Final thoughts

My overall experience for this module is positive and negative at the same time. The exhibition in the beginning was an amazing experience I do not have anything negative to say about it. It forced us to work together as a team and luckily everyone took this task seriously and did the absolute maximum for success. Although this module started successfully, when I got my work placement and after completing my first day I experienced my first disappointment. From this failure, I learned to be more specific with what I would like to do and what I choose to do. I should have waited longer to get a more suitable placement for my skills. After the failure I felt very stressed I lost all my hope and was not excited to start anything new. I had a lot of unsuccessful attempts to find a live brief or a new work placement. When the events management team reached out to me in the beginning of January I felt good about myself because they asked me personally. I got my motivation back while working on the designs for them. My collaboration with them is not over yet we are planning to finish everything by the end of February. I am looking forward to seeing what the event will look like with all my designs. It is a very good experience for me because I have never had to speak to a client face to face before. I have also noticed that I do not have a problem with e-mailing people which is positive because I had to send out a lot of e-mails for this module. The live brief for the events management team did improve my skills. I have only ever done two gifs before doing the other two for them, so it was great to see how I cope with things I am not so experienced in. I will try to find more live briefs to do in the future, so I can gain even more experience.

Third Outcome

My third outcome is a digital illustration about celebration. This one was a bit more difficult to come up with because I was running out of ideas. To get some inspiration I had a look through on Pinterest. I was looking at colour palettes, celebration party ideas, graduation and other invitation cards. In the pictures above, I put my main inspirations for my outcome. One of them is my inspiration for the colour palette in my own piece, the other one is a character of a graduating student and the last one is a wedding invitation card. The character of the graduating student helped me to think of ideas different to business people in suits. I liked the layout of the wedding invitation card. These inspirations helped me a lot to create something joyful and appropriate for the event. This illustration will possibly be put on posters, leaflets or e-invitations. It took me about three to four days to finish my piece. The clients were very pleased with it and I was satisfied with my art work as well.

Second Outcome

My second idea was to create a gif of floating balloons. Balloons seemed like a good idea to draw for a celebration. This piece is going to be an augmented reality as well but again the clients told me that it can wait for now. I really enjoyed working on this one, I probably enjoyed it more than the first one. It took me three days to finish and I am satisfied with it. The clients liked it as well they told me they might want to change the font, but they are still indecisive about it.

First Outcome

As they asked me to do augmented reality, I made a gif first. Whenever I think about business events I always see people in suits and fancy dresses. I did not want to make anything too crazy, but I still wanted to stick to my style. The finished gif is not augmented reality yet, because they have not told me about what kind of leaflets and posters they would like to see. We also have not decided on the format, size or the text yet. However, my gif is finished already they asked me to help them out with more designs and finish the augmented reality which I will do in February. This idea was not too difficult to come up with, the clients were happy about it and so was I.

Client meeting

In the first week of January I attended a meeting with two students of the events management team. They explained the main objectives and outcomes of the event and explained some of their already existing ideas to me. They have assigned me to come up with initial sketches. I suggested the idea of creating augmented reality for their posters and leaflets. They liked the idea, so they asked me to first create two gifs and some other designs for the event that they can use at any phase. The clients I talked to were very professional and straight forward. It was a successful first meeting and I definitely gained experience from that. After this meeting I was excited to start working on my ideas. First, I found myself being slightly unmotivated I could not think of anything good enough. Because these designs will be shown at the event I put a lot of pressure on myself. I started looking at colour palettes and leaflet ideas on Pinterest.

What is the event for?

This upcoming event is called Celebration Event. This celebration is for the South Wales Business School’s successes. Their venue is going to be at Eclipse at the Trefforest campus. This event is organized by the third year Events Management students. This event will make it possible for the people in the industry to engage and network. This celebratory event focuses on the past’s successes, future plans and improvements. It is planned to raise awareness and money for the stroke association as the main partner of the event.

