Cut & Paste

It'd had been our first night out in a while so no surprises that we didn't roll back to the hotel till near on 4:30am after Cut&Paste's first ever event in London!

As the brief description revealed on the home page, Cut&Paste is kind of like Pop Idol for designers, with 8 contestants, all from different backgrounds, battling it out for the crown.

Brick Lane's Truman Gallery provided an excellent (although a little cold!) venue and, given the fact the rugby was on, about 700 people meant a pretty good turn out too.

The comp kicked off at about 21:00 with the theme being currency. After two rounds of 4 contestants the judges kicked out half and we were left with 4 semi-finalists.

 Their theme was the Olympic rings - and what they mean for London and some controversial responses ensued!

We were then left with two finalists battling it out with "poking fun" as the subject with Tom Judd eventually being crowned champion.

You can view all the work at the Cut&paste website, here and if you fancy having go yourself there's still time to enter the online comp.

A great night for design and fingers crossed we see a few more events like this in the future.

Darren

Designers are wankers

No I haven't decided to turn on all those that keep us in business - Designers are Wankers is a book written by a chap called Lee McCormick, a product designer whom I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of week back. Lee, like many of us, is frustrated by how ill prepared design graduates are for the real working world and, unlike many of us, he's trying to help do something about it.

I attended a debate on the subject with Lee at Manchester's The Cirlce Club along side Dinosaur's CD Mark Beaumont and a fella from Salford Uni.

The debate raised some interesting points but best of all encouraged a wide variety of people to start a dialogue about the issue and hopefully this will plant a few important seeds.

Designers are Wankers now have a website that you can visit too www.designersarewankers.com . It's full of interesting people who are willing to offer genuinely insightful advice. If you've just graduated or are still struggling to find your path in the the design world, visit it. All the answers you need are on there - you just have to ask the right questions.

PS I might be involved in setting up a simular debate in Leeds over the coming months so keep your eyes peeled for info and drop me a line if you're interested in being involved.

Darren

Bloody students

Since we're now well into, what I and I'm sure countless others in my profession refer to as, the "student season" I thought it might be nice to explain our predicament and perhaps offer some (seemingly) much needed advice.

As soon as I get into my office I hit send and receive and look forward to seeing what lands in the Character inbox. Most of the time I'm excited about what we're about to receive but over the last few weeks, and doubtlessly into the summer months, we're hit with tens of applications from people who (if they read the copy we put together) know that they are not the right candidate for the job - and most of the time it is the recently graduated students that are the cuprites.

Now I can't blame them - after all you don't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket. The frustrating thing is though is ninety nine times out of a hundred I am never shown anything that makes me want to give them a chance.

You see we are a business and as such need to make some money (obviously). We do this by charging a fee to our clients once we successfully find them the right candidate for their role. We're not cheap either so our clients come to us to help them find very specific people – not the sort of people that would get in touch everyday. And there's the problem. Most top Creative agencies get more than their fair share of graduate CV's emailed directly to them so the chances of them wanting to pay Character (or any other agent for that matter) an additional fee for hiring are slim to none.

"But all your positions require experience so how am I supposed to get experience if no one will offer me a chance?"

A question we hear all the time and you're right, it isn't fair. But then again neither are a whole heap of other things.

The fact is that you have just spent the last 3 - 4 years at a university learning how to be a designer. Fortunately though, once you get a job, you'll learn more in 1 week than you did in the whole of that time – that's a whole other issue entirely though and not necessarily your fault either.

You've got to come to terms with this, you have no commercial experience but you should have (if you're going to make it) massive hunger, enthusiasm and a vivid imagination. This will go some way to make up for it.

Writing in your CV that you're young and enthusiastic isn't enough to persuade me though I'm afraid and neither is a couple of your "arty photos", abstract art work or the business cards you did for your mate's mum's mobile hairdressers.

Wake up and realise that you're trying to enter into an industry that is more heavily over-subscripted than any other I can think of and start thinking about what you're doing on a higher level.

