Charlene + Dan Portfolio Review

From the last email sent, it seems that Charlene and Dan were interested to do a book critic with us. Honestly, I was not expecting anything after the final presentation with them, so the email that came was truly a pleasant surprise. Grace and I then decided to spend the weekend putting our book together and then follow up to arrange a time. While putting things together, it seems that apart from the Yahoo! presentation, we didn't do much together. I suggested to pick 3 projects each from our own portfolio instead. 

After going back and forth with all the emails, it was decided that we would have the critic on the 27th May at 10am. This is the first time we are going as a team so I'm really curious what Charlene and Dan would say. They started off by asking us what are our plans now that we graduated and how we plan on moving forward with what we have. I told them that we did not get much response despite sending loads of email and loads of application. The closest we've gotten is from Jaywing Leeds who responded to the email saying, he'll have a look and get back to us but he never did. Dan then asked if there was any agencies if we are particularly interested in. This left us rather tongue-tied. Because Grace and I've only been sending out applications all over but we've never really looked and research into any agency in particular.

Still, I personally quite like Wunderman Thompson and BBH. They did said that they will have a look and contact the hiring team for us but I spoke to Grace after, and we both felt that we shouldn't over-rely on them on job hunting. While it is nice that they are helping us, we are working just as hard on our part.

We went through around 5 projects and the overall feedback was positive. Charlene mentioned that every time one of us presented, it still feels a bit like this is 'Cheryl's project' or 'Grace's project'. But I do agree with her that this problem would be sorted once we landed a placement and have more projects together as a team. 

Perhaps the only issue is that our portfolio includes big brands such as Volkswagen and Lego. They have long history of great adverts so it was suggested that unless we have something more exciting to show, it would be better to not have these included. They told us that sometimes, small household brands can be just as exciting like cereal, or sauces or cleaning products. One other thing is that most of our executions are spread across different mediums. Dan suggested that if the idea works, the person reading it can easily imagine the idea spreading through various channel. So it would be better to cut down on the explaining and get to the real bit. Although it was only 30 mins of book critic, Grace and I were really grateful for their time. 

In the meantime, Grace and I are making our own briefs, sending more application and going for more portfolio reviews. Personally, I feel anxious that we still couldn't find a job. It's been a month and some of our classmates are already starting to work. Bleak days.