Application of the week

Here is a covering application I was sent for one of my roles. 

Had to blog it for uniqueness.

Dear Mr. Dean Cousin,

Here I am,
there you are.
I have the dream,
you have the job.

More than four
are the years
where design
has been my life,
smile and tears.

Illustrator, Illustration
Quarkexpress, Photoshop
Corel Draw, Macintosh
Super Flash, Actionscript
Print Production and
are you worried?
Take a look
you will not be sorry: http://hjpo.carbonmade.com/

Enter will be pressed
with an automatic answer
ready to be sent.
Wouldn´t that be easy
escape the format
and have a Skype chat?

Yes I´m Portuguese
and I live in Lisbon,
but by airplane, boat or car
I will be where my dreams are.

CV of the week

Got to love this :-)

A splash of colour to the daily cuppa

Hit the Orla Kiely website for a few things for the house. Worth checking out if you like the style.

The Olympics London 2012

Crap weather, great games, 3rd on the medal table and loads of new national heroes!!

The Olympics is truly an event that my family and I will never forget. The vibe was brilliant, friendly people, well organised and was great value for money excluding the on site snacks, drinks etc but overall an awesome time and I was thrilled to be a part of this global event.

Check out some pics I took and feel free to comment on your Olympic experiences.

Kids make the best mess

My son had a kids sleep over the other day, what a mess! But oh what fun they had making it!

African Fashion Week London

I made it over to African Fashion Week London. The show was amazing and the vibe was awesome! Check out more on their website.

The market so far…

As we come into August we are hitting the peak months within the freelance design and creative market calendar. So, the industry should be a hive of activity with relentless phone calls with offers of work, right? Well, perhaps not.  We have the Olympics to deal with and we’re still feeling the affects of a double dip recession. I found myself pondering over the level of impact such events have on the market?

I noticed a flood of activity and increased freelance requirements (10+ per day) during July, but as yet it hasn’t carried on into Aug . It’s usual for people to jet off on holiday and this is also a period of change from perm jobs over Q3, which leads to a demand for cover and personnel.

In short, I feel confident that the coming months will pick up rapidly and as a result it is vital to keep in touch with your agent(s) if your availability changes, as this will increase your chances of being called for bookings and briefs. 

My top tips so far are:

• Update your agent with availability weekly (if in short term bookings). We can’t read your mind and don’t know when you can work if you don’t tell us
• Stay professional and conduct yourself in an open and honest way. You make the type of candidate we want to work with
• If working offsite, make sure you are accessible and contactable throughout the 8 hour working day… you never know when that call will come in
• Freshen up  your cv and folio with a summer look and show that you’re current and in touch with the season
• Agents - if you book freelancers, make sure you have a strong relationship with people and offer the right rates 
• Honour your commitments. You might have been out of work for a week or two,  but a pencil still needs to be followed up before taking other bookings

If you are based in London and work as a freelancer with in the creative sector then why not join my group: http://ht.ly/cEw8v and get involved in the conversations?!