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Job Description: Landscape Architect.

Workshop

Design Portfolio Tips for Designers

Here's some industry advice on how to best showcase your creative potential in your design portfolio. Whether you're aiming at a creative role as a Graphic Designer with an advertising agency, or an Art working job for a blue chip client, we have...

Workshop

Job Description: Proofreader.

Workshop

How to... Become a Freelance Designer

by Creativepool. Most design agencies at some time or another will need to hire freelancers or contract out certain pieces of work. Sometimes [fairly often in fact] agencies will hire in freelancers to free-up the in-house design team so they can...

Features

Taxing. What we can learn from the Starbucks fiasco.

by Magnus Shaw. There's only one thing that surprises me about the Starbucks saga, and it isn't their reluctance to pay tax. As large corporations are only really answerable to shareholders, that is to be expected. No, it's the fact they thought...

Features

The 'Welcome To Las Vegas' sign, appreciated.

by Magnus Shaw. If you've always been keen to see the very cornerstone of capitalism; a seething hub of avarice and a perfect mechanism for prising people's hard earned cash from their pockets, Las Vegas is for you. I've just returned from a...

Features

Ella Universe

I was looking not only for a blog name but for a brand name for my vision. I wanted to embrace all what I love in this alter persona, immerse myself in its world, and invite others to join if they liked. I created this muse, Ella, the timeless alter...

Features

Why creative jobs aren't always a bowl of cherries.

by Magnus Shaw. I work as a copywriter and blogger. I also do something I call consultancy - advising people on their writing, marketing or branding, really. Sometimes, I produce or present radio programmes too. These are all very enjoyable and...

Workshop

Opinions - Kindling. What do eBooks mean for writers?

by Magnus Shaw If you read my columns with any regularity, you'll have noticed a little ad in the footer inviting you to buy "ADVICE" - a collection of my writing on advertising (it's very good, by the way). Those kind enough to have clicked through...

Workshop

Opinions - Must haves? Ten products they told us we needed (but we didn't). Part 2

by Magnus Shaw Creativepoolers, welcome back to our list of ten of products advertising told us we couldn't live without (when, in fact, we absolutely could). Please feel free to use the comment box to let us know if there's anything we've omitted....

Workshop

Opinions - Working capital. Do you have to be in London to be a proper creative?

by Magnus Shaw Paul Burke is a writer and producer with AMV BBDO. In a piece for The Drum and Creative Circle magazines on 28th August he wrote this: "If you work in advertising and call yourself a creative, why on earth would you move away from...

Workshop

Opinions - Help yourself. Is it ever okay to nick an idea?

by Magnus Shaw An enormous advertising company (Leo Burnett) and a small creative film company (Asylum) have had a difficult couple of weeks. It's a tangled tale but essentially Asylum produced a film for the McDonald's charitable foundation for Leo...

Workshop

Opinions - Work's A Beach

by Ashley Morrison When I was on holiday in France recently, I couldn't help but envy the people who worked on the vineyards we visited. What a great life that must be. Well, for the owners if not the labourers, anyway. They get to live in some of...

Inspiration

CP Loves... Jeremy Deller's 'Sacrilege'

by Ashley Morrison. Tempting as it was today to blog about the Olympic Opening ceremony (you've gotta love that James Bond bit with Her Maj, haven't you?) I've decided to talk about another round-the-country event which is taking place at the moment...

Workshop

Training is an investment, not an unnecessary cost.

by Mark Young, Academy Class. In difficult economic times employers can be forgiven for looking at their expenditure and deciding that some things are easier to do without than others. While utility bills and direct employment costs are unavoidable,...

Industry

New Designers 2012

New Designers is the UK's most important graduate design exhibition. Over 3,500 of the brightest and most creative talents from Britain’s leading design courses will come together for the 27th edition of New Designers. New Designers is an...

Workshop

Opinions - The specialist versus the generalist

by John Fountain Not so long ago creative folk were employed to work across all areas of business communications. It was said that if you were any good you'd be able to turn your hand to almost anything. And if you had any weak spots or showed any...

Inspiration

Trailblazers

Colette Alexandratos Illustrator and Vector Artist "I am a self motivated, open minded, creative and hardworking individual who can adapt to a variety of styles, from hand drawn illustrations, to vector based artwork by working as an individual and...

