D&AD Blog

Want to work in advertising?

Are you finding it hard to get in to advertising or even just to get a placement? Nigel Edginton-Vigus, Creative Director at Wunderman has been there.

When you’re busy ‘doing’ your career, you don’t really stop to analyse how you got into it in the first place do you? Or you don’t until the D&AD ask you. So with the delightful Dr Rhiannon James in the padded leather, wing-backed armchair (no doubt peering attentively over a pair of expensive horn rimmed spectacles) and me lying prostrate on a comfy chaise longue, here goes. “Mummy!” Oh dear, let’s start again.

Steven King was once asked why he’d chosen to write horror novels. He replied; “What makes you think I had a choice?” And that’s pretty much how I feel about this game.

Yes I did terribly at school, except in art and English, so you can see where I was heading. And true to form I flourished at art-college. Although even there I spent most of the final year on placement at all the best agencies I could get into (working all hours with the brilliant Dave Buonaguidi). Of course, there’s the ultimately rewarding slog through placements that I went through just like everyone else. Over the years, I’ve also sold Betterware door-to-door, been an apprentice panel beater and sprayer, driven breakdown trucks, worked in bars and sold print services. I’ve been a designer (I won prizes for it and everything!), ran my own design agency for 6 years and worked in both new business and account services. I’ve even worked on a traveling funfair, which I loved, and I’ve been redundant. Twice.

But while I’ve enjoyed doing all these jobs and learnt something valuable from them all, I’ve always felt compelled to be in advertising.

And D&AD’s always been there to help me. In fact, here’s a little story that might give you hope if you’re trying to break into the industry yourself. I was ‘downsized’ from a job as a new business manager at a design agency, back in ’96. I was in my late 30s, had a two-year old daughter and suddenly, no income. Christ! However, the situation forced me to think about what I really wanted to do: write ads. So I signed up for a D&AD workshop, got a book together, pestered all the CDs/teams I met, designed a mailer and within weeks I was working as the oldest junior writer Carlson had ever employed – as well as the cheapest! I won’t bore you with my career trajectory from there. But it perhaps shows that hard work, tenacity, grim determination, enthusiasm and love of what you do (plus a generous measure of good luck) can take you quite a long way.

And when you work with such bright, fun, talented, exciting, switched on, curious, creative, often dysfunctional and always passionate individuals, what’s not to love about the business?

So that’s how I got into advertising. Now you know and I’ve remembered.

On the subject of getting into the business, one of the most important things you can do as someone trying to get into this industry is consider yourself as a brand. Then make sure you market and promote yourselves. Which is why I always set a self-promotion brief to every placement team I take on. Here’s my current  favourite from Mark Lees and Laura Davies. They’re now on an extended contract with us at Wunderman. So it worked.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tjav1JFqi0

Although it’s got me thinking: how did advertising get into me? But that’s months of analysis.

Are you taking the diss?

Steve Price is founder of Plan-B Studio and writer of the www.designweak.com blog. Having worked both as a designer/creative director and a tutor, he has been inspired to discuss the merits of writing a dissertation for a bachelor's degree. Both he and D&AD are interested to hear your thoughts!

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‘Does MTV design or create Youth Culture?’... ‘Visualising Boundaries: Between Architecture and Design’. You’ve not read these titles? Are they not on your Amazon wishlist? No? Really? That’s because these are the titles of my dissertations. The first for my Bachelors, the second my Masters. The former I believe could be completely scrapped. Not the contextual part, but the ten-thousand-word-dissertation part.

Why? Simple. No-one has ever asked about or been bothered to listen to me recounting my dissertation topic even with an invitation to do so. Not one. It is high-time we revised this part of a BA degree.

‘Art schools prompt you to try and go in to depth about your ideas and you end up writing documents after documents. It makes you feel like that is how the real world exists, and actually it’s not true in all cases. Often you might be working with television companies who manage to present an idea for a ten programme series, with a few million pounds budget, on a single sheet of A4. It’s about being able to articulate an idea as simply as possible.’
Nicolas Roope, Creative Founder at Poke interviewed by Core77

The design education comes in for harsh criticism amongst myself and many of my peers. The same problems are still being met - basic, and fundamental skills aren’t present in many graduates; as they weren’t when I graduated. Helping to produce designers that can think conceptually is important, but it is now only one portion of a very big pie that all too often comes out half baked (sorry I used to be a chef).

I never understood the need for writing a dissertation. Surely I wouldn’t have made it through to the interview if I wasn’t able to read or write? Arguably, if I had, I should be welcomed and embraced for having the ability to surf through life without those basic communication requirements. So if not to test your language and grammar - what is the use of a dissertation today?

