123Buero

I have recently been on a visit to Berlin, and while I was out there I went to a design agency called 123Buero along with Ashley, Jules, Mike and Laura. We were greeted by Timo Grassener.. he gave us a quick tour of his studio, and gave us all (ginger tea) not a fan of I must say.
He told us a bit about his background.. he graduated 2002, he went freelance because when he graduated there weren't many jobs about. He felt that the good creative jobs, had rubbish pay, Then there was good paid jobs, but they lacked creativity.
He showed us and talked about his work, which involved prints and editorials, his main interest was typography. He showed us typefaces that he had created in a package called font lab. They were called Maison and Pretzel.
After looking at his work we all showed him our portfolios, I found his feedback quite critical and honest. The feedback he gave me was that I should explain my ideas better and that I should have a lot more work on my area of interest which is typography. He also said that its a good idea to work outside the 'box' because you gain experience of different things. He said that we were more advanced than he was at our ages but we should have a lot more work than we were showing him.
The first thing he did notice about our portfolios were that they were very similar, so they don't really show our individual personalities, I agree with him on this point. The visit ended with a presentation Timo did a few weeks back in Paris for a workshop, which included logo design, editorials, stationary etc.. before leaving he gave us all a business card for his agency so we would be able to contact him at any time for advice on future projects.

I found the visit was very useful, I liked his honesty because that is what you need to hear you don't need someone to telling you its a good piece of work when its blatantly not. This sort of advice tends to push you to do better. The work he showed me was done to a high standard and this is what I will be competing with which scared me a bit. It definitely made me think about the work I have in my portfolio and how I could change it for future portfolio visits. What I also took from the visit was to be more individual when it comes to presenting and discussing my work, especially in the way I explain my ideas, because I obviously know my own work but the agencies won't have seen me before and won't have a clue about any of my work. So this is what I need to improve on in the future.