Over the past 15 weeks I have been lucky enough to assistant teach at Billy Blue College of Design in Sydney with Amanda Teer, the students are in their final year on a course that teaches the fundamentals of good design communication.
In our class, one of their final before graduating, the students got to work on a live brief led by Sophie Walden from Oxfam Australia. An interesting design project where we had to concept and develop a full campaign linked to the existing 3things movement but that focused on the global/local issues of food injustice and how the average person can really make a big difference.
I can truly say that both the students and I have learnt a huge amount from this project, not only about the issues of food injustice but also about working under immense pressure to produce an entire campaign. Its been a wonderful journey helping and learning with the students and some amazing ideas have popped up along the way that may see the light of day once developed and costed out.
Giving yourself space to think freely is one of the biggest lessons learnt from the 15 week course, trying to pin yourself down too early can really hinder the creative spark that many of us need to kindle. It was amazing to hear some of the ideas presented each week, ideas that were not constrained by politics, budgets or sometimes time!
Some other lessons learnt along the way were:
> Go the extra mile, tweak, zoom in, double check, it makes a big difference in the end!
> Research, research, research
> Go all out, then think about pulling back
> Have faith in your own style
> Enjoy the journey
> Double check all presentation material, especially spelling, there is nothing worse than standing in front of a 10ft spelling mistake!
> Watch those dreaded 'umm's' and 'just' words, nothing we do is 'just' anything...
I am honoured to have been included in this teaching experience and from what I saw today in the final presentations, excited to see our group of young designers come so far and ready themselves for the big wide world. Well done all of you and I wish you the best of luck in your creative endeavours, perhaps our paths will cross again.