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Trying to find a third portfolio visit this year was a nightmare. I contacted many agencies in Berlin and in Manchester and only managed to get two visits. Not only is it frustrating when agencies don't respond to your emails, it knocks my confidence as well. I felt like I had tried so hard trying to get in contacting them, I did a back up emails for some of the agencies who didn't get back to me the first time round, but I still didn't hear anything from them. I was so adamant that I would have done all my portfolio visits done by the end of November and it was looking that way the week before I went to Berlin, I felt like I had achieved one of my aims before even going on the visits. I keep thinking back to the visit I missed in Berlin because I couldn't get there. I thought to myself maybe its the way I am portraying myself through an email. Then I thought if this is the case then why did I get responses from Germany but not Manchester. I think the reason why I heard back from agencies in Berlin and not in Manchester is because in Berlin their agencies don't get visited much by students, so to them its something new and exciting when people want to come to see their work. Manchester based agencies seem to not have much time to see people they don't consider a priority.
For next year I want to visit agencies in London I want push myself more and not just focus on agencies in manchester because when I have graduated I hope to move down there as I think that it is one of the best cities for design.

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.

Hesign

Hesign is a graphic design agency based in Berlin. I set this visit up many weeks before I arrived in Berlin, I felt really lucky to get a visit with the designer Jianping. Since I wasn't familiar with Berlin I invited Juliette Brooks and Edwina Sharp to come on the visit with me.

Hesign was established in Berlin, Germany in 2002. In 2005 the branch company in Shanghai was established, and the other branch in Hang Zhou was set up in 2008. In addition to graphic design , branding, art and design and book publishing they also organise art and cultural events activites.

Jianping talked about his way of working and showed some of his projects he had done and some he was working on. His personality really shined through when he was talking to us he told us how he overcame problems that he had in the past when producing work, for example he said that he was asked to produce a book, but he ran out of paper, but instead of panicking he solved the problem by producing the book with few full pages and the rest half pages he did this by cutting the some full pages in half. Which shows to me that he doesn't take himself to seriously and has a funny sense of humour.

After we talked we all showed him our work, he didn't give us that much feedback but he seemed to like what we showed him, he invited us back to his agency anytime we go back to Berlin which was nice of him he gave us a souvenir to take a way with us which was a catalogue of his work.

I had a positive view on this visit, I thought his work was incredible, and to own three branches is incredible. I feel as a designer you need to be able to be yourself and not what other expect you to be.