Catherine Baird from Dashboard

Catherine's background
Sheridan graduate in 2001
Associate Creative Director at Dashboard
- worked at EcentricArts as a designer after grad
- went to Henderson Bas as a senior designer after
    - became an art director there
    - manage the entire team (9 designers and 3 flash developers)
    - elevated to an Associate Creative Director
    - started to learn how to manage people, manage clients
- Moved to France (got 4 interviews and was hired in 3 weeks)
    - worked at 5emegauche as Sr. art director
    - company had about 30 people
    - stayed for 6 months
- Came back to Canada and was offered a job at DraftFCB as senior art director
- Went on to Dashboard as Associated Creative Director
- Shared her final project - showcase flash skills and wicked design that can impress someone

Some of her advice when she first stepped into the industry
- after you grad you may start off as a junior designer and junior art director
- supporting the intermediate art director or a senior art director

the difference between traditional and digital design
website is a massive thing - lots of content, pages (you need a task force)
    - biggest mistake is not completing all the design and letting the developer create the entire website

Dashboard is a digital engagement agency
- moving into traditional, animation, illustration - constantly changing
- this industry is ever changing - facebook, youtube
- about engaging people from offline to online

Dashboard's new website design

YOU (top 5 secrets to getting infront of an art director)
1. be prepared - have all your work ready to show
    - make it easy for people to see your work
    - 6 page pdf including resume
    - link it to online portfolio
2. do something unusual
    - don't be boring
    - show your creativity
    - make a video
3. follow up and don't write long e-mails
    - CD are busy, don't be discouraged so send some gentle reminders
    - if you stalk someone, you're not going to get a job
    - if you're e-mail is too long, no one will read it
4. show diversity
    - if you've done things other than design, show it
    - makes you well-rounded, interesting, and creative
    - starts a conversation in an interview
5. network
    - be nice, work hard
    - don't burn down bridges
    - respect your work and work ethics
    - go to events, take people out for coffee
    - it's a small industry

trick: if a Creative Director won't get you in for an interview, ask him/her to do a "portfolio review"


THE FUTURE
- touch screens
- airports - cars with glass boxes around them
- iPhone
- mobile will be the future
- every client wants an app for the iPhone
- skinning youtube and facebook pages
- cloud computering
    - PC
    - mini note
    - notebook
    - remote desktop
    - remote server
    - database
    - mobile
- Unity - a plugin to play cinema quality videos, 3D videos online
- typekit

Brendan Good from Leo Burnett

Last Friday we had a very insightful speaker, Brendan Good from Leo Burnett, coming in to speak to us about the advertising industry. Brendan Good is currently the Associate Creative Director at Leo Burnett. He took Sheridan's web design program in 2003. Before this program, he was an industrial designer at RIM. After the web design program, he has worked at various companies like Organic, Jam3Media, Greys Interactive.

During his presentation, he mentions that it is very important to maintain your connections, dive deep into the things that you like and keep learning. He says that if you make your hobbie your passion you can definitely make a career out of it. Another very important idea he wanted to extend was passion. For everything and anything you do, passion can take you a long way. He also mentions that as a designer, it is great to always have a notebook and a pen around you. This is us to make notes and to jot down any ideas that we come up with.

Class for January 28, 2011

Unfortunately last week I was unable to attend class and missed out on a great guest speaker, Steve Miller from OneMethod.

Helen, who was nice enough, updated me on some of the things he mentioned during his presentation. Steve graduated at Ryerson University with a degree of commerce. He mentioned that marketing is a very valuable asset to have in the web design industry. He says that it's very important to understand the demographic, brand, consumer behaviour and usability flow. When it comes to an interview, 50% of it is about your work and the rest is about yourself. He says that your portfolio should always be the most brilliant piece of work you have ever created. It should be something that sells yourself to the employer.

As for OneMethod, it is a company that bases around the idea of Digital + Design = One Method. It started with only 6 employees and has grown to 20. Some of their digital work includes, web, advertisement, mobile media, social media, digital content, and motion design. Their design work includes, branding, advertisement, print, interior design, strategy, and curriculum. 

135 Liberty St. Suite 201

Toronto Ontario CAN M6K 1A7

steven@onemethod.com

Tel: 416.649.0191

Cell: 416.816.7077

Web: www.onemethod.com

Guest Speakers: Keith and Leslie from EcentricArts.

