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.

You can read it here.

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

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.

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.

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

Take a look here.

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.

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

48 Sheet Code from Thoughtful on Vimeo.

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