MODULE EVALUATION

The 3rd and final PPP module was a bit of a learning curve. My experience in my final year at university led the PPP module down a path of reflection and direction rather than direct action. Throughout the module I have been making myself aware of a variety of possibilities and thought process brought to mind by a range of different stimulus. Whether these be a part time job doing graphic design, studio correspondence, books, videos, talks etc.

I have learnt a great deal of practical knowledge in this module, more so than any of the PPP before it. I still feel that I am slightly lacking in the self promotion areas, however what is important to me at the minute, is being aware of the possibilities and channels that are available to me, in order to take a calculated approach to self promotion. I felt that trying to push myself into the industry was almost counter productive. As a person I have a tendency to jump at opportunities, and I think that I have tried to stay very reserved in order to not make any mistakes. This is quite a bad thing to do, especially with the competitiveness of the industry, however I have felt comfortable with my progress and my plans for after I finish the degree course.

Having secured two placements for after I finish university, I felt very privileged. Gaining two prospective and strong placements and Elmwood and Music, has helped me have more confidence in my work, but also put me at ease that there is something happening after I finish university. I plan to capitalise on these placements by acknowledging and acting on the experience I gain in terms of my own appropriateness and enjoyment in the role of designer at each respective studio. The lessons I will learn from these placements will be invaluable and it allows me to begin to accept or reject the potential context of my practice.

This year I did not want to dwell on my self branding. While I understand the importance of communicating your personality, aims, and ambitions to a potential employer, I think my own approach has succeeded so far, so I would like to continue to approach people as a person, and not as an over packaged product. I think a modest and confident portfolio coupled with a will to be in the right place at the right time/saying the right thing at the right time, will have as much success as a promotional mailer.

I have made a conscious effort to engage with a range of things that have improved my own personal and professional practice. The Life After College sessions were a particular example of this. I attended workshops that were based around Creative Entrepreneurship, Who You Are and Where You Need To Be, and Social Media. I felt that these choices said something about the context of my practice, and where I am at with PPP in general. The Who You Are day workshop was absolutely fantastic in it’s ability to help me make decisions about my future. The workshop pushed me to highlight, identify and analyse my ambitions and posed the questions that I need to answer in order to achieve the those ambitions. Creative Entrepreneurship gave me a glimpse of how to conduct a start up. I found this particularly interesting as I would love to own my own business one day. While the workshop only brushed the surface, it did identify a lot of areas for further engagement after I finish university.

Having a job doing graphic design this year has really changed my opinions of the industry. While I have been working in house, while the job was in-house design and the industry was not particularly what I wanted to do I felt that it was valuable to get into the habit of accepting work, meeting industry deadlines, and employing the skills I have learnt in the other modules of the course. The job has gone very well, and I will be able to keep my job there post university. However, in order to progress and pursue more appropriate lines of work, I will be looking to move on as soon as possible. I plan to immerse myself in placements until the end of the year at least, in order to sample a lot of different possibilities within my interest area and identified contexts. I will capitalise on my existing opportunities and I will seek out and be open to new possibilities.

I feel that I have everything in place, to create a successful start to my career. From gaining new studios to contact, to finding tools that will help me with freelance, I feel that engaging with the module has helped me set a foundation for my professional practice from June onwards.

AFTERCOLLEGE

After college I have two placements lined up. I have a placement lined up at Elmwood, a branding agency, and one at Music, a branding and art direction agency. These placements will take me up to August, and I will try my best to impress both parties in order to potentially gain more time and experience at these places. 

While at the placements I aim to increase my network by talking to people at the agency and seeing if I can find further work or placements from people there. I found it is common within the design industry to find that everyone knows everyone. I hope to exploit this by looking into new placements while I am currently on a placement. This will show the potential employer that I am keen to work, with the added bonus of having a source of references and recommendations at that moment in time. I aim to engage with placements nationwide. I would like to gain a placement in London before the end of the year, and I would like to be back in Leeds for the winter 2014. After this, I will be looking to capitalise on the experiences I have had with a view to getting a job, or further work placements. While this happens I will be conducting freelance work as ‘eye designed this’.

I would like to engage and contact the following studios about potential placements. This is not a definitive list, but this is a starting point of agencies that I feel have a synergy with myself, or are of a certain profile that will help my future career. 

In Leeds: Golden, B&W Studio

In Manchester: Love, The Chase

In London: Pentagram, Someone

I will be aiming for these studios for placements however I have an extensive list of other studios that I will be calling upon when I look to send out my CV in August. Because I have plans until August, I feel that I have a liberty to be more calculated with my proposal and submissions.

I aim to reengage with a range of hobbies in order to provide more enrichment to my personal and professional life. 

Various Industry Jobs board

PLACEMENTS_MUSIC

I was fortunate enough to spend a week with Design By Music helping put together some installations for a project they were doing called The office is dead. An old office space was going to be filled with installations in order to commemorate the death of the office, and promote as a new (to be) renovated creative space. 

While on my week in Manchester I got to help out the designers putting together some ultimately impressive pieces of work. What I found more valuable was the experience of talking to designers, and also understanding how the studio worked in terms of the staffing and the general day to day goings on. I was not fully immersed in the studio, however I did learn a lot about the company structure through asking questions, and my own speculation. 

