Jonny Hardstaff portfolio crit

Today I had my portfolio crit with Jonny. I spent yesterday afternoon re-doing my portfolio to make sure I was happy with it. I didn't think that I had enough projects to fill it out, as I haven't yet finished anything I was happy with this term, but it turned out I had 6. I tried not to think too much about how I was laying it out- I just wanted it to be simple and clear. I feel my portfolio presentation was not as good as I hoped it would be for the January hand in, and looking back I can see where I went wrong. I put quite a lot of thought into editing down the images and text and making sure I presented the bare minimum that I needed to put across the projects.

Jonny's approach was very different from Ian's from what I've heard. He was a lot more interested in the portfolio itself, the work you'd done and chosen and how it reflected you and what you wanted to do in the future. I think this bode well for me as I have put a lot of time and effort this year into choosing the right projects and working on things that play to my strengths.

After listening to the first two crits I have to admit I was a little more nervous than I was when I went in - He wasn't mean but quite brutal (although it was all constructive and he made a point of drawing out the good things and potential), and I have never felt totally confident with my portfolio, mainly because I would work on a project and feel really pleased with it, then get negative feedback in my marks that I couldn't really understand until I could reflect back, by which time my confidence was knocked.

However, I could not have prepared myself for how positive Jonny was! He was so enthusiastic about my work, and seemed to love all my projects (the ones he picked out as slightly weaker I would have taken out if I'd had anything to replace them with so I totally agreed with him). He had nothing negative to say at all - the only advice he gave me was to keep working towards that all time amazing wow project that will just blow people away! ''The project that can go out and pull all by itself and then come back and tell you about it'' so to speak. He also told me that I should consider applying to the Watford advertising course - run by Tony Cullingham, it's considered the best course in the country and a golden ticket into the industry. I found out about this course when I was in London from Dave Trott, and although I had thought about it, it is so difficult to get on I don't think I would have ever applied through lack of confidence. Jonny basically recommended I apply and thought I had a good chance of getting on, such encouraging words to hear!

I can't even describe how much it has boosted my confidence to finally have someone validate my work so enthusiastically. I know this line of work is so much based on opinion and personal taste, but I've felt up until now I've never had quite the response I've been hoping for from the tutors, and to finally get some recognition from someone like Jonny Hardstaff has just put me on cloud 9. Suddenly I feel excited about the rest of the term, and determined to better myself. I am also now going to act upon trying to get some work experience at Love, somewhere I've had my eye on for a long time and would love to go for a placement when we finish, and have been putting off because I didn't feel confident enough.

Thanks Jonny =)

PDP done and dusted

Liz's tutor group had to wait until Tuesday for our PDP's, which in a way was good because we had more time to keep working and therefore more to show, but we had to wait to the last minute to get any feedback on our personal projects and competition briefs.

I had a specific list of questions to ask and points to discuss (haha) but I think this helped me get the most out of the session. Sometimes I think the PDP's are a waste of time if you are doing ok, there's not much to say and you don't get a lot out of the tutors unless your behind or not doing ok, but this time it was quite useful for me.

The first thing Liz said was that she thought this had been a good term for me, that my confidence in my ability seems to have changed completely since summer and I agreed totally with her. I have to say my work experience in London has totally changed the way I work, the way I think, what I want to do in the future and how I see myself. It's one of those things you don't notice until after it happens. Particularly I feel so much less stressed about leaving uni, I won't say I'm not still terrified but it's a good kind of exciting terrified rather than rigid with fear shit help me terrified. I suddenly realised that actually I can do this and I can get where I want to go if I work hard enough, and if I fail then I'll just try something else. I personally feel this has had a knock on effect on my work. Again, I can't say that I don't freak out from time to time, but I freak out at the right time when I know I haven't done enough, and then I deal with it pretty quickly. I have stopped giving myself such a hard time, I know I am my own harshest critic, but I also know that I have worked as hard as I possibly could this term and so whatever I get in the January assesments will be the best that I could have done. And now everyone will probably hate me, but accepting that in my mind has been a massive shift for me and is allowing me to be totally relaxed and enjoy my work and enjoy the pressure of getting everything done, which in turn is making me work better! Like dominoes in a good way =)

As far as critique on the projects goes, there wasn't much to say as Liz had seen most of the stuff in tutorials. Silence is in the making as we speak after many hours filming and editing it is finally coming together. There's still a high probability it will completely go to pot and I will be left with nothing but I guess I will have to deal with that if and when it comes. She advised me to get a second visual opinion form Mack about how to display my Alcohol awareness project (which I did and we concluded that I should work on the colours and then take it into flash) but it was a thumbs up for the concept and ideas. Then we agreed that working on the stonewall brief as my personal project would be a great brief for me if I can apply a strong concept to it, a chance to enter some work into a live brief and the room to develop it further than what's asked for my portfolio.

