Gemma Germains Guest Speaker

From today's guest lecturer called Gemma Germains, it has put my future into perspective as she seemed to be very genuine into what she was saying about the future and how there will be ups and downs and you have to work hard to get what you want in life.

Gemma Germains is a creative director who has her own studio and business called Well Made and works with luxury retailers, international publishers, restaurants, brand designers, and arts organisations to deliver copy, social media and content strategy. Today she gave us an incite into the creative industry and what we can do to help our future.

She spoke about internships; and the importance of getting paid. She believes that internships can be successful if paid and you can build relationships from it, however if not then she disagrees with them completely as companies thrive off your talent and fresh ideas and you as the creative designer get no credit from it. Some companies not even trusting you with client's design work and involving you with meetings etc, belittling you so it makes you feel worthless as you haven't been given the right work experience to get a full time job in your chosen career path.

However she believes solely in building up your own freelance work and portfolio. Mainly getting contacts for yourself and building upon them to gain stability and confidence within yourself and your own business/work. Gemma has explained to us that it can be hard and there are plenty of challenges ahead and some of them you do get wrong, and told us not to worry as it is a learning curve for all.

She believes "if you’ve got all this spare time and energy and finance to support yourself whilst working for someone else for free, why don’t you invest it into your own project? The stuff that gets a name is self-initiated work."

She also believes in going to university as it allows you to open all doors and to communicate with others that could potentially help you within your future career or even work alongside with. I agree with this statement solely as a lot of companies now like to see that you can work with others and they like to see that you are experienced within doing this. Not only this but some freelance work even hire teams/pairs of designers to work together on a brief for example a graphic designer and photographer coming together to create a poster.

Gemma Germains, i personally find inspiring as she told us about what she had been through on a story timeline of her highs and lows since she started university, it represented to me that nothing can stop you from achieving your dream. She came across to me as your average lady who can make mistakes but conquers from them to achieve something magnificent.

Bibliography

http://wellmadestudio.com/

https://vimeo.com/80978016

http://www.kin2kin.co.uk/gemma-germains/