Contents
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
p. 5
Intoduction
p. 6
Why do I deserve the job?
p. 8-9
Finding a placement
p. 10 What is Absolute? p. 12-18 Work involvment p. 20-26 Culture p. 28-29 What have I learnt? p. 30-31 Feedback
Introduction
Aidan Liu Bachelor of Arts: Advertising MP0656: Placement Module 19/08/15 - 15/07/16
I sent countless emails to some large agencies and some smaller ones that may possibly needed a helping hand during the busy period before the New Year commenced. Some companies were kind enough to say that the slots were taken but I could try again in the near future, unfortunately in my case I couldn’t wait and I needed to acquire a placement asap as I didn’t want it to clash with my Uni attendance. To make myself stand out from the crowd I imagined myself as an employer and I knew that it all came down to what I can offer for the company rather what they can offer me. What makes me stand out?
This portfolio will focus on the development of my Journey into acquiring a placement in the creative and marketing sector. I know by knowledge that the creative industry is competitive and with a vast number of talented undergraduates trying to earn a placement I knew my chances were thin. As the industry consists of many career paths I was wary of which agencies to contact, I did some in depth research into local agencies and made sure that the companies I would proceed to get in contact with would fit my criteria. My aim was to work in an area I was most skilled in, this being in the department of strategic thinking and design, anything close to that would’ve been great.
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A bit about myself - Why do I deserve the job? Im Aidan, an undergraduate student studying Advertising in Northumbria University. My main priority is to learn and engage in the advertising/creative industry as this is something I would like to pursue as a career after I graduate. Throughout my past 7 years of education my work has always been design based and it involves a lot of creative thinking. Im currently on my final year of uni. I previously studied Design for Industry until I discovered that I had more interest in the advertising sector rather than being a skilled drawer and designer, but positive outcomes came from Design which allowed me to become more creative and skilled in particular areas such as computer softwares e.g. Adobe Photoshop, inDesign and Illustrator etc which I knew would become a handy tool in the future. With a design background it gave me a little head start going into the first year of the Advertising and Media course as I already had a portfolio built up which I am still currently developing, adding in creative advertising material.
During my second year we were asked to find a live client to create a campaign for, me and the team worked on creating a 30 second advert for them, I was given the role as a Creative and Video editor. This client was the ‘Osaka Japanese Restaurant’ in Grey Street Newcastle. This gave me a little taste of the industry and I was definitely excited to embark on a placement to get the full experience of what it is like to be in the real workplace.
“It’s not who you know that matters—it’s who knows you that’s important. Personal branding builds up your reputation to the point where you have a presence even in your absence.” ― Jarod Kintz
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Finding a placement At the start when the placement module was introduced I managed to secure a placement at an internet marketing agency. This was easy to secure as I had connections and not even an interview was required. I turned up on my first day formally dressed expecting great things and throughout the 6 hours I was there I was sat in front of a computer screen monitoring internet traffic. The first day ended and I knew for a fact that I wasn’t going to make a return. From this experience I learnt that I shouldn’t go on a placement for the sake of getting the grade, but that I should think carefully where I wanted to go and where I will fully engage with the learning experience. I did some research into some local agencies and picked out which one would suit my learning and desired profession. I contacted places such as Drummond, Redheads Ltd, Stark Hartley Atkinson etc and unfortunately I was unsuccessful, was I thinking too big? I didn’t let this bring down my confidence and kept trying and I thought maybe I was aiming too high. As Joel Gascoigne states “Great things start small”. I contacted some smaller and newer companies.
“The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat.” ― Napoleon Hill
It would be an ‘Absolute’ pleasure to meet you.
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I contacted a new Marketing and Design agency called Absolute and they were quick in their reply and within one week of contacting them I was sat in their reception waiting for Abbie the Creative Director to meet with me. The office is based in the Northern Design Centre in Gateshead and as they only established the company one year ago not yet did they have there own office space so their office was shared with other agencies. As expected I was nervous and anxious but Abbie and her business partner Sarah made me feel right at home. They offered me a cup of coffee and looked at my portfolio of work and they loved it, we then got into talks about an exciting website project they were working on for Interior Supply a furniture supplier in Chelsea, London and they wanted me to be part of it. By the friendliness and nature of the agency I was definitely interested. We shook hands and Abbie told me to start first thing Monday morning of the following week. At long last my troubles of earning a placement had come to an end and I could finally start my journey in the creative sector.