Last Friday, Keith and Leslie from EcentricArts came into our Career class to discuss a bit about the web design industry.

Keith is the Co-Founder of EcentricArts. He has been in the Interactive industry for over 20 years now.  Before starting EcentricArts, he got achieved his MBA at York University and worked for Digital Renaissance for a few years before his leave of absence. He went on a vacation to Italy with his family afterwards and then after he came back, he gathered two other friends and started EcentricArts.

Leslie is currently the Art Director at EcentricArts. Her main job there includes working with the creative directors and designer. She has a Degree in fine arts and took the Sheridan Web Design program years ago. After graduating, she started working at EcentricArts and has been there for over ten years now.

Ecentric Arts has been around for over 10 years now. They have around 25 employees. Their work mainly focuses in arts and culture.

Their latest project was the kidshelpphone.com. When creating this project, they went about both ends, for teens, kids and regular visitors. They originally tarted off designs with 2 or 3 moodboards, thinking about the elements, typography, image treatments, and illustration associations. For the functionality side, they worked on wireframing and the specifications. After getting the wireframes approved, then they move the chosen moodboard elements into the design and building the actual website. One of their main program to replace action script and flash was JQuery. They say that this process will help prevent them from going down the wrong path.

When hiring and looking at portfolios, EcentricArts look for:

• Great personality in the person
• A designed resume – first impression
• Quality more than depth in their portfolios
• The designer to pay great attention to the details in their work
• Spell check is very important
• Like to see range and diversity in their projects.
• Being specific and focused with the position you are applying for.

Going to the ROM

For class this week, we decided to go on a field trip to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto. When we got there, we were guided by one of the people who worked in the media department to take us on a tour. She first brought us to the crystal and diamond section where she then gave us a speech about the ROM's upcoming new digital ideas and plans.

After visiting and interacting in that section, I feel that there are a lot of opportunities for the ROM to improve on with their interactions with the audience. For example, when we in the crystal and diamond section, I noticed the touch screens in each aisle shared info about each diamond and crystal. I felt there could have been more playful interactions put into the touch screen design to make it more interesting to the user. Maybe they could have incorporated some games or even a story animation to explain the timeline of the crystal. I think this is important because a mass amount of visitors to the ROM are kids.

A section that I particularly liked was the dinosaur section. It was recently renovated and improved. I felt the videos and animation that they integrated to explain the dinosaur's growth and and movement was very nicely done. The only thing I would consider is to make the French and English section more obvious so I can right away differentiate the language. It got a little complicating to tell which piece of information was explaining which item.

Below were some pictures that I was able to take at the ROM:

The last suggestion I would make to create a better visit for the ROM's audience is to allow them to somehow download or purchase photos for each section. This is because most audience want to take pictures with or of the objects they are reading about. If there were a download imaging booth for each section, it would sort of cool and interactive for the visitors.

Sapient Nitro - In-class group discussion

On Friday in Career Option class, a few employees from Toronto's Sapient Nitro came to visit and we had a nice group discussion and informal presentation. Sonia, Eiko, and David are all employees at Sapient. Sonia is the Director of Human Resources, Eiko is the Associate Creative Director for U/X focus, and David is the Senior Art Director at Sapient Nitro.

During this discussion and presentation, they started out giving us a brief and descriptive about Sapient and Sapient Nitro (the creative side of Sapient). Sapient is a company that has 6000 employees globally. They are a company that focuses from creative design, technology, project management to user experience. Sapient is a company that has end-to-end capabilities. This means that they can build things on their own without having to outsource any of their designs to other technology companies. They design, create and delivers all. Sapient is company that has a great diversity of positions. This is a company that gives you opportunity to learn and grow. It is also a company that allows you to travel a lot and you can even have a career manager who will assist your career path at Sapient.

In the Toronto office, SapientNitro is located downtown, Richmond and Spadina. They have around 200 employees and is currently adding more. The office mainly focuses on digital work. Their goal is to be like a full production agency, just like the New York Sapient.

One very important that they also mentioned to us what is User Experience and how they achieve it,
User experience is basically designing solutions for the user. It is important to when doing design research that we go and talk to people about online experience, build up personnas of your target, and do whatever it takes to learn about them as much as possible.

