College Talks from Industry Professionals

Over the last 6 months, a number of professionals from the creative industry have come into College to explain a little about what they do, where they started and have offered their advice. Its always interesting to hear about the different routes people have taken to get to where they are now in their careers, because if nothing else, it proves that there isn't just one outlined route to getting a job in Industry these days.

Take for example Colin Davies, founder of OneNineFour, a multi-disciplinary studio in Newcastle. Colin didn't study design at University or College, he taught himself everything he knows. He didn't focus on one area of design either, he's lent his hand to just about everything. He's painted murals on shutters in town centres, curated exhibitions, created sets, apps, websites, software and even branded buses. It was fascinating to hear how he'd managed to get where he is through shear hard work and a big book case to where he is now. If I learnt one thing from his talk, its to never shirk away from doing something, even if its massively outside your comfort zone, you should always be game to try something new and collaborate. You'll make mistakes, and run in to a couple of disasters along the way probably, but thats just another vital part of the learning process.

We also had a talk delivered by two chaps from Hippo Marketing, a company based in Gateshead. They concentrate on Marketing and branding, and it was interesting to see and recognise a number of familiar pieces of work that they had created for businesses and council schemes in the area, such as Change 4 Life, Dance City and Byker Community Trust.

On the other side of the design spectrum, just a few weeks back, Clictime, based in Ponteland came to talk to us about their 14 year old time piece business. They are the licensee holder for Disney & Star Wars watches and clocks, and most notably the exclusive licensee holder for Lego Watches. They work is distributed throughout 8,000 outlets in North America and across 4 continents. Its grown into such a big operation that they have production and marketing offices in the US and Hong Kong as well as Ponteland. It was incredible to hear about how a small business in Ponteland can be creating work on such a big scale and for such huge clients as they do.

Finally, we had David Burdon from Glad in Gateshead. David has had a pretty fast rise to prominence in the design world, winning over 30 awards for his work. He got his first few jobs in Edinburgh, before relocating back to Gateshead to set up Glad. Glad was recently listed in the Top 40 agencies by Design Week's 2012 Creative Survey. Not bad considering it had been around barely two years. David's particularly style of work concentrates on simple, clever ideas, very elegantly executed. He loves clever ideas, making witty use of objects and white space in his branding and illustration work. Looking through Glad's portfolio, I noticed that there isn't really a clear 'style' or 'theme' running through their projects. I think there is a pretty important lesson in that, particularly with regards to branding; that no matter what your working on, or who for, your solution always has to work for and suit the client, their customers, and the brand, its not a great idea to design for yourself.