DLKW Lowe - Day 1

I can't quite explain what I was feeling this morning as I got off the tube at South Kensington and waited for Sadie. A complex mix of nerves and excitement about something that I have been thinking about for a long time. So many questions... will I enjoy my time here? Is advertising for me? Will I be good enough? amongst many others. 

Coffee - standard.

 Walking into the wrong building - standard. 

And then we got there... this is where excitement took over the nerves. I truly could not wait to get stuck into this. 

 Even the reception was beautiful. 

On getting there, we met Natalie, the Creative Director, who was wonderful. She gave us a tour of the offices, both upstairs and downstairs. Introducing us to a whole range of people across the team from creatives to account managers, image retouchers to graphic designers. It seems, on first view, that there is a section for everything, everyone with very specific jobs spread across the board. Which seemed new to us, at college, we get given a brief, we generate the ideas and then we create. Here it seems that there are separate people for each of these jobs. 

The agency is spread across two floors, upstairs is separate companies... owned by the agency to do specific tasks. We are up there next week where we are going to do some type work and some moving image based design. We are going to learn about Flash and be set some more design-based briefs. 

This is the office we are working in. We each got given a desk, with our own email accounts set up. Very exciting, it finally felt real... and that we were meant to be there. 

I cannot explain how vast the office is, it even turns around corners. There is an incredibly artistic feel in the place. It seems to be buzzing with creativeness. On every wall there are snippets of advertising, pieces of graphic design, pictures from magazines and all sorts. It is a fascinating place to be. Even to just watch how everyone interacts and works around each other. It is all very relaxed, people dressed normally (phewf... this was one of my worries... what to wear to seem professional). 

Our computers. Our own accounts. 

The information sheets placed on our desks. Who everyone is... who to contact... how...

And then it was time to get down to business. 

We were introduced to Richard, who took us into a separate room to brief us for the day. 

He decided to give us a brief that they had recently done... and were still working on. 

A brief for Halfords.

Halfords bikes. 

Halfords are the largest bike retailer's in the country, but they have started to have the problem that supermarkets such as Tesco have started selling cheaper bikes. 

The message that they want to get across is that their bikes are better value. Tougher, more robust and more durable. This is what we need to get across. 

Today was very much about idea generation. He told us to sketch out and brain storm every thing we came up with. However wild and wonderful. Anything we thought, we needed to put down. 

He wanted us to get into the mindset of an idea generator. "Come on guys, were designing ads, go mad".... so we did. 

For hours. 

We did our research... and came up with as many ideas as we could. That was a lot. Some good, some bad, some tame, some wild. 

He told us that once an idea is there... there are always ways to tweak and adjust them to make them work. 

Are they offensive? Who will they offend?... this can be sorted later on. 

So many ideas. 

We met up with Richard again at the end of the day who reviewed what we had done. 

He was really happy with the amount of ideas we had come up with... and uttered the words "great, you have come up with a lot of fucked up ideas, I love it"

He filtered out the better ideas... and then said how they would use them. Tightening in on them and really extracting all the good material from each one. 

He also gave us this sheet. A whole new way of looking at something and generating ideas which fit the product we are trying to advertise (in this instance, tough bikes).

A really interesting way of looking at it. 

Tomorrow, we will either delve deeper into one of our ideas... or be set another brief to carry through. 

So today was brilliant. We got a real look at how the studio functions as a whole. I am really looking forward to learning more about the individual roles in the agency and how, as a collaboration... the ad goes from a brief to reality. 

I am also SO excited about our trip to Visual Effects studio Framestore in Soho on friday.