During this discussion, they've also explained to us a few things they will particularly look for when it comes to hiring an employee:

• If you can basically get up and talk to others easily, you're already a chosen candidate.
• A great team player
• Come prepared for your interview - laptop or portfolio set up before the interview
• Knowing a bit about the organization of Sapient
• Being to explain the process work in your portfolio
• Showing your process work to explain your work
• Being open as you can about the position's work, being flexible with the duties of the position.

Another very interesting thing that I found during this discussion was the video they showed us about their most recent and current design work. It was very well done and it certainly intrigued me to find out more about them and even consider to apply there once I grad!

Creative Niche - Resume Workshop

In today's lecture, Adele and Stephen from Creative Niche were nice enough to come into our class and give us a lesson on how to improve our resumes.

Creative Niche is a well-respected talent and creative business services agency. They connect many designers with client job opportunities and great careers. Adele is currently the Director for client services at Creative Niche and Stephen is the President. Both of them has had over 10 years of experience in the design industry and has had various jobs related to design and advertising.

In this class we spent a the time to discuss a few things that would be important and useful for us to know when we come out of school and enter the industry.

Here are a few things that would be important for us to remember.

What are some current market trends

• Digital / interactive / web
• Mobile
• Rich Internet applications
• Social networking

Adele also mentioned that when we look for jobs, we always tend to search for the obvious positions. She says that it would be good to search and take a look at the new opportunities that we might already have the skill sets for as well.

Obvious – production artist, graphic designer, art director
Less obvious – studio manager, production manager, content manager, project manager
Not so obvious – u/x designer, seo/sem specialist, online community manager.

When it comes to job searching, we should take into consideration to accomplish these few key points in order to successfully get interviews and job opportunities 


1. Research

• Identify and research a list of potential employers
• Research market trends
• Consider your needs and goals
• Carefully read job descriptions of your desired position

2. Skills assessment

• Do an inventory of your skills, abilities
• Accomplishments and achievements
• Create sample case studies of your contributions to clients and employers
• Create PARs (Problems, Actions, Results)

3. Use the PAR theory (Problem, Action, Results)

• What challenge do you face?
• What action did you take to overcome the challenge?
• What was the result of your effort?

Aside from these three steps, we need to identify our soft skills and incorporate them into resumes. Soft skills are basically personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness etc. They tend to be universal, everyone has them.

A good way to keep track of what you do at your previous jobs would be to simply write out your day-to-day activities from each job in detail.


Moving on to developing our resumes, Adele pin-pointed some important aspects that we need to follow when we write our resumes: 

Make sure your resumes have objectives

• Quick statement
• Relate you objective to your audience
• It should be work-centered, not self-centered
• Do not exclude employers

When you're talking about your experience,

• Be concise and specific about accomplishments
• Provide proof of you potential value
• Create an image that matches the company you are applying to.

State your accomplishment
How you've contributed to a project or an achievement that reflects your work style


When you're writing your education,

• Show case academic achievements, extracurricular activities, and related courses
• With 2 years related work experience, education should not be on first page or top of resume

State the school
Articulate the things you’ve done at school and related course work


Your resume should answer these 5 questions
1. Who are you?
Name, contact information, title

2. What are you applying for?
Your objective

3. What can you do?
Highlight your skills and abilities

4. What have you accomplished?
Detail your accomplishments and achievements

5. With whom have you worked?
Mention brand or industry, clients, companies, agencies and projects 


Format and Design of your Resume

• Determine layout, format, structure and content
• Should be visibly pleasing and easy to read
• Create a PDF that is you, but relates to the company that you’re applying to
• Make sure it fits within the 8.5x11 format
• Avoid large blocks of colour
• Have two versions ready: Word and PDF

Always edit and proofread

• Review, proofread and spell-check your final document
• Have various versions of your resume if you have more than 2 roles that you are applying for.
• Make sure the design and layout is appropriate for the role in the company
• Track where you have applied – repeated applications look bad

After all the rules and guidelines that CreativeNiche has given us, they were very nice enough to show us a resume sample and give us some small notepads to write notes on. They also gave us some final advice about keeping our resume up to date daily, staying informed about the industry and anticipate changes. We should always update our technical skills and knowledge, continue to participate in portfolio reviews, grow personal networks and build a great personal brand of ourselves.


Before they left, they gave us some contacts to where we can locate them on the internet. They can be found on Twitter, Facebook and even Youtube (used to provide job offers)


website: www.creativeniche.ca