Congratulations Teeside University

Congratulations go to Teeside University for picking up the Outstanding Employer Engagement Initiative at this years Times Higher Education Awards and for going on to be named University of the Year - a great achievement.

Talk Talk – A postscript to the Thoughtful 6 project

Design tutor and brainchild behind the Thoughtful 6 project, James Corazzo, has written a piece for D&AD's blog which examines the project six months on from when it started.

You can read it here.

And you can watch the film D&AD made about the Thoughtful 6 project here.

Times Higher Education Awards 2009

We're delighted to announce the Thoughtful 6 project has been shortlisted in this years Times Higher Education Awards in the Outstanding Employer Engagement Initiative category.

A big pat on the back for Principal, Lynn Merilion, as well as Mel Spooner, James Corazzo, Ian Parkin, Gary Spicer and Keith Alcock from Stockport College for making the project happen.

We'd also like to thank Laura, Dion and Greg at D&AD for their time and support, as well as Mark at CR for shining their spotlight on the project.

The winners will be revealed at a gala dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London on 15 October 2009.

Are you a dog with a flash waistcoat?

More good stuff over at Creative Review. James McNulty (a Wire fan we guess) puts across the argument for ditching your standard portfolio in favour of a digital one. You can read the article here.

We’re always impressed with students who have got their work together on a neat looking website, and we’d encourage the one’s who haven’t made the digital leap to get their work online in some shape or form. But don’t ditch the books just yet. Having both options is probably the best way to go for now if you're a predominantly print-based design student.

We’ve had students come to us with teeny tiny laptops that don’t really do the work justice, and have us all straining our eyes over a large table to see what’s going on. A nice A3 folder would have been preferable here.

We’ve also had students come to us with great folders, but with flat storyboard animation/film concepts in them, that again don’t do the work justice. A laptop would have been good in this situation.

Realistically the majority of students can’t afford a laptop each to cart around to interviews, but at least if you have your work online, there’s the option of saying to your interviewer ‘Here are my storyboard ideas...I'm afraid I don’t have a laptop, but if you have a mac free, I can show you the film online if you’d like’.

Personally, if we liked the person and the ideas, we’d run to get our own laptops to see the work as it was intended to be seen.

Graduates: What else do they need to learn?

Creative Review has some more interesting views regarding graduates on their blog.

Take a look here.

D&AD filming part 3

D&AD filming part 2

Here's a few thoughts from the Thoughtful 6.

D&AD filming part 1

Laura Woodroffe and Dion Joy from D&AD recently interviewed everyone involved in the Thoughtful 6 project for a short piece which was shown at New Blood.

There wasn't enough time to show all the filming at New Blood, so here's a few extracts.

Thoughtful thanks to Laura and Dion for allowing us to show the video.

How do you organise placements?

There's an interesting debate and lots of good advice concerning student placements, over on Creative Review's blog.

48 sheet smartcode

48 Sheet Code from Thoughtful on Vimeo.

Here's one of the tests we did for the 48 sheet code.

New Blood, Sweat and Tears by James Corazzo

This years D&AD New Blood at London Olympia was bathed in brilliant sunlight for three days but the (metaphorical) dark clouds of recession were never far away from most conversations. It’s almost impossible to say whether less industry attended this year, and even if that was the case, should we take this as a barometer of graduate opportunities? (personally I think the Harry Potter like Olympia tube station didn’t help).

As always the work ranged from the truly excellent to the good, the bad and sometimes painfully ugly. Noticeably the production values seemed to have gone up a notch almost across the board – as one Creative Director remarked, “some of the presentation levels are exceeding what we put in front of clients”.

But what about the graduates? New Blood is a platform that makes London a real possibility for graduates based further a field. And this year we had a number of students offered placements and commissions. But New Blood is also a baptism of fire, with nearly 100 universities displaying their finest graduates it makes for a crash course in what you're really up against – if it hadn't already dawned on 2009’s graduates it will have now.

Colour Chart Codes

The smartcode 6 sheet posters for Tate Liverpool's summer exhibition Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today have been printed and should be going up any day now.