South Wales Business School event - getting a live brief opportunity from the Events Management course

I have been unsuccessful with finding a placement or a live brief until the beginning of January, when two third year Events Management students asked me to do some designs for their upcoming event which will take place on the 22nd of March this year. They wanted me personally to do some illustrations for them because they saw my work on Instagram and they really liked my style. I was very pleased when they asked me, and I immediately said yes. I finally got an offer which was very suitable for my skills.

Trying to get another work placement or do a live brief

After deciding to not to finish my work placement with Peacocks, I had to find another placement or a live brief to complete. For months I have been unsuccessful with all the opportunities that Laura has send me because I did not really like any of them. I tried to apply for a few but they either did not suit my skills, or somebody has already taken it. I was very stressed about this module at that point because I thought I would run out of time.

Getting a work placement at Peacocks Ltd.

In order to complete Client Studies module, I started looking for work placements in August. I got in touch with Laura and asked for her help. She told me to fill in a form on Unilife Connect so she knows what placement would be suitable for me. She also told me that the CV I had first was not detailed enough so I had to change it. Second thing I had to do is sending the link of my online portfolio which is currently my Instagram account called @fruzsillustration. I said I would love to do a placement in a design studio if possible. I was a little bit concerned that no one would take my application because I am very unexperienced. She sent me quite a few opportunities to choose from through e-mail. When I got the e-mail from her saying that there is a placement available at Peacocks Ltd in September, I instantly e-mailed Laura telling her I am very interested in doing a placement with them. In a few days luckily, I got the placement. I was very pleased to hear the good news and I was really looking forward to starting my work placement. I had to e-mail the head of the design studio of Peacocks and tell her my details. We agreed that I can start in October on the 17th and could do three days a week. So, when the 17th of October came I went to the office building where Peacocks was. Everybody was really nice. I had to fill in some health and safety forms and got a building tour as well. On my first day, they asked me what programs I can use. I said only Photoshop. They wanted me to use Illustrator to put photographs of clothing into groups on separate pages. I had a guide as well to follow. I did not think that this activity would take me so long but there were so many pictures I could not finish the task. They told me to continue it the next day. When my first day at Peacocks has ended I was very unsatisfied with my experience. It was not like anything I imagined. I thought I would have to design something for them. I felt like if I continued doing my placement I would have just wasted my time because everything I had to do for them was not related to illustration at all. I knew, I did not want to go back and I was disappointed. On the same day I decided to e-mail Peacocks and tell them that I will not be able to attend because of personal issues. The did not get back to me till next Monday and I sent the e-mail on Thursday evening. I spoke to all my lecturers about my experience and asked them for help. They told me to speak to Laura about it so I did. In a polite e-mail I explained both Laura and Peacocks that I will not be able to finish my placement. They kindly understood it and wished me the best. In my opinion both sides just misunderstood each other that is why it was a disappointing experience for me. I am still thankful that I got this opportunity. On the positive side, I gained a little bit of experience in working at a design studio. For the future, I will be more careful with the descriptions of the placements/jobs that I apply for.

Nostalgia Exhibition - Outcome

Our Nostalgia exhibition took place on the 13th of October and was available until the 20th of October in Castle Emporium. My group has done everything to make this exhibition successful. We did plenty of flyers sent out lots of e-mails and made sure our venue is perfect and big enough to have everyone’s work up on the walls. In my opinion, the outcome was better than I expected it was very well put together and would not do anything differently. It was an amazing first experience to have an exhibition. I thought it would be a lot more difficult to put something together like Nostalgia. Obviously, it was stressful enough but because everyone participated in this task we could organize this event very successfully together. I also thought it would be a lot more expensive, but it was not too pricey at all we only had pay for our own frames and another £6.50 each for the printing, snacks and drinks for the after party. I would love to do it again. It would be great to see how I could organize my own exhibition with the experience that I gained. The piece that I have created for Nostalgia was a memory of mine from years ago when I was about ten years old. I went to the mountains with my family for a few days and in the house’s garden where we stayed at, there were three goats just jumping on and off a really old car. To this day for some reason I cannot forget about it so I thought I would do an illustration remembering the goats. I really enjoyed creating my piece I had no issue with it at all. I was hoping that one of the industry people will find at least one of us interesting enough to offer a live brief or placement but as far as I know no one has gotten an offer. A gentleman from Cloth Cat even reached out to us and asked if he could meet a few of us so we can tell him more about our exhibition. He came spoke to us and took some pictures of some of the pieces which was very exciting.

