Dave Sedgwick

Last week, I was lucky to attend a lecture held by Dave Sedgwick. Dave currently works for design agency 999 in Manchester. I have to confess, I had never heard of 999 before the talk but was pleasantly surprised with the interesting advice Dave had presented. A brief history of Dave began by attending a D&AD course at Manchester Metropolitan University while successfully completing two placements at Flux Magazine (Derbyshire) and Splinter (Liverpool). While in his degree show, design agency Dinosaur gave him two-week placements, which then lead to a placement with TCW Creative (now Love Creative). From their, Dave managed to get a job at TCW but was unfortunately made redundant in 2003. After freelancing and working for some other design agencies for a short period, he joined 999 in 2006.

Dave explained one thing he remembered while studying his degree was how to spend your time and money. Would your last fiver be on a couple of pints or a copy of Creative Review? This was definitely something I had thought of in the past. While studying, Dave said one vital part what helped him graduate was his contact list and researching design agencies. He advised that some people would not like what your doing regarding design work, e mailing them for advice or questions as well as asking for placements. Being prepared for negative replies was important when leaving university as your motivation will be low if it’s unexpected.

Dave touched on what methods you would do on getting a job in the design industry and the small things were surprisingly the areas that may be the difference in getting a job or not. Besides having a strong portfolio, asking for placements and contacting in a different way besides e mail, researching agencies what are winning awards and offering help on projects from home in your free time can get promote yourself as a designer and improve your art work. Dave also spoke about the content of different areas a designer has. Dealing with clients, speaking to the printers, financially working the books and having meetings with the design team are all things what stop the actual designing.

Another part of the talk involved a discussion about having as many ideas as you can when dealing with a brief at the first stage. Dave advised the ideas what work well to you but not to others can let you push the ones what the design team agrees on. Not all your ideas you like will necessarily be liked by others. If the idea is dismissed, save it for another time or maybe some freelance work for yourself. Another important subject was what to put in your portfolio. I myself feel it’s vital to have a printed piece of work as it has a story behind it, but Dave advised to think about how good the piece of work is compared to your other work. Just because it has been sent to print does not mean it’s your best piece of work. The talk was very insightful and I will use Dave Sedgwick’s advice thoroughly.