Creative Futures 2013

?Creative futures was an opportu-nity for art based students to be given an insight into the industry. The university invited a range of experienced art-ists and designers

from within the creative industry to tell us about their journey. There were a total of 65 speakers that shared their knowledge and gave priceless tips on how to get that

all important job. The week begun with an opening talk from Dr Stu-art Cunningham who is head of the creative industries here at Glyndwr. The introduction explained how

the week was going to unravel and also an ex-planation on how important these talks are as they give priceless knowledge from people within the industry. In

theory the event was a chance for students to take the time to think about what they want to do once they finished their studies.

Written by Carl Redfern

This talk was presented by Robert Ball, a

designer currently working for “The Partners” design fi rm. He started with a short introduction about

him self and his career which, although brief, was very interesting. The fact that he started in illustration and moved to design interests me and

his chose his career in design for similar reason I did. He gained his job through a 2 week work placement, this must surely be an inspiration for student to go and get

them self work experience and work placement at fi rms as it is a good way to immerse your self in the industry and possibly gain employment. The partners main focus is on branding and

they take an interesting and “out of the box” approach to briefs. Mr. Ball explained that Branding is “Creating the appropriate work for the appropriate people” and that as a branding company they

cannot have a signature style. The approach each brief differently and there for crate a individual and tailored outcome for each task. I think it is a great way of creating work, too many people create a style and

get stuck in a design rut and create similar work over and over. This is not good design practise and every company is different and there for you work should be. Possibly the most interesting case of this was when they

were given the brief to create a screen saver for a accountancy fi rm. On the surface this appeared to be a dull task however with some creative thinking they came up with the idea that they should have a screen saver and that they should turn off there screen instead, thus saving money and electricity. This Ingenious piece of thinking took no design skill to create as they were selling the company “nothing” however due to the creative thinking and ideas produced my The Partners they were able to sell this concept and it was herald as one of the greatest green concepts of the year. Robert followed this with an interesting quote saying ” Don’t mirror companies, don’t create something you think they will like. Have the confi dence to create something you like”. I really like this idea however I feel it has its limitations. Companies like The Partners are able to create such this due to there reputation and respect within the design industry. I feel it would be much harder to do this as a young unknown designer as your ideas and designs will be less respected. On the other hand its ideas like this that make designers and if you are not creating interesting and innovative designs then you will never stand out. The next section of this talk was about “How not to wright a CV”. After many years in the industry Robert said he has seen many C.V’s and portfolios and gave a few pointers on the subject. He claimed that he rarely reads C.V’s sent in and that it was “all about the portfolio”. This is an interesting insight into the way employers look at potential employees and something that I’m sure

all students will have taken not of. After this he gave a few obvious tips about creative a C.V including “keeping it clean” and “make it simple and easy to view” One of the fi nal points addressed in this talk

was about inspiration. He said that you should look for inspiration in different and unusual places.. “If everyone looks for inspiration in the same place, then ever ones work will be the same”.

This is a valid point as I feel that the internet is so prominent in everyday life that sights such at Behance and Tumblr have a heavy infl uence on the work everyone creates.

This is evident when seeing people fi nal pieces of work in university as there is a generic theme running throughout. Perhaps with some outside

infl uence and inspiration the work produced would stand out more. This talk was incredibly interesting and gave a

real insight into the working of a current d e s i g n e r .

“KEEP CALM AND GOOD LUCK”

Written by Simon Amor

How NotT o B e ADesigner

This talk was presented by Robert Ball, a

designer currently working for “The Partners” design fi rm. He started with a short introduction about

him self and his career which, although brief, was very interesting. The fact that he started in illustration and moved to design interests me and

his chose his career in design for similar reason I did. He gained his job through a 2 week work placement, this must surely be an inspiration for student to go and get

them self work experience and work placement at fi rms as it is a good way to immerse your self in the industry and possibly gain employment. The partners main focus is on branding and

they take an interesting and “out of the box” approach to briefs. Mr. Ball explained that Branding is “Creating the appropriate work for the appropriate people” and that as a branding company they

cannot have a signature style. The approach each brief differently and there for crate a individual and tailored outcome for each task. I think it is a great way of creating work, too many people create a style and

get stuck in a design rut and create similar work over and over. This is not good design practise and every company is different and there for you work should be. Possibly the most interesting case of this was when they

