J O U R N A lM A T H E W S C O T TY E A RT W O

My Top Ten Significant Educational Experiences

Design is not my life and I don’t enjoy it

(that much...)

I think I will start this educational journey by portraying my first significant 2nd year educational experience in the style of the person in which I am discussing. His name is Craig Oldham and apparently good communication is just shortening everything into unnecessarily provocative bullet points that make little sense on their own. Let’s give it a go.

CRAIG OLDHAM LECTURE

Got a [FUCKING] job at the [FUCKING] chase (apparently a good design agency, I didn’t know this)

Likes [FUCKING] swearing

Hates [FUCKING] ego wanking lectures where they just show their own work

Be [FUCKING] memorable

Graphic Design is the most [FUCKING] democratic form of work

Any [FUCKER] can do it

The best designers are great [FUCKING] communicators

It’s a [FUCKING] intellectual discipline - all about [FUCKING] thinking

David Carson is self taught and defined a whole [FUCKING] generation of designers

Important to just have a [FUCKING] go and do it

[FUCKING] parents split when he was at University - could explain personality weaknesses e.g. foul mouth and a smoker

[FUCKING] collaborate with people and make it better

Forget [FUCKING] grades and fucking right and wrong

Stay well [FUCKING] open and encourage fuckers to comments and discuss your ideas

[FUCKING] show off yourself, say I am [FUCKING] brilliant and I want to do better - Push the [FUCKING] boundaries

Explain it to some [FUCKER] you have never met before

Don’t follow [FUCKING] trends - they will go out of fashion as will your work

Placements are the [FUCKING] key (Really? If only I knew this before...)

[FUCKING] huge over supply of graphic designers in UK - 75,000 design jobs, 15,000 design students every year

Experience the [FUCKING] design industry and get some [FUCKING] perspective

It will be a killer, and a chiller,

and a thriller, when I get the Gorilla

in Manchester

9.After the end of the term coming up to Christmas I was at my wits end with the course. We had just finished a traumatic group project which took my stress levels to new heights. I was ready to pack it all in. Personal and financial issues were certainly a contributing factor. I knew I needed to get a job and for two main reasons. A) to get some regular money in my pocket and alleviate some of the pressure on my parents to support me and B) arguably more importantly, to improve my social spectrum and create a world for myself outside of University and Halls.

Even with a very impressive hospitality and catering CV it initially proved difficult to find work, however a ray of sunshine beamed through the search results on GumTree to find me. It was an ad for Gorilla Bar Manchester. I had always wanted to work in a busy cocktail bar and now was my chance. Fortunately, I got the job and it has had a really positive impact on my time in Manchester. Even though the 6am finishes were hampering my ability to keep up my robot-like punctuality, I actually found it improved my motivation for the course as I had less time to be bored looking at the uninspiring work on my Mac screen and instead had money in my pocket to go out and enjoy Manchester a bit more.

Hopefully this along with an adult, non-student-hall flat next year will put me in an even more professional mindset to do the best I possibly can in my 3rd Year.

An Apple a day keeps the student at home

It’s no secret, I’m sure, that the computer and printing facilities at MMU aren’t exactly ground breaking but it doesn’t take away from the fact that it is incredibly frustrating, especially coming up to deadline periods, to do the simplest of tasks.

For example, I entered the MMU building at 11am one Monday morning with my InDesign file ready on Dropbox to be downloaded and printed. I thought, “I’ll walk in the building, sit down at a computer, open the file, click print, walk to a printer and smile as my beautiful graphic work prints out”. This of course couldn’t be further from the truth, 7hrs later, I scrapped the whole process and went back to my flat where my 2012 i7 2.7Ghz, 256SSD, 4GB DDR3 RAM and Kodak A4 Printer Scanner (total cost £1,500) were sitting. I soon realised that I never needed to leave my flat at all and could do it all there.

Next year I will be investing in an A3 printer so that I’m not so badly effected by MMU’s appalling lack of facilities. How on earth can you spend £34 million on a huge new building and simply dot a couple old Macs and PC’s about for good knows how many courses to share. It’s utterly ridiculous and another shining example of the broken, profit driven university system we are stuck in at MMU. So if you want to come to University and do Graphic Design, remember to budget about £1,500 for a good mac and A3 printer.

Stress / Strain = Why?I’ve recently come to terms with the fact I don’t deal with stress very well. I think it could have stemmed from the medication I had to take for my skin condition when I was 18. It led to a heightened level of anxiety and some rather unpleasent panic attacks. I am able to deal with these bursts of anxiety fairly competantly now but some of the effects stress has on my body still persist. It mainly causes me to become nauseous, which in turn has a negative impact on my eating, sleeping and work rate.

