Free range talent

The Free Range graduate art & design is running over the next few months. The show is a platform for graduate art and design students to showcase their work to both public and industry. Featuring more than 100 university courses from across the UK it's a brilliant way to see up and coming talent. Shows rotate weekly over the 8 week season by discipline including design, graphics, photography, art and interiors.

Walking through the 10th annual Free Range Art & Design Show, held in the Old Truman Brewery over the weekend gave me a chance to reflect on the better part of a decade that lies between where I sit today and my own days as a student of design.

Some of the work by the students displayed at the show quite impressed me. Skill and creativity – although not always mutually exclusive – are impressive to see in such a fresh crop.

It also highlighted some of the differences there are between studying in the creative industries and actually working in them. The biggest of these being time. Namely, deadlines. I remember university assignments being somewhat more relaxed as far as the time constraints of submitting creative. Real world client demands tend to mean that a university deadline of weeks or even months gets reduced to the more realistic, days... and sometimes hours!

This pressure is part and parcel of the industry and in-fact sometimes precisely what we as designers and copywriters need to spur us on to deliver the best we possibly can. I find there, truth in the somewhat corny saying, “...oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds form under great pressure”

I find it exciting that the same journey I traveled and grew along is now facing these newcomers. There is much to learn and the road is not always as well paved as we hope, but the rewards for finally arriving... make it all worthwhile.

SalB