So I think all in all it went as well as it could and mainly reassured me that I everything is going A ok at this stage!

Essay Tutorial

An early essay tutorial for me. So far I was pretty pleased with the work I'd done on my essay, 'a good foundation to improve on' in my first tutorial. I had referenced and researched to high heaven so just had to concentrate on writing. Since then I ruthlessly edited and tried to structure better and make my arguments more clear.

This time, I felt I got some good pointers on how to perfect my writing for the final draft, mainly ideas on structure and layout. I hope that coming up with a strong but simple visual design solution for my essay will help to articulate my points better. I had tried to write in an entertaining and personal way that isn't how I would usually write an essay, and Hitch wasn't sure about this, but that's what they asked us to do (?) so in the end we decided it was fine.

I am so desperate to get a first for this essay... I hope I am not reaching to high, but I've been getting 67 and 68 for every essay I've done and I didn't work as hard as I could have. I've tried to make sure I've improved on everything and push this as far as I can, but i'm still unable to get a definitive answer on what that *thing* is I need to do go from a 2.1 to a 1st! I really don't want to miss out this time!

Tutorial 24.11.09 - Competiton brief

Unfortunately I was still at the research stage yesterday in the tutorial. I've been trying madly to catch up this week but there is so much to do. Still, I thought I was wasting time researching but we chatted it over in the tutorial it helped me to sum up what I'd found and now I'm moving onto the ideas stage. Since I've been getting stuck into this brief I realise it is a much bigger challenge than I previously thought and actually the research that I've done was a vital starting point in order to come up with an idea that actually works, even if it's taken me a bit longer than it should have done. The age group of 13-16 is so difficult to reach and so varied that I don't even really know where to begin!

To sum up my research, the main things I'm going to work to and include in my ideas are:

1. I want it to be a positive message - not shock or negative consequences, but something young people can aspire to, offering an alternative to drinking.

2. Although I want the campaign to be partly informative, this is covered else where in the government campaign and information about alcohol can be found if they're pointed in the right way, so my main message is that it's ok not to drink, there are other ways to have fun, and it is ok to talk to people about drinking.

3. I want the tone of voice to be quite light hearted, not 'authoritative', but coming from someone young people aspire to.

4. I want to use ambient/guerilla or non traditional media, or a mixture of both to really connect to young people and interupt their daily lives.

So now all I need to do is hit upon the idea!

Tutorial 24.11.09 - silence round up

Yesterday we had our weekly tutor group with Liz. Because we missed last week as Liz and I were both helping out with UCAS in London, we spent the first half recapping the silence brief.

My review was in the morning before we flew to New York in the evening. As soon as we got back I went home for the weekend and spent most of the time working on my essay, then as soon as I got back to manchester I went of to London to work at the UCAS fair for a few days. So really I felt like I'd had two weeks off and not got very far at all with anything, especially silence. At the weekend I had looked through my silence work for the first time in what felt like ages to try to re-evaluate where I was and what I needed to do and I totally began to freak out and worry that my moving image piece wasn't going to round up everything I'd done, worrying that I had bits of work that I wanted to include that just wouldn't fit into it.

A good chat with Helen and Liz got me back on track again though. I calmed down and realised that I don't have to include every little reference to what I've done and that my moving image piece will be contextualised to my work if I do it properly. I also finally got it clear in my head that I, personally, need to contextualise my work. I find it really difficult to just go off and do something for the sake of it just to see what happens if there is absolutely no link to my idea and work. This doesn't mean I can't experiment and push boundaries, but I need everything to be done for a reason otherwise I don't feel there is any point to producing it.

So, I decided with Liz that my plan of action is to brainstorm some narratives that can tie my work together into a moving image piece and begin to draw storyboards up. On Thursday I am going to see Gary about equipment and technical stuff, and then it'l just be a matter of a day in the studio filming. I know I have a lot of work to do to make this work, but it's manageble and I feel a lot better now I've got a definite plan!