The Office, Installations

The Studio

theofficeisdead.com

The final website with installations I helped complete. The website work a Design Week award for Interaction Design.

Off the back of this placement I have been offered a 5 week placement at the end of the year. The team were impressed with my dedication and said as a reward I would be able to do a placement. This seems to bypass all interview and portfolio crit stages, and I have the opportunity to do a placement without worrying about approaching the studio. This goes to show that there are various ways to engage with studios and I feel that this may not have been as successful if I had contacted them out of the blue. Music are a great studio ti be involved with. There breadth of work and range of projects really excites me. There studio is a fantastic environment and there is a nice studio culture there that I will be using as a basis to make comparisons at other places that I will go. I like that the studio works with a variety of sectors, however focusses on producing the creative but appropriate solutions to a range of different problems and contexts. 

PLACEMENTS_ELMWOOD

I was informed that I had won a placement at Elmwood. This marks my first placement offer. I decided that I would start conducting placements immediately after I finish university. I did not want to engage with them while I was on the course as I found it difficult to manage my time between working on the course, at my job, and trying to be a human being. I felt that after I finish the course I would be more focussed and have time to reflect on my time at university in order to keep the two chapters of my life overlapping. 

I like that Elmwood are a branding agency. They have a very high quality to their work, and I am interested in what it is like to work for an agency that deal with big business. The studio is a fantastic space and I would love to do some work there to see how it affects my design process. 

I would be very happy working at Elmwood, and I like the fact that is has a history and basis in Leeds. I am very keen to stay in Leeds so I feel that it is a good start for me to engage with studios around Leeds and become part of the professional design culture here. While I am at the placement, I plan to talk to as many people as possible, and work my hardest, in order to impress the people around me, and perhaps have further talks with the studio, whether it be professional advice, help, or placement extension.

DESIGNSTRATEGY

I feel that in order to have a design strategy I need to be comfortable with the context of my design. I think that this year has definitely been a turning point for me. Through initiating my own briefs I have found where my interests lie, and which briefs enrich my practice and send me in a more positive direction. It is evident that branding and copy is a huge part of my practice, however I am slightly concerned as I do not want this to define me. It just happens that these are two skills that I call upon quite regularly. I feel that as I move into the professional world I will need to keep very focussed in order to develop new skills, and try new things. 

With that in mind, I think it is important for me to have a definitive list of some of the things I would like to do. I think that this should be as much of a general as it should be about graphic design. Having a general bucket list may inform my design in a way that is unforeseen at this moment in time. 

Bucket List

Learn to be efficient at coding HTML & CSS

Learn Javascript and JQuery

Learn to use open-source 3D software Blender

Work in Europe

Be involved with film 

Work for a technology startup

Go to Canada

Become proficient on the bass guitar

Learn to play the double bass

Learn to play the piano

Work for a large design studio

Work for a small design studio

Do freelance design projects

Live in the countryside

Do a motorbike tour around Europe

Do a motorbike tour around America

Things I Like

Art Galleries

Exhibitions

Music

Coding

Brands

Interiors

User Experiences

3D

Installation

Film 

Independence

Things I Don’t Like

Packaging

Print

Type Design

Editorial

Publication Design

Infographics

Ross V.S eye designed this

I am looking to create to websites for myself. I will have a website for me as a person, that will be a port of call to other things, projects, social media, CV that I have. I will be doing this in order to give more of an overview of me as a person rather than a graphic designers website. I will then create a website called 'eye designed this'. This is where I will have my design work. I will look to use 'eye designed this' to get freelance jobs. I wanted to appear more like a small design studio rather than an individual person as I believe there is a better chance of somebody commissioning a design through a design studio, rather than a recent graduate looking for placements. I think that the work I have done on the course is a sufficient standard to be passed off as professional and I look to capitalise on that. For design studios to see my portfolio my rossfranc website will have a link to my Behance, Linked In and outside interests so that the employer can get the full spectrum of my personality and also find my work easily. 

JOB_UKCP

T/Shirt I designed while working in-house

Over the year I have been working at the company above as an in-house design. I gained the job by being asked to work there as a favour for a friend. The company specialises in alternative fashion and body jewellery. While the company is great to work for, and I enjoy helping my friends, I feel that I do not completely fit in to this particular line of work. I have spent my time making artwork for clothing and social media, as well as clarifying and creating brand guidelines for the business. I have liaised with illustrators and web designers, and I have had major creative input to the business. This has given me some fantastic experience that I could talk about at length in an interview, despite me not being overly proud of the work that I have done at the business. In order to reach my potential and be happy with my career I will need to be creating work that I have an affinity to, and I feel that this is what I am lacking here. I need to be thinking of bigger ideas, and spending less time creating artwork for social media, which is not where my passions lie creatively. 

SOCIALMEDIALIFE_AFTERCOLLEGE

I have committed to attend a range of workshops organised by college. They are called Life After College, and focus on skills and tools to help graduates immerse themselves in the professional world. The first meeting I attending was on Social Media and Career Networking. The talk was quite useful, however the the session did seem to cover a lot of ground made in PPP2 however this session was far more in-depth and much more focussed. Some of the things that I learnt were in the finer tools of the LinkedIn and highlighting how important and helpful this tool is for employers.