This week there's a series of conferences at Regent Street about several aspects of design, animation and about the professional world and how to present our work to agencies and enterprises. The first talk I attended today was given by Paul Roberts, who works in the advertising industry.

He started speaking about job applications, and he remarked the need of demonstrating lateral thinking and savvy and of standing out from the crowd to interest agencies. He also highlighted the fact that the job market situation is worse than any time in the last 20 years, though it has never been totally good. The economic crisis is affecting the industry and, in terms of design, even the governments shift design needs in their public projects.

He went on to explain that there are so many students looking for work that you need to make your application stand out from the rest. You need to research your target agencies, trying to figure out what their needs may be now and in the future, and you have to be diverse to increase your options, since agencies are getting smaller and more specialized. Moving on to digital is an advisable action, and you may consider making a digital portfolio, considering that the amount of digital work in many agencies has turned from 30% to 70% in a few years.

Agencies will be interested in hiring students because they cost less in wages and because they contribute fresh ideas and novel solutions. Even if your work is not sufficiently rewarded, you may use each placement you get in an agency to extend your portfolio.

When talking about the creative work, Paul insisted on the need to wow and excite your audience, whatever media you work in. So, you have to know your target audience and try to apply the K-I-S-S principle: Keep-It-Simple-Stupid, because the best ideas, according to him, are the simplest. You need to focus on the most important characteristic of the product, because putting many facts may cause people to lose them. You must make sure that your message management is clear. When presenting your ideas, it's advisable to show more than one, to offer alternatives and to show that you have worked hard on it.

It's also important that you work on what to say and not on the how. You should work on your messaging before you start designing. Then you can focus on shaping the message appropiately, keeping in mind that a great idea is the truth well told.

Paul Roberts also gave us some tips to take into account when designing an advertising campaign:

- Playing with words: Create a message, sentence or concept associated to the brand's name so nobody else can use it.
- Building brands: Make it characteristic by using a word, a colour... that is bound to remain associated with the brand in the client's mind.
- Disguise your work: Some of the best adverts are those that don't look like adverts because they're disguised in items or places of everyday life.
- When presenting your proposals to clients or agencies it's a good idea to show them that you have used their brief. Take them through your logical thought process so your work makes total logical sense.
- Be enthusiastic and passionate.
- Have good working habits and constantly reinvent yourself.

Finally, and to illustrate the theory, here are some examples of original adverts and the resorts they use.




















Integrate the means with the idea and surprise.












Play with words.














Implicate the consumer with a game, a riddle, something not too easy nor difficult but amusing.





















Use humour. A good laugh fixes the ideas in people's memory.