HEAD BLOG

I mentor at a local college. It’s a great way to see how the next generation are being taught to approach advertising and design. I learn a lot about expectations, processes and ideas.

Oh, and I suppose I’m of some help to the students.

Whatever.

Each year, without fail, I see things I don’t like. It could be that students are being given six months to explore a brief when I know one day they will have, well, one day.

This year I got to talking about a design the student had done and I asked why he’d done it, what thought processes had led to it. We discussed it in some detail because I’d got quite a different interpretation of it. Ultimately I asked how the student “sold” it into the tutor.

The answer was that designs weren’t sold in. They were given no rationale.

It made me wonder that if students weren’t required to explain, if they weren’t required to show their working out, then what would encourage them to do any working out to begin with.

And without being able to explain why a design works then what faith could I have in the message it is supposed to convey?

Moving to old man mode, I believe that part of the reason there is any kind of debate about the quality of creative at the moment (a topic being run in The Drum lately) is that very little in the way of rationale and message is actually being demanded.

Perhaps if colleges took up the challenge to be more commercial in their teaching technique then we might see this change at grassroots level. Certainly a more vocational approach to design wouldn’t hurt as students learn to better understand the demands clients will one day put upon them.

Forgive the headline. I just wanted to be sure I got your attention.

It’s graduation season when, as the doors open and hats settle, us employers are treated to an onslaught of applicants seeking out “opportunities”.

Most of your applications take the same form: an email expressing hope for any opportunity and urging the reading of the attached covering letter, cv and portfolio.

Your letters are earnest and hopeful.

Lazy bastard students.

I don’t want earnest and hopeful. I don’t want a covering email telling me to read a covering letter. I don’t really want your CV but if you do send it then design it to have impact. Your one brief in this is to sell yourself. From email to portfolio. Sell sell sell.

Why?

Because I want to notice you.

I want you to show me you can think up the sort of concepts I have to sell to clients.

I want to see what you might be capable of.

Why?

Because I’m a lazy bastard employer.

It must have been fifteen, sixteen years ago. Not to the day, that would be stretching truth and memory a little too far and it is vital that you trust me on this: Microsoft almost killed me.

When I say “killed” I mean killed but when I say “me” I do, in fact, mean my career.

It was fifteen or so years ago and I had left college with a degree to my name and a whole load of skills without a place to put them. A job was needed but not just any job. With all the arrogant hope of the newly graduated I scoured the papers for the writing job that would suit my unproven skills. Teaching poetry? Not a problem. Writing for Coronation Street? Sounds easy enough. I had the comfort of a supportive creative writing lecturer and the knowledge of what zeugma means. How could I fail to impress?

The weeks turned to months and still no interviews. Then one turned up for a start up magazine. I wrote my sample piece (ok, maybe I ought to have written a LOT more sample pieces) and submitted.

That the interview took place in a upstairs room should have set the spider sense a-tingling but any fears I may have had were allayed by the deployment of the ultimate weapon: Excel.

Some people are getting all hung up on Powerpoint but for me, Excel was the killer (I’m not sure Powerpoint even existed back then – this was a time when Word came on a whole stack of floppy discs).

I thought my writing had secured me the coveted place in what would be the next Loaded (I know, NOW I know) but looking back it was the “editor” pitching me.

And he got me.

A detailed Excel based presentation proved beyond all shadow of a doubt that not only was the magazine viable, it was potentially revolutionary. All it took was example after example of how a simple change in one cell could affect every other part of the spreadsheet including (and spectacularly) the bottom line. That sold me. That paved the way for me to accept a job on the basis of a deferred first payment.

Then a second.

Then, yes, a third.

Month after month I wrote and (shudder all ye DTP afficianados) designed the magazine using Pagemaker and Photoshop.

The months I spent there kept me looking for real, paid, work but they awoke the urge to learn any and every new application I would need to do any and every new job that came my way. Working with the people I now work with I see just how important this first stage was and that despite the despondency, despite the scam, Excel showed me what could be achieved by a wing and a prayer.

I’m still owed £833.33 though.

Thinking about what I said yesterday about submitting a portfolio got me thinking. Or more accurately, remembering. Way back in 2007 Head First advertised for a graphic designer. We promised money in return for services. You know – the usual sort of thing. Read more…

When I tell people what I’m about to tell you they are surprised. The Spock eyebrow goes up and I’ve even heard the word “really” forced through their lips. You see, I’d just told them that some designers don’t even bother submitting a portfolio when applying for a job. Read more…

For students and non-students alike it seems to the application process that proves most difficult. Oddly enough, in my experience, students have it down better than those already in a job. Maybe more experienced creatives don’t feel the need to try as hard but really, this page of advice comes mostly from what I’ve learnt from them. Read more…

A letter from the University of Chester landed on my desk today and before I get around to answering it I was reminded about a subject I’ve been mulling over recently: the yearly graduation process. Read more…