It is an annual grind for all concerned - the students who spend months hibernating the whole process under a layer of procrastination and hangovers. Teachers who are burdened with the task of tutoring and modulating them throughout the process. What a waste of time and resource. Not to mention a complete waste of materials. In the final year of my BA there were some ninety-six students. Each student was forced to submit two, hardback bound copies of their dissertation (on my MA at Central Saint Martins, five copies!). Working on the basis that each dissertation was sixty pages long, that’s 11,520 sheets of A4
alone!

I have an idea. Rather than a lengthy dissertation what about five reviews/commentaries on the chosen topics that interest each individual student; these could be reviews of books, web sites, technology, projects by agencies, interviews... Minimum of 500 words each. These could be posted on their own blogs, or submitted as PDFs on Slideshare for all to see and read. The emphasis is to help them simplify their message. To refine their skills as communicators.

These topics would be set between tutor and student at the start of each semester. Each student would then present their findings/topic to an audience. Perhaps in varying formats; Pecha Kucha, or presented along side only the use of images, or sound, or words? Each format should set to test and challenge how the student deals with differing formats and audiences. Heckling encouraged.

Or, as part of New Blood, create a design graduate summit whereby the best presentations/essays get to present their ideas and findings to the people that might want to employ them.

The design education has to evolve and right now it doesn’t appear to be doing so at the same pace of the industry. Graduates are already under increasing pressure to perform and do so almost immediately. Without giving them the necessary time to learn practical skills I’m afraid that their efforts will be as useful as their dissertations which will sit dormant on their book shelf, just like mine.

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Sir Ken Robinson spoke at the Cumulus conference in London earlier this year and also commented on this topic. His argument was if we are looking for a nation of creative communicators, why do we ask creative graduates to present in a form that they are not expert in (ie long-form essay writing) as opposed to using the visual methods and craft which they have been developing on in their degree. If you would like to hear more and what Sir Ken has to say on this issue, please have a look at his TED talk on education and creativity. 

D&AD Student Awards Update

Today we have posted up the first set of Tutor Packs for the Advertising, Graphic Design, Digital and Craft briefs. The remaining pack for the Product and Environmental categories will be posted shortly.

Also, we have now uploaded the first set of videos from our recent workshops this covers talks from Imagination, Creative Orchestra, Red Bee Media and Which. Each is around 15 minutes long and will give you insights into the advertising briefs as part of this year's programme.

Additionally we have PDF presentations from Westfield and IKEA available to download from their individual pages on the Student Awards site.

The remaining video's will be posted soon.

For those of you awaiting the remaining Product Design briefs and the Environmental Design brief, we hope to have these shortly and will be emailing people directly when they are released.

Lida have also set a Direct Response Brief around MINI cars and we will be announcing some workshops around this for late January in the next couple of weeks.

If you haven't already done so you can now follow the Student Awards on twitter.

Finally, a small amount of students and tutors are reporting difficulties accessing the site, if you experience any problems please email studentawards@dandad.co.uk with your details including the email address you have registered.

Brand forgiveness

Many thanks to Sarah Wade, Account Director at Elmwood for this brand study, looking at the development of Sunny Delight.

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Watching BBC3’s ‘The Noughties, was that it?’ a while ago made me ponder how easy it can be to forget the bad stuff in the face of great reinvention. Look at Cheryl Cole, squeaky-clean goddess and all round nice gal of talent show telly. Does anyone remember that she liked a good few beers and a toilet punch up a few years back? Did she castigate herself forever more? No, on some very smart PR advice she dumped the bad and built on the good and voila, butter wouldn’t melt on a Saturday night. Whatever you might think of Ms Cole, she’s done a fine job of transforming herself from being loathed to loved.

Sunny Delight has had a chequered history, starting out with stellar success within months of launch in 1998. It seemed that P&G, the then owners had pulled off the impossible - to successfully launch a new brand. The odds for any new brand are not good, even with a huge marketing budget to support it – 9 out of every 10 brand innovations fail - fact.

Where P&G got it right is through a compelling mix of product and storytelling to bring to life the idea of sunshine in a bottle. What they hadn’t banked on was the overindulgence of some of their Sunny D fans who drank so much of the stuff they began to turn orange, apparently caused by the high levels of beta-carotene in the product. Life for the brand suddenly became not so delightful.

