Random.

I was asked to produce a piece of work which said who I was, what was special about me, and gave my contact details... I assume we are going to be using it to make our business cards or something?! This is what I done....

Its only a quick photo at the minute but the idea is there and I can whack some nice type on there instead of the handwriting maybe...

Introducing... The HandyCap.

The other day we were asked to pick some words out of a dictionary and try to give them some new meanings. My favourite was:

 'Handycap' - a cap that that has everything you could possibly need attached to it somewhere or somehow, the user could wear it all the time and then when they need something they can just grab it.

Pretty handy huh?  I reckon it would probably look something like this if it went into production...

Apprentice Challenge.

Your Fired! Not really.

Bucks New Uni was set the challenge of hosting their own 'Apprentice' Style business challenge by some local business man who said 'we would never manage it' I wasn't really listening but he said some throw away comment about how it would never happen, someone at the Uni heard about it and decided to prove him wrong! This Apprentice Challenge would run along side enterprise week.

Now all of this is really meant for the business and marketing students, but a few of us creative students heard about it and thought we could probably give them a run for their money, so we threw together a team and branded ourselves 'cream of the crop.' Wicked.

First we had to go to the launch party where all 16 teams met and found out who their sponsors would be. An FA cup style draw took place and we ended up with The Crowne Plaza Hotel as our sponsor, which I was pretty happy with. We then spent some time with our mentor from The Crowne Plaza getting to know him and finding out how he could help us, aswell as sharing a few drinks and cannopes.

Stage 1.

For the first challenge each sponsor gave their team £50 to spend, the challenge was to buy and sell doughnuts and make as much profit as possible, we had about a week to plan and sort out a supplier and anything else we needed. We went away and thought about it individually, then came together to share our ideas the next day, then took them to our mentor. In the end our plan was to blag some free bunny costumes (which we did) and sell in the shopping centre in town, using the costumes to draw people to our stall. We also had 2 'rovers' who went out to various locations to sell during the day, including the police and fire stations, the hotel, local building sites and a school. Selling went well and just before we ran out of time we ran out of doughnuts, which was a bit of a result! When all the profit as counted we had made nearly £90 and sailed through to the next round!

Stage 2.

For the second challenge we were given another £200 plus the profit from stage 1. Each team had a market cart in town on a saturday, we could buy and sell whatever we wanted in order to make the most profit. We played around with a few ideas and looked in to maybe selling a 'bag carrying' service to help people take all their shopping back to their cars. In the end we went with another idea; we would use the money to buy a Nintendo Wii console and then charge passers by to have a go, with the chance of winning the console if they had the top score at the end of the day. We wanted to get a buzz around our stall in order to attract lots of people and create a bit of competition. Come the day of the challenge we found our market cart was not in the best of positions as it was kind of tucked away. This hindered us slightly and we resorted to the bunny costumes to attract some attention again, the day ran smoothly and we had a steady flow of people but no where near as busy as we had hoped. Come the end of the day we had covered the cost of the Wii console and made about £12 profit, which doesn't sound that good, but some teams didn't even break even. We handed over the console to the lucky winner who had only spent £4 on goes! So he was pretty chuffed. Unfortunately our £12 profit wasn't enough to put us through to the final round, we had a laugh and managed to make some profit though...so not all bad.

Strategies.

Here are our first thoughts for some advertising strategies, we were asked to come up with 10, these are a work in progress:

1. Ryvita - So light you might have to tie them down.

2. Kiwi Shoe Polish - It saves carrying a mirror. / Your shoes are a reflection of you.

3. Carling Extra Cold - Gloves not included.

4. Monster.com - Only zookeepers like working with monkeys.

5. Kellogs Corn Flakes - Voted no.1 by milk everywhere. / Milk's Favourite.

6. Nutri-Grain Bars - Have an extra 10 minutes in bed.

7. Night Nurse - One sheep, 2 sheep, ZZZZZZ

8. Hornby Trains - Your dad might even let you have a go.

9. Elastoplast - Bloody good.

10. Clearasil - Everyone will spot the difference. / For when your under the spotlight.

11. Daihatsu Cars - No one likes show offs anyway.

12. Exchange and Mart - Everything from Audi's to Zimmer frames.

Round 1! FIGHT!

We were asked to produce a piece of film, based on the idea of how body language can be used to control a situation, we didn't want to be too obvious and wanted to have a bit of fun. We thought about doing it one of two ways; either like the cult classic Street Fighter or like an old western, shoot 'em up style.  We decided to go with Street Fighter and wrote a quick script and sorted a location, Here's what we came up with:

It shows how powerful body language can be, and how someone can take control of a situation without having to say anything! We had a good laugh making it and I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

Letterboxes are better than inboxes.

