CRAIG LