Know Design

During one of our recent Likemind coffee mornings I got talking about work experience placements with Jon Hickman from Interactive Cultures.

It’s something I’d been thinking about a fair bit over recent weeks so Jon asked if I’d jot down a few sage words of wisdom on getting the most out of a placement, for a website called Uni Survival which is run by one of his colleagues. So I did. And here it is: Getting The Most From Work Placements

Several weeks ago we took part in Kerning – a scheme to help graduates into industry.

Three recent graphic design graduates from BCU (Laurie, Aliya and Ning) each did a one-week placement with us to get a taster of what it’s like working in a small design studio.

As part of the scheme we were lucky enough to have Caroline Archer from UK Type (the masterminds behind the Plus Design Festival which starts today, hint, hint!) come in to work with the graduates on a group project we’d set. It was interesting to see the different ideas and perspectives each student – and indeed Caroline – brought to the project.

This week we’re very pleased to welcome Tina, a third year student from the Skolen For Visuel Kommunikation in Denmark. Tina’s on an internship with us for four months as part of her course and we’re really looking forward to having another designer in the studio – we’ve got quite used to having an extra person around the place.

Hopefully it’ll be a good learning experience for Tina … and for us too. Faded blue exercise books at the ready!

Visit many of Venice’s most popular tourist attractions.

Race across the Atacama Desert in a jeep.

Watch two seasons of 24.

Or if you’d prefer something a little less drastic (this is surely less drastic than two solid days of Jack Bauer?) and lot more creative, you can always take part in Film Dash – Chris Unitt’s 48 hour filmmaking challenge – which starts this Friday 17th October.

Intrigued? Have a look at the Film Dash website for more ...

Twitter is amazing. If you’ve not heard of or used it before I’d urge you to have a play.

It’s probably easiest to explain Twitter as a kind of mini-blogging tool; similar to Facebook’s status updates but without all the stuff like walls, adverts, poking and throwing sheep getting in the way ...

Once signed up you have 140 characters per update to do with as you will, and in your Twitter stream you can follow what fellow tweeters have to say. They may or may not follow you back but, as the title of this post suggests, Stephen Fry – yep, actual, real-life Stephen Fry – is following me! (As well as thousands of others, but still ...) He’s Twittering his way round the globe at the moment, making a new show called Last Chance to See which is all about endangered species. His current location: Kenya, filming white rhino. And I know this. Told you Twitter’s amazing!

Though I don’t lead as exciting a life as Mr Fry, so far through Twitter I have managed, amongst other things, to: virtually meet a whole load of interesting people; be followed by a comedy genius; tell the world what I’m having for lunch; snag some spare Book Festival tickets (Thanks Jon!) – and I’m currently in 140 character discussions about urban gardening.

Twitter – just like garlic bread before it – is the future.

As James is taking part in their Young Professionals on Arts Boards scheme, the folks at Arts & Business kindly invited us along to their awards ceremony at the Town Hall last night.

The Jaguar Arts & Business Awards celebrate the best collaborative projects between ... you guessed it, arts and business!

The evening’s musical entertainment was provided by Orchestra of the Swan, who I’d heard about but never actually heard until last night. They were great, playing the 20th Century Fox fanfare (complete with foot-stomping in place of drums!), several movements from a beautiful piece by Elgar, plus The Avengers theme tune which sounds amazing played live by a dozen assorted strings.

Back to the ceremony - we were pleased to see both The Big Picture (BBC, Jessops and Audiences Central) and the Aston Creative Development Programme (Aston Business School, the MAP Consortium and C&T) scoop the awards in their categories. Very deserving wins, we reckon. Not that we’re biased or anything, we just did the e-marketing and some print for The Big Picture and James is on the board of C&T ...

Anyway, here are the Audiences Central team, along with Kerry Endsor (who project managed The Big Picture) and the ladies from Rewired PR, celebrating their big win with bevvies at The Radisson!

We’re about to start trialling a forthcoming Business Link West Midlands/Birmingham City University scheme called Kerning – it’s a kind of KTP (Knowledge Transfer Partnership) thing.

Here’s how it’ll work:

A BCU graduate will do a placement with us and, for a couple of the days that they’re here, the university will organise for someone to come and teach both us and the student ... ummmm ... something! Okay, details are slightly sketchy just now – there’s definitely going to be an element of ‘find what works and then run with it’ I think!

To kick things off, we’ve been matched with a recent graduate called Laurie. He’s done some fantastic work and judging from yesterday’s meeting is also a fine fellow and a good fit for Supercool. His degree specialism was typography – a subject close to our hearts – so that’s going to be the main focus of Laurie’s time with us. (And what an apt topic for a scheme called Kerning!)

To use techy terminology, we’ve come to the project in between the alpha and beta testing stages really; there’s a loose framework for us to follow but how things go with us will influence how the whole scheme will be structured in future. So, it’s exciting to be involved right near the beginning.

The finer points are still being worked out but watch this space as we discover more about Kerning ...