Review

All in all I think the review went very well for me. I did work hard in the run up to it to get as much as possible done and I think it paid off. My estimated grade was high 50's, just bordering on a 60 which is what I was hoping for although I was too scared to admit it. Considering I got 62 last term and I was really disapointed, I'm feeling much more confident now. I know I've got more to do and places to go before January and I am capable of pushing my marks up if I keep developing my work!

Firstly Kino 4 posters. I did a lot of experimentation over summer for these projects and really enjoyed trying things out. I think the tutors liked my designs and the fact that I'd tried so many things too, but I felt the comments helped me to make a final decision on what design, and mainly what stock, my final posters will go into my portfolio as for the January assesment. It should only take me an afternoon to print them off and have three final pieces.

Secondly, Silence. Well. Since we began I have done a lot of work for the silence project and felt i'd produced some nice ideas. I knew I was very much just finishing off part one still when we went into the reviews, but this wasn't concerning me because I felt I had a strong concept and lots of work. The review really helped me because I had come to a bit of a stand still in knowing the right way to take my project in to part two and a a finished piece. Both Liz and Mac said my work was crying out to be taken into moving image and to try my hand at making a film sequence from the visuals and ideas I already had. At first I was a little dubious about this - I'm not a moving image person, I don't have the technical skills and have never done it before. i felt like without a lot of technical help that I wouldn't really be able to achieve this. I was scared that I wouldn't be able to produce something good enough to make it worth while doing a moving image and that would let my work down.

However, I have thought a lot about it while I was in New York, and decided that it is the right way to go. I can't find another way to push my work forward, it doesn't really fit into the folding document catorgory. I also should make the use of facilities and technicians while I have the opportunity at uni. For me this project has been a nice experiment and to experiment with moving image will really challenge my creative skills. I'm hoping I can blag the technical skills by collaborating with people who know what to do and maximising the technicians.

Wish me luck!

off on a tangent

After my wacky week tutorial with Mack and a quick chat with John Walsh I'm moving my project on finally. I made a great start with it, but the last week has been a bit stagnant and I was struggling to move it on. I realised that I 've been so close to it I started to find it difficult to see new potentials in my work. At first when Mack told me to try scanning some stuff in and experiment with it just to see what happens I wasn't sure that would take me where I wanted to go, but then when John said a similar thing but in a different way, I realised they were both right. So I'm not going to play with the photocopier just yet =) but I have realised I need to let my concept go a bit and push it in any direction that comes. Then I can explore just how far my ideas can really go! I admit that I am no photographer - I like photos but I'm not great at taking them and although I want to do some experimenting and let go I don't want to do things i'm not good at just for the sake of it...

So a break from Silence to finish of my Kino posters (more on them later) for the review has given me a welcome break and I feel refreshed for a weekend of tangents!!

Clinton's advice

As part of wacky week I signed up for tutorials with Mack and Clinton.

Yesterday there was only a few of us with Clinton, and instead of launching into our silence project straight away we had a good chat about work placements, other work we were doing and where we wanted to end up. Clinton gave us some great advice, told us to re-evaluate our skills and try to imagine where we think we want to go when we finish uni. He advised us to make sure that by christmas that we had a strong idea of the direction that we wanted out work to go in. This was not meant to mean that we should pigeon hole ourselves or narrow our options, but to make sure that we know what are strengths are and what we want to get out of this degree.

This tutorial really helped me clear my mind and summarise everything that i've been thinking about since summer. I have been slowly, and without realising it, drifting away from being so set on advertising. This is a scary prospect! It's not that I have ruled it out, I still think my strengths lie in idea generation and I love the psychology behind it, it's just that I want to do something more. I don't want to sit at a desk and be an idea machine, I want to meet clients, solve real problems, work on things that I care about and work with people who I have chemistry with. Clinton said that we should see ourselves as 'creatives' that can actually work in a number of jobs and places, create work for ourselves and be very adaptable to different situations.

We discussed that sometimes it's difficult to know the exact jobs out there and what they actually entail outside of the obvious ones. Clinton told us it's really important to research out who is in industry, what their jobs are, which are the jobs you want to do and how did they get there?

This tutorial helped me so much I feel a lot less scared about confronting the real world but more importantly, i'm quite excited that my life is not mapped out and I don't know what's going to happen or where it might lead any more!