Cool shit no.2

There are a couple of things ive noticed about cool little art exhibitions in Amsterdam, one being they are generally free to enter and best of all there is always free beer all night! As an Englishman, of course I only go up a respectable number of times to coyishly ask:

‘en biertje alstublieft’, DANKEVEL’

with a smile on my face that says ‘you’re really ok with me having this?’. But manners don’t seem to apply to Australians ; ), so just get them to get the liquid drugs!

Anyway, I went to an exhibition with Dolly Rogers called BANG YOUR DEAD. Cool name, Cooler exhibition.

The exhibition looked at war and how it effects young children ( or something to that effect), which manifested itself into huge wooden knife/grenade toys, camouflage jigsaws and ninja star pillows made from ex army blankets. It was all right up my street, guns, pillows,knives, beer and a dj pumping out some near decent tunes. What more can a 22 year old boy ask for?

Heres some images for your eyes:



This was cool. It was a 3d dove made from strings with little ninja stars attached to them that hung from the ceiling. It was about the size of a horse if you can't gather what size it is from the images...


Wooden weapon toy block thing. You've all seen/had them...

The pillows made for great landing pads. Check the air on that shit! me and Rogers made sure it was safe for others.


And of course, you can't have all these pillows round, feed everyone alcohol and not expect a pillow fight.

The idea of the working world is such a scary one when you're student. With all the abstract names, cool websites and the top work that’s displayed in Grafik and Creative Review etc, it is easy to forget that the people behind these big ideas and companies are just exactly that, people.

What scared me the most was the fact that I had it in my head that they would all be Uber design Warriors (which most of them are), stressing out about huge deadlines and scalding the intern with their coffee whilst pushing their face into a scanner for not cutting a mock up straight. I also thought, that working as an intern will be fiiiine, its not like ill be given any work that will actually mean anything to the company.

Well, I was wrong on both counts. Firstly, the people are lovely. Secondly, people employ interns to help them, they don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They want someone who has the passion and drive to create work and learn from them at very little cost. If an intern is no actual use to the company as far as producing work then it would be a waste of their time and probably money.

I have had work that includes logo design, Photography (see previous post), Website design, magazine layouts, package design and presentation work. All of which I have learned a lot from by doing them with the support of colleagues who know all the shortcuts and can give critical advice that makes sense! I generally don’t learn when its my own work because I think I know what’s best for my work, but when its someone else’s work on the line, you listen and you learn because if you don’t its not just a couple of marks you’re missing out on, its letting down a whole company and probably people you have come to like a lot.



So, that’s why I say you learn way more, because your work actually matters now.

I can’t really remember what I set out to achieve with this post, but I’m sure what I’ve written isn’t the original idea….

I guess the moral of the story is get a fucking placement and prepare yourself for some hard work, a knowledge-fest and good times!

PS : Nothing wins over top Amsterdam creative’s

After Nothing came out and grabbed a shit load of media coverage, the effect was immediately apparent because not long after the website went live, a call came through from Het Parool informing us that they are setting up a competition to design the front cover of the PS magazine as part of their 10th anniversary celebration,and we were invited to design. The companies involved included Kessels Kramer, They, 180 Amsterdam and many more.

Het Parool is a newspaper in Amsterdam, which, I suppose is similar to the Guardian as far as content is concerned, not aesthetically of course. But they do have all the supplements and what not, and one of the supplements is ‘PS’, which gives you all the best places to eat, drink, party and also the movie and music reviews etc etc etc.

To take all of the credit would be a complete lie, because I did very little apart from take the photograph, however, it was the photograph that beat the rest. The idea stems from thousands of bollards that protect pedestrians from cars (and destroy the wheels of cyclists), which are scattered all over Amsterdam and are instantly recognisable to all Dutch people. They carry the 3 Xs, which is taken from the Amsterdam coat of arms. Anyway, if I have to explain why we took this image then I guess its not a good idea after all…….just a prize winning one.

Thank you placement year

Letcetera

First and foremost, BIG UP DOLLY ROGERS (ive been listening to alot of dub-step recently)

Remember me saying "Its not what you know, it's who you know?", " and "you get to do some cool shit on placement". Well in the next coming posts I will be elaborating in full on what exactly I meant. Here's the first:

I met Dolly Rogers when they were just plain old Jeannette and Chris back in my first placement at Wellcreative. They took me under their wing as a son they will never have and showed me the ropes of the working world.....and Pride, Dream and WEC (nice one Rogers).

