OUGD602 - Protest Press Workshop

6A2 - Demonstrate specific knowledge and specialist understanding of the professional and contextual location of their practice.
6B2 - Undertake research to identify and evaluate their personal and professional skills and the career or progression opportunities available to them.

Protest Press are a collective running hands-on workshops using creative methods to engage conversation, evoke positive change, and inspire powerful activism. The workshop aimed to get us thinking about different issues of protest which we felt passionate about, and to produce a collaborative, typographic poster using off-cuts of paper based on this.

In order to get us thinking, we started the workshop with a word association task, writing a statement then passing it on for someone else to respond and continue this way responding only to the statement above until the paper was filled. Issues which came up included sustainability, climate change, sexual consent, politics and student welfare.

The topic my group decided to focus on was student welfare, since we thought mental health is a big issue at the moment and that it is important to look at how stigmas behind this can be changed or thought about differently. We therefore began brainstorming ideas for quotes surrounding this topic, but in the end chose to focus on the statement 'I'm ok' which tends to be the general answer to the question 'how are you' when it is clear the person is not but don't feel comfortable talking about their issues.

In the design of our poster, we decided to focus on the juxtaposition between the two meanings of the statement 'I'm ok' by folding the paper in half and on one side placing the words 'I'm ok', but on the other side placing the word 'not' as a continuation of the statement. The type style we created used outlines made from off-cuts of paper in order to create more of an impact.

Placing the poster out of the studio, we experimented with folding the poster around corners and various shapes so that from a certain position only one side is visible, but when walking back in the opposite direction, the other side is then also visible.

We felt this worked better when situated on the corner of a wall. The poster was then kept up on the corner of the notice board in the university's cafeteria since it was thought that here it would grasp a large amount of attention and get our message across more effectively to a mass amount of people who fit our target audience of students. At the bottom of the poster we also added the email address of student welfare in suggesting that it is okay not to be okay and that there are people here who are willing to listen to your problems and help you get the appropriate support if and when needed.

Experience:

Protest Press take a hands-on approach to these workshops, working with raw materials to produce original posters which aim to engage the public with important issues of protest. They believed that this hands-on approach meant that the posters seem more personal and allows for an experience which gets people to engage more with not only the message, but also the process.

OUGD602 - Pitching and Networking

6B2 - Undertake research to identify and evaluate their personal and professional skills and the career or progression opportunities available to them.
6C2 - Develop and implement a personal promotion strategy to communicate to relevant organisations.

Elevator pitch:
An elevator pitch is a short description of an idea, product or company that explains the concept in such a way that any listener can understand it in a short period of time.

TASK: Create an elevator pitch for a project featured on your website - needs to be one sentence. Include what, how and why? What is the core idea? How does it work? (output) Why does it work?

Project - Micro-genres of music:
The floppy disk and bubblegum packaging stickers aim to communicate wider issues of society presented in vaporwave music, focusing specifically on themes of manufactured nostalgia to encourage viewers to regress to their childhood days, and escape from a less idyllic reality.

Networking:
- hunter.io - search domains, website finds associated email addresses if you know the structure of a company or agencies' emails.
- Google - tools - all results - verbatim (searches word for word).
- Could use Cc or Bcc on an email and send to multiple potential email addresses at once.
- Face-to-face meetings.
- Phone calls.
- Think of ways to put image or moving image into emails to make them stand out.
- Contact people in the morning before they check their emails (more likely to see and reply).

OUGD602 - Being A Professional (2)

6B2 - Undertake research to identify and evaluate their personal and professional skills and the career or progression opportunities available to them.
6C2 - Develop and implement a personal promotion strategy to communicate to relevant organisations.

Annual goals (what I want to achieve by the end of the academic year):
- To finish my degree with a first class honours, keeping up the streak of firsts gained throughout the other two years of study. However, if this doesn't work out, aim for at least a 2:1, which I will also be very happy with.
- To have some form of work placement ready for when I have finished university.
- To finish the academic year with a finished portfolio I am proud to show off.

Termly goals:
- To secure some form of work experience that I can do for one of two days a week throughout the course of this academic year in order to gain valuable experience into working in the industry.
- To finish work at a decent time before the deadlines, organise my time more efficiently in order to avoid rushing pieces of work last minute.
- Work on interesting personal, research-led projects, in addition to extended practice briefs, which can then go on to build up a portfolio of a range of work which I am excited about, proud of and can confidently explain / show off to potential employers and clients.

Hourly plan for next week:

- Work on a day-to-day basis, plan and make a list each morning of what I want to achieve that day, work on ticking off everything or at least the majority of this list.

Productivity tools:
- Use 52/17 or Pomodoro app - work in 25 minute bursts with 5 minute breaks - help to break the habit of taking a break every 5 minutes from work, keeps my focus on the work and not get as distracted if I am able to take regular breaks after a certain amount of work.