This is where the difference comes between our friend Cheryl and the nations most notorious soft drink – Sunny D just kept on and on apologising for itself, even on its packaging, which undermined its credibility, drained away any consumer trust that was left and acted as a constant reminder to the poor publicity it had received. They publicly invited mums to tell them what to do (AKA the Parents Advisory Group), splashing this all over the pack – a clear signal that Sunny D wasn’t in control any more. They adopted a tone of voice that was an attempt to befriend consumers and demystify the ingredients which only kept the ‘orange children incident’ front of mind. Add this to a poorly printed label depiction very unreal looking fruit and the brand continued to slide for many years. Repeated references to past mistakes are not the way to move forward for any brand so it became do or die for Sunny D and clearly an evolutionary tweak was not going to be enough.

We live in an exceptionally brand literate society – we can see through the hype, even the stuff we buy into, but our love for our favourite brands makes us magnanimous in our forgiveness, up to a point. It’s the love that facilitates the forgiveness but the product must also deliver, so the task for Sunny D was twofold – sort the product out and bring back the love.

Gillian McKeith, Jamie Oliver, et al have seen to it that we know & care about what we eat – a changing food and drink market demanded a healthier, more natural, less ‘colourful’ product from Sunny D, which has now been duly delivered through significant investment.

The branding task was more complex. After so many years of trying to please all the people all the time Sunny D had forgotten who it was. In a world where only one brand can be the cheapest, who will you be? Well, product functions and benefits are ownable for a short while until someone comes up with a cheaper, faster way of doing it better. But the real equity is in who you are – what you are, not what you can claim is what will make you unique. Sunny D looked back to its roots in west coast surf culture to find its true identity and brought this to life through a pack reinvention that focussed on the positive aspects of the brand and new product formula. A new clear bottle which clearly showed the product was developed and further investment in the quality of print meant that fresher, better quality images of real fruit could be used. The heart of the pack is a bright blue logo surfing under an orange-slice sun bringing the sunshine freshness to life on the label and the fruit reinforce the nothing artificial claims and act as strong flavour indicators. It’s a pack that looks like its enjoying life and wants you to with it. This new identity moves the brand from an artificial squash that’s cheated its way into the chiller and feels guilty about it to a juice to be savoured whilst surfing off the coast of the O.C.

If you want forgiveness then you have to prove you deserve it by taking responsibility for your mistakes and then moving on. So far the outlook for Sunny D is good – sales are up and confidence seems to be building. At long last the love might be coming back. It’s a big ask to get your consumers to trust you after such turbulent times but if it can work for Cheryl…. Watch this space.

To code or not to code?

This week, we are pleased to introduce Franki from Franki&Jonny
http://www.frankiandjonny.com. Franki is going to be a regular contributor to the D&AD University Network blog, commenting on things that are happening in the industry, giving an insider view to the discussions with clients, the things that are troubling her and trends that she observes. Her first piece is looking at 'what is expected of a modern creative'. We hope you and your students find this useful and look forward to hearing your thoughts!

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When I was 22 I quit my corporate print job at a reputable London agency in search of something beyond 8 Page Brochures and Quark Express. I didn’t know what I was going to do but I knew it had to be something different.

My friend, a Technical Consultant for the aforementioned agency learned of my desire to move on and invited me to work on location on a film set in Venice creating a website for the film maker Mike Figgis. ‘But I don’t know anything about websites, I’ve never designed one’ I said, in a bizarre attempt to talk him out of offering me a job in Italy for 6 weeks in the company of Salma Hayek and John Malkovich, to which he replied: ‘I don’t want you to know anything about websites, I want you to come up with ideas.”

8 years, one BAFTA and a load of FWA awards later that visionary programmer is my business partner and we run a niche digital agency specialising in Film and Entertainment clients. And we’ve never hired a web designer.

What?

We are a design-led agency. We cannot be true to that principle if our designers are asking themselves ‘how?’ before they think about ‘why?’. It’s a case of being technically agnostic - we will design something first and then decide how to build it. If a designer isn’t concerned with the build it keeps the design fresh, appropriate and unaffected. An old creative Director once told me not to have ‘scissors in your head’ - cutting off ideas before they can even form, we feel that a little technical knowledge is just the kind of scissors he was talking about.

We therefore hire designers on the basis of their ideas and visual skills across any medium and pure coders with absolutely no ambition to design. Put simply we're wary of the jack of all trades and master of none - the kids that do both tend to do neither well.

But how does that thinking sit with students? If they have a great digital idea should it stay as an idea until they can build it properly or should they have a go - cobble it together with Dreamweaver, Flash and a bit of help from a mate’s brother? Let’s face it aspiring creatives have to shoot their own photos and films, bind their own books, and find a million other ‘cheats’ to realise big ideas at education level so is digital any different these days?

