Be awesome in your approach

Congratulations on choosing the most competitive career there is. You’ll very quickly need to understand the concept of “cut-through”. Do your research. Carefully select the agencies that match your ambition and creative desires. Now stalk them. Find out the Creative Director’s first name, heck, even their dog’s name. Make your approach highly personal, very quirky and exceptionally clever. You are an expression of your own creative thinking, so get disruptive. Even if you completely lack talent, chances are you will get a meeting out of pure sympathy.

You’re not special… yet

Regardless of what you have achieved thus far, in our eyes, you are green, untested and volatile. No matter how good you think you are, you’ll still take absolutely ages to complete what takes us five minutes. We’ll probably want you to tackle the kind of work that merely requires a diligent and stable hand. Surprisingly, with young designers, we’re looking for a standard of work that fits in. As big boss Dalai Lama states, “Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.”

Talent is only 20% of the game

Talent can never work in isolation, and it’s not a replacement for personality. You must be good with people, willing to learn, and humble. Humility is such a refreshing experience in a world dominated with stress, egos and prima donnas. Be positive. Good vibes are contagious; you can become known in the agency just by bringing a bit of energy back into a tired creative team. Be proactive. Ultimately, your goal is to be remembered. Get involved in brainstorms and volunteer your thoughts. An apprenticeship is a test of your abilities - you’ll remain untested if you stay quiet. 

Don’t stop learning

Here’s a word for you: auto-didacticism. In a sense, the word means “learning on your own”. Live your work life according to this rule. Don’t rely on the existing framework of an agency to take you where you want to be. In this industry, you need to continuously find new ways of remixing old ideas. Get involved in as many creative avenues as possible. You should constantly feel uncomfortable with the level of your knowledge. Creatively speaking, if you stop, you die. 

Get physical

You’ve spent years in the space of theory: now it’s time to get practical. Use the medium of paper to sell your ideas. If you can illustrate your idea, you can most probably make it happen. When it comes to a review session, don’t give a five minute spiel about why the idea we’re about to see rocks. It looks like you’re scared of not delivering. Have at least a dozen ideas for each review so we can kill some off and develop the rest.  

Know the power of the pencil. And the weakness of the PC

Yes, we know you’re itching to prove your prowess on the studio machines. But remember that there is no greater piece of creative kit than the humble brain. The computer can get you aimlessly pushing pixels around in some kind of moronic unfulfilling loop for days. Learn to walk away, grab a nice HB and flex that grey muscle through the medium of paper. You’ll be developing some very useful sketching skills which you can use throughout your life.

It’s going to be very hard

In this industry, money matters little and effort matters most. Get used to the pain. The past effort used to deliver a university project in three months will need to be squeezed into three days. You’ll have to tear a lot of stuff up and start again. Your social life will suffer. And finally, no matter how hard you work, someone will still take your precious idea, tear it up and either scream at you or laugh right in your face. Do you really want this that badly?

Have an exit plan

If you’ve been slogging at placements for a long time,you’re not getting any hint of a permanent position and you’ve followed the above advice about being a lovely person, then perhaps this just isn’t the job for you. This is no bad thing. You are not curing cancer; you’re turning people into consumers. There are far better ways to be making money if you are currently unhappy and it is not working out. Be brave, cut your ties and move on. 

Then look over your shoulder and laugh back at all of us for killing ourselves everyday for no fame and no fortune.

Firedog Creative is a branding and digital agency, based in Shoreditch. Follow them at www.firedog.co.uk or @firedogcreative.  

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