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What is Absolute? Absolute is made up of three Directors, Abbie Hartshorn creative director, Sarah McGrady the design director and Amanda Whittington-Wright the client service director. It is a creative marketing and design agency that combines outstanding design, strategic communications and digital expertise. Basically, they specialise in design, digital and all things that are going to get a business seen and heard. Although Absolute is new, the team has a combined experience of 35 years in the industry. They have worked with small local companies to international super brands. Clients include Mercedes-Benz, Bellway Homes, Barker and Stonehouse, IKEA, Smart, Bang and Olufsen and Nando’s to name a few.
“We’re not a big scary agency, absolutely not. We pride ourselves on being approachable, clear communicators, with no hidden agenda. We work with start-ups to marketing managers of international brands but our company values are always the same”
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Work Involvement Interior Supply
The first client I worked with was Interior Supply, a furniture supply company that source and select the highest quality furniture and furnishings for interior designers and architects. Their luxury showroom is located at the heart of the Chelsea Harbour Design Centre in London and is a one-stop shop for busy designers and specifiers. Celine the managing director for the company gave us the task to create a new website to showcase all their branded furniture as their original website was a little outdated. Abbie gave me the job to make sure that all images of the furniture supplied for us to work with were up to standards so that they all looked clean and crisp when we came to putting them up on to the website. I used my ability in photoshopping to make sure that all the images had clean white backgrounds and resized all the images so that they were all the same size. There was over one thousand images to work with so this became rather time consuming and luckily Scott a fellow intern helped out too. There was also a deadline to work towards and this was a good test of my ability to get a task done on time in a workplace.
Unfortunately problems kept popping up and this pushed the expected deadline even further, this was due to the client not supplying us with images that were meant to be there which resulted in a lot of confusion. There was many emails sent back and forth between Abbie and Celine discussing the matter, Interior Supply wanted to have the website completed before christmas, and as the client had supplied us with missing images this became very unlikely. Celine understood completely and gave us until after the New Year to get the site live. Once the missing images had been sent to us this was another few hundred to resize and photoshop, it may not sound like the most exciting of tasks but I didn’t complain as this was a vital part of the project that had to be done on time, and it has taught me that in the industry not everything will go the way you want it to and there will be encounters for you to tackle on the way.
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Work Involvement Interior Supply
This task took about 3 weeks and I was proud that I was a vital asset to the project. In the words of Abbie “We couldn’t have done it without you”. This made me feel a massive sense of accomplishment that I could complete a deadline on time for the agency and the client. After this was done I was able to display my creative side and give my input on how the website should look in terms of what should go where and what fonts to use. At first I thought with a narrow mind and believed that I should be as creative as I could be, so I suggested overly fancy fonts and complicated arrangements of the website, Abbie then guided me onto the right path and taught me that I should think of the brand and client first before going straight into design mode. She taught me questions to ask myself, what does the brand represent? what is the brand’s identity and image? I realised that I was thinking way out of the box and that things had to be kept simple, the website had to offer easy navigation for customers so that they find what they are looking for, and fonts had to be easy to read also.
The website also had to be kept simple so the images of the furniture is what attracts the eye of the customer as this is what they are trying to sell. It soon came into mind the importance of the resizing and photoshopping of the images task, and that it had to look appealing as possible for the customer. Fortunately I didn’t have to attach all the images to the site as this was the job for the web developer that Absolute had hired but there was the odd manual work that I had to do in order for the site to go live such as attaching the tech specs of some products and adding in the supplied descriptions of the products, this was done on Wordpress. After 4 weeks the Interior Supply website went live and it was a certainly a proud moment to see something I worked hard on brought to life. www.interiorsupply.co.uk
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Work Involvement Clean by Nature
The next client I worked with was Clean by Nature, a company that specialise in expert cleaning with natural and eco-friendly cleaning supplies for cleaner’s, greener homes and workplaces in Newcastle, Gateshead, Durham and Sunderland. They asked us for a completely new redesign of the companies logo but not to neglect the identity of the brand. Sarah asked me to come up with a few designs of a new logo but first I had to do some research of the company and what they do. The colours of the brands identity is kept neutral and simple, there are no use of vibrant colours other than green as I presumed this was to keep the idea of the environmentally friendly aspect. Luckily for me I had some experience in logo designs as I had worked on rebranding in the visual communications module from my second year of studying Advertising. At this stage of my placement I was finally able to put my skills of creativity to use. First I noted down my ideas by sketching a few drafts, creating new logo designs and modernising the font.
