Within this article (1 of 2) Dave provides advice for aspiring Designers looking to join the Design industry.

'I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.'

—Albert Einstein 

Yes, Einstein very cliché… but very true, at least for me anyway. I want to talk about myself and how I got my feet through the doors of the design industry.

 

So... there are 64.1 Million people in the UK, how do you stand out?

Firstly, lets talk about personality, everybody has one, your personality is your soul, it’s an expression of things you have learned, seen, smelt & felt through your lives, therefore your personality is like no other. I believe that your personality sets you aside from others in the world, something as simple as a belief about a news story to only being able to sleep with the door open. These are things that we don’t notice on a day-to-day basis but make us individually original as human beings.

So why is personality important?

Your personality makes decisions and the decisions help express who you are...

I grew up in the early 90's where technology wasn't as dominant as today, instead of playing games on my iPad I built rope swings across rivers & drew pictures of cartoons which I imagined. These are the things, which made me who I am today. Everybody has a different journey they took to get them where they are today.

So why is this relevant to getting a job? This journey you have taken is your visual diary, the element you must apply to your CV or however you want to communicate yourself differently in order to make it stand out from the rest.

Your journey defines your character & your character is your front cover, unfortunately business is very fast paced and design agency’s simply don’t have time to take a second look, they probably receive hundreds of CV's every week, so its our jobs to impress on the first.

I am not your typical creative, I don’t read many books, I hardly watch television, & I am a football addict. But I have an ability to think differently. Everybody can think differently all it takes is patience & passion for the world around you.

I bet you are thinking what is this guy talking about? 

Thinking differently is not closing one eye or pretending you are a dog, it is as simple as analysing/researching your thoughts and seeing how far you can push them to solve problems.

 

Here’s an example I learnt from University.

 

Problem: Sell 1 apple to a businessman.

 

Primary thought: Why would a businessman want an apple? Okay ‘would you like to buy this apple off me sir?’

 

Thinking differently: Research the apple, where is it from? Tell a story about how the apple got to be in your hand on that day. Research the businessman, try and find a link between him and the apple, maybe include this in the story you are telling him? Why not tell the story first and pull out the apple at the end?  Or tell him a story of which he can relate to, maybe something humorous? Or something, which is intriguing and gets him asking questions? Educating somebody in a different way may persuade him or her to get involved with it.

Try targeting your chosen area of expertise. Do some research about them, think of the ability to think different is like your battery, when you come up with ideas you are constantly looking for sources beyond the ‘norm’ until you cannot think of anything else. Then return to it the next day… I can bet you have better ideas.  Now apply your personality to these ideas, along with great presentation and there you have it you are being original.

Of course there is a lot more to it than a CV, which is shaped like a balloon, or posting a box of chocolates to the place you would like to work.

You have to be great. Being great at what you do is down to yourself, your work ethic & the amount of time you spend practicing doing what you do in order to be better. I was always driven by what I saw around me always trying to on par with the greatest work I would never discard my work but only improve it, and then at the end you have something you are proud of along with a trail of how you got to it, which is what creative directors LOVE to see.

Concluding this eclectic piece of advice, I am going to come up with 5 things I did which is the reason I am sitting behind this Mac at Sugar Creative typing this right now. Also 5 things I’ve learnt from working within a design team.

To continue to part 2 of this article please click here.