I am continually trying to improve this aspect of myself by dealing with stressful situations in an organised, logical and straight forward manner. I don’t allow myself to become worried or concerned about the issue. Initially I thought this would make me become ludicrously laid back to the point where nothing gets done, but I couldn’t of been more wrong. Instead it has had a really positive impact on my work allowing me to think more clearly and ultimately get more work done. I think this is because I’m a happier person when not stressed and can motivate myself much more easily.

Also, being a bit older than my peers means that I am much more used to responsibility where you simply HAVE to get things done.

The only occasion this year where I slipped up was becoming too laid back to my approach to group work. This entails a much more hands on approach that I hoped would not be necessary in second year. I realise this was a naive mistake now and will rectify it for next year. With regards to my personal work, I feel I have stricken a good balance and I am confident of my working strategy for third year.

Widen letter spacing

Add froth to prosecco cocktails

Put title and icons under drinks - currently like a lid

Make key look more like bar layout

Whats red snapper doing on its own?

Finesse, Finesse, Finesse.

I’m really looking forward to spending more time finessing my final work in 3rd year. I was glad that, towards the end of the year at least, we have spent more time focusing on the finessing of ideas and design work. I felt especially proud of my book cover designs, the branding project outcome and the final Unit X Individual Response outcome. I think with more time and a bit more planning I could produce some really good work next year and hopefully will be able to show it off better in my portfolio.

I think the end of the second year has signaled the last hurdle for me in terms of

motivation and I hope to view the third year as one long 400m sprint, nailing project after project and conducting myself with the utmost professionalism.

I may still by hyper critical of both myself and my colleagues but I know this can only by a good thing for when I leave university. Although it may be tiresome for your (the tutors) ears, at the end of the very cliched day, I think where you set your ambition is where your standards will follow.

I will be interested to see how this effects my relationship with yourselves and my fellow students by the end of the year.

One of the biggest factors effecting my decision not to become a graphic designer when I leave is the reliance on technology. More importantly its the idea of being glued to a Mac screen all day editing things ‘n’ stuff ‘n’ that in the Adobe Media Suite that I detest. Whether its the fact that I get eye strain from time to time or that I care about maintaining a healthy posture through out my life, the concept of sitting down in one spot all day bores me to the core.

A little bit of compuer work is ok and I think if my future job entailed a good balance of both logical, thought provoking, problem solving computer work and a bit of manual labour I would be happy. This is why I have leaned so much towards the hospitality and catering sector in the past few years, I feel it strikes a nice balance between what you might call physical and pratical work and also your intillectual and technical based skills.

The Number Works is a small Pub Company from the West Midlands, which specialises in good value food and fast service. I would describe it as a simplified Wetherspoons with a bit more heart and personality. I have worked for them for many years and have seen the company grow from 1 pub to 8 in the past couple years. I have been fortunate enough to work alongside the Managing Director and developed the companies website along with all their computer systems and some graphic and marketing material.

It has been a great experience for me and I can’t wait for this summer where I have organised to learn about accounting, cooking in the kitchens and will be working closely with the Managing Director carrying out Marketing and PR work for them. I have learnt a lot about the pub industry and hope to continue to do so through the summer and 3rd year. I definitely see this type of business as the kind of business I would like to get into once I finish at University. I feel this is mainly because it is a very hands-on, practical industry that requires strong leadership and excellent communication skills. The main reason I wanted to come to University to study Graphic Design was so that I would have all the skills necessary to push a business forward and become a highly valuable member of staff to any company.

4. The Number Works just fine for meComputers

are useless.

They only

give you answers.

- Picasso

It would be fair to say I have been relatively critical of MMU in the past 2 years. I think this is mainly due to my impossibly high standards and my unrealistic expectations of the entire University set up. My hopes of meeting lots of ambitious, zany creatives seem to have faded all together now and I feel I have finally able to accept that I am here and must just get the best I can out of it. I am especially pleased I have not yet lowered my ambitions or my standards to where MMU would like me to be and with a new burst of energy and fresh motivation, I say bring on 3rd year! I strongly believe that as that twinkling light at the end of a long and dreary tunnel looms ever closer my motivation and work ethic will just grow and grow, especially if the summer goes as well as I hope.

3. Third Times A Charm

It was a cold winters evening, the christmas period was well and truly upon us and the term was rapidly coming to a welcomed close. Soon enough, my flatmates and I would part for our christmas ventures not to be seen for a month or so. It was clearly a good opportunity to go out for a festive get-together meal and celebrate are largely trouble free first term together in Briarfield Halls. However, due to it being a Friday night and in the middle of a hectic festive period with Restaurants packed full of overly-excited, not-seen-you-this-drunk-before kind of work parties it was impossible to find ourselves a table we wouldn’t be waiting over an hour for.

