Design job sites?

^ sounds like the 1st assignment of my degree course!

Yeah....totally just regurgitated some of my personal statement. I've thought about it so much that these sentences are etched into my brain!

They sound like the right reasons though. To me anyway.

See! I pay attention to details! Give me a job! Someone!

I'm actually going to stop taking the piss now as I am about to graduate from a graphic design degree this summer myself and although I've applied to do an MA if I'm unsuccessful I'm going to have to start whoring myself about, so this thread is actually very useful to me.

A question I'd like to ask is how many people here are freelance and how many have permanent jobs/contracts at companies? Also have any of you started your own companies with friends/classmates and made your own collective?

When I graduated I made handmade mailers and painted mugs and sent them out to agencies I wanted to work for, things that grab peoples attentions work far better than a PDF Folio... My first placement was a result of getting a bit tipsy at a folio crit night and actually growing some balls when a Creative director complimented my work and asking him when I should come in for work experience... I was in and out of the agency for around 3 months until I found fully paid work elsewhere... that was my "break".

Chris, if you can, go freelance. It's a good Market for freelance at the moment!

I would love to, but do not have previously mentioned "balls" for it... or contacts.

We had a work experience guy who just graduated from CSM - i made him cut letters out of paper with a pair of scissors, screw them up, flatten them out, then scan them in and re-trace them. all day long. for a month.

Thankfully when I was on placement I was just treated like any other junior, I did everything from the Friday beer run and building office furniture to produce routes for pitch work for Major label "pop" groups...

Chris, you don't need balls, just a bit of confidence and once you get the first couple of jobs out the way you'll be fine. I'll PM you some contacts if it helps.

If you don't have balls just get your boobs out...

Chris, you don't need balls, just a bit of confidence and once you get the first couple of jobs out the way you'll be fine. I'll PM you some contacts if it helps.

That would be much appreciated! I'm actually on my third job atm, but I have always fallen into work, apart from the first placement I never really had to chase toooo much.
Yeah, it a confidence thing, I always feel a prick selling myself/my work...

I work at http://www.i-dmedialondon.co.uk/ (please don't look / judge us at the brown / beige, i didn't do it, and it's due an update soon anyway)

do you ever work with Barford?

Scoot, an MA isn't really worth it now for communication design if you're talking employment alone (10 years ago maybe...)- if you were a product designer then there this is argument to support staying in education. But for graphic designers and communicators it's just another way of putting off the inevitable internships.

To be perfectly frank - doing an MA at the RCA will probably narrow your sphere of work (and therefore your employment prospects after). If you want to design art catalogues, curate and do self initiated projects a la James Goggin then it's perfect for you, however the cold hard facts are that kind of work is intrinsically linked to Art, and in the current economic climate, art isn't looking too hot. That kind of work is thin on the ground at the moment.

I know the course will be going through significant change under Brody, however change of attitudes and change of the expectations of the type of student applying will take time. Probably not in enough time for you.

While it has produced interesting work, the MA communications course at RCA hasn't consistently produced any actual designers 'of note' from that course for a very, very long time (with the odd exception - Goggin, Barnbrook, Astrid Stavro off the top of my head.. but all produce certain type of work which will not filter into the public domain much - we're not talking Rand, Vignelli or Beirut are we?).

There's certainly a place for education and it can definitely be a wonderful enriching thing - but don't kid yourself into thinking that it will bring you any closer to your dream job (or indeed any) when you leave.

My 2p

Oh and Scoot to answer your general question, I've done education, freelance, part time, full time, writing, consultancy and started my own company.. not very helpful answer I guess - but given that I'm 27 and I left Uni at 22, it goes to show that leaving university after a BA can make life really interesting - there's been some, good, some bad, some amazing, but I've learnt SO much more the hard way than I could ever have learnt by staying in education.

Wow good input dan...lots of food for thought.

I suppose I should say that although I'm graduating from a graphic design course, for the past two years of it I have specialised in film, as well as worked on a lot of self-initiated conceptual projects, and collaborative efforts with fine artists, architects and performance designers. I'm not really looking for a job in the industry purely as a graphic designer but as more of an all-round swiss army knife of ideas, strategy, PR, documentary-film and design and yes that definitely narrows my options of employment because I wouldn't have specialised in anything but it's also strangely flexible as I could apply different skills to each project as it came.

