PPD - Group tutorial prep

1. What is Industrial experience?
To me it is gaining knowledge of the graphic design industry by visiting creative professionals, studios, print factories, emailing / writing to professional to get a better and more importantly a first hand understanding of what it is / where it is I want to work. It becomes an important way of creating contacts and create networking in order to gain work.

At present, I've only visited 2 print places - Trident in Hull and Team in Leeds - it was a real eye opener and really great to see first hand the process of print.
Aside from that, I've been to a few talks from professionals, one being the four designers conference in London.

2. What can you learn from industrial experience?

• See what the competition is - what skills you may want to improve on or styles you like. 
• Example - the print place - Team - really learn what the process is - from costing a job right through to packaging and sending out - was great to learn how expensive some print processes really are - will aid me in the future when thinking about a clients budget. 
• Understand what it's really like to be a professional - hear horror stories about horrific clients - help you deal better in the future. 
• Have the opportunity to make contacts.
• Build relationships - e.g. with printers.

3. What form/format could industrial experience take?

• visiting creative professionals
• Visit studios, 
• Visit print factories. 
• Emailing / writing to professionals.
• Attend exhibitions, networking events. 

4. What areas of industry are you interested in?

•  Heavily interested in the music industry, really want to make designs for bands - but I still want to be involved with the band etc - would want the contact - don't want to work for a huge company - would want the musician to feel like I care about them so to speak.
• Editorial designs
• Art Direction - photo shoots etc. 
• More print based as opposed to digital design. 
• Something ethical - animals, sustainability etc - I know I don't want to compromise my ethics and every work for McDonalds.

5. What are your concerns about industrial experience?
Although I know that experience will strengthen my confidence, at the moment I have massive concerns about industrial experience - I have trouble talking to my tutors, nevermind a stranger - I just have this idea that they won't care about me - be interested in my work or even want to talk to me - I know in the majority of cases this won't be true, but I don't know, I just think I hold some designers in such high regard - particularly as their work is out there - and it just makes me nervous talking to them. Think I'll have a massive problem when trying to put together a PDF portfolio to send out to them and actually hitting the send button! Yikes!!