Fortunately for us, Wagamma’s radical seating policy allowed us to squeeze ourselves onto a table. I think Wagamma are similarly happy with their lack of Christmas Party appeal as the chance of whining, ungrateful office workers complaining how they don’t like Japanese food would be too greater risk for most managers to take at such a critical period in the retail calendar. Astonishingly it turned out we had a whiner amongst us, whos level of stubborn, childish immaturity was about to be fully exposed. He had decided before we even sat down that he disliked everything on the menu, even though after stating how much he loved BBQ chicken fajitas, the option of BBQ chicken wings at Wagammas seemed preposterous. Naturally this filled us all with rage, not only was he rude enough to refuse to eat but after a quick sip on a can of coke he got up and left all together. What a prick.Anyway, I chose the Firecracker, which, clues in the title, was ludicrously hot. It was like molten lava on my tongue and I knew

that the white hot spices were going to do me no good whatsoever “downstairs”. The reason I mention this is not because like many people on Instagram I want you to know about every meal I have, it’s more because it had a large effect on my ability to escape 10 very angry lads who chased me through Manchester CIty Centre soon after.

Let me explain. Once we left Wagamma we started to walk back through the fairly busy but seemingly feastive streets of Manchester which was lit up with the twinkling lights from the irritatingly over-priced German Markets. As we did, and before we knew it a monstrostity occured. A lad about the age of 18 picked up his mates McDonalds Milkshake shouting “I’ll do it, I’ll do it!” and without a single thought going through his tiny skull he launched this milkshake at an innocent by stander. Potentially this person was on his way somewhere, perhaps to meet some friends or simply on his way home from a hard days work. Whatever he was doing, where ever he was going, he would be completing his journey with an entire carton of milkshake down his smartly dressed attire.

The lad then turned around to sprint off into the distant leaving yet another person on this god for saken planet to be unjustilly effected by the desperate lack of displine in modern day Britain. The thought of him getting away with it and laughing a way to his friends think he was the “big man” for chucking a milkshake at a stranger was too much for me to bare and will me up with a rage I didn’t know was there. I had milli-seconds to react and so as the red mist desended on my eyes I slugged him, and down he went.

Unfortunately, in my moment of haste what I hadn’t had time to calculate were the number of friends he was hanging around town with. Understandably they weren’t too pleased with act I had just performed and began to walk towards me with what I can only describe as “intent to hurt”. I ran of course as I didn’t want to become a statistic for the Metropolitan Police to hide from the press.

As poreviously mentioned, its evidently much more challenge to run for your life when you have a stomach full of red hot spices and liquid magma. So naturally I searched for an opportunity to escape from the angry youths and jumped into a fruit and veg van, where the owner was unloading his fruit and veg. Even with the loud barks from the pack of wolves waiting for their prey screaming “we’re gonna fucking kick your head in”, the fruit and veg man felt absolutely no sense of moral responsibility to protect an out of breath, well dressed citizen from these rather enraged chaps. Instead he considered the prospect of me damaging his onions as too greater sacrifice for the protection of a human life and threw be straight out the van.

The next few minutes were a blur of poorly excecuted punches, a genuine fear for my own life and a fustration at the lack of support I received from the Manchester public. Eventually and to my delight the gang skipped away after, I assume, they felt they had done enough damage.

OK, so what have we learnt from this. Well.. apparently being a social policeman in the city is not a very rewarding job!

No Justice for Social Police

The element of the course I have struggled with the most over the past 2 years is certainly the fact that in my opinion there is too much theory and not enough practice. You might find it hard to understand as I can see how coming from a more practical, professional environment where you are constantly restricted by “real world” factors, the idea of having free reign to do exactly as you please could seem an attractive prospect. But without this previous experience I can tell you it is not so appealing.

I live fora

live brief

Firstly, when you have practiced your profession to a high standard I imagine you know your style, your method of working and more importantly what you enjoy doing. Without this the prospect of a totally open brief with almost no boundaries can be a totally overwhelming experience, and I would argue I am not alone in this argument. Many people I have spoken to feel the same whether they say or not.

I decided to drop in on the talk by JDO Raw and the Basement Jaxx Group Discussions and I noticed a huge improvement in peoples ideas, motivation and work ethic. I can only put this down to

the fact that the brief had practical and professional potential and a possible monetary reward at the end of it. Personally I am not so interested in the monetary reward and so naturally I felt inclined to go for the MWM Creative brief which had a clear problem to be solved.

What was most wonderful about this brief was that I felt for the first time that I got it and I could produce a piece of work that answered the brief and was also something to be proud of visually. Yes it was by no means perfect and with some better photography skills and maybe an extra few days to finalise the tediously accurate design I

would have something even better. I was however still happy with my final outcome. I think that next year as I become faster and better at making those small design decisions I will become more prolific in producing solid design work. I, at no point, feel totally confident that my designs are in anyway groundbreaking or even boundary pushing but with enough effort and determination I should hopefully be able to keep up with the pace that my peers set.

