Interviews

I have moved to London for summer to look for some job or internships. This means a lot of interviews where I am trying to 'sell' myself and impress people.

Design interviews are new to me and they surprise me to be honest. One was taking place on the rooftop and when it started to rain was moved to a ping-pong table. The other in children's library (I loved it!). Those weren't unofficial - informal chat with jeans and tee-shirt member of staff. This made me quite relaxed and confident, so when I went to Hasbro yesterday I was expecting similar... Well it wasn't. On the other hand it was very corporate and white-collar. Before I had to complete a personality test and the recruitment process is divided into 2 stages - interview and then one-week life project for selected five.

Degree Show

 In the last week of May (20-27) at Duncan Jordanstone College of Art and Design we were hosting the annual degree show. For my product design group it was the last rehearsal before we exhibit in London at New Designers. We decided to call our stand '15 - hundred ideas, designers, products' which we thought is the best honest description of our group.


In my personal opinion what we managed to put together as a group - the stand and the projects, were really impressive and made me very proud to be a part of it. It was also a great experience to show my product to the wider audience and listen to their commentary.

Been there - the New Designers fair

I guess it's about time I revise my trip to London over the last weekend. First of all the city is wonderful, absolutely the place to be - I wouldn't mind moving there in future. It was also great to visit it with friends. Although they refused to join me in my pettit museum tour, they were happy to spend hours and hours playing with toys in Hamley's (Barbie section was such a disappointment)

Well, but the highlight of the weekend (after Harry Potter :) ) was the New Designers fayre, which was the annual exhibition of the Design graduates from Great Britain. We went there on Saturday and spend the most the day looking at the stands of different product design courses. I invited my friend Oliwia who's a design layman to join me, therefore I could see how a person who's not involved in the design views this sort of exhibition. Our forth-years display was right at the front, so naturally we went there first. I wanted to show off to Oliwia what kind of stuff we do in IPD. Unfortunately when we moved on, we have realised that the other Uni's exhibitions were much more attractive and eye catching. Our stand was quite dry and boring. It was definitely lacking presentation boards and the display of the products on top of the glass, having a collage of things loosely related to the projects underneath, was not the clearest way of presenting.

A few stands that I enjoyed the most was Brunell, Bucks and Northumbria
When it comes to Brunell their products were really high standard in finish, branding and presenting. All students displayed under a logo 'MADE IN BRUNELL', which somehow made an impression of a good quality. When it comes to the content of their show, all of their products were very commercial as their briefs came straight from industry from firms like Cannon or Malboro. I reckon that is a completely different direction from where Dundee is trying to go. Our design process starts with identifying the 'real world's' problems, investigating it deeply and then finding a design solution. Hence our products were (or at least intended to be) more mindful and thought through.

Bucks had two displays: one of them was said to be more 'arty', another more commercial. I spoke to one of the exhibiting students and he said that the 'Bucks style' represents sort of things shown in Icon (I wish I could say that about Dundee...). The product design section was very consistent - the products were quite similar in stylistic (simple shapes, white and primary colours). The presentation was also kept the same for each product.

In general I was overwhelmed by the amount of the talented young people who leave design schools - it's must be super competitive in the industry, considering that only a selection of courses was presented at ND. For the next year, I reckon we must really focus on the presentation (branding, marketing). The ability to sell our products is also a very important skill to show off. However we must decide first if we are exhibiting as a group of individuals or a group (one company / IPD graduates)

my digital presence

Last Monday we were given a presentation on CV's, portfolios, job interviews and all that professional – ‘grow-ups’ things, that we will have to go through after we graduate. It was done by our Product Design lecturer Pete Thomas and his friend Matt Shannon practitioner from Imagination.

Although the presentation was very constructive and valuable, I had an impression, that after we graduate, it all becomes about how effective we sell ourselves. Nevertheless, it was good to find out about certain do's and dont's of presenting our work to the outside world. I found this session particularly useful, as my personal website is just starting to take shape. (I reveal a snapshot of it here)
The main conclusion concerning the digital portfolios was, that we shouldn't show too much. Just demonstrate some of the strongest parts of our university work and treat websites more as a catch enticing our potential employers to invite us for the interview.

Looking at my digital portfolio from this angle, it appears very amateur. But on the other hand this was my primary intention. I wanted it to be something personal – an evidence of my passion towards design and art; my own development and different experiences gathered during the years of studies. I was intending to reflect most of my skills, to demonstrate flexibility, multidisciplinarity and my general enthusiasm. I was assuming, that as a graduate, my main advantage is, that I still have a fresh mind and I can prove myself in different areas and aspects of design. In a way I don’t want to pretend that I am professional. It’s dishonest – I’m still happy to learn and shape myself as a designer. And in this respect my website demonstrates a charming clumsiness of young design student.

Watercolours

So I did as I thought. I spent a good while trying to decide on a different technique for making my final D&AD boards. I wanted to experiment with something new, other than CAD or photoshop, that would make my presentation different and somehow unique. I believe, the third year, it’s high time to figure out what kind methods and tools fit me best, so I can practise them before the final year project.

I finally decided to paint my boards with watercolours. The effect, that can be achieved with the subtle, fresh and slightly blurred colours seemed to be just right to express the tone of my project. I settled on the composition and palette and…well, it all looked great in theory, but the practise wasn’t easy at all. Especially as the last time I really painted was… 3 years ago, I guess… Apparently watercolours are one of the most challenging painting techniques. Mostly due to the fact, that there is no white paint, so once you put darker colour there is no chance to erase it or paint over. It also requires a lot of patience as each layer has to dry completely before applying the next one. It basically makes it impossible to see any immediate effect and got me really frustrated. I came to the point when I was ready to abandon the whole idea of this ‘artistic rebel’ and put a few vectors in solidworks or illustrator and have the whole thing ready in half hour. Luckily I had support from certain artist from upstairs, who helped me out and gave some motivation. To be fair, I was pretty satisfied with the outcome. Unfortunately getting the digital version of the image turned out to be quite problematic too. As watercolour paints give very light colours, many delicate shadows (which I gave so much attention) were lost while photographing or scanning, so I spent another couple of hours trying to photoshop them back (still not quite there – the image on top)

What’s the moral of the story? Well, it’s hard to be creative .

D&AD boards

The last couple of days everyone from Product Design (I wish I could say IPD) have been stressing out about the d&ad boards. What we actually have to do, is to design four A3 presentation boards explaining our ideas and referring them back to the brief.
Those recent days I have seen a lot of example boards, that are sort of guideline of what we are expected to deliver – like what are the correct layouts, fonts, colours and so on.

Looking at those boards, I realised how little they differ from each other. They are all following the same pattern - a big rendering on the rationale board, little drawings of hands on the interaction board, 3-4 pictures of insights on the research board… They are all telling same boring story. Well, the truth is, that the boards need to fit the criteria of d&ad, which sets limits for the content, but still, there must be a way to do something different and fresh. And I’m going to find it! We’re designers – creatives, which means we shouldn’t be encouraged to follow the same matrix. Well, yes – it is the content, that matters the most, but as we are asked to present it in the visual form, I reckon the presentation does play an important role.