Hello Creative Adventurers,
Another great opportunity has developed through being a graphic design student. This week is "Design Manchester" a week-long festival #DesignMCR15 and there is a series of talks and workshops. This time I could participate in a workshop with Fred Deakin. Before that I want to share a few words about events like this and why I think you should try to attend as many as you can while studying.
Why Pushing yourself to get "out there" will benefit you as a designer and creative practitioner
To be honest with you, I was hesitant to participate. I am still a bit shy when it comes to larger groups and especially larger groups of graphic designers. However, I am really glad that I pushed myself a little and even raised my hand to share a few thoughts in front of everyone about my workshop experience *yay* ;).
I do believe there are quite a few of you creative people out there who feel the same about those events. They can be a bit scary, however, you are there to learn, and no one will expect perfection or endless wisdom of you. Try to see it as an experience and as an opportunity for you to develop.
I do believe as well, that you need to push yourself to become successful in what you do. Those opportunities, especially while you are still in education, are a great way to:
- get inspiration for your design practice,
- to receive feedback and
- to get connected with other people.
So next time your uni offers you to participate in a workshop, give it a try and let me know how it was ;)
Collabology - or the art of working together with different backgrounds
Back to the actual event. Fred Deakin started this project called collabology. Essentially it is a series of workshops for people from different disciplines who try to work together and create a project in an industry-standard environment. In other words:
As a bridge between academia and industry, Collabology runs intensive, collaborative workshops that introduce hand-selected students to the fast-paced and cross-disciplinary environment of modern professional practice (http://creativeskillset.org/who_we_help/creative_professionals/free_online_courses/collabology)
After introducing himself and his work we were asked to find a workshop buddy to go through a few exercises.
How do you work?
Task 1: Describe your design/creative process in 2 min.
In the first task your buddy just listens and then gives you feedback for 2 min about which areas of your creative process are structural or generative.
What I learned
I found out that so far I have been working without trying to do much research or find context for my work. In the past, when I got a brief, I usually made a few sketches and then went on with one idea that got more and more refined.
Through the feedback from my buddy (who is a graphic design graduate) I realised that it could help to find more and more interesting ideas through trying to develop a few ideas and then move on with the strongest one. Funny enough, today, during our uni session for Exploring Graphic Communication I realised that I am really prone to this pattern of pursuing one initial idea. Of course this doesn't mean that my projects are boring or bad, but I realised that I don't give myself the opportunity to discover an even better option ... because I'm stubborn. So now I will try to push myself and develop a few ideas before I move on creating an actual piece of work. Let's see what happens, I'll keep you up to date if it worked better for me.
What do you do?
Task 2: Create your elevator pitch. If you meet Bill Gates in the Elevator ... what would you say?
In the second task we had two minutes to describe to our buddies what we do. Some of us found this quite easy, others - like me - had a bit of a harder time to define themselves. After two minutes our buddy had to sum our words up in one sentence.
My buddy's notes on my short talk were:
Teach painting - reaching out online - inspire - responsible - positive change - honest / authentic
His elevator pitch for me was "I want to inspire change for the better in others through design".
Fred mentioned: "When you say it, you should feel it". I somehow do resonate with this sentence but maybe the structure or wording is not 100 % according to how I feel about my work. Anyway, Fred also said, that for some of us it will take longer to find this sentence.
If I would reflect about it a bit more it seems that I want to create positive change, reach people online and inspire them through teaching/sharing about design in an honest and authentic way. Wow, that's a long sentence. I wonder how you creative people out there would phrase your elevator pitch. Any thoughts? Let me know in the comments below ;)
What do you know?
Task 3: Talk about skills that you have and wish to have.
In the third task we had again two minutes of talking about our skill set and areas we would be interested in developing. It showed that I have a wide range of skills due to my diverse educational background and my interests. The task would be, to find a way to combine them and I do think this will happen in my own creative business.
Skills I have: Business School, Accounting, Programming, Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Video/Audio editing, Flash, Photography, Social Anthropology
Skills I want: Coding WP themes, Lighting for Photography, Typography, After Effects, App Design, Starting a business, e-commerce
Conclusion
As you can see in two hours you can't go through the whole process of collabology but if this caught your interest have a look at their free online courses.
Participating in this workshop has helped me to identify how I work, which patterns I follow and how I could develop my creative process. Furthermore, I realised that I still need to find a way to specialise and to define who I am as creative practitioner and where I want my business to go. And last, I have a list of skills that I want to develop further.
This workshop was a great opportunity and I encourage you to take advantage of such events.
Please share your thoughts in the comments below,
have a wonderful day
Romica :)
