journey to replace the current approach that’s in their stores.

This was a perfect opportunity to not only make further contact with Will and Shannie but to have experience of working on a live brief, as there is potential for this to extend further in the future.

After visiting the Wickes store in Leeds to find out more about how people currently shop there, we developed a few ideas that we thought could work. Putting these into decks helped define our idea in a concise and easy to understand way.

A talk by Abraham from The Pop Up Agency (Creative Convos)

Abraham from the Pop Up Agency came to visit as the final speaker, rounding off the week-long of conversations from industry professionals. He co-founded a unique studio that specialises in travelling the world, solving briefs in an allotted time of 48 hours only. He and his team initially started this out in university as a challenge for them to visit 15 cities, in 15 weeks to complete 15 briefs, a hefty one but they managed it. Although to most this seemed daunting and not doable he said he had to have the stubborn mentality to see it through regardless of who questioned them.

During his talk he gave a few bits of advice for us:

- Always split the cost that you give to your client down into three sections. 33% for salary, 33% for expenses and 33% for savings.
- As a result, never undercharge!
- Finding a mentor for guidance is essential, this will help you develop into a better person and designer.
- To revisit goals regularly and in doing so your achievements will never become outdated.
- Most importantly people in his studio don't have roles - everyone is there to evolve and grow. Not to be stuck in one particular role.
- Democratise creativity - Everyone is creative!

The key takeaway from this talk though was his approach to tackling briefs in such a short period of time. His effective method is to:

1. Empty your mind of ideas; go for quantity not quality.
2. Next within a group, write down an one single idea on a piece of paper individually.
3. Move around the table clockwise and attempt to develop more of each idea atleast 3 times.

A talk by Will and Shannie from The Elephant Room (Creative Convos)

We were welcomed by a warm, friendly greeting by both Will and Shannie from The Elephant Room, a relatively new advertising agency that appear as well established as any other agency in the game. With clients such as Dyson, they're definitely doing something right.

Compared to past experiences of talks by other industry professionals, this one stood out differently with it being more discussion orientated; an insight into professional life, that for once didn't seem as daunting as they typically do. Will and Shannie were real with us, didn't beat around the bush or feed us typical one-liners that we want to hear but instead showed us another side of the advertising industry.

One key take away that really stuck with me was that they said how it's..

"...not about experience but about potential."

Creating a role that's right for you is essential and it's exactly what both Will and Shannie did within their agency. It's not always about being the master of one particular skill set as this isn't for everyone, but instead crafting your career around what you're confident with. Connecting with anyone and everyone is essential as we don't always know who's friends with who, it could come in handy in the future for potential collaboration or job opportunities. Another takeaway from the talk was to never disregard other personal interests, regardless of whether it's relevant to your career or not because ultimately everything makes you stand out as your own unique personality.

With all the recent controversy over H&M racist advert for a product, both Will and Shannie made a solid argument in response to this that people would typically dismiss. As opposed to fighting against brands that do things wrong, make mistakes etc. instead see how you could work with them to fix this otherwise brands will never learn. There is becoming more of a need for brands to have a social responsibility over what it is they produce, advertise and advocate and so with this comes the responsibility to ensure they're all aware of society in its current state.

A talk by Dines from Studio Blup (Creative Convos)

Monday marked the first day of the Creative Convos week curated by Alec and branded by both James and Sammy. This is a week where a range of different professionals come in to give their insight and knowledge on the transition from study to professional work life and their experience of that so far. Mixed in with this is a couple of different day briefs/ tasks to get us more involved with the speaker and those within the studio.

First up: Dines from Studio Blup

Rolling through into the studio with his bouncing enthusiasm and positive attitude was Dines, a guy whose passion for all things design shined through from his first slide. He started with how Studio Blup first came about for him which was during his later years at university, designing bits here and there for a club he used to go to. For him, this was the start of something big, although it only seemed small at the time he had visions for something more expansive than just him in his own bedroom designing. He mentioned that creating his so-called studio at the time, even though it was comprised of just himself, meant that he had a professional facade that made him stand out from other competing designers at the time. Having a regular email such as ....@gmail.com just didn't seem to cut it for most so by having a professional email such as hello@studioblup.com, straight away it created a much more sophisticated visual identity for him, which he claimed is a key to getting work, internships, opportunities etc.

Another thing that I took from his talk was to be multidisciplinary isn't necessarily a bad thing, contradictory to other designers who sometimes argue this point. Having a range of different skills whether analog or digital and being able to apply and adapt these to your ideas and concepts makes for a much more versatile designer, another thing he claimed helped him take on and get more client work in the future. Regardless of whether he had the knowledge of particular programmes, he set it out for himself to learn these during the process of the project as a means of becoming much better equipped for other potential projects in the future.

The second part of the afternoon was made up of a short pitching session, which later went on to become 'Dines Den'. Each of us would pitch a past project or upcoming idea/concept for a project that he would then give feedback on both the work and our presentation skills. Although somewhat daunting, it was interesting and helpful to get this feedback as it's now a means for me to expand and continue working on a project that would have just been left behind in the second year.

All in all a chilled and insightful afternoon.