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.