Tom's personal branding on his Behance Portfolio page
It sometimes feels like the good news never stops coming and this week the First Years are keen to get in on the act.
We're delighted to discover that Tuomas Watkins has been invited to take part in Adobe's 'Creative Jam' meet up for New creatives having been discovered through his
Behance portfolio (which has had nearly 300,000 views, by the way). It sounds good anyway, but it sounds even better when you realise he was picked out specifically as one of the Top 20 new creatives in the whole UK.
From now on we'll call him Sir and make sure not to look him in the eyes.
A snippet of Tom's D&AD entry for the Body Shop - see the whole campaign HERE
In the meantime, you can follow Tuomas' adventures at Creative Jam by watching the whole event live
HERE as it is a live streamed programme.
If you feel like finding out more but only 140 characters at a time, Creative Jam will also be on twitter using the hashtag #CreateNow
Find out more about Creative Jam by clicking
here.
Every year at around this time we welcome a host of excited, eager students who are about to get on a rollercoaster they hope will drop them in the centre of the Ad Industry three years from now.
It's a special time, welcoming a bunch of new faces into our family, and what better way to welcome people into your family than make them prance up and down wearing T-Shirts with their name on?
And what's even better than that?
Taking pictures of them and plastering them on the internet, of course.
So, here we go. A few of our new intake, looking very cool indeed.
Viki 'what are you looking at' Willis in full debate mode.
In order to be good at Creative Advertising you need to be able to construct a good argument. Constructing good arguments requires looking at things from all sides and only when you fully understand your subject can you create innovative and persuasive advertising strategies.
That's why the Creative Advertising course holds an annual Great Debate competition between the Level 1 and 2 students. The students have to know the subjects they will be debating inside out and be able to present an equally good case for and against their subject matter. The students don't know which side of the argument they will be promoting until they enter the 'debating arena' and only have a couple of minutes to compose themselves before the battle of minds begins. Preparation is key and the students that have done the most extensive research will inevitably progress the furthest in the competition.
'A-Levels easier to pass now, yes or no'?
'Which would win, a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?'
The competition runs at a hectic pace with second years and first years squaring off against each other whilst the third years sit in judgement and decide which teams proceed into the next round. The questions range from the esoteric to the plain bizarre and a successful debater doesn't allow their personal feelings to enter into the discussion – it's all about creating the strongest argument.
After much heated debate thirty six teams were whittled down to just two, Joe Lovett & Becky Cartey Vs Harry Price & Alicia Job making up an all first year final. After a titanic struggle Joe and Becky emerged as this years Great Debate champions and will get the chance to defend their crown in next years competition.
Two Norwegian internationals were on the first year team this year.
180 minutes, 36 teams and 5 debates all leading to...... the final!
All this debating is great practice for developing a sound advertising brain and keeps everybody sharp. Now, which is best, poster advertising or social media?
One of the hardest things to do as a creative, but busy, individual is keep a strong momentum. You constantly need ways to stay creatively busy by changing the type of activities you do.
Doodling, for example, is lots of fun but also very stimulating and, when that doodle is with a large group can be a great way of connecting people who do not necessarily know each other that well.
The Creative Advertising Society are always coming up with ways they can bring every year group closer together and recently they held a GIANT DOODLE event.
Everybody took their shoes off, gathered round some huge sheets of paper and let all their worries slip away as they responded, pen in hand, to the various DOODLE INSTRUCTIONS they were given by the Society team on hand.
What resulted was somewhere between an explosion in a Sharpie factory and Banksy's first graffiti lesson but it was nevertheless energetic, momentum building and very, very social.
On a wet October afternoon the Creative Advertising 2nd and 3rd years took over the studio to run a session designed to help new 1st years feel at home on the course.
The session, organised by Emma Thomas (2nd Year) paired new 1st years with their elders in the years above so they could have a students perspective on what it's like to be a student in Lincoln and particularly on this course.
It's always important to us that no individual or year group becomes separate from the course values and it becomes particularly useful for everybody to know everybody else when, in a few years, they are looking for their first contacts in the industry.
Who knows? This could be the start of a (few) beautiful friendship(s) and the people our 1st years connected with in this session could be the contact the one to bring them in on placement when they leave.
Thanks so Emma and her team for such a rewarding afternoon.
Here's a post from BA (Hons) Creative Advertising lecturer Brian Voce:–
Over the first three weeks our new students have been busy examining the essence of visual communication in the ‘FUNdamental Sessions’.
They have been exploring the very basics of visual language and communication, investigating and discussing how line, colour, layout (composition) and type can communicate a message or association to an audience.
Amongst the many ways they explored this were: drawing responses to music using only line; communicating feelings and emotions with only colour and shape; and investigating typography and type styles to visually illustrate the meaning of words.
You can see some of their typographic experiments here (the ‘post its’ denote group favourites which we discussed and debated in greater depth). Thanks here to everyone for contributing to what became lively and informative discussions!
We had interesting work and good ideas well done everyone.
This week we received a boatload of new first years, all eager to prove they have what it takes to make it in Adland (the industry, not the advertising related theme park, with such rides as the Barclays Waterslide et al.).
As usual we put them through their paces with a round of form filling and photographs followed by the greatest pub quiz of all time, complete with miming, choirs and a little bit of Pictionary to boot.
From this point on the fun does not stop but the focus is turned dramatically towards rewiring their brains in the way only we know how.
Stay tuned: eager, hungry, energetic young minds have checked in for training.