OUGD602 - Being A Professional

6B2 - Undertake research to identify and evaluate their personal and professional skills and the career or progression opportunities available to them.

Visioning:
"A picture of what success looks like at a particular point in the future, described with enough richness of detail that you'll know when you've achieved".

An effective vision should be:
- inspiring, detailed, documented, communicated and a little scary.

"A vision without execution is a hallucination" - Thomas Edison.
Success is defined on your own terms, not that of others.
Break a vision into smaller, manageable actions and tasks - using time effectively, work smarter.

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A vision for the future:

1. set your vision five or ten years in the future.
2. start by writing the date (2023 or 2028).
3. write in the present tense (I have, I do, we live, etc) - family, life, etc - talk about both personal and professional life.
4. describe your ideal life, in rich detail.
5. include personal and professional life.
6. cover everything that defines success for you.

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09.11.18

The year is 2023. I am living just outside of London, an ideal spot between where my family live and between work, in a small house with my boyfriend, Laurence. The place is very cosy and filled with the same IKEA furniture from Laurence's first place, however has been arranged and decorated in a much more organised way than he had it originally. We have a spare room, which I have turned into my own little studio space, a place where I can work on personal projects and display my work - my own personal art gallery.

I work during the week as part of a team in a studio specialising in print and publication design, from which I have had numerous works published already, which is still exciting to see every time, especially when I find them on shopping trips. I love to travel, and I am lucky enough that my job allows me to spend some of my time in new countries, working on exciting collaborations with other design studios and new clients. I earn a healthy living which allows me to do this.

On the weekends I spend my time working on personal projects, the odd bit of freelance work, and spending time out with my boyfriend on days out. I have my own dog now, although not forgetting about Alfie, the family dog, of whom I am still his favourite even after leaving him depressed when I left for university in 2016. He still gets over-excited when I go to visit. I visit my mum and sisters regularly, who are still at school. I hope that what I have achieved in my life so far now after university inspires them in their career choices also.

In addition to travelling for work opportunities, I love to travel in my free time also, with my boyfriend who enjoys the same. These new experiences continue to form ideas and inspiration for both work and personal projects. Perhaps one day I will move out of the UK to live and work in a new country, exploring design from an entirely new perspective.

OUGD602 - Making Your Own Experience

6A2 - Demonstrate specific knowledge and specialist understanding of the professional and contextual location of their practice.
6B2 - Undertake research to identify and evaluate their personal and professional skills and the career or progression opportunities available to them.

The Nomadic Designer (Dan Cooper):
- "I'll give you two days if you give me one back" - Cooper offered creative agencies two days of his services if he received one day back of mentoring, turning unpaid work into experience.

The Cool Bus:
- A mobile graphic design studio - saved an old school bus from a scrap yard and kitted this out into their own design studio to travel around America finding new creative opportunities where they went.
- Based on this, one of the founding members were invited to an interview for WILD for the position of junior designer - instead, he got offered the role of art director.
- Shows that if you do something that interests you, make a creative opportunity for yourself, then more stable job opportunities could come from this.

Snask Creative Agency:
- "Make enemies and make fans".
- "When you make something no one hates, no one loves it" (Tibor Kalman).
- Don't be afraid to make work which is controversial or people don't like, this makes your work more talked about and therefore more publicised.

Soren Danielsen:
- GO VIRAL - Danielsen created a short promo video for himself in order to try and secure an internship, which was then shared on various social media platforms. This went viral and was viewed over thirty-thousand times, also by professionals who offered him feedback on his work, as well as job opportunities and freelance work.

The Pop Up Agency:
- Started up their agency by aiming to solve any creative brief within 48 hours (over a weekend, whilst they were studying). This took them to 15 different cities, over 15 weeks and solved 15 briefs within this time. All expenses were paid for by other agencies who Pop Up were offering their services too, alongside a discount rate for their work.
- Shows you do not have to have tons of money to be able to pursue something big.

Kate Darby:
- Believed that sites like UpWork, Fiverr and 99designs did not work well in providing a stable income from freelance work.
- Took part in a social enterprise accelerator programme, which then allowed her to launch her app she worked on for a final project at university called Dovetail X, which allows people to set up their own profile, showcase their work and apply for jobs whilst also allowing other creatives to find you with other job opportunities.

Everything these examples have in common is that they tap directly into their creator's interests and passions, which allowed them to essentially build their dream job and gain work experience. This is an important aspect since there is always value in being yourself.

Ikigai - A Japanese term for "a reason for being", which usually refers to the source of value in one's life or the things that make one's life worthwhile. Looks at life balance and mindfulness. A creative exercise which allows you to rule out what you do not want to do (in terms of a job) and find out what you do want to do.