Inspiration

When busking meets big business

In the eighties and nineties I lived in London and throughout that time, London Underground put buskers on a par with the small, grey, dusty mice running between the rails. That is, vermin ripe for extermination. Okay, maybe not extermination, but...

Features

What's the problem with the Big Fat Gypsy Weddings campaign?

This week Channel 4 has attracted considerable attention. Its high-profile, much discussed ‘documentary’ strand Big Fat Gypsy Weddings has returned to a big fat viewing audience and water-cooler debate over the style merits of pineapple...

Workshop

Know your value and prepare to negotiate!

by Richard Bloom, Purple Consultancy. The past 18 months or so have seen the creative industries recover from the recent recession at an astonishingly fast pace, at least from our point of view as recruiters it has. It is still very much a...

Features

What 5000 video diaries sound like.

The Saatchi Gallery has just opened a new film and screening room, just around the corner from the Saatchi Gallery on the King's Road. The first artist to take up residence in this room is Christopher Baker, a scientist-turned-multimedia artist who...

Strife is tweet - a top ten of Twitter scandals

1. Social sausage Anthony Weiner (oh the irony!) denied everything and blamed hackers (they always do), when a photo of his genitals was tweeted from his account and sent to a woman in Seattle. The problem was that Weiner, at the time, was one of...

Inspiration

What a [lovely] load of rubbish

Question: if a piece of art can literally be mistaken for rubbish, does that make it rubbish? No, not necessarily '“ but it does raise an interesting and valid question about whether art can ever be called 'bad' (or 'good') and whether it...

Inspiration

The art of the comic book

Comics have been a large part of popular culture for generations. Today, this genre continuously churns out amazing artwork from some extremely talented artists. Of course, comic books are close to many designers' hearts because often they are their...

Leaders

V&A Illustration Awards

I stumbled upon the V&A Illustration Awards quite by accident. Although I've lived in London for a number of years, I'd never been to that museum, so I decided to pop along to get some inspiration for this week's blog. It's a deceptively large maze...

Workshop

Failure to launch: why some brands don't make it.

Perhaps it's the money. Large budgets are often greeted by marketing teams in the same way Keith Richards welcomes a stiff drink. But the fact remains that endless resources are not always guaranteed to produce branding success. Far from it. The...

Features

Are you special?

I was very pleased to receive a big response to my recent piece on becoming a copywriter but one question really caught my attention. The correspondent asked me to suggest a 'type' of copywriting in which to specialise. This rather threw me, but it...

Features

Who wants to be in Creative Review?

We all do. Let's face it, that's the honest answer. We're all creatives, therefore we're all big, blinking show-offs, therefore we want our work splashed across a ruddy great DPS in the next available issue of CR. And don't say you don't, because you...

Inspiration

Is that a pair of boobs on my macchiato? How Starbucks came up with the rudest logo on the highstreet.

The Starbucks logo; something most of us absentmindedly encounter on a daily basis but have you ever stopped to peer at the mermaid logo which is emblazed across your morning latte? It's caused a fair amount of controversy since the brand launched in...

Features

Shouldn't banks just stop advertising?

When you're as reviled as the Black Death, figuring out a productive advertising strategy is quite a challenge. Indeed, some might suggest shutting your fat gob and staying well off the radar might be a good call. But when you're a megalomaniacal...

Features

F1: We Have A Winner

There are few sports as glitzy and glamorous as Formula 1. It's like rock'n'roll without the drugs but with everything else. A multi-billion dollar industry with fast cars (er, obviously), dashing men in shades, 'pit babes' (apologies to the...

Leaders

Japan: Censoring The Arts.

Creatives in Japan are currently up in arms about a new form of censorship legislation which is in the process of being approved by the authorities. The Federal Province of Tokyo has made it illegal for creative companies to portray any female...

Features

Meet James Norrington

James Norrington is Creative Director of the brand engagement agency Avvio. Multi-talented, he's a digital designer, graphic designer, 3d designer and a dab hand at video editing. He's also a pretty impressive wind-surfer and skier. James, you...

Inspiration

From the people that brought us Kinetic Cats

Upon deciding that Brooklyn creative agency Labour were to be the first topic of my first Creativepool blog, you cannot begin to imagine how long I toyed with the idea of a political pun for the blog title. So long, in fact, that I was beginning to...