Posted 14 June 2007, by Aaron
Last night was the private viewing of my end of year show. I donned some smart clothes and exhibited my portfolio of work, in the hope of networking, making connections, and possibly finding freelance work or even employment.
I’ve actually been up since 4am this morning, doing that thing that happens after job interviews where you go over the entire event in your head and re-run conversations you had. It’s quite annoying so I guess it’s more productive to spurt out some thoughts here.
Firstly, I feel weird. For two years I’ve been working up to this event and now all of a sudden it’s over in a flash. The event kicked off just before 7pm and by 8.30pm practically all of the guests had gone home and just the students were left polishing off the alcohol.
I’m a bit older than most of the other students and I noticed some were virtually hiding behind their displays being a bit bashful, whereas I made a concerted effort to say hello and talk people through my work. This is a tricky one to gauge though, as I’m not a natural at this kind of thing and I was aware sometimes that I came onto people giving it the hard sell. It got easier towards the end of the evening and I ended up having some nice long conversations about how people were enjoying the show and how they’ve found other students’ work, before I began discussing my own work.
In fact, I don’t remember any periods of time where I was not engaged in conversation with someone. It all went so quickly it seems a bit of a blur. This seems positive, but I have mixed feelings. My gut feeling is I spent a lot of time speaking to people who were just interested passers by. I’m delighted that they liked my work but I know full well that they are not going to phone me up tomorrow and offer me a job.
This might seem a little cut-throat, which is not my style at all, but I can’t help feeling that for an event that can potentially have huge bearings on the future of ones life, you need a massive amount of luck: lucky that the potential employer decides to walk into the same room as you; lucky that they walk past your display rather than the dozens of others; lucky that you’re not busy talking to someone else when they walk past.
And this is my point. Whilst there was a lot of chat, I only recall speaking to a few actual designers or representatives from studios or agencies and I only gave out a handful of my portfolio CDs and business cards. I can’t escape this nagging feeling that it’s a bit of an opportunity missed.
On the plus side, at one point I received a grilling from five chaps from one studio who were really interested in my work. They even said that they were actually looking for someone who was a multimedia all-rounder. I spent an intense five minutes with these guys fielding constant questions from them and showing them my work. Then they were gone.
Do you remember your final show?
If you’ve been through a similar experience to this (I presume all design students have?), I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on your show?
Thanks for the previous posts’ comments: Paul, Lauren and David.
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Tags:College, Creative Industry, Personal, Portfolio
Kinda like the anti-climax on Boxing Day, innit? Well done for getting through it in one piece…
I’m glad that you communicated, as it’s all too common to see students at these shows cowering in the corner of the room - lacking the confidence that you obviously have.
To be honest, it’s unlikely (though not impossible) that you’ll get a job purely off the back of the show. What you’ve done is started putting your name out there - but you need to keep pushing…
Hand your business card to anyone who speaks to you for longer than 5 minutes. Send your demo CD round to all the agencies who’d you would like to work for. Phone people, and nag people, and push your online portfolio too!
Life’s all about luck at the end of the day. Sometimes you get it, and sometimes you don’t. Simple!
Yeah I am feeling a bit Boxing Day - minus the bloated on turkey feeling.
Wise words though Paul.
I’ll keep pushing for sure, although now I’ve finished this course I’m not sure where I’m heading. I could study a bit more (although I’m a bit fed up with the lack of free time); I would love to get some studio esperience, although couldnt really afford to go in as a junior (the downside of being an oldie student with a mortgage); or I could try and go freelance - lacking the studio experience scares me a bit, but this is probably the most realistic option.
Hmmm, decisions.
My final show was similar to yours, Aaron.
One person got a scholarship in the States out of it, and as far as I’m aware no-one else had any of the luck you speak of.
Try not to let it get you down though. All the work you’ve put in will continue to pay off now that you have a few web projects and a strong portfolio under your belt.
At my show, I think maybe one person got a job from it but that was it. I think you are doing all the right things, those interested “passer bys” all have friends and contacts so you never know. Your online portfolio and blog should bring you possible work too.
