From pits to pitch
On April 2015 ad axem as a guest of Toolkit startup 2 organize a workshop for new designers.
For me as a designer I always try to catch up workshops that seem interesting or are handled by designers I like their work even if the subject is on a different orientation than my field of work. But being honest here there is really a lot of workshops that failed their purpose for two reasons. The one is because they were too theoretical, while involved tutors spoke a lot about their achievements. Not a cool thing to happen on a workshop. The other reason is because of lack of time, which most of the time is a reasonable thing to happen and can’t be avoid.
So considering those kinds of things and organizing a workshop from the point of the audience we came with “from pits to pitch”.
The workshop was addressed to graduated students and junior designers who had already worked as freelancers, or worked on a team have earned their first money or maybe nothing of this has happened yet.
As Scrawled briefs, improbable delivery times, non-existent budget and curious characters are some of real situation out there on the work arena ad axem team and all the attenders lived together tree days in real conditions of work, with colleagues and competitors, competitions and deliverables from the first introductory meeting until the final pitch
The aim was, as attendees would leave the workshop, except of the first work that the new established teams would complete, they would have seen from complex work methodologies in the creative profession (agile) by simple tricks-of-the-trade that will bring closer to the aim: to live from what you love, you can choose your customers!
Day one: Clients from hell
The first day more less looked like an appointment in the psychology. Each of the young designers had to read to the rest of us a story that was given to him about a difficult situation on work. Each story was about different clients personalities. The strong personality, the client who doesn’t know what he needs, the one who want everything on no budget etc. The designer firstly had to give his solution to his story and then the rest of the team continue speaking each one from his point of you.
“Have you seen those Minions? I think they’re great! Could we use those on our branding?”
The brief
The first day ended given to designers a brief. The work that they had to accomplish in the rest two and half days. The brief was a competition about a marketing campaign for an Aegean island, Syros. Each team would have to propose their ideas concede ring exept of the characteristics of the specific island, aspects as money, time, materials and procedures.
The thing that designers knew was that the brief had some gaps, and some things weren’t defined well enough. The thing that they didn’t know was that this was actually a real project that ad axem designed from Syros municipality.
At the end of this procedure attendees had to be separate on teams each of those would have designers with different kind of skills to start the campaign.
Day two: Branding tips
The second day had a concentrated branding lesson for the teams. Students got familiar with meanings like brand analysis considering history and reputation, vision and objectives, strategy, competitive and axes on design, trends and « Triassic model impact product / service », target group and at last values.
Then they had the rest of time to organize their thoughts and their orientation on the campaign.
Day three : The big day
Each of those teams presented their ideas on any visual way they preferred like moldboards, sketches, and posters and show us what they would do to advertise Syros to potential tourist.
The interesting part here was that each of those teams had in mind at least one of the important (3-4) things we hoped they would consider. Which actually was a big success since there weren’t any wrong ideas or forbidden solutions just a Guided thinking if they could find the important clues.
After that we presented our design approach and show them the augmented reality cartes postales we designed for the marketing campaign of Syros.
While now the most important thing which left fort the end of the third day was those great little tips and tools to work easily on a team and collaborate with your client and of course our way of working the « agile » method.
For us in ad axem this workshop was a great experience. A workshop full of laughter, inspiration and sharing. While experts offer time and space to explore young designers creativity we guess that both them and us took the best advantage on those tree-days workshop learning most of all what would be to work on a field that you love!
Source: ad axem and toolkit startup 2
