Part of what we’re
doing between now and graduating is being introduced more thoroughly to the
idea of ‘Professional Practice’. We’ve had quite a few live briefs previously,
but these new weekly sessions are focussed on things like portfolio
presentation, CV, and so on. We’ve been given a practical group brief as part
of the module, but it’s a bit controversial. I’ll save that for another day!
Today, we had a talk
on digital portfolios. The aim of the session was to instil in us the need to
have a portfolio ready soon, so we can flop it about before we graduate. We were then encouraged to make a digital version, either a pdf or website. We
looked at a mixed bag of case studies and different possibilities.
a reconstruction of this afternoon's lecture
The reason I’m
thinking of this post (and I apologise for leaving this till paragraph three),
is because of what our tutor had to say about blogs, and also because of what
I’ve been thinking more generally about student blogs.
Why should students
blog?
The first part. Paraphrasing
slightly, our tutor said “Blogs are a little self indulgent. I would probably
focus more on a portfolio site, and not really worry about a blog for the
moment.”
I’m not disputing the self-indulgence; you only have to look through previous posts here to see that. But I couldn’t help thinking (and I hope you’ll agree) that he was missing the point. This is well-travelled ground in PR world, but I'm not so sure about whether it's been covered for design.
Is this enough?
Sure, if you’re hoping to go into
graphic design, you need an awesome portfolio. It needs to show you are
inventive, skilled, committed; everything that a studio with a junior vacancy
needs. But when we’re being told to not even bother and to leave the jobs for
previous graduates, one feels that one needs more than a flawless portfolio and
impeccable tea skills. We’re constantly being told to ‘get a life’ and to be
critically aware of the world around us. In my opinion, that’s what blogs can
do.
And it’s so easy to set up! The hours, weeks (years!), and months spent building my own portfolio site haven’t stopped me from getting out through this blog and talking to people all over the internet, and making some really good connections along the way. If I fancy talking about my latest project, that’s fine, otherwise I can talk about an awesome song, a bit of architecture, politics – whatever. All that ‘get a life’ stuff starts to make me new friends in those areas, and new connections start to form.
Crucially, job-wise, who isn't going to be asked at some point to work on a project that needs a knowledge of social media. It might work for college tutors, but "blogs are self indulgent" isn't going to impress many clients.
I really don't understand why any student wouldn’t blog.
How should students
blog?
So how should ‘any
student’ behave once they’re here? That was the second part of my recent
musing.
Since being online in
this bloggy guise, I’ve been extremely lucky to have linked with awesome people
over good projects, and had some help with all kinds of sticky situations along
the way. I’ve been to some amazing events, and I’m planning to go to more. I’m
averaging around 30 visits here a day now, which is both humbling and nice.
I say it’s been lucky,
because I didn’t really start out with any agenda or intention, for example, to
‘connect with advertising people in the hopes of getting a job’. I just
gravitated towards people whose blogs seemed interesting, and started talking.
So brand me hopefully became just a keen student with a naive opinion on
things, politely accepted by those higher up the chain, who really had better
things to get on with.
I think, as students,
we ignore that last sentence at our peril. Just because we’re on the same
blogging platform, or we’re mutual followers on twitter doesn’t mean that
people want to hear our misguided opinions on things that, frankly, we know
very little about. Also, blogging, although I think it's pretty rad, it's not everything.
People in the industry
are happy to hear about new bloggers and up-and-coming practitioners, whatever
field they’re in. Everyone was in our position once. But they worked long and hard to get where they are.
This post is more of a
reminder to myself really, but I’d love to know what other people’s opinions
are?
I think we have to
remember that we should be here to listen and to learn, and hopefully to meet
like-minded people, sharing ideas and experiences.
That is all.
