Feedback from Newblood

Newblood have given us some general feedback, they say that there were more visitors to the exhibition than for a long time, and the number of people being offered placements and interviews was overwhelming. For all the reports in the press, it actually seems to be a much better time to be graduating than recent years, and there is a lot of optimism and business in the creative industries.

Feedback from industry:

The good things:

• Many visitors were impressed with the quality and high standard of work on show
• Feedback has been positive with most industry commenting on how friendly and enthusiastic the graduates on the stand were.
• There were lots of creatives and recruiters there looking for talent to offer placements, commissions and interviews.

The things to be improved upon:

• Several industry fed back that people didn't speak to them.
• Some mentioned that the hosts of the stands ignored them when they asked questions/were not very helpful - simply directed them to a list of students without offering any insights into the content of the course for example.
• There was a feeling that some tutors or students were not responding to people whose names were not known to them and didn't contact them when they gave out their business cards.
Hopefully this is not representative however it is concerning. It is really shortsighted to think that people are not useful just because they are unknown to you. You never know when a contact might come in useful further down the line, and it always advisable to follow up with anyone who offers to help, even if at first it may not seem appropriate. You never know!

The one other comment was about content in portfolios. The following advice came from a senior creative who spent his time critting over 50 portfolios at the event which will hopefully be of benefit:

The key themes that repeated regularly over the four days are as follows;

• Less than 10% of the books included an example of an integrated online/offline campaign
• Those that included an example of an integrated campaign were generally brilliant, creative applications. Far more well thought through than I was expecting.
• Too many of the books only included 'competition briefs'. Very few (3 or 4) of the graduates have learned the value of proactively setting themselves briefs so as to improve their book so you don't end up seeing the same work time and time again.
• Less than 10% of the graduates managed their book efficiently online
• I did not see a single piece of long copy.
• Only two of the books included an example of a branded mobile application. Both were brilliant.
• Very few of the graduates had any real understanding of the business side of things

We are already talking about next years event - and I'd like to look at things very differently - we are certainly thinking very hard about the content of the modules and how we are developing new briefs, in the meantime - D&AD have produced a download 'Rough Guide to the Industry" - click here