How Not to be a Designer - Robert Ball

This talk was a look at Robert Ball, and how he basically became a designer, by doing the things we aren't 'supposed' to do as a designer. It was split into three parts; a bit about Robert, a bit about his work, and a bit about us as designers. He talked us through his work when he first came out of uni working on the Robocop 3 video game, and up until now working with the London based advertising agency, The Partners. He showed us some of the work he had helped design for a new advertising campaign for The National Gallery. This work was really impressive, and very well thought out. They went on to do a marketing campaign, where they hung full size copies of the paintings on the streets of London.

I think that the most useful part of the talk, was where Robert got to the part where he was talking about us. Here he gave us some really helpful tips and pieces of advice. He advised us not to write a CV, as most employers will look at your portfolio over your CV. If you do have to write a CV, then only tell them things that you want them to know, and leave out interesting hobbies, unless they are really, really interesting. Enter as many competitions as possible, as it's great exposure for you; after all, it doesn't hurt to try. Another piece of advice he said was to look for inspiration somewhere other than the internet, because if you look in the same place, you’ll have the same portfolio as these. When putting a portfolio together online, keep it very simple, with as few clicks as possible. When putting a paper one together, keep it clean and tidy, and don't include any roughs and sketches, as most people wont want to see these. This was a diagram he put together on how not to put together a portfolio.