were given the brief to create a screen saver for a accountancy fi rm. On the surface this appeared to be a dull task however with some creative thinking they came up with the idea that they should have a screen saver and that they should turn off there screen instead, thus saving money and electricity. This Ingenious piece of thinking took no design skill to create as they were selling the company “nothing” however due to the creative thinking and ideas produced my The Partners they were able to sell this concept and it was herald as one of the greatest green concepts of the year. Robert followed this with an interesting quote saying ” Don’t mirror companies, don’t create something you think they will like. Have the confi dence to create something you like”. I really like this idea however I feel it has its limitations. Companies like The Partners are able to create such this due to there reputation and respect within the design industry. I feel it would be much harder to do this as a young unknown designer as your ideas and designs will be less respected. On the other hand its ideas like this that make designers and if you are not creating interesting and innovative designs then you will never stand out. The next section of this talk was about “How not to wright a CV”. After many years in the industry Robert said he has seen many C.V’s and portfolios and gave a few pointers on the subject. He claimed that he rarely reads C.V’s sent in and that it was “all about the portfolio”. This is an interesting insight into the way employers look at potential employees and something that I’m sure

all students will have taken not of. After this he gave a few obvious tips about creative a C.V including “keeping it clean” and “make it simple and easy to view” One of the fi nal points addressed in this talk

was about inspiration. He said that you should look for inspiration in different and unusual places.. “If everyone looks for inspiration in the same place, then ever ones work will be the same”.

This is a valid point as I feel that the internet is so prominent in everyday life that sights such at Behance and Tumblr have a heavy infl uence on the work everyone creates.

This is evident when seeing people fi nal pieces of work in university as there is a generic theme running throughout. Perhaps with some outside

infl uence and inspiration the work produced would stand out more. This talk was incredibly interesting and gave a

real insight into the working of a current d e s i g n e r .

“KEEP CALM AND GOOD LUCK”

Written by Simon Amor

Gareth Lawn is a graphic designer. He graduated from North Wales School of Art & De-

sign, Glyndwr University in 2008, as a print designer. He talked about about his methodology of work of having a

-ing mood boards, and ideas up from early stages through to the

up in the design world, he had very important advise as what we have to do to get the job, like to learn how to use software not only illustrator

and photoshop and indesign but others like dreamweaver and after effect and so on, learn other disciplines like web design,and illustration because,

to be a successful graphic designer we need to know as much as we can about every-thing know it sounds like a lot but that’s what it takes to be successful. He is also a web

designer, he took briefs, generate blueprints he liaise with clients and it is a very important to stay in contact with your client and developers about the site functionality. He did not learn

web design at Glyndwr university it was like a learning curve and a challenge to do it. He was ambitious and cheeky but it paid off because he made an impression by experimenting and using screen-printing that helped him to generate ideas that sell and get the ideas that the agency are after,

the lesson is to make research about the agency you are applying for, to generate ideas that they are looking for. Now a day designers need to have good grasp of print and web design, hav-

ing the ability to design for both is a massive advantage. Skills: More we have more it is in design world, we need to be multitask but the ones that are more often wanted are:

Knowledge of software’s or at least basic knowledge as many software’s as we can and if we opting for web design we need to learn HTML and CSS. Make sure that

the people or the agencies know about them. Further more we need to put a lot off efforts, be hard working and enthusiasm as well as collecting as much

information’s as we can using blogs, reading books and looking at other designers work. Make yourself known to others, expose yourself us-

ing the same tools like blog, facebook and others, to be a good designer we need to live, breath and think design, it is like

learning a language, to speak another language we need to think using the same language you want to learn. Ask-

ing for feedback is a good thing from your peers and

Written by: D Zermani

Gareth Lawn

M E M E M E

Yasia is a deputy art director of Octopus Publishing Group. I have researched into the website of this company and their statement reads ‘Octopus is a leading publisher of illustrated books. We are comprised of nine imprints, and as a group have extensive expe-rience of working with high profile authors, trusted partners and associations to produce exciting, market leading books.’ Yasia first explained about how she came about this job when she left university. She started out by emailing people and sending off her portfolio to company’s for junior design jobs. She then got a job in a magazine in which she stayed for 4 years. She then went into book design and applied for a job at Octopus Publishing in which she now works at currently. We were also told when designing jackets for books you need to make sure that they are exciting and stand out to the audience. After listening to Yasia speak I think its shown me the ways you can get around trying to get into the business you want to work in. If you create a portfolio and work hard within the jobs you get you can accomplish anything.

DESIGN &ILLUSTRATEDPUBLISHINGYASIA WILLIAMS

Written by Benjamin Seas

Created by

Carl RedfernSimon Amor

Ben Seas Lilly Fan

Daoud ZermaniKatherine LuJen Rowlands