A year of PPP
Engagement
One of my aims for this year was to increase my engagement in the creative industry. I done this in a number one ways. The first was very simple, I spent a lot of time on instagram simply going through profiles and hashtags and following as many creative people as possible that made work I liked, work that was similar to mine or work that i wanted to make in the future. I made a point of utilising instagrams bookmarking feature in order to keep to hand the images and projects I found this most inspiring or things that I wanted to learn more about.
The second way was utilising youtube. One thing i identified last year was that i wasn't very good at attending talks outside of university or arranging studio visits. As I already spend a lot of time on youtube I decided it would make sense to watch a talk by a designer/creative every so often. As the platform is growing the different types of content is growing too. This means that quite often artists and creatives will upload their own studio talks or insights into bodies of work they have created. In particular, a youtuber called Sara Dietschy has made a series on youtube called That Creative Life which discusses things such as how to stand out in your creative field, do you need a website and playing to your creative strengths. She has made another series called Creative Spaces Tv where she interviews artists, takes a look at their spaces and discusses the tools they use within their creative field.
As I have had a full time job this year, it has made engaging in this side of the creative world a lot easier.
As mentioned, I have been working full time this year in a bar/music venue. This has allowed me to engage more with the local music and art scene due to the demographic that this draws into the bar, which is a very sociable setting. Not only that but almost all my co-workers are involved in art or music. This has given me lots of opportunities including, collaborating on a publication for an external exhibition, creating a music publication, branding and co-curating two exhibitions set to happen in june and july. This has allowed me to connect with creatives that are in my local area and has given me the opportunity to engage in my practice in a setting external to university.
Alongside this, I was still able to attend some talks and exhibitions this year.
The year started off with Frankie from the design kids. She gave an invaluable insight in how to travel with your work using the creative community and also how to make yourself more employable. This gave me some key skills and information that I can use in my own job search.
A visit to Evolution print was a person favorite due to my interest in printing. Despite it being such an industrial process, evolution print and all there staff showed how it can still personal and how engaging with clients, no matter how big or small should be an important part of business. Their philosophy on taking on any project made me feel that as a designer, no matter how small or insignificant i think a piece of work is, it is valuable and worthwhile to a lot of people.
This has given me an invaluable insight into the business and inspired me to think bigger when making production decisions on my publications or design work.
Creative convos was a great week and an great opportunity to get talks from designers and creatives on a smaller scale, rather than in a large conference setting. This meant that the talks were often more personal and tailored to our needs as soon to be graduates.
I visited many exhibitions this year, mainly of friends who are also creatives, allowing my to get an insight into the kind of work that out generation of designers and creatives are putting into the world. When possible or when a new exhibition was showing I visited my local galleries; the hepworth, leeds art gallery, walker art gallery and the tate liverpool.
Ive often thought that going to some of the bigger galleries was kinf of pointless for a graphic designer as it is usually fine art, however i visited this year with a different perspective as I wanted to focus on simply engaging in the creative community in anyway i can. Going into these spaces with this different attitude has allowed to to spend more time viewing and trying to understand the work and find similarities in other peoples practices and my own.
Time Management.
Time management has been a really important part of my degree this year as i have had to balance working 30 hours with doing my uni work. Time management has never been my strongest point but working in a creative setting has definitely help me keep focused on my studies as i am constantly being inspired and this allows me to apply it to my uni and personal work.
I have made sure to utilise my physical calendar and the calendar on my phone. Using my work schedule as a starting point i am able to see when i have free time and divide it up between all my commitments. Having a physical, tangible and visible representation of my free time and the time between work commitments and uni commitments has empowered me to use the word no, as i am more aware of when i am starting to take on too much work. It also allows me to schedule free time into my life so that it is not a constant battle between my job and uni.
At the start of the year I made a time plan that took me up to just after christmas to allow me to complete my dissertation but not neglect all other work at the same time. Although I didn’t refer to this very often, the act of making it allowed me to visualise and organise in my head time scales for all the briefs I wanted to undertake.
PPP Tasks.