Nostalgia Exhibition - Organizing in progress

After deciding on the venue and the name of the exhibition, we all had to sign up for a role to do to have a successful exhibition. There were no trouble deciding who is doing what because everyone was fine with the role given. We had project managers who were responsible to make sure everything goes smoothly. We also had Curation team, Location&Logistics team, Branding&Design team, Promotion team and Events team. I signed up for the Events team alongside with three other course mates. Our job was to find sponsors invite industry people and organize our after party. We almost ended up raising money for charity at Big Moose but because their venue was not big enough, so we did not do it at the end. We reached out to Porters, Live lounge, Grazing Shed, Lego, Khiel’s, Hobos, Record stores, Flamingos, Paperchase, Sobey’s, Buzz, Tiger, Body shop, Lush, Smuggle, Tim Horton’s, Menkind, The works, Urban Outfitters, HMV, Whsmith’s, Blue Banana and Ed’s diner asking if they could sponsor our exhibition because we did not have a budget. From these sponsors I e-mailed Menkind, Whsmith’s and The works but I did not get a response back. However, I did not have a problem with e-mailing anyone I was still very concerned about their responses. Unfortunately, we could not get any sponsors no one has gotten back to us which was quite disappointing. On the positive side we successfully sent e-mails out to industry people such as, Haum, Rabble, Lingumi, Huw Davies, Hoffi, Tidy, Bomper, The Printhaus, Cloth Cat, Brand 68, Savage and Gray, Sustainable Studio, Glue Digital, Dippy Egg and Chapter and invited them to our private viewing. We also sent e-mails out to venues to have our after party at and Gwdihw, Ten Feet Tall and Tiny Rebel got back to us saying yes to our after party. We choose Tiny Rebel because it was everyone’s favourite option. I also came up with the idea to ask the two Music courses (Contemporary Music Performance and Popular and Commercial Music) at University of South Wales if anyone would be able to play music at our after party. We emailed both courses and Moc Isaac musician from one of the courses, generously said yes and played at our after party.

Nostalgia Exhibition - Preparations

First thing we had to do to complete Client Studies module is organizing our own exhibition. Both groups were left alone with their ideas and had to complete this task together. When I first found out about the exhibition I was a little bit nervous about how everything is going to come together. As far as I know, in my group it was everyone’s first ever exhibition that they had to organize in their lives. I was lucky to be in my group because everyone tried to do the most they could and worked really hard. We came up with the name ‘Nostalgia’. The reason for that is because everyone in my group has got very different styles. We were going to agree on a colour palette or a theme based on one colour or an image using two contrasting colours but we decided to not to because some people love using colours and some of us do not. Another idea was to name our exhibition ‘Amity’ but then on our Facebook poll ‘Nostalgia’ has won. Our exhibition was in Castle Emporium in a really nice gallery upstairs. We had a lot of venues to choose from such as Ruin Cafe, Big Moose Cafe, Chapter Arts, Printhaus, The old Library, Flamingos, Cardiff Creative, Cardiff MADE, Little Man Cafe, Kongs, Norwegian church, Hoffi Coffi, Moon Club, Gwdihw, Gate art centre, Kin and ilk, Tiny Rebel and Jacob’s antique. Everyone chose at least one venue to email, I reached out to Little Man but unfortunately, I have not gotten a response back. Printhaus, Tiny Rebel, The old library, Flamingos, Cardiff creative and Big Moose were interested in having us but we decided to have our exhibition in Castle Emporium because it was the most ideal for us.