The Four Big Challenges

WORK, WORK, WORK, THEN PLAY A LITTLE

University can often create an unrealistic way of living your life. Especially considering the fact that unless you have wealthy parents, the act of supporting yourself during your time here is essential. Therefore, considering such things as work experience, placements, extra carricular work can create a tsunami of stress your not suppose to experience until the day you have your first child. In many ways I think I have managed to overcome this challenge and although nothing is set in stone feel as though I could be on the path to securing myself a good job when I finish University.

It most certainly still feels like I have a big inbalance in my life with what can sometimes feel like work, work, work and not enough play. Is this my choice? Maybe. But then you have to ask yourself if you want to succeed is it a choice? Not so much. Especially if you want to acheive what I want to in the steve jobs-like time period I have assigned myself. This is the real balancing act. Not how hard I should work, but how hard in relation to the potential reward. Hopefully with my job being secured for next years return after hopefully a very fruitful summer, this balancing act will start to slow and I can create some sort of rewarding routine for myself. Lets hope so eh!

Challenge 1

Accepted.

IT’S ESSAY-ER THAN I THOUGHT

I think one of the most pleasing aspects of this year was my progress in the Contextual Practices element of the course. I found it much more interesting this year as the topics were broader and I felt I had a lot more freedom to construct an essay question I was genuinely interested in. Coming from a background of Maths and Science based subjects I’ve never felt hugely confident in my literacy skills but I was pleasantly surprised with a 68% score in my summative essay. In fact, I would of received a high 70 if it wasn’t for a few clumsy referencing mistakes. This is great news going into third year as we have an opportunity to spread our linguistic wings in a 6,000 word essay about almost any topic we like. Great!

In terms of the way I constructed the essay, I found throwing all my ideas and research down in a big word document and then refining it at the end had a big impact on me receiving a good grade for this essay. I hope to use a similar strategy next year and just improve on my referencing - I never have been much of a “by the rules” kind of guy.

Challenge 2

I’ll have a go...

BORE THEN QUARTER

Through out the degree I have struggled to find the most productive way of working, especially in the classic sketchbook form, which I think has led to a less than satisfactory presentation of my work ethic and development work.

Being an impossible perfectionist with a very little amount of patience I found it hard and very tedious to work in sketchbooks like other students were doing. The whole idea of collecting images, printing them out, cutting them up and sticking them in my book AND THEN annotating is abhorrent to me and frankly, I feel, couldn’t be a bigger waste of time. Also, due to the fact that sketchbooks hold little practical value to me and knowing I would never use them in a professional context I found it increasingly difficult to find the energy to work hard on them and make them look beautiful. However, I came up with a clever system that would transform this and give me the freedom to add as much work in as unstructured way as I like. I would simply build my own sketchbook full of annotated A4 printouts and random sketches, then come the end of the project would organise into one concise file, drill a couple of wholes in the end and bind with a well designed front and back cover for a professional looking finish.

I must say I was really pleased with the outcome and will definitely be using the same system next year. I have recommended it to a couple of the other students and they think it’s a great idea.

Challenge 3

Really?

Challenge 4

Oh, come on!

THERE’S ALWAYS ONE (OR FIVE)

Group Work. although it might not come across in the next few paragraphs I do actually enjoy working with people. But there is is usually a couple small factors that effect how pleasurable this experience is. Discipline, Productivity and Creativity. I don’t think these traits are too much to ask of 2nd Year Graphic Design students, in fact, getting them to do any work what so ever normally seems challenging. And on the odd occasion you might get an individual eager to do work and fill their sketchbook with meaningless development work, they are unable to think for themselves and just carry on blindly churning out generic design work.

Personally, I feel I am a natural leader and I really enjoy working in a productive team. I’m aware that when my team don’t respond to my every word with enthusiasm that I can become somewhat despondent and negative. However I maintain that this is an unrealistic dynamic that would never occur in a professional environment. It reminds me somewhat of the BBC reality TV show “The Apprentice” where a group of people all fighting for the same job with absolutely no loyalties or responsibilities to each other have to work as a team to achieve a collective goal. And they normally struggle. Without accountability there is no structure and without structure their is no cohesion.

The reason I don’t particularly want to panda to this type of unstructured, unproductive group dynamic is because it would require me to lower my standards and expectations of my work colleagues and from experience working in a professional environment this is no way to go. I refuse to become a less ambitious product of MMU. I know that when I leave and when I am faced with a “real life” team in which I have to motivate and lead, I will be able to do so successfully as they quite frankly will not be able to just go home at lunchtime or scroll through the catalog of Topshop.co.uk all day. To me, the argument of “we can’t be too harsh on them because they won’t come back” falls on deaf ears and is actually a counter intuitive way of teaching students. The bottom line is that people need to learn discipline and this does nothing for people that want to be their own boss.