The idea behind the campaign is the belief that a modern gallery can do more than just hang pictures on walls and throw open their doors. Audiences can be engaged with the artworks in new and exciting ways.

The campaign uses smartcodes made from cut up colour chart swatches. These codes not only deliver the ambience of the exhibition they also link potential visitors to video clips of the works on show via their mobile phones.

And although the idea has an attachment to paint and painting there is also a connection to the digital artists on show, such as Cory Arcangel and Angela Bulloch.

If you haven't got a smartcode reader already you can download the free i-nigma reader to your mobile.

Go to www.i-nigma.mobi on your mobile. i-nigma will automatically identify your handset type, download and install the i-nigma reader.

iPhone users can download the free NeoReader app from the App Store - it only takes a moment to install.

(We found the NeoReader app works better with datamatrix codes than the Barcode app.)

The video is free to download but standard mobile internet charges may apply.

Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today runs until 13 September 2009. It's a fabulous exhibition for all designer types with an interest in colour be it fashion, graphics or architecture. And oddly enough youngsters would love it too.

Thoughtful thanks to Christoph Grunenberg, Jemima Pyne and Ian Malone at Tate Liverpool for allowing us to film the gallery. Chris Chadwick and Wes Storey for being as helpful as ever behind the camera. And digital darlings Que Pasa who worked with us on delivering the video content using their Mobrool platform. When it comes to delivering a mobile campaign, you'd be hard pressed to find a more creative, flexible and friendly team.

The Thoughtful Six at New Blood

A few months ago, Laura Woodroffe and Dion Joy from D&AD interviewed the Thoughtful Six and design tutor, James Corazzo for a short film which will be shown at New Blood.

New Blood is a graduate recruitment fair created by D&AD. Design studios and advertising agencies have free access to the exhibition, ensuring graduates gain maximum exposure to kick start their careers.

New Blood is held at Olympia National Hall, London, from Monday 29 June until Wednesday
1 July 2009.

The Thoughtful Six and Stockport College would like to thank Laura and Dion from D&AD for their tremendous support of our project.

The People’s Champion

Last year whilst we were in the process of picking six students that would become the Thoughtful 6, we gave the second years a one week brief. We asked them to come up with some innovative promotional ideas for innocent drinks which would be filmed and sent down to Dan at innocent for him and the creative team to look at. The students did really well, and there were some great ideas in there.

On a separate note, we’d been meaning to catch up with our friend Row from innocent for a chat and a cuppa. Row’s the People’s Champion at innocent and is based up in Manchester. She’s been promising to bring us one of her renowned homemade cakes too, so we asked her to come in today to meet the Thoughtful 6 in their last week, and thought it’d also be a great opportunity to get the student’s ideas in front of her instead of sending them down. 

Well, Row didn’t disappoint and brought us a big tub of homemade blueberry muffins (the biscuits we brought couldn’t compete) as well as a few boxes of smoothies. She then talked to the students about the how innocent started, and what she does there. Being the People’s Champion means Row communicates directly with their customers, and she told us about the busy few weeks she had after innocent had announced this. You can tell what she must have been up against after reading some of the blog comments. It’s clear to anyone who meets Row that she embodies the ethos of what innocent are about, and probably has smoothies running through her veins. 

She also talked about the process of how they write their labels, and invited us to have a go at some. That’ll be our summer gone. One interesting rule they have is to never ever ever (even if you want to shout), use exclamation marks. Dan says that you shouldn’t have to tell people that you’re trying to be funny, you should just be funny, which kind of makes sense.

Anyway, we had a good chat for an hour, and then finished it off by showing some of the second year’s innocent ideas. Row really liked them, so well done second year’s. We gave her a disc with all the ideas we didn’t have time to show.

Thanks again Row, next time we’ll bring the cakes!

Happy 2nd Birthday

Yesterday saw the 2nd Birthday of Richard Wilson's sculpture Turn the Place Over at Moorfields, Liverpool L2 2BL. To celebrate cake artist David MacCarfrae (right) made his version of the artwork including an actual rotating ovoid. The radical intervention into architecture is now an established icon of Liverpool's extensive public art offer.