aspire to enquire

Time to make a plan

I'll save the full 'it's been a funny year' post for next month, but, well, it's been a funny year. A year where I've realised that the 'business plan' my generation was brought up expecting probably isn't going to work out, a year where I've questioned my own perceptions of success and achievement.

I've kind of realised I need to get on with life now. Under the circumstances I have, not the ones that might eventually present themselves.

Art by Friedrich Kunath, via Natalie Olah

I also realised that although I know there's loads I don't know about lots and lots of things, I'm never going to find out about them if I don't just get stuck in.

So by means of setting things down so that I have to do them, I've decided (in no specific order) to list the things I intend to do with my next ten years:

• Make a home
• Launch a lifestyle & hospitality brand
• Start a family (and add to the one I have)
• Use my passions and what I know to change something
• Make more music

Some are more nebulous than others, and some don't lend themselves to getting started right away. That leaves a couple that I really should be getting on with right now.

More on those soon.

 

 

 

 

Cardiff's first Illustration Degree Show

This looks fun. It's the Illustration degree that started while we were at CSAD reaching its first final-year show. If you have a look on their tumblr it looks like the build up to the show has been a very collaborative effort which is promising in itself. They've all made little houses! It will definitely be worth checking out.

Nearly one year old blood

A lot of links have been coming this way from the D&AD blog recently, to the post I wrote after last year's New Blood event. It's crazy that it was almost a year ago. 

Although the D&AD post has been up for some time, I hadn't realised it also included a little video, in which you can also see me talking pretentious rubbish about water or something. 

If you're exhibiting this year, best of luck and hopefully I'll get to come and say hello.

Collective Visions

 AnalogVisions by Scott Hansen

Originally I just wanted to post about this beautiful poster I'd seen by Scott Hansen, but reading through his blog I spotted a little note about Brighton University's site for their Illustration and Graphic Design classes of 2009 (Kyle Bean's work caught my eye, it's rather awesome).

I think he's right that it's definitely something universities should be working on for their graduates, alongside the degree shows. 

But I'm a little worried that it's too late to be thinking about showing your work to the public at the end of your degree. Obviously education is a place to stretch creativity and ideas further than a commercial client would allow, and at somewhere with a reputation like Brighton that's obviously what students do. but I can imagine a lot of students out there coming to 'decision time' on what to submit to their college website, and feeling that they don't have any work worth showing. 

That's certainly how I felt around Christmas last year. 

I'm not sure how you solve that one.

Martin Winters asks...

Like some sort of internet celebrity, I had an email over the weekend from Martin Winters, a student at Stockport College. He's asking; "Blogs - Good or Bad?"

I answered some questions for him, which he's now put up on his blog alongside lots of other far more insightful responses. 

Hooray!

I'm sure that's not true, but still, quite a compliment! 

So I'm off to intern at Public Zone for a few months and learn loads about interfaces and digital campaigning. 

Once I've found somewhere to stay, I'll be really excited. Plus there's a picnic next week. Smiles all round.

D&AD New Blood 2009

We had a stand at New Blood last week, in the boiling-hot-but-much-better-space-than-last-year Kensington Olympia. 

I think we all found it similarly awesome and daunting to be alongside creative students from around the World, all showing the results of years of studying and working. 

Our stand design strategy this year was to invite people in with an open central area and lots of little things to play and interact with around the space. I would say that strategy was 60% successful. There's clearly a balance to be struck between inviting & intimate and big & visual. In many cases the best new blood winners were all four of those things. Worth thinking about for next year's third years.

That's the other sad thing, that we don't get another go. I got the impression that those of us who didn't go last year were completely overwhelmed and awestruck by the scale and talent of the show and their position within that. It's a symptom of studying in a town with misjudged opinions of itself, I guess. Even though it's outside of term time, all 2nd years should come to get a sense of what's expected of them as New Blood next year. It should be a school trip.

Some more observations / tips:

1. People mostly check the name of the college before the work on display.
2. Covering your wall space with huge work stops people from going in for a closer look. 
3. Scottish (4 year) courses had consistently more considered spaces and work.
4. A well designed overall space was far more inviting than leaving it to individual work. 
5. Some work that we didn't take with us would have done really well. 
6. Too many students in front of a stand means people can't get in and look. 
7. Having business cards or take-away items that actually feature your work is a good idea. 
8. Print work was the main focus - real opportunities to show great 2.0 concepts.
9. Check that your power isn't going to be switched off before the judges look round.
10. Not many people seemed to be taking advantages of the talks and workshops. 
11. Stands worked better when they were staffed by students.   
12. Hardly anyone was using the #newblood09 twitter tag, or even tweeting about it at all. 

There are write-ups on Form Fifty Five, and Creative Review.

Did anyone else go along? What would your tips be?

The end of the beginning

It's been a while since our show in Cardiff wrapped up, but I thought I'd share some of the photos I managed to get of the opening and the space.

All the CSAD courses open on the same day, so there's a real buzz around both campuses as all our family and friends browse around.

If you could survive the awful music there were quite a few nice things to do outside as well; a barbecue, a 'make your own puppet' stall, and lots of cakes and drinks prepared by 2nd year students saving up for their big shows next year.

My space looked like this:

I thought it would be good to put a little link to my website, seeing as that's a lot of what I do, rather than just the graphics.

Here's some other parts of the show:

Gemma Roberts.

Matt Hilde.

Stuart Lee (same brief as my authority piece).

John Wiltshire, James Phillips, Adam Bourne.

Lots of people. 

Laura Scull

Jo Williams, Matt Hilde.

Dave Cuvelot.

Chris Welsby.

Matt Case, Becky Cooke, Gemma Siely and Ben Macey. Becky's piece was so good I'm going to do a whole other blog about it. You can't see it here.

There was loads more, Matt took better pictures than these. All in all, a fairly successful show.

Well done everyone and good luck with all your future endeavours!

D&AD New Blood 2009

I'll, like, totally be there, with 8 other friendly colleagues from the Graphic Communications course at Cardiff School of Art and Design.

You can look at my little profile page here. See you there?

Unashamed self-promotion

One of the things our tutors have been very keen for us to do this year is to start getting ourselves out into the world with nice looking portfolios and websites. Trying to get jobs and placements, and generally being more like professionals than students. Selling ourselves as the designers and enquirers we aspire to be. 

It's been a tough ask, but I think that when the exhibition opens on Saturday a load of us will be able to show that we've done just that, even if there's no other professionals there to see it.

In my own case, I guess I've kind of been 'getting out there' to some extent through this blog, meeting people I admire from the blog world and getting a chance to put my opinions together and discuss them in public. But the great thing about the uni requirements is that I've now also got a lovely little website and portfolio, which I'm very happy to announce today.

My home page hub of all things me: www.tom-harle.co.uk

My portfolio page: http://aspire2enquire.typepad.com/portfolio/

If you're reading this on an rss reader, you may not have noticed that I've also put a bit of work into the layout of this blog as well, with a cheesey picture of myself and everything.

And my exhibition space is going to look pretty sexy as well. Come along (more info) and have a look if you're in the area. If you let me know when you fancy stopping by, maybe I can come and meet you and show you round everyone's work :)