This business is fundamentally about communicating. You've got to work on delivering a more insightful and better crafted message than any of your peers.

There are some fantastic resources out there for those of you that try to find it. Sign up for a student membership with D&AD, read Creative Review, Design Week, Campaign and The Drum (Vox pop in this week's issue asks, "Are graduates ready for agency life?" ) religiously. Make sure you know what's hot on theFWA.com and newstoday.com

Work harder over the next six months than you ever did during your schooling. Read reviews, make phones calls, form you're own opinions on peoples work and work harder at your own.

If you send us something that genuinely excites and shows real promise, I'll guarantee to bend over backwards to help you get onto the ladder.

Before you do send me another email though, at least find out my name first!

Good luck to all of you.

Darren

D&AD Awards 2007

A week has past since our industries biggest awards night, The D&AD's. If you haven't caught up with the runners a riders then read on my friends and see what we made of it all.

Unfortunately we didn't make it to the night itself (new business, money bla bla bla) but all the results are up and available to view at the D&AD website, www.dandad.org

First up in the integrated category it's worth mentioning the runlondon campaign where Nike attempted to settle the age old battle of North vs South through the medium of running. Being a runner myself I liked it and pulling together a campaign rolled out over so many platforms can't be easy. It's nice to see that recognised – shame about the result though!

TV

The TV categories featured familiar names. One stand out for me was the Leo Burnett Italy spot "underwater world". I've seen this on British screens and thought it was stunning. It's beautifully art directed a great sound track. Fallon and Sony featured again, this time with "paint" the follow up to balls but couldn't bag a pencil this time round. A great concept with massive visual impact but unlike "underwater world" I've always thought the soundtrack lets the piece down, a criticism I've heard levelled at it in the past. Worth mentioning Ogilvy and Mather's "transvestite" which was only shown in the US, this had me, to coin a phrase, laughing out loud!

Print

The much loved Marmite "love it or hate it campaign" was again nominated, this time presented as Dermot Flynn illustrations of famous people/places we either love or hate – personally I can't stand the stuff but I think, despite being one of the longest running campaigns, these ads show it still has legs.

At quirky little ad for Lego (a twist on the famous builders poster) and an arresting series of posters for Amnesty International were others worth a mention.

Scottish agency GRP who triumphed as the Grand prix winners at this year's Roses awards got their mitts on a pencil with their work for NHS Glasgow and partners. I must say I wasn't sure about this on the night of the Roses but having now seen the work close hand I am completely sold. The attention to detail and the authenticity of the execution is truly exceptional and I think it will serve well in getting the intended message across.

Onto one of only 2 black pencil winners on the night and it's for best use of illustration for German agency Kolle Rebbe Werbeagentur GmBH with Eva Salzmann's as the illustrator and their work for War Orphans. It's a highly emotive piece and I think the sort of thing to really provoke a reaction. I showed my girlfriend it and she said it was horrible! Is that what they are looking for? Probably so I would suggest.

Another piece I thought stood out over the summer was Nick Georghiou's shot for the "St Wayne" poster which picked up a nomination in the best photography category.

Viral

Viral is now and a bigger shortlist than ever before. Sky One's "come home to the Simpsons" piece I saw a while ago and I must say it still brings a smile.

The first to make a deeper impact though was the Abbott Mead Vickers piece for breast cancer awareness. The impact of the closing seconds is huge and really brings home the message, "anyone" and I think communicates fantastically well to both male and female. "A little bit rude" by Publisis is cute enough, I remember the girls in the office going nuts over Ogilvy and Mathers' work for Dove when that was doing the rounds last year, "fingerskilz" will be something most football fans will get a kick out of (sorry!) and "web 2.0" is an another interesting use of the current trend for stop motion animation, although I must say I think I've seen about enough of it now.

Brand

I wanted to mention the identity for (RED) delivered by Wolf Olins. I've grown fond of this over the last 6 months or so and off the back of a tricky brief (how do you create an all encompassing brand that allows other brands to retain their own identity within it?) it only seems to grow stronger.

