Hemisphere Portfolio Crit

Luckily for me no one else in my group turned up so it was a good chance to have a chat with Grant who gave me some invaluable advice. I presented my portfolio to him and he raised some main points, which I should consider if I’m to improve my approach to a more professional standard.

• Conversation – It’s good practise not presenting your portfolio with a script in mind, but to spark a conversation when discussing projects because it helps to interviewer understand your way of thinking and is a general more pleasant and friendlier atmosphere.
  
• Presentation of portfolio – Presenting my work in an A3 portrait portfolio made my presentation very ‘linear,’ Grant showed me the company’s work presented on separate landscape sheets in sleeves which suddenly the work in a sense felt much more approachable to look closely, compare projects and the desk covered in work sheets definitely looks more interesting than a two page spread in my portfolio.
  
• Be remembered – A key point when applying for a job you know will have lots of applicants, somehow you need to be remembered, if it’s by the interviewer keeping a page of your portfolio, telling them something interesting they didn’t know or creating something bespoke for them. Grant then explained their company’s slogan which is ‘useful beauty,’ a piece of work should not look attractive purely for the sake of it, there needs to be solid reasoning and it needs to be fit for purpose.
  
• A human being who is a designer - This was an uplifting piece of advice from Grant; he understands people as human beings, not design robots, he explained how it’s better to be honest about your strengths, weaknesses and difficulties you may have. One example was if you yawn and you have a reason, say it; say you were up all night stressing over the presentation of your portfolio or it may be misjudged as boredom, it could spark a conversation, because ultimately an interview is for both the interviewer and interviewee to weigh each other up considering if they could have a strong working relationship.
  
• Wants to see a brain – This was something Grant raised which at first I thought “Obviously” but then thinking about it more I remember Ian Anderson saying he employed people he considered smarter and more talented than himself, which scares me. I need to work on my confidence in myself, portraying myself as design competent and work on my communication skills, because being part of a graphic designer is being able to communicate.
  

Being a ‘real-life’ situation, I found this crit extremely helpful and it taught me to put 100% commitment into every opportunity with the real world because ultimately this situation could have been a situation where I am considered for employment and if not, put in a review file for possible employment in the future. 

Ian Anderson

This workshop was intended to make us think more creatively. We were given the brief:

In the future the world is ran by one organisation, this organisation wants to re-brand, and to do this they need a new colour. Each colour is owned by separate companies, therefore each company would need to pitch their colour to the world organisation persuading them that their colour would be the most beneficial in order to win the contract.

Our team colour was blue, we could do anything with this to create a compelling argument why our colour should be chosen above the likes of red, orange, green and yellow. We began by putting everything down on paper that has a connection with blue as a starting point, from here we tried to expand on possible routes we could take it to make our presentation the most compelling.

We decided to make our pitch factual stating what blue could do for the world organisation. Key points:

• Blue can be extracted from seaweed therefore it is a sustainable colour.
• Blue is tried and tested on signage, easily readable when travelling at high speeds.
• Blue is diverse, the palette offers many tones which are provocative a range of emotions.
• Conveying blue as the natural choice because it surrounds us from the sky to the sea (we really wanted someone to point out the sea isn’t blue, had our argument ready and everything…)

To say we were 2 people down in our group I think we did well, although I only started to think this after the presentation, before all I could think was FAIL. The other groups presentations were for a start longer, humorous & more imaginatively presented where we had opted for short, sharp and straight to major points we thought if there would be a world organisation in the future, what would they worry about, and tried to reassure them on subjects such as legibility and cost. We closed our presentation with ‘Blue speaks for itself’ because we didn’t have any blue cakes or blue carrots to sweeten the judges.

Presenting is something I’ve never been good at, nerves get the better of me and my face falls off. I understand the need to be able to confidently present an idea so hopefully practise will improve these lacking skills. I’m really glad I stuck the workshop out, it’s really hit me how important it is to be confident and voice our opinions. 

Wandering/Wondering

I signed up for this workshop because I’d been engrossed in the silence project for too long and needed something different to focus on for a while, to have a break and hopefully find new inspiration. I didn’t think I’d enjoy walking around taking pictures and gathering information, yet Katrina and I found interest in things we see daily. The main thing I enjoyed looking for was grid structures in things like architecture, gates, pavements, road markings and so on and thinking about how this could be used in creative practise, as a starting point or even an abstract magazine grid. I’ve made a decision that from now on if I’m feeling uninspired or lost in a project to just go out for a wander with my camera, sketchbook and pencil gathering information on anything and everything, which I find interesting.

I think John’s idea of ‘letting work find it’s own way’ is a good motto to go by sometimes and to just experiment and not think about a final piece.