flyer for a north yorkshire creative industries network event hosted by create. the event takes place in scarborough on 12 march in scarborough and looks like the sort of day creative practitioners won’t want to miss [despite the fact that i’ve been invited to lead one of the workshops…]

the event is aimed at artists and designers and will explore some of the themes that cross over between the two disciplines, particularly as ‘crossing over’ is something that both keynote speakers have done. trudi entwistle is a site-specific artist with comissions across the globe who began her career as a landscape designer, andii edwards is a graphic designer who still gets chance to pursue the sort of work he first started to do on a fine art degree.

it’ll be great to catch up with trudi as we know each other from leeds metropolitan university days [me designing, her teaching] and worked together on a book prototype that combined photos and thoughts on her work with typography. local residents might remember trudi from when she transformed the road outside the royal hotel into a grassed area with emerging triangular turfed boxes.

the flyer arrives folded to about the size of a CD case and opens up, first to reveal the introduction and programme and then to A3 to reveal the rest of the information. printed on 100% recycled paper which is what we’re recommending to all our clients these days - the quality is great. credit to scarborough-based printers adverset for a nice job on this. copywriting by us. designers and artist in north yorks should find this dropping on their doormats in the next few days, or you can download a pdf version at: www.create.uk.net/discussions.php - go to the ‘useful documents’ section. oh yeah - my workshop is titled ‘do designers have a soul?’ and will develop some of the ethics stuff i’ve been exploring with students recently.

the ethical design brief from this morning’s lecture can be found by following this link: ycc_ethics_brief.pdf

got a couple of speaking engagements coming up. the first is to students in the school of arts and new media at the university of hull scarborough campus on the 4th february. i was a visiting lecturer there a couple of years ago prior to reorganisation and appointment of full-time staff, so although we’ve done quite a bit of design work for the university this last couple of years it’s a welcome opportunity to engage with students again.

the second is actually a two-parter, the first bit being a talk on 5th february at yorkshire coast college as part of an aimhigher project. it’s actually open to anyone who wants to attend, not just students, and is part of a series of free 2 hour events a little worryingly billed as ‘expert sessions’. so i’d better deliver something good… part two will take the form of a crit and perhaps some hands-on design and group discussion following a brief set in part 1.

at the college i’ll be talking about design and ethics and whether as designers we have a wider responsibility to society than just turning out the type of work we want to do. the starting point will be unpacking exactly what the designer’s job is and asking what propels some people to become designers - is it a simple career choice or a compulsion from within? hmm, deep. i’ll be showing some of our work and explaining why there are far more factors than just graphic design determining why something ends up the way it does. so folks turning up for that one can expect a design brief with ethical considerations.

at the university i’ve been asked to show our work with particular reference to websites in the content of larger design projects and some of the realities of running a business. inevitably when i talk about electric angel and the sort of work we do the ethics thing will be mentioned so i guess students can expect a bit of my soul-searching too. anyway, i’m really looking forward to both.

i’ve been meaning to blog about the creative diplomas since the creative coast event in september. a post on this blog highlighting the government report on education for creative industries got me thinking again, so here’s my thoughts on the idea…

a quick intro to the diplomas first: it’s a national scheme in which local education authorities apply to run specialised diplomas for gcse age pupils instead of the traditional qualifications. given the scarborough borough’s existing creative and digital scene and existing creative strengths within local schools, it was decided that the borough would first apply for creative diplomas. in addition to core subjects such as maths and english, students will be able to create a mix of projects that encompass and combine various creative skills. i would have loved to learn this way when i was at school.

this is exciting for the creative industries in scarborough as it provides a near seamless route from secondary school through college, university and into the creative industries. it’s almost the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle as we already have great creative courses at yorkshire coast college and the university of hull scarborough campus. with creative coast we’re trying to facilitate meetings between these establishments and local practitioners to provide a mentoring scheme. add the incubator units in the creative industries centre (opening 2008) and scarborough is looking at becoming a perfect place to study and start a creative business.

so what’s the catch? well in return for having this new generation of savvy creatives in the town, the schools will need a fair bit of input from creative professionals - in providing input to course content and offering workplace experience for teachers and students. and most of this will have to be given for free.

there are two problems with this: the majority of scarborough’s creative scene is made of individuals, and the first issue is that many work from home - that pretty much rules out work placements. the second is that when you work on your own, finding time to give away for free can be difficult - every hour you spend with a work placement or in a school is an hour you don’t earn a wage and contrary to popular belief, most self-employed creatives don’t really earn that much.

if the creative diplomas is to work, it’s going to require some creative thinking to overcome physical obstacles, some learning about the nature of creative businesses from the schools and some real generosity on behalf of local creatives.

and i do think creatives need to be more generous, particularly those who do manage to make a living doing what they love. i’m reminded of a conversation a couple of years back at yorkshire coast college. i’d been working with some students on the graphic design course and myself and a representative from another local creative business were asked if we’d mind coming in to talk to some assessors. for some reason he saw this as an opportunity to slag off the standard of students in general and declared that his business would never employ students fresh out of college as they ‘weren’t up to speed’. instead they always advertised outside of scarborough and only within the industry. i suggested that it was businesses job to take students and teach them how to apply their skills in the workplace but my argument fell on deaf ears. i was embarrassed that another local company would not only declare this opinion in front of assessors at their local college, but that they even thought it at all. if everyone thought like this how would anyone ever get their first break? did he not remember his first job and how someone generously taught him?

i hope that he is very much in the minority in scarborough - on gut instinct and the evidence of the people i’ve met through creative coast i’d suggest he is. so creatives of the north yorks coast, it’s time to put your mouth where your money is and open your doors and your hearts to a future generation of creatives. it could be the best investment you ever make. it’s unlikely you’ll make any money out of it, it will probably cost you money - but there’ll be a lot of grateful young people as a result. that’s time well spent in my book.

interesting interview with new york-based designer james victore courtesy of graphic define magazine - an except from the forthcoming book by debbie millman ‘how to think like a great graphic designer’. i particularly like his honesty in the following excerpt and his definition of the impulse to produce beautiful, pure work as ‘god jobs’:

The rule here is there are jobs you do for “god,” and there are jobs you do for money. I try to approach everything as a “god job”—lowercase g. At the beginning of a project, I ask, “What are we going to do, and how are we going to do it? How are we going to make a person fall in love?” And when we start getting questionable feedback about what we’ve done, we have to realize it’s not always possible to do the god job. That’s when I know we just have to get it done and get paid.

in the interview he also talks about the designer’s responsibility in the world to contribute to society. good stuff.