D&AD

Had a quality discussion with Jake from JP74, proper nice guy and I got some useful feedback! He liked my work which is always a pleaser and has given me some food for thought on certain areas of my portfolio.

. Structure
Flicking through the old portfolio which contains all the work I want included in the portfolio he said to switch around some of the pages, notably having some of my strong type work to be at the front, so to show my type skills as a designer then have the wayward work of my snowboards and stuff like that!

. Speaking
Got given some words of advice on how I should be talking about my work, showing passion and being excited about it, as I seemed a bit lax, bit too 'chilled' like. Not over the top though, If im excited about my work so will the person I'm talking to. This also being important if I decide not to include many descriptions or copy within it. This way I need to be able to open it and 'tell the story', to quote Jake.

. Type
Considering the talking aspect of it type isn;t too much of an issue. There were certain areas of my work that could benefit from having more than just a label as I have at the moment.
Specifically referring to the snowboards, after telling him the background to the brief he advised to include something more, whether it be the riders name to each board, showing that they are all specific to one person. There are other possibilities with this, whether I include the interview / last words question etc

. Snowboard Context
I bought up the issue with the contextualisation of my snowboard designs, his advice was to take a photo of a boarder holding his weapon head on, keeping it straight and therefore easier to mock up on photoshop, i think I'm just about good enough on photoshop to make it convincing. Furthermore sticking the labels on a board.

. Added work
Told me to include the cereal box, specifically the image of it in tescos, that on a double page spread with a small description would work wonders, apparently.

. Twitter
Jake advised me to join Twitter, as it gives a good chance to network with a whole range of designers and creatives, even speaking to the big boys, Erik Spiekerman etc.

. Photography
I raised it as an issue, and Jake agreed, I need to sort the photography out! Which is working in the new one, picturing everything in a suitable context.

All in all really positive.