Friday, 5 October 2007

CETL Masterclass with Richard Higgs from Big Squid

Very fun day of activities:
Watched a Big Squid show reel with some very inspiring ideas. It was exciting to see a local design house with such a highbrow companies and projects.

We first started by exercising positive and negative conversations. This helped me gain an insight in to how both the client and designer can feel when a consultancy is going both well and not so well.

We then did a pro-Smoking campaign with some new group members (very fun, shows that its easy to get good ideas within a group even if you don't know them so well). We came up with a parody of Harry Potter. It was really enjoyable bouncing ideas around the group and coming up with something that we all liked.

Finally we attempted to promote a silly law, in a new group. It was to abolish the "boys under 10 cant see naked mannequin" law. Unfortunately most of the next group I was put with lacked maturity (enjoyed drawing male genitalia rather than ideas on the sheet) and I found it very difficult to work with them. Unfortunately because of the joking around we ran out of time and weren't able to present a very good idea. I found this very frustrating and learnt that unless a group of designers is focused on the same objective, its very likely much will be achieved.

In all, I learnt a great deal about the different ways of communication both with clients and with group members.