After this process I took these ideas to photoshop and experimented with different brush sizes and different shades of the colour green. I wanted to keep it simple and clean as possible as I didn’t want to drift away from the identity of the brand. I came up with several final designs and Sarah was impressed with quality of the work I had put in. Unfortunately none of these designs were picked by the client but it was certainly a fun activity to put my skills into practice in a workplace. www.eco-cleanbynature.co.uk
A selection of my best designs for Clean by Nature.
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Work Involvment Jobs on the side
With my placement being over the festive period, I was given a few small tasks to create some christmas cards that Abbie had wanted to give out. Her brother loved pugs so she gave me the job to create a christmas card for her brother by photoshopping a santa hat on to a picture of her brothers dog. These tasks were quick and easy to complete and I had no problem completing these tasks for Abbie. It was a fun way to pass time and also a few laughs that came with it which created a happy positive vibe in the office especially when the days were gloomy.
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Culture I remember turning up to my first day of my placement wearing a shirt and tie, I noticed that everyone else was casually dressed but I wasn’t embarrassed as I wanted to make the best first impression and was careful on how I presented myself, I took pride on how I looked and how I spoke as this wasn’t just a placement for a module but I also saw it as a potential job opportunity for the future. Within a week of working at Absolute I started to become a lot more relaxed and felt right at home, I was able to join in on the stories and I even had lunch bought for me at times as a reward for my hard work. I would make sure that my work ethic was up to standards but also had time to socialise as I believe this is important in the creative industry to engage with one another. After 2 weeks I felt like I was already part of the team and it was definitely a pleasant feeling of becoming part of a small creative company. It started to feel like a proper job and a large part of my weekly schedule was dedicated to this job. I already had my routine of arriving at work offering my colleagues a cup of coffee and having a walk down to the
quayside on our lunch breaks on the sunny days and how could I not mention the games room. Me and my fellow intern Scott would have a friendly game of pool in the games room when we needed to take a break and funnily this became rather competitive and became a fun ritual of our daily routine in the office. “Dripping in gold” When I started my placement at Absolute their office was shared with other companies until they managed to secure a private office spot within the northern design building. I decorated the new office with Sarah and Abbie and as Scott was away during the time me being the only male in the office of course I opted to do all the heavy duty work, this was a great opportunity for me to show my fun side and we had a lot of laughs while decorating. Absolute’s main brand attribute is the colour gold, the logo is gold so therefore they wanted to drown the office in gold, they bought gold lamps for our desks, painted the shelves in gold and
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covered the walls in gold stickers. The office was decorated to be very personalised to the companies image, and it was great to see Abbie and Sarah so overjoyed that they now had their own office for their company and fascinating to see a business grow right in front of my eyes.
“First opportunity is the golden opportunity.” ― Amit Kalantri Decorating the new office. It may be small but sometimes smaller is better, we could bond with each other a lot easier and of course the view from the office made up for it .
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The games room...made my placement day’s just that little bit sweeter.
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Culture Although there was a lot of socialising and fun I stuck by my main objective which was to learn and engage in the creative sector. All tasks given to me were completed to the best of my ability and I also offered to take some work home to complete for Abbie as I wanted to help as much as possible as I noticed she had a lot of clients to on her hands. As a result of the work I put in Abbie and Sarah kindly awarded me with a £100 gift card and a bottle of ‘Absolut’ vodka as they knew I liked to have a socialised drink now and then. I was extremely grateful as I wasn’t expecting any sort income or reward.
