It’s that time of year again, Creative Futures time. It’s a week of talks from people throughout the creative industries offering insight and advice for us all and to make us think about the future and what the big scary world when we don’t have that safety net of university but actually out in the real world trying to get jobs in our chosen profession.
Angus Montgommery is the editor of Design Week Magazine, a magazine for Artists/Designers about things that are going on in the ever changing industry of art & design. One of the biggest issues he raised was the one of rising tuition fees which in most places has risen to £9000. He spoke of a survey of Artists and Designers that asked them that if they were to do their degree again would they pay the money for it. Most of them said yes they would pay the money as the experience they gained from the people around them and the contacts they made were invaluable. Which was an interesting outcome I expected most of them to say no they wouldn’t but I suppose if you factor in that it’s a place that you make contacts I completely understand.
He told us that looking for inspiration should really be done away from the internet as everyone goes to the same site and reads the same things, so everyone becomes less of an individual as they’re all getting the same inspiration in a way. I think this was quite a good bit of advice if you want to make yourself stand out you have to go that extra mile in your look for inspiration and it will be all worth it in the end. He then talked about some of the Art & Design Projects from the past year that had caught his eye.
The first lecture on Tuesday I went to was entitled Getting a Job in the BBC.
This talk I felt was lacking and I didn’t feel offered that much advice that I hadn’t heard before, It felt like a standard script that someone was sent out with and then told to play a showreel at the end. The person talking literally said to look online and I felt that was all there was to her talk. There was no one key valuable piece of advice that I could take away from it. She talked of the BBC talent pool which is a where the BBC take on a small number of people as sort of apprentices. This is where the current Director general of the BBC started out. She told us it was open and people could apply for it but when I checked later that day I learnt it was closed and had been for some weeks.
The next talk I went to was from Chris Woodworth. Who was talking about Animation and Getting into the Games industry. I went to this talk originally to kill time whilst waiting for another talk. Even though this talk was not about the area of Art and Design I would like to get into it was interesting to here stories of getting into another industry. He was an ex-student of Glyndwr who now works for Travelers Tales a games company and he creates cut scenes for quite a lot of the Lego franchise games. I feel his advice could cross disciplines and apply to all. He said one of the most important things to do was to promote yourself and make yourself be known .He also said always be developing your skills in your free time don’t just work on things for work, work on thing for you things that you want to do. He gave examples of of his work and also talked about not only the work but how it’s important to have a good working relationship with your colleagues.
The final talk of Tuesday that I went was by an illustrator and Graphic Designer called Dave Newell. One of the main reasons I went to this talk (again it’s not in my area) was the speaker was my house mates dad and I went to show moral support. But again this talk turned out to be interesting. Dave talked about his long and varied career and how the industry has changed over the years he’s been doing it. He showed us work starting from the very beginning of his career right up to some of the most recent things he does. which is designing packaging for Batteries, Toothpaste etc .
The Final Talk of Creative Futures that I went to was a talk from some people that I know very well a local company that has been going less than a year. It is of corse Minimal Media. who I’ve done quite a bit of work for. The 3 of them Alan, Hollie and Graham talked about they’re background and what sort of things they did before they meeting at university. The main thing that brought the three of them together as a unit was a short film called Glyndwr Resonance, which I was lucky enough to have worked on and did the behind the scenes for it. They set up a company that was originally Plugin Productions which was a name that Graham had worked under years before. They changed their name to Minimal Media as someone else had already registered plugin productions with companies house. One of the things I learnt was never say no to a job as they have got work from doing other jobs and it’s all about making the connections. Another things that was emphasised was promoting yourself and getting your name out there. Another thing that was made clear was experience and that it’s good to have lots of it before leaving university as Graham said if they were hiring somebody for a job and one person had a degree but no experience and the other had a degree plus experience the person with experience. They showed us example of their work which consisted of their showreel Glyndwr Resonance and an Advert for a new social network that was being sent of to be launched at a conference in America the very same day.
This talk was probably one of the best talks I went to all week, and I’m not just saying that because I know them, It genuinely was it provided everyone with the right amount of advice and insight as to what it’s like when your fresh out of university and ,for those that are interested in it, setting up a company.
From this week of creative futures the main point that I got was promote yourself in anyway you can because your probably going to need it and also get as much experience as possible because that’s going to help you a lot.
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