Anyway, after Wellcreative went down the shitter we kept in contact, (in fact, I wouldn't be where I am now if it wasn't for them) and they continued to keep me up to date with cool things that were going on in Amsterdam and even got me involved.

The first of such "cool things", was a Zaishu event, which is basically a gathering of artists and designers who like to draw and paint on some small stool/chairs.Google Zaishu if you wanna know more. The gathering was held in a massive warehouse that housed loads of mental artsy shit and also a massive amphibious army tank.


I came to the event just expecting to breathe in the atmosphere and bank it in my placement diary as a nice experience. But as soon as I got there I was handed piece of chair and all of Dolly Rogers materials, which happened to be a fuck load of letraset (spelling?).
So, I got the first of many beers and started scratching. I couldn't help but feel a tad bit cool considering my general surroundings and the awesome people getting their poem/paint/makeshift BBQ on.Anyway, here's the results of my labour(left facing panel):
Thank you Placement Year.

The launch of Nothing

Check this out!
www.nothingamsterdam.com

I guess if you know me you will have already looked on this site, and considering I only have 2 people (of which I know) regularly checking my blog it renders this post completely useless……..for that matter…this whole blog……….whats the point?….is anybody reading this?……lets end this now……

(before the office was built. Plank of wood for desk, pen and pad for work)

JUST JOKING!

Wooooo, I know how to bring on the heat. Anyway, Ive been working for Nothing since (almost)the very beginning of its existence. Before the cardboard office, before the mass PR hysteria, before any of us knew all of the goodness that’s been squeezed out of Nothing would actually happen. But, all Bas and Michael’s (the big bosses) hard work has paid off and I feel really humbled to be a part of it (no, they won’t be reading this blog)

(I feel like i’m using to many brackets in this post)

(Im gonna keep this short, but if you do go on the website make sure you find my section to see my cheeky face, a little bit about how working here came to be and a short video put together by myself about my time here at Nothing)

(More soon).

Why I wanted an internship and why I chose not to use the University’s help.

When I heard that Huddersfield offered the opportunity to do a sandwich year within the course I immediately knew that I was going to do it for the following reasons

- to extend my time as a student for as long as possible
-
- to find out what working in the creative industry is like so I can create a CV that potential employers will actually find interesting, not just

‘I worked at Sainsburys for 4 years and can pull a mean pint’.

That was it really.

I knew that I would be nowhere near prepared to go into the working world, creatively and portfolio wise, with only another year of study left.

So, I began trying to get my placement by going to one of the placement seminars that the university puts on, getting completely bored and leaving early. From what I gathered, I needed to send out a CV to some companies and sign up to whatever placement links the university already had.

Some might say that I was stupid to walk out on these seminars because of the great links to ‘companies’ just waiting for me, by going to these seminars. HOWEVER, I wasn’t convinced that the links were all they were hyped up to be……..The example of a placement that we were shown in my class, as a taster of what could await us by taking on a placement, was a guy who worked for a church doing graphic design for a year and produced a logo and a style guide for it.

What appeals to any designer about that sentence?

It would be wrong of me to say don’t go to these seminars, because im sure that the university has lots of churches for you to go to and will secure your sandwich degree.

Above is the CV I sent out to my potential bosses, I have no idea how this got me a job, I guess it looks alright aesthetically, but if you want to read the shit that’s on there, drop me a line and I will gladly share it with you.

Some things about placements

First of all, if you have the opportunity to undertake a placement/internship year in your studies as a graphic designer, or any kind of designer for that matter, DO IT!

Why? WHY? I guess you wont know for sure until you’ve done it. But im gonna try and nail a few (of which there are many) of the good points down for you.

+ A diploma probably won't get you a job on its own. Work experience will.

+ You will learn WAY MORE than you ever will as a student

+ You meet lots of nice and more importantly experienced people. The phrase ‘its not what you know, its who you know’ has never become more true whilst on this internship

+ You get to feel dead smug whilst your other shittier peers are back at university

+ Getting paid – you can be -500 pounds rather than -1500

+ Having the opportunity to work on cool shit

+ Getting work published in actual magazines and such, not just your make belief work

I will elaborate on each of these points throughout the course of the blog, which is coming along like a speeding bullet I might add.

The image above is the entrance door to my first internship at a company called 'Wellcreative'. I don't know many offices with a big orange rotating door, but thanks to my internship, now I know at least one.