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What have I learnt? Throughout my time at Absolute I was able to apply my skills that I have learnt during my time at University and also acquired skills such as learning about web development and business process’s between agencies and clients. I was also able to build upon my current skills such as photoshop. Going into the placement I was semi-prepared on what to expect as I had never set foot in the workplace of the creative sector. At first I thought it would be a lot different to University work but from my experience I realised that is wasn’t much different in terms of standard and difficulty of the work but as work is done for client’s and not for grades it gave me a whole new perspective on the creative industry. I learnt that society is shaped by design and in order for brands and business’s to succeed design is a very important aspect. I also learnt a whole lot on responsibility and prioritising my time as producing work for clients rather than myself created a huge amount of pressure to get work completed on time as I also had university work to do as well. Also with Absolute being a brand new agency a
reputation has to be built by creating award-winning work to attract more business’s to work with them therefore my work had to be up to industry standards as well as being completed by the deadline. During my time at absolute I mainly focused on branding and design and as I am studying advertising in University it was a shame that I couldn’t work on the advertising side of the creative sector as I could have used my transferrable skills in my academic studies such as campaigns, TV, media and copywriting, although my aim is to pursue a career as a creative I was able to apply creative thinking and skills during my time at absolute which I am happy about. Being able to witness the meetings and communications between absolute and it’s clients I learnt about the process of creating outstanding work to the client. I found that work created for clients isn’t always going to be easy as people have different perspectives on what is good work and what is not. Working at absolute has taught me that your designs may not impress others, but that doesn’t mean throwing in the towel, design work has to be continually
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developed and built upon until it is right for the specific client. This brings me onto my next point of my work being critiqued. When designing for Abbie and Sarah they critiqued my work pointing out the strengths and weaknesses and I learnt to take criticism as a learning curve to develop my skills and grow as a creative.
“Listen to your critics. Because if you go through life denying what they say, you’ll never be a good writer. The only way to improve, is to listen to those who tell you what you need to work on” ― Adam Snowflake At absolute I have discovered my strengths and weakness’s I would like to develop on to get the best out my my ability to become a successful professional when I leave university. Working for clients and meeting deadlines has developed my organisation as a whole, I have learnt how to prioritise work and what I lacked before my placement was researching before moving on to practical work. I have found that research is the most important factor in any type of work I do, without research,
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design work becomes pointless and it is likely that it won’t fit the criteria of clients. Another weakness I process is talking with ease and explaining my work with confidence and my presentation skills as a whole, working at Absolute I now know that the creative sector will require you to perform a lot of presentations and discussions to get your idea across to clients and peers, I didn’t contribute in any meetings at my placement but I know that it is something I need to work on for the future.
Although I stayed longer than I was required it was hard to say my goodbyes, although Abbie stated that if I was ever looking for a place to work after graduation I would be welcomed back with open arms. I was ecstatic with the news as I will have a guaranteed place of work once I leave education as what I hear from other students is that it is very difficult to look for a job in the creative sector with it being so competitive, I was relieved in a sense as this was something that kept worrying me in the back of my mind. Being offered a job opportunity has also implied that I made the impression I intended on giving. I also asked Abbie if it was okay for her to give me some feedback so I could reflect on what needed improving and where my strengths are at.
“It has been a pleasure to work with Aidan, he is able to organise his time well, and also has skills and knowledge in the advertising/creative industry. During his time with us he was able to transfer his skills in the work he had done for us and and his dedication towards completing work for clients is a strong asset that he possess’s. Aidan is also very easy to get along with and we believe that with more experience and
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room to improve on his weaknesses, he will become a strong creative individual to any advertising and marketing agency.” My time at Absolute has taught me so many qualities I can take away with me for the remaining times I have left at University to help me achieve the best possible outcome and also skills I can put in to practice in the industry. My placement has given me a wider perspective of what the creative sector is like and a little taste of what it is like to be out there in the real world of employment, and all I can say is I cannot wait till I’m out there in the industry, I am excited of what the future has to offer.
There was a point where I was on the giving up Iafter sending There verge was a of point where was on the countless CV’s agencies and verge of giving up to after sending taking the alternative countless CV’s to up agencies and takingof formal interviewsformal rather up theperforming alternative of performing than getting thethan realgetting experience. I am interviews rather the real glad that Ithat wasn’t thethat pathwasn’t I took experience. am glad that andpath I now have and skills that I can take the I took I now have skills away Iwith job opportunity, and that can me, takea away with me, a job met new people thatnew I can now that call Imy opportunity, and met people friends. Absolute,Thank its be can nowThank call you my friends. youan absolutepleasure. pleasure. Absolute, its be an absolute
Bibliography 1. Good Reads. Amit Kintz. Available at https://www.goodreads.com/quotes. Last accessed 20/01/2016. 2. Good Reads.Adam Snowflake. Available at https://www.goodreads.com/quotes. Last accessed 20/01/2016. 3. Iodine, K. (2016). Lunch & Learn Marketing & Branding Workship, Part 2. Available: http://business.dahlonega.org/events/details/lunch-learn-marketing-branding-workship-part-2-30041. Last accessed 20/01/16.
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