Most probably not. I guess my fear is that a little knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing and whilst I would encourage emerging designers to engage with new media, to love it and to understand its power I would urge them to not to get bogged down in the technical details. Learn enough to get your idea working, if possibl e collaborate with a technical student the way you would with a photographer or an animator, get good advice and keep it simple. (And once you have done don’t put ‘proficient in Flash 10’ on your CV if you aren’t. )

I’d love to hear about innovative ways design students have realised digital ideas and how the industry can help guide the development of great cross-media designers without forcing them all down a half-coded fudge that leaves them confused and overwhelmed. Answers on a postcard. Or on the blog. It’s not about the medium, it's about the message!

--
Franki Goodwin Co-Founder
Franki&Jonny

Things I've Learnt

This is the first in a series where creatives share their experiences, talk about what path they took into the industry and what things they wished someone had told them when they were starting out. Shaun Bowen, Creative Partner from B&B Studio is first up:

Your first job is your next college.

See your first role as your apprenticeship and your opportunity to soak up as much knowledge from those around you as you can. Keep your head up and take an interest in what the other designers are doing around you. Too many graduates leave college and think they know it all.

It’s incredibly important to understand who you will be learning from. I was lucky to learn from Mary Lewis at Lewis Moberly and a fantastic team of designers that were working with her at the time. It made me the type of designer I am now. It made me understand the importance of a great idea but also how important it is to make it look good. It was a time when computers were still a novelty and crafting of type and image was given so much more emphasis. I feel fortunate that I caught the end of such a wonderful era but this is your era, and you should apply the same principle and learn all you can. 

Designers all think differently.

One of the great things about my first job was the difference in the design team.  We were all from different backgrounds and many from different parts of the world, each with their own approaches to finding a solution to the design problem. Presentations are far more successful if several designers have had an opportunity to think about the brief and then work collaboratively to solve it. 

Design agencies are not all the same.

Before I got a permanent job I gained experience from design placements. As well as the obvious benefit of seeing what it’s really like after college, I was amazed how different culturally the agencies were. You can only truly understand an agency once you’ve worked there, but finding somewhere you fit is an important factor in how long you will stay. Building a team of talented people that all work well together is what makes an exciting studio and the outcome is great design. 

Clients don’t always know what they are talking about.

Understanding what a client really wants comes with experience. Sometimes clients say one thing but actually mean something else. Making sure you ask the right questions helps. As a designer you can bring an objective view to solving their problem, but you need to understand the problem first.

Sometimes clients do know what they are talking about.

Being able to listen is a big part of being a designer. Remember that the client is immersed in their brand and its category. This insight can be a very helpful and often an essential part of you understanding their brief.

Work hard.

You won’t succeed unless you work hard. But if you love your work it makes it so much easier. If you don’t love it, it means you’re doing something wrong. 

Be nice.

A design studio can at times be a stressful place, but there really is no excuse for not treating all those around you with respect.

Simplicity is a powerful thing.

 

D&AD Student Awards workshops at the BBC

We've got a couple of workshops and a round table event for tutors coming up at the BBC over the next few weeks.

You must RSVP to studentawards@dandad.co.uk for all events. The BBC cannot admit visitors who have not previously registered for this event. 

Let us know which day you would like to attend as well as your name, college and phone number.

 

Thursday 19 November & Tuesday 24 November - London

Thursday 19: 1.30pm – 6pm

Location: Broadcast Centre, 201 Wood Lane, Media Village, London, W12 7TP

Nearest tube station: White City

 

D&AD, along with our invited speakers from both the sponsoring client and industry representative,  will be looking at a range of advertising and craft briefs from this year’s Student Awards. This half-day session will focus on Advertising, Animation and Social Design.

The talk is designed to entice entrants to explore radical thinking and will elaborate on how design narratives can and should educate people.

 

Tuesday 24: 9.30am – 4pm

Location: BBC Broadcasting House - Portland Place, London, W1A 1AA

Nearest tube station: Oxford Circus

This full-day session will focus on the digital briefs. The theme of the discussions will be around Online Advertising, Viral and Integrated Communication. We will examine the issues of collaboration and how the traditional mediums are adapting to recent changes.

In the afternoon following the talks we are hosting a roundtable discussion on digital media for tutors and industry.

The workshops will be filmed and posted on our website so all students can benefit from them in developing their responses.