Digital

The second black pencil winner appears as a website for Nike+. The site is good looking enough but it's the way in which the user is invited and participates in this new virtual world that is really clever. The product itself is quite amazing (A chip in your trainer communicates with your iPod telling you how fast and how far you have run etc) and the site really builds on this unique technology by pulling users together and enabling them to compete against each other as individuals, teams and even countries. You can track your own and others routes, times and performances over time and get tips from Nike endorsed athletes on training regimes and even what their own "power songs" are.

A tribute to how successfully the site works is me; I actually went out the day after and bought the bloody thing!

There's plenty of stuff that I haven't commented on so if anyone has an opinion post a reply, it would be great to hear what you all think.

To see the full list of winners visit: www.dandad.org

Until next time.

Darren

The Roses advertising awards

I know this is a bit late, since the Roses were back on the 20th, but I thought it would be worth sharing my opinion on the night and the work on show.

Admittedly I wasn't around to see it all as I slipped away into the night at around 11:15pm and I don't think they finished dishing them out until gone mid-night (again!). Anyway, on the night I have to that there was very little work that stuck in my mind but I agreed with the theory that the significant increase in entries means that the industry isn't in that bad a shape at the moment.

The bulk of the silverware (and gold and bronze ware) was carted up to Scotland as usual and The Leith Agency's never ending work with Iron Brew was once again heavily featured - perhaps this sticks better than most because the campaign featured my name sake Jason Scotland?

BDH..TBWA's press work for Wickes was in there for the second year running (which I think is great campaign and is bang on the money for the target market), I still can't believe its only appearance has been in press with never so much as a sniff in the TV categories.

Another big winner was the McCann Erickson poster for Addias. Simple idea but really communicates straight to the target audience - those poor sods in Manchester that are perennially rained upon!

A glimpse through this weeks "The Drum" or a visit to their site www.thedrum.co.uk will detail more winners so take a look.

Thanks to Lisa at The Drum for her hospitality (Can't believe I made the top table!). It was a new experience being sober at one of these events but a good one never the less.

If you were at the event and have an opinion on the good the bad and the ugly then post a comment!

Darren

Big news

The end of our third month and the news we've all been hoping landed this week; Character's first permenent job offer.

Keep your eyes on our blog for further details and perhaps a short interview with the lucky lady.

We've got other high level candidates interviewing at the moment as well so we're hoping for even more good news shortly.

Fingers and toes and eyes are all crossed.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Darren

More progress

Here we are, just over two months old and we're at the point of no return! Having spend the last two months "brand buliding" etc we need to get down to the serious stuff and start generating some Mu honey.

I've invested some time in joining a few myspace groups today and the ads we've got running on creativepool, design week, krop and FWA are yielding some decent response so hopefully the top draw candidates will be flying throught the door.

In the meantime keep your eyes peeled for our first placement which (fingers crossed) will be happening very soon!

If anyone reads this and has a good idea who the next David Carson or Trevor Beattie is then please get them to give me a call!!!!!!!

Speak soon

Progress

Well we are now making some progress! Business cards, letterheads and website are all here and the telephone has even started to ring - good god! Next week will be a big week for the business and by the end of it we should be able to see much better where we might be heading. For those friends of mine, I should have the business account set up by the end of the week, meaning I can finally get paid and finally get out for a couple of beers! Cabin fever anyone?

Blast off !

Character Creative has now been trading for little over 1 week and those of you that don't know, Character is my (Darren Scotland) first leap into the world of business. We're a recruitment agency for the creative industries by the way.
A friend of mine suggested sticking something up on myspace so here we are. I've played around with lines of code all afternoon to to see if I could get the place looking more inviting but something tells me it might be an on-going process.
So anyway, those of you that are interested/bored enough to spend any of your time checking this out please do pop back in from time to time. Hopefully this space can become useful for all of us and I'll try and keep regular updates for those that are interested in my success or failure!!

See you soon I hope.

Darren