Stop Yawning! BoringStudent launches first Beta

The other day a very quiet launch happened. It’s a project that’s been going on for a while called BoringStudent. The site, www.boringstudent.com, aims to be the definitive resource for anyone contemplating Higher Education or University and is aimed specifically at 16-19 year old students.

How will it do it? Good question. The site focuses on 3 core strands:

1. Honest & reputable University & College reviews. There are lots of sites out there giving thought and opinion on Universities and students can now use Facebook to connect with people and directly ask questions but rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, we’re going to take the wheel and add lots of nice, useful things.
2. Advice, information, thought and comment. BoringStudent will have a clear editorial voice. Aside from telling students what it’s really like in halls, how to ace your personal statement, what the UCAS process is all about, how to get through an admissions interview, we will also provide relevant editorial that goes beyond the facts and challenges prospective students views on higher education. We’ve called this area Total BS. D’ya get the irony?
3. High quality production values. There are so many student sites out there but apart from a select few, they lack production values. We’ve a team of strong, highly professional, ex-students who are committed at delivering the best stuff out there for people considering University or College. Already we’ve produced loads of professionally produced videos showing what student life is really like, being a fly on the wall in halls and following the angst of A Level results day to name but a few.

Wrapping around this student-focused information is a bubble of interactivity. Users will be able to find people looking to go to the same University as them, share their UCAS Personal Statement (but, of course, not copy them!), ask the questions they’re too afraid to ask about Universities and generally have fun interacting with the site and each other.

It’s genuinely exciting for me to be part of this project. The people working on it are really committed to the best and I think that always makes work seem more enjoyable, doesn’t it? We’re very lucky to have the ex University of the Arts Student Union President for two years running heading up editorial and University relations and a fantastically talented video producer overseeing all our video content.

The site is in beta and there will be lots of significant developments over the next few times. If you have a few minutes, check out the site at www.boringstudent.com and let me know what you think!

Design Student? Run run as fast as you can!

As the recession bites it seems that senior industry figures who have experienced working through a recession, unlike anyone born in the late 70s or 80s, are willing to dispense lots of advice. The latest bit? If you’re a design student you’re wasting your time as there aren’t enough jobs.

Ian Cochrane, managing director of management consultancy Ticegroup, is quoted in Design Week as saying “‘Look for jobs in industries that have vacancies – I mean, if you want to design restaurants, it is good to have worked in one or two”. I have to admit this made me smirk, I used to be aghast at the quality of candidates we’d receive CVs from directly or, worse still, from recruitment agencies.

Many of the design candidates I see for Acknowledgement come out of university with a portfolio that would put GCSE students to shame and a CV with more spelling and gramatical mistakes than this blog (and that’s saying something!)

They don’t spend time researching our company, the clients we work with or have a critical view of our past work. In addition many couldn’t effectively communicate their own creative process. What many of them do for three years, or more, at University baffles me (but doesn’t keep me awake at night).

Occasionally you’d come across gems: they we the polor oppositie of everything above and seemed to have a passion for doing a great job. We would hire those ones, or at least try to as they’d also get snapped up by the competition.

So I think it’s very wise to advise design students, as Cochrane has, to seek alternative routes to employment but what about those currently studying a design course with their sights set on working for a digital agency? I think there is still a market out there for great digital talent and here are my (non-designer) tips for standing out:

• Be a good designer. Sounds daft but if you can’t create digital media akin to the stuff you see major brands turning out then maybe this isn’t your industry!
• Have an online portfolio that demonstrates you understand the full breadth of digital work. So aside from webpage designs, include banners, widgets, sites that are focused around typography, email designs, ecommerce designs, interstitial pages, rollovers, video players.. anything that goes beyond just a website/banner design will stand out.
• Your portfolio should contain lots of real world brands even if you haven’t actually worked on them.
• Show you can use Flash and also have a good understanding of ActionScript – you wouldn’t believe how much more desirable you become
• Have a critical view on digital design. Be prepared to criqitue the work of others constructivly and suggest how you would make improvements for the benefit of the client and end user. It’s often easy to forget that as a digital designer you’re working to please three groups: the place you work, the business that’s appointed them and the end users of said business.
• Become immersed in social media: twitter, myspace, linkedin, last,fm.. any of it. Use it often, do it well. Make it part of your portfolio. Try to use the same username across everything you want an employer to find but at the same time, watch out for those pics of you trashed at a friend’s house part on flickr also with the same username!
• Make sure your spelling is perfect. So many design student CVs I’ve reviewed have spelling mistakes so those who can spell, use apostrophies and know the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ really stand out!
• Ask for feedback if you get turned away and tell them you want some honesty. Usually people I’ve turned away never ask why but when they do I try to be as constructive as possible. I imagine many other people would do the same.

I can’t draw for toffee and I’ve never opened an adobe application apart from PDF viewer. I can, however, count on one hand the number of entry level digital designers who’ve done just half of the above. They really do stand out!

Anyway, careers advice over. I’m off to get myself a geography tecacher styled cardigan.