OUGD602 | Personal & Professional Practice 3 | Placement Email Draft

Email Placement Draft

To Whom this may concern, 

My name is Katie Sung I am currently a final year Graphic design student studying at Leeds Art University.

I am looking for a placement around Easter (anytime from 26th March until Friday 13th April) for one or two weeks, or any time after June. If you are able to help me that would be great.  

I have covered the following experience from my degree course -  branding/logo design, packaging design, screen printing, photography, adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign and so on, UX design and Editorial design. There is a link to my portfolio - https://katie-sung.squarespace.com.

If I can provide any further details, please do not hesitate to contact me. 

My email address is ktsm.sung@gmail.com

Phone no. 07768392805

Thanking you in anticipation.

Kindest regards, 

Katie Sung 

The Email draft above will be sent to the list of design agencies and firms across: London, Manchester and Leeds. 

List of Design firms and Agencies:

Manchester

1. 999 Design
2. Thinkdesignagency 
3. Gorillastudio 
4. Bgn.agency 
5. Dcp-uk 
6. renfrewcreative 
7. Cubecreative  
8. Ahoy 
9. Loaf 
10. Dinosaur
11. Refinerygroup 
12. Creative sparks 
13. Rainbow 

London

1. Digital light ltd design 
2. Tough little graphics 
3. Design happy
4. Maydaylondon
5. Spinach design 
6. Pearlfisher 
7. R design
8. Marmalade London design 
9. Gloriouscreative
10. Love creative 

Leeds

1. Robot food 
2. Lord Whitney 

Screenshot of a few emails sent out to the following above agencies:

OUGD602 | PPP3 - Visiting Professionals - The Pop Up Agency, Abraham Asefaw

Summary
Abraham Asefaw of The Pop Up Agency is delivering a talk and workshop. He’ll cover designing how you want to live and work, the value of creativity and working globally. 

About - Abraham Asefaw

• Founder of the agency - older
• Originally from Sweden/grew up
• The pop up model - solving problems 
• 40 countries
• Based in London
• Needs & Values
• These values & needs created the agency 
• Solving briefs within 48hrs 

The intention of the agency

• To share/explain how to start up a business
• Abraham started the agency during school (University) 
• Check in expectation - concept 
• It about the state of mind 
• What happens to work during the day 
• How it is working in the environment of this industry

The Pop Up Agency

• Transparency - Reflection - Feedback
• Within the agency the employees have no designated roles 
• 15 Weeks, 15 Clients, 15 Days 
• Prototype this concept. Who needs this?
• Takeaways from these long hours of working 
• Naive enough & stubborn to see it through 
• 'We are a reaction of our time'

Question & Answer time

• To connect more - most people are linked to one another (e.g. CEO knows other CEOs & Directors to Directors
• It's common that most agency do not understand the business side of the agency
• Being a Student is the best time to experience/experiment 
• The reason of their concept of following '48hr' for completing a brief? The reason is as they were students, they had to do separate briefs during weekends. So the weekend only had two days to complete. 
• Choose London as the best location as it has Global intention 
• Try things - add strategy, design, communication 
• Bad at production and designs - lasted a year - No salary
• Good at the creative process - challenge to the production
• Creative consultant and creative training
• How to make this work? Idea of creating a board of adviser. 
• Look into the agency's own needs 
• Staying sustainable is extremely important for an agency and business 
• Salary to Expenses to savings have all been spilt into 33%.

• Brand needs processes 
• Sales, development, execute 
• Democratise creativity 
• What value are you providing 
• Value of guidance 
• Constructive feedback 
• Having mentors and advisers 

Last Q&A

• Is it the same people who started the agency still within the agency? Not the original 5 people at the beginning of the agency - lost of goals not the same attitudes or aims at the beginning of the agency. (There is always change within team members.) 
• In the agency their are currently 10 people but 2 founders 
• Their target audience are bigger brands 
• They mainly approach them - lots of public speaking, promoting themselves 
• No more pressure, confident as they had a experience 
• Only working one brief at a time. No multitasking
• Collaboration 
• Focus and an open mindset

Email 

Workshop

Brief Question - 'How can we create a business based on our needs and values

Learning more about the business side of owning and starting up an agency. By working in groups of 5 -7. The aim was to work together in a group by sharing and developing our ideas. For instance: all group members get a piece of A3 paper, we have 3 minutes to either draw or write our idea. Once the time is up we switch other to the person to our right paper. We can either develop their idea or start a new one. 

