Work samples tips - visual communication
Hannah Green Youngblood and Tilda Aspelin have collected a lot of tips for those who sit with the work samples for Visual Communication.
"Believe in yourself, have fun and take a break, are probably my best tips," says Hanna and is supported by Tilda.
"It's important to really try to have fun and to see it as a project that you're doing for yourself, not for it to be judged," he said. But it's hard! Interpret the data in your way and you will show both what you can do and that you have understood the task, says Tilda.
Two years of preparatory training
Both have attended preparatory courses before entering Beckmans, Tilda two years at art and design at Österlenskolan and Hannah one year at Nyckelviksskolan and one year at Beckmans Kvällsskola.
"At Kvällsskolan we were working on real projects just like we do now on the bachelor's programme, so I felt like I knew a little bit about Beckmans. At Kvällsskolan, for example, I learned how important it is to be well prepared for the presentations and that it is up to you to take advantage of feedback from teachers and classmates to develop, says Hannah.
Work test assignment became aha experience
One of last year's work sample assignments for Visual Communication was about kites, or more specifically how a kite that can fly can be combined with graphic product design in practice or in theory. It was the assignment that both Hannah and Tilda found the most fun.
"For me, it was an aha experience about how you can think. I first started sketching something that I thought beckmans wanted but it didn't turn out well, so I started over and Googled "dragon" for inspiration. The first meeting was about the artist Drake, so it was his lyrics that became the graphic elements of the task, says Tilda, who also recommends keeping notes on the process.
"If you get stuck, you can go back and look at your early ideas, maybe there's something there to work on," he said. In this way, it is also possible to deepen ideas and follow a common thread in your final result, not only for yourself but also for those who are going to judge.
Hannah, in turn, thought about what flying dragons had been used for in the first place, namely to send different signals and messages.
"I was thinking about the context in which dragons can be used to send messages today," he said. The situations I came to think of were in connection with demonstrations and protests, where people often use similar tools (banners, flags, signs, etc.) to spread their messages. Instead of choosing slogans that can vary, I chose to use the symbols of three often recurring themes in demonstrations: love (a stylized heart), peace (the peace sign) and freedom/equality (a clenched fist), hannah says.
Focus on the idea and use your own toolbox!
The task both found most difficult was the one that was about making a website because the first thing they thought was that they couldn't program. But as they read the task more carefully, both realized that they did not need to program to solve it.
"We both chose to work with sketch images instead and that's what's important, not to feel limited by the technical but to focus on the idea and solve the task with tools that you're comfortable with," he said. If you're safe making pictures, do it instead of doing something halfway in tools you can't, they say.
Do you have any final tips for applicants?
-I can really recommend Youtube tutorials! No one tipped me off when I did the work tests, but there is really everything from folding paper in different ways to very advanced things," says Tilda.
"Another important tip is not to use mockups but to make out all the tasks for real! For example, if you are going to turn a label into a paper bag, get a real paper bag and print your label and paste and take a photo. It gets a lot more personal than if you use a digital mockup of a bag where you put in the label," says Hannah.