To RSVP for either workshop and the tutor session please email studentawards@dandad.co.uk

Click here to see the BBC brief:

http://studentawards.dandad.org/2010/html/bbc_27.html

creativesear.ch team wins 30-day challenge

Congratulations to Beckmans College of Design students, Petter Prinz & Kaspar Prinz, who have won the Student Awards 30-day challenge with their fantastic creativesear.ch.  The challenge launched at the end of September with 15 teams and Petter &  Kaspar are the last ones standing.  The prize is a paid placement at AMV.BBDO. 

 

The team, along with Philip Cristofor, developed Creativesear.ch, an aggregate search engine that provides results in the form of pictures, text, film and music.  In its first month, the site became the single biggest referring site to www.dandad.org/studentawards.

 

Our President, Paul Brazier (not so coincidentally also ECD at AMV) said,“Petter & Kasper did what creative thinkers should - they saw a problem and solved it.  The creativesear.ch positions D&AD where it belongs - as the first place to go for inspiration.  Most importantly, they answered the brief. I was impressed by the fact that they understood the tone needed for D&AD and presented it in a clear and dynamic way.  Well done to them, I’m looking forward to welcoming this team in to AMV for their work experience.” 

 

Over half of Student Awards 2010 briefs include a placement as part of the prize.  The winner of the Nokia interactive design brief will land a 3 to 6 months paid placement in their creative department; Which? is offering a 12-week paid placement to one of the winners of the Integrated Communication brief; De Facto will offer a paid placement to a Viral brief winner, along with  £1000 if they decide to use the idea.  Finally, New British Design will create a prototype and help market at least one of the winning furniture designs.  Further additional benefits are available - have a look on the site to learn more. 

We are - ShellsuitZombie - your friends.

Give a design grad a job and he'll be employed for two years. Give him the means to get one himself and he'll be moderately wealthy with a detached home in SE18 by the time he's forty - Ancient Proverb

Hi readers, we're ShellsuitZombie, a small graduate organisation whose aim is to cut through the crap and help you get yourself into the creative industry. Since we graduated just over a year ago we've collectively been hired eight times, lost two jobs, worked in London and Paris, freelanced for some great and awful people and for some and no money, lived in A LOT of different houses, bought six bicycles and baked a cake. Using this experience (mainly the baking) we set up SSZ to encourage both graduates and the creative industry to fall in love again.

We try to do this in three ways.

1. Forget 'Mother', think brothers.

Through our website we put graduates and their work on a level playing field with the work that inspires them. After all, what x Art-Director did with £12 million shoot is of limited relevance to a poor student whose budget is second hand baked beans tins. At our stage you can't just throw money at stuff, the idea has to be good, and a lot of yours beat the pros hands down.

2. Let's get boozed

Don't take that title too literally, but booze (and socials in general) work wonders for smashing some of the employer-employee (or industry-graduate) barriers that might taint more formal events (dare I say, such as New Blood). When the whiff of desperation has passed, we can all have a larf. Our events try to make that happen. In addition graduates sharing advice and stories with each other is invaluable - A room full of them can only be a good thing.

3. REVOLUTION

We proudly (and angrily at times) act as a voice against those who would have everyone believe there isn't a hope for graduates, the nay-sayers who sit on their thrones and spout condescending and patronising garble about the number of grads per job, the state of education and the inevitability of our collective fate in Broken Britain. We really hate those guys.

So there you have it. We are all working graduate creatives from backgrounds in design and advertising who have a passion for making this whole process easier, less stressful and most importantly more fun for you guys. No-one chooses a creative career as a fallback, it's a way of life. We've had tough times over the last 18 months but there isn't one of us who would swap them for a management recruitment salary and an easy time. Sod that, we make shit look good.

ShellSuitZombie at D&AD New Blood 2009

Please come and visit us at www.shellsuitzombie.co.uk where you can sign up to our mailing list to find out about future events/competitions, submit your work, subscribe to our RSS feed and have a closer look at what we do. We also like twitter (@shellsuitzombie) very much, so hit us up on that bad boy.

Peace, Love and Cakes Galore

Jonny Burch

ShellsuitZombie

What's it like inside an agency?

We were really interested to read that the theme of the November issue of Creative Review is based on creative workplaces - what they look like and what people do there. http://creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2009/october/cr-november-issue.

This is something we have also been developing as part of the online resource available for tutors in our University Network and more will be available from a range of creative practitioners in the coming months. This information is great because it brings together a diverse set of experiences which can help graduates - and those more mature professionals - to decide what kind of organisation suits their individual skill set.