Collaboration in Design

Over the last few weeks and months, i've become more and more involved in design primarily done through collaboration with other students and professionals. Whilst we're all a little precious (ok, very) about our own work, i've found collaboration to be a far more effective way of creating work that ticks all the boxes, and often does more than that.

At the end of last month, Shift, the internship programme i'm currently working in, held an event at the Northern Design Centre. Entitled 'Open For Business', the idea for the event, was to demonstrate Shift's ethos of getting a group of young creatives  together and working on live briefs that will prepare them for working in the Creative Industry.

The Shift project differs from the standard internship in the sense that it throws students in at the deep end. They're running their on agency, working on projects for real clients and most importantly, they're learning every day from eachother about the wide range of skill sets needed in successful modern agencies. They're pooling all their own ideas together, and they're making something bigger.

The 'Open For Business' Brief was to set up your own 'Pop-Up Business'. Groups had four workshops to work through to develop their business idea, its name, image and product, before they pitched it to some of the Shift team, College Tutors and The Apprentice's Gabrielle Omar. Gabrielle also gave a talk on collaboration and how its changing the creative world for the better.

You can read more about Shift's endeavours on the Shift Blog. You can follow us on Twitter too, there's going to be far more of these events and opportunities to come in the future.

At College this week, we also saw a presentation from Colin Davies, a creative who runs OneNineFour. He told us how he in actually had no design education at College or University, but through a heck of a lot of reading, and a 'never say no' attitude to projects that could daunt any young creative, he's had a successful and varied career in the Creative Industry. From branding and illustration through to curating exhibitions, art directing, creating murals, software and set design. It just shows what an enthusiastic attitude, and an open mindedness to collaboration can have. This ethos has meant Colin has got so much more from his creative career.