OUGD602 - Creative Convos - Regular Practice (22/02)

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.

Tom Finn & Kristoffer Solling: Regular Practice:

Tom and Kristoffer both studied a masters in Graphic Design at the Royal College of Art (RCA), a course and institution which encouraged collaboration. The two began working together whilst still studying and began working on a branding project for Typographic Singularity, which employed experimenting with ideas and composition through hand processes, an approach which they continue to employ now in their creative practice.
- Turn 'out there', 'moronic' ideas into something which has value. For instance, a poster created for a jazz night called The Lonely Hearts Club used a bespoke typeface which Tom and Kristoffer created out of the strokes of various love heart shapes, cutting these up by hand and physically experimenting with the composition. Through this they then continued to experiment with re-contextualising found typography in a more contemporary way, pushing themselves with its form.
- Use any opportunity to make work, experiment and push yourself.
- Use the context you are in now to work on things you might not get the chance to do after graduation, this may help to establish the sort of work you do want to make in the future and show who you are as a designer before getting into the industry professionally.

Prepping for industry:
- Nothing can replace good work.
- Don't make a website in a night - focus on documentation and a strong pdf portfolio first.
- Utilise your time in education to make interesting work - push practice whilst you can.
- Strategise and customise your approach to people - who do you think will buy into you? Conduct research into this/different designers/agencies - mention a piece of work they have done in emails and communication, show interest.
- Go to stuff - show you're interested in the field, meet people, ask questions.
- It is important to schedule in time for documenting your work effectively.