This week I was starting to become concious that I was running out of time to find another internship that I could move onto and truly have enough time to be able to get as much from it as I had Story designs. Because of this, I mentioned to Julinka that I was wanting to update my portfolio and CV. She told me to bring in what I had and that she would have a look over everything for me.
I handed Julinka my CV and showed her my portfolio and her feedback was priceless. It turned out that there were a lot of things on my CV that she said didn’t really need to be there – like in my keys skill I mentioned Colour Research – she said within industry this would come as a given considering my background an my degree. There were a few other things that followed this trend etc. She also advised me to shorten a lot of my written sentences. I know I do have a slight tendency to waffle – and we spoke through how people only tend to look over your CV for well less than a minute before making a general decision. This was all very useful information from her that I made sure to write down and take note of considering it is people like Julinka that will hopefully one day be my future employers so these types of opinion are extremely important.
I also showed Julinka my portfolio that I had put together at my time at Chelsea. It was amazing how she managed to pick out which project I presented that I was most passionate in. She said that I managed to show my passion through my portfolio very well, but then equally she said she could tell which was my least favourite project because it didn’t read as well as the others. Again, she advised that I slimmed down on the portfolio too. mentioning the lack of time that employer tend to have to really look these things through. She also advised me to make sure that I get the design work that I have done at Story into my portfolio because this will be great for future employers to see. She also suggested that I put a bit more emphasis on my more skilled and realistic drawing. This is something I feel that we have been shyed away from at university and we have been pushed to go a lot more conceptual and abstract within our work which is obviously what I have showcased in my portfolio.
Again, this was another moment that really opened my eyes on the reality of the industry vs university. I couldn’t help but think that the two sides are looking for completely different things from us as designers. This is something that had really been sitting with me throughout my time in the internship, I really felt like my eyes were being opened to the reality of what my future employers want rather than what my tutors want from me. This posed a big question for me in my plan for my final year in university and which avenue I am going to chose to go down.
For the remainder of the week we got some of the designs back that we had worked on at the start of January, this meant that I got my collar designs back! I was so so so pleased, especially with the cutwork lily one! This being said I wasn’t a massive fan of the grey jersey that it initially came back on. Luckily Julinka had a vintage white top, so we cut the collar off an stitched it onto the top which completely transformed it and made it look even better!
I also got my edited floral tuille dress back which we had added another motif to to fill out the empty areas. I was so much happier with it like this and it was really nice to know that even when the designs come back, they can be adapted and changed to something that you are then happy with.