I have decided to write my practitioner report to compare Mike Rigby, who came to speak to us this year, and Dan Ingham & Stephen Owen who came in last year. I decided this as I also wanted to compare my own thoughts and reflection on what the guest speakers said with the difference of a year’s design experience. Dan and Ste were still starting out on the design ladder but they both won awards at the end of year exhibitions and were entered into the 'New Blood' section of D&AD.
They told how important it was to get into college as much as you can as you could miss important information and being around other people is paramount to improving ideas you couldn't do on your own.
As they both got chances to exhibit their work in London, it gave them the chance to build relationships and contacts with people and show their talents to thousands of people.
Out of 2000 students Dan and Steve won one of the 40 awards given out which is a tremendous achievement.
This led to numerous offers of work which surprisingly they turned down as they want to work at big agencies which is commendable and it seems they are going to follow a similar path to Mike who graduated in 2002 and has been in employment at The Chase, Landor, Moon, Pentagram, Mark Studio and has recently been offered the job as Creative Director at Interbrand in Australia. Therefore, it is good to get opinions from their different perspectives.
Mike's talk was advertised by posters put up around the design department recently featuring the word WOW which since the talk I have realised means Words of Wisdom. The date on these was 26th October which was wrong as it was meant to say November. Then someone designed a poster that said D'oh in place of Wow with the correct date on. These were placed next to the ones with the incorrect date on. I don't understand why you would want to highlight someones mistake and it makes a mockery out of that person. It could quite easily have been reprinted with the correct date on. However maybe this was intentional. The way Dan and Ste promoted their talk was with a screenshot of an email saying that they didn’t have any time to make a poster. I am not sure if this was intentional either or it was a real e-mail but they both got our attention by being different.
Dan and Ste explained they would rather not work on designing kebab house leaflets forever and would rather work on the bigger things. I respect this as it would be easy to take the money and they have decided against this.
Mark seemed to have taken the same attitude and spoke of the positives about being in the design industry. He said it is interesting, challenging, no two jobs are the same, you get to go on photoshoots, you go on free awards nights and that their is a strong design community. Also, people are helpful and it is easy to work from home or abroad. Aswell as this you can work for worthwhile causes and help give people a voice.
The negatives were the long hours of unpaid work, the competitive nature of the industry and the amount of pressure put upon you. The negative impacts are overpackaged items which is negative on the environment and also information overload. He then went onto speak about Studio structure and the hierarchy of staff which I think was more for the first and second years.
Moving onto the subject of placements Mike did a 6 month placement at Imagination and then did a placement at The Chase. Dan and Ste also opted to not take the first job they were offered and they decided to go on some placements with the likes of Thoughtful and The Chase and then moved onto placements with Mark Design and McCann Erickson.
Marks opinion is that placements speed you up and you become ten times faster than before. You get real live projects and you can gain contacts by networking and going on nights out. His advice for getting a placement was to have 6 solid placements in your book, have good ideas well executed, impress tutors and do well at interview. To get the most out of a placement you should socialize, be enthusiastic and positive. He advised us to not let rejection get to us as it does not mean you aren't good enough and will only make you stronger.
With so many people graduating each year from Graphic Design in the North West, Dan and Steve's advice to us was to build up contacts with people, continually improve your portfolio, enter competitions and try your best.
Also starting on a low wage isn't all that bad, Mike started on 13k and left only a couple of years later on 23k. His first project was ironically the project that we worked on at the Liverpool Design Symposium during The Chase's workshop. He achieved what was required and the underlay outsold carpet at the company for the next 2 years which shows what good design can do to sales. With his design he also achieved a 350% store card uptake increase which shows it doesn't have to be a glamorous brief to achieve results.
Aside from design, Mike has travelled the world and advises us to do the same as it is the best thing he has ever done. This is in contrast to Dan and Ste who got stuck into the industry as soon as they graduated. Mike then eventually got a job working at Landor in Australia whilst travelling where he was paid more and had amazing views from the studio. He believes British designers are highly exportable due to superior ideas whereas other countries are more strategic. I have found this when showing my work in New York. He is now working at True North until he leaves to travel again before he takes on his new job with Interbrand.
He says a lot of his time is spent producing brand guidelines which show the look, font, colours and tone of voice of a brand. Although he likes to make time to do self initiated briefs and advises us to do them aswell.
Overall Mikes advice to us as students is to broaden our horizons and look at all types of media. Experiment whilst you can and you are in education. Crit and collaborate with other students. Above all believe in yourself. This is echoed by Ste and Dan who had told us that, due to them always being together and doing the Colleges promotional work, they had received some negative comments and jealousy. This led to some bitchiness because it was always ' Ste and Dan '. This wasn't a problem for them because they were getting slagged of for doing good work. They told us that we should believe in ourselves in the same way and it will take us far.
Overall I think both talks were similar but it was good to get opinions from people at different levels within design as Dan and Ste are attempting to do what Mike is doing right now. The things that Dan and Ste have told us I am certain Mike would say the same as he also seems to be good and determined to do well in the industry. Mike has a more laid back style to myself and Dan and Ste but it seems to work well. They both agree on the subject of placements and being proactive in getting yourself aswell as having strong portfolios. It was also interesting how they all had the opinion that money wasn’t a big deal when starting out. Mike said it soon went up and I am sure that Dan and Ste are now reaping the benefits of their decisions also.
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