When everyone is done, we put it into a chart on which idea has the most impact but is difficult to product and vice vera. When we decide which one to present, we had to do a tweet explaining the idea to the class. 

OUGD602 | PPP3 - Visting Professionals - The Elephant Room, Shannie Mears and Will de Groot

Shannie Mears and Will de Groot of disruptive new advertising agency The Elephant Room are going to discuss identity and diversity, it’s value and their motivations and goals for starting their own ad agency.

Will de Groot - Co-founder & Cultural Strategist. will.degroot@theelephantroom.net.

Shannie Mears - Co-founder & Head of Talent. shannie.mears@theelephantroom/net.

• The Elephant Room is an advertising agency that started less than a year ago. 
• Located in London. 
• The Elephant Room is the type of agency which helps clients/employees to do what is liked than what they do not like. 
• Agency looks into more of the potential aspects than following age general and now have become out dated structure within advertising companies. For example, creating new roles such as 'Head of Talent'. 
• They look into different interests with the employees, interns and clients. Hence connecting to anyone with a creative background or knowledge. 
• 'Always look out of things that could potential collaboration with.' 
• Expanding network is extremely important & to never disregard any sort of work. 
• 'she says..' is a women advertising industry that focuses on feminism. 

Why We Exist? - The Elephant Room

• The agency tells the truth to their audience and clients. 
• Maintain a stable and strong bond with other designers/clients.
• Wanting to expand their advertising agency - currently five members only. 

Reaction to a Brand

• The agency explained how some advertising companies may promote or adverts a product in a matter which could be seen as offensive, racist and discriminative etc. 
• The example that they gave us was the H&M selling a kids hoodie which the black kid was modelling. It was the wording of the hoodies which stated 'Coolest Monkey in the jungle.' 
• This developed controversial status as it was implied that black people are seen as monkey/animal like. 
• The H&M apologised for the image 'The ad sparked a backlash on social media, with some calling it inappropriate, disgusting and negligent.'
• Even though the brand may of wanted diversity within their brand and may not purposely being racist. 

What's important within an advertising agency

• Researching subcultures. 
• Able to communicate to clients on: belonging, desires, promotion, etc. 
• Understanding the audience - be aware that audiences are aware of the forefront person who represents the product/brand. 
• For instance - Kendall Jenner was the forefront person who represented a Pepsi advert. - Get it wrong!

Shift - talk presentation in New Blood D&AD

• Is an organisation which involves European countries to allow diversity and young people to be able to meet and create. 
• It's important to find a mentor or find a peer mentorship. 

Other Companies

• Dyson - coming into lifestyle products like hairdryer than heaters, air conditioning etc. 
• Wileyfox - is a collaboration in a big group and importantly a team of people with various talents and backgrounds. 
• Do not under value. 
• Royal Mail which The Elephant Room is currently collaborating has come up with 'Rethink Ink and Creative lock in' scheme. 
• Royal Mail wants to highlight or promote more of traditional prints/printings. 
• Expanding print such as a print as a channel. 

How to get an internship?

•  When emailing design agency constantly nag with sending repetitive amounts of emails. 
• Sunshine agency is worth looking up. 

Live Brief - Wickes Colour Selection

Background

• Wicked want to re-imagine the customer experience for selecting colour and create a journey to replace the current approach that;s their stories. 

Task

• Disrupt the market to significantly grow in-store footfall and attract new customers to Wickes by: 
• Connecting and delivering the best and most simple way for customers who are shopping colours in stores. 
• Helping customers choose a paint colour scheme and get them to the tin that they need in the most intuitive and straightforward way of any retailer in the UK. 

Considerations

• It's about shopping colour, not tins.
• It's about schemes not just individual colours.
• It overtly caters for the different ways customers shop colour. 

Deadline

• Week today - Thursday 8th of Feb, midday.
• Format 5-6 pages of PDF.

Recommended agencies that do internships

• YCC
• Social fixt on facebook 
• Mad hand hack
• It's nice that 
• Creative Equals
• Outer Box
• Virgin Atlantic 
• The dots 
• Exposer scouts 
• Creative Access