Ah, school. You will learn 20 times more your first two months working than you did for that two years. It’s good to get the basics down, but believe me, once you’re in the real world, you will wonder why you ever thought about going back to school for another degree or certificate.
We called our final show Portfolio 12 Review because it was our 12th Quarter of school. We had 3 reviews, 7th Quarter for print work, 10th Quarter for video and 12th Quarter for whatever you wanted to show as your best stuff. I was so nervous going into it. The profs always like to scare you with stories of how you won’t graduate if they don’t like your work. I don’t think that’s happened once in the (short) history of the school. We had a very small class, only about 10-15 people showed work that day. We usually have about 4 professors (out of about 10) come to critique, and some younger students trickle in and out at the urging of their profs. The academic dean showed up (late) at mine.
We took turns showing off our pieces and I was #4 to go. We had been told that they structure the review where the first few to go are almost the best and the last ones are the best with all the crummy ones in between; the professors like to leave feeling like they weren’t complete failures! I was one of 3 people asked to reshow my work for the academic dean. He happened to be sitting next to me and when I sat back down after my presentation, he asked for my contact information because he liked an ad I’d done for the school (purely as a project, not real). Never got a call from him. Meh. If I had a dollar for every time that happened…
I’m sure it’s the same everywhere, people will be really interested in you and say how much they love your work and that they “have this project…” and you never hear from them again. Look at me! Only 6 months in the real world and I’m already so jaded. Ok, end rant. This is not my blog!
But take heart, young Padawan, your career is just beginning.
David - I’m not too down on the event. Actually I think it went pretty well for me - some of the other students didn’t get half the attention I did. It’s just it was all over and done with so quickly it seems quite a hazy experience - considering the two years graft that went in to it.
Tara - You’re right, you never know who you’re chatting to and who they might know. Enjoy your holiday by the way 
Lauren - Hehe, I’ve been working for eleven years so I know a bit about the real world already. But I take your point. In fact that’s my secret weapon. For the past three years I’ve worked with designers in the industry day in day out so I’ve got a good grasp on the industry, the processes involved and indeed what the client expects (I am the client). A lot of the other lads are a bit naive in this respect.
Oh hey! That’s awesome that you’ve actually been the client. I went to a workshop a few months ago about websites for non-profits (I work for one as the web/graphic designer). I was under the impression I would learn about what kinds of things NP’s should put on their sites, what community pages we should list our site on, some SEO, etc.
Instead the workshop was intended for people who knew nothing about websites (indeed, we went over what a URL, host and domain name were!) and how to interact with a designer, what to look for when choosing a designer, etc. While it wasn’t what I thought I would hear, I was very pleased being able to sit in on that workshop and hear about how life was from the client’s POV. It really helped me see how little they know and how scared they are about being swindled.
Lauren - I guess it depends who your clients are. There’s the ones who don’t know much about design - see Paul’s article on 10 stupid client questions.
Then there’s the corporate world. I work for a government body with a pretty reasonable comms budget. We’re not afraid of being swindled by designers - if they tried it they’d lose a slice of our big fat pie. We have corporate identity guidelines that designers must adhere to, we set the budgets, we set the deadlines. We make annoying requests to designers like adjusting the ethnic balance of people on the front cover, getting all the genders and ages represented, etc. We have corporate risks that designers need to be aware of. This is more what I mean when I say I know what the client expects, and it’s this operational reality that I think a lot of young students can take a while to wrap their heads around.
Well, though not a student anymore, I am learning this, too. I wish that our world didn’t harp on ethnicity so much though. But yes, I know it does and that’s just life. I had to be very aware of that when doing the annual report for my company. But it’s still easy to forget. To me, a good picture is a good picture! I don’t care what race or gender or color of skin the people have in it! If they are smiling and happy, that’s the message that should be conveyed.
Oh yes, I saw Paul’s post. Hilarious!
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Paul Enderson
14 June 2007, 10:55 am