Tuesday 17th January, 2017
Branding yourself for employment
The guest lecture run through the ICE program from University was given by Jonathan Sands OBE and served as a good reminder of how you should promote yourself when looking for placements. He started it by talking about his own company, Elmwood. The branding agency was promoted by Sands to show their work with many different companies, with some especially grand branding opportunities such as 'serious **it' which was a sewage company. Branding design that was done right, was done by the Elmwood Agency.
Moving on to talk about promoting oneself properly, he spoke of how things balance in interviews or applications. Your portfolio is 50% while you yourself is the other 50% that goes towards being hired. He laid out the law when he said what the majority of companies look for, although they can differ for each; you should have good ideas, craft skills, intelligence and most importantly be a nice person. Which are all things that I definitely seek to hold onto throughout my career, however it turns out. To finish the lecture, he told us that not all hope is lost if we cannot get a designer position as there are many other opportunities for employment related to design, such as; account manager, illustrator, typographer and many more. The Elmwood company is definitely an example to follow whether it be advertising or branding design.
Jonathan Sands, OBE