Today we live in a society similar to Big Brother, there are around 4 million CCTV cameras in Britain which view us as many as 300 times a day, we are also in the age of email, instant messaging, text messaging and facebook, all of which can be accessed by people other then the intended recipient. We happily put all of our info and photos on social networking sites; facebook, myspace bebo etc. for any Tom, Dick or Gary Glitter to look at! Some facts for you: 60%of organisations intellectual property is in their email system and a typical user stores half of their critical business info within their emails. So in this Big Brother society how can we keep our private messages private, and our personal information personal? The answer, is handwritten letters. I get a bit excited when I get a handwritten letter through the post, there's just something nice about it. I don't get the same feeling when I check my email inbox and see I have 120 new messages, I know 80-90% of them will be spam or of no interest to me. Now I know we get junk mail in the post but at least we get the satisfaction of screwing it up and throwing it straight in the bin (the recycling one, of course.) There's something special about receiving a handwritten letter, you know the sender has taken their time over it and that its for your eyes only. You can actually hold it in your hands, just as they would have done before they sent it to you. It's real, not a virtual thing, and it's written in proper english, not text or email talk where everything is shortened to save time so you can hit that send button. You can save the letters away in a drawer or box but that drawer or box is personal and only you know the letters are there. I found a nice quote: "letters tell the stories that become our history" I think that everyone should try writing letters, so that they have something private and personal and real, but also so our history that we are leaving behind can be seen, read and felt.

Go write a letter now. I'm going to. Do it!

scary but good.

I've just finished drawing up some ad ideas which I will be presenting to Graham Fink (creative director at MC Saatchi) tomorrow afternoon, pretty exciting, pretty scary at the very same time!

If only building the perfect life was this simple...

My answer to: A piece of type/design to demonstrate your chosen quote.

The text reads: "Life is what you make it"  You can sit around all day feeling sorry for yourself, thinking the worst of the situation you are in and making yourself sad, depressed and lonely, or you can wake up every morning with a smile on your face ready to make the most of your day, meeting new people, seeing new places and experiencing new things.

Beauty, its in the belly of the beholder...

We were asked to show our own interpretation of beauty, so I went through all of the obvious things to get them out of the way; nice views, storms, the female body, kissing etc.

I wanted to present something that was beautiful to me, but on more than just a visual level. Something that would excite all of the senses, that made people feel good inside and would make everyone happy... Sounds hard right, but it wasnt, the answer was, of course...Bacon sarneys!

There's alot of beauty surrounding food, it excites all of the senses, it feels good to make food for others and even better when someone makes food for you, it brings people together whether it be friends, families or people you've never met and is a part of all special occasions; birthday cake, christmas dinner etc.

So, come the day of the crit, I pulled out my camping stove, donned my apron and made the rest of the class some good old bacon sarneys!

I'd like to stamp on them all.

"hello, u alright?" so I look round, and its another idiot with his bluetooth headset on. Aaargh! He goes on to chat to his partner about work and what to get for their dinner, I don't need to hear this, nor do I want to.

I dont like these little devices that look like massive hearing aids with christmas lights on. They annoy me for a number of reasons:
-I never know if the people using them are talking to me or not.
-I end up hearing the conversation, but only one half of it.
-They look rediculous.
-Business types use them to show off about their latest deal or new car.
-People think its ok to continue thier coversation whilst I serve them on a till. Its Rude. Don't do it.
-Did i mention they look stupid...
-And that they're rude.
-And annoying...

Fair enough when you're driving, but when you're walking around, please, just don't do it.

How do they know this?

The other day I thought I'd ask AQA (short for: Any Question Answered...) Who i was? so i sent them a text and to be honest the reply I got was quite scary, it was spot on;
'Adam Ronan is 19 years old. His birth was registered in Feb 1989, he's from High Wycombe, and his middle name is Matthew. His surname is from county Cork, Ireland.'

Seriously, how do they know this? Do I want them to know this? Think of the possible repocussions, anyone, anywhere, can send a short text and find out about me... this cant be a good thing!

If you're not sure who you are, or you fancy finding out what AQA knows about you, send them a text. I'm not going to put the number on here, I'm not going to give them free advertising, they'll just use the money to tell more people who Adam Ronan is, and I don't want that...