The first task of the year, get online, was one that i found quite difficult. I have often found it difficult to try and present my work in a professional capacity meaning that after a brief is done or a submission is completed, i don’t really have anything to put online. I also attributed this to a lack of confidence. I have identified a lack of confidence in my ability as a designer which has meant i have dragged my feet when it came to important areas of my practice. One of which is getting my work out there. However in order to kickstart myself, i completed the brief but tried to focus more on platforms that i engage more on. This being instagram. Despite making a website and seeing the value in it, at this point in time I don’t think having a website will benefit me as much as having an active instagram page. I started out by refining my personal branding so that it more accurately reflected myself and began to piece my online presence together. Again, due to time constraints and deadlines, my social media has been put on the back burner. But in order to keep myself present, I make sure to log in to my design account every so often and engage as much as possible. If nothing else my name is getting spread further a field by following people and being generous with my likes.
Like Alec, i’m not convinced on the power of a business card as in my personal experience, stickers work wonders. My first take on personal branding i had an unusual name and bright orange stickers. I made sure to place them anywhere i could. On my phone, on my book, on my laptop. On other peoples phones, other people's books, other people's laptops. As I often have my phone out, people catch sight of the sticker and it becomes a conversation starter about me. The act of giving someone a sticker and having them apply it to one of their own belongings creates enough interest for a substantial conversation. Not only that, stickers stick. This means that if i manage to get it stuck to an item they use quite often, it's like a little reminder and keeps me in their head.
Talk it out was a session i found really beneficial. The fact that i was able to send a question anonymously meant that i wasn't afraid to ask what i really wanted to know, and that was the same for everybody. This made it a lot easier to have a discussion about things that don’t often get brought up for fear of sounding silly and showed that these ‘silly’ questions are the ones we all want answers for.
My improved engagement this year has allowed me to learn valuable lessons on how to present myself in a professional capacity. As i have worked with friends a lot this year, when discussing our work it was very important for me to present myself and ideas professionally in order to be taken seriously. It is very easy when working with friends for arguments to arise and for deadlines to be missed. I found that discussing work and ideas more professionally helped with these problems. Setting a specific date, time and place to discuss ideas made it seem slightly more formal that just having a discussion whilst at the pub. Attending a specific meeting shows commitment on both sides. Simple things such as taking/using a pen and paper when discussing ideas and work again makes it feel more professional and I was taken more seriously. Using a diary encouraged the people I was meeting/working with to do the same, or get out their phone and add plans and dates to their calendar. These very simple skills an practices have made it possible for me to work on lots of live and collaborative briefs externally to university and ensure that they run smoothly.
Reflection.
Overall, I think this year in PPP has been successful. I took time to look back on last years presentation in order to see what I wanted to achieve this year and i think i can confidently check all the boxes. I have spent time reflecting my my issues over the past few years and tried to figure them out in a way that works for me. This has meant that things like engagement, collaboration, free time and time management have almost become easy if not a regular part of my practice. Taking this time to reflect and trying to engage in ppp as much as possible has allowed me to identify the cause of a lot of my issues. I always struggled to get in touch with creatives, put my work out there, apply for placements and decide which direction I want to take my career. Taking the time to reflect allowed me to figure out that i need to work on my confidence. Having figured that out, trying to sort out all these different elements has become a lot easier and less stressful as i understand why i find them difficult to do. Now, i can try lots of different things to improve my confidence with the knowledge that when that improves, slowly but surely all those other elements will improve too. Speaking to a careers advisor at university has reduced my stress immensely. Although i was still unable to pinpoint a specific career direction. I have a plan for the immediate future and lots of different areas i can look into that i didn't think to look into before. I am armed with the reassurance that i can take my time to figure everything out, and try a few different options. Knowing that getting a job straight out of uni is not the be all and end all to employee’s has reduced a huge amount of stress and allowed me to focus more on my work.
Moving forwards my confidence has grown enough to start contacting studios that interest me, After getting some good advice from the designer i am doing my placement with, i felt that studios became a lot more approachable.
He told me a good way to start a conversation is not think about the ways i may not be good enough to get a placement but focus on the things i am good at and simply offer my help. Whether that be utilising a skill that they don’t have or simply offering an extra pair of hands. Approaching a design studio in this way allows them to feel like they are gaining something out of the experience, rather than a case of them doing a young designer a favour.