I don't have a dream job and I'm not interested in being commercially successful or making tons of money (being able to pay rent would be good though), I just want to be a part of some genuinely interesting and innovative projects, which is the Goggin route I guess, so I'll either get lucky and some people will pay me for the privilege or I'll end up completely broke and begging a design studio to take me in age 30.

but WAIT I don't even know if I've got into RCA yet so all this talk is possibly for naught!

do you ever work with Barford?

don't think so, who is it?

don't think so, who is it?

its where my sister works, they make ''corporate communication videos'' or something and they have worked with TKMaxx for years. thought you might have done work with them perhaps,

that was all.

aha, no, we just did the site structure for them, wireframes etc, and some of the page designs, didn't get more involved than that

Wow good input dan...lots of food for thought.

I suppose I should say that although I'm graduating from a graphic design course, for the past two years of it I have specialised in film, as well as worked on a lot of self-initiated conceptual projects, and collaborative efforts with fine artists, architects and performance designers. I'm not really looking for a job in the industry purely as a graphic designer but as more of an all-round swiss army knife of ideas, strategy, PR, documentary-film and design and yes that definitely narrows my options of employment because I wouldn't have specialised in anything but it's also strangely flexible as I could apply different skills to each project as it came.

I don't have a dream job and I'm not interested in being commercially successful or making tons of money (being able to pay rent would be good though), I just want to be a part of some genuinely interesting and innovative projects, which is the Goggin route I guess, so I'll either get lucky and some people will pay me for the privilege or I'll end up completely broke and begging a design studio to take me in age 30.

but WAIT I don't even know if I've got into RCA yet so all this talk is possibly for naught!

Collaborative, Fine Art, not a 'designer' .. you will fit in fine at the RCA :)

Is it worth asking why if you're not really a designer, you are applying for further education in design, on a course being run by Neville Brody?!

Why not do something fine art related or go work in film? MA's aren't cheap anymore

I didn't even go to college... Had a tough time a coupla years back but doing OK at the moment, are things still that shit out there?

crosses fingers, touches wood

44, all my own teeth, print only...*

• Lie
  

aha, no, we just did the site structure for them, wireframes etc, and some of the page designs, didn't get more involved than that

oh cool fair do's, thogh you might have had to deal with there videos, oh well

anyone thinking of doing any more education should look into applying for this: http://www.printfuturesawards.com/

If you don't have balls just get your boobs out...

Sorry I'm late, I came as quick as I could...

James Goggin came into my uni for a week to tutor us, nice nice guy.

During my placement at Why Not I managed to do a whole show catalogue for an LCF MA show. Just timing I guess, a month later and I'd have been making coffee and artworking the credits page of a book.

Collaborative, Fine Art, not a 'designer' .. you will fit in fine at the RCA :)

Is it worth asking why if you're not really a designer, you are applying for further education in design, on a course being run by Neville Brody?!

Why not do something fine art related or go work in film? MA's aren't cheap anymore

Ok...pretentious statement coming up...I want to be a good graphic designer, not for the sake of design itself but because I want to be able to convey my ideas in the clearest and most effective way possible. Something that most fine artists and film-makers fail at horribly I think. So studying under Brody would be an ideal way of achieving that. Film/moving image is also a part of the course, so I can do any kind of project I want and use whatever medium fits it best.

Hey I think you should all come to the CSM final exhibition in June :)

Brody is all about typography Scoot! Anyway, you go for it - from what you say, you want to be anything but a graphic designer, that's cool though. Everyone's doing it these days.

hmmm degree shows.. this is the first year that I don't have a job requiring me to go to them all for the first time in 4 years, so I probably won't. Might make an exception for yours —*where is it? You doing something at Freerange?

...in the current economic climate, art isn't looking too hot. That kind of work is thin on the ground at the moment.

Art's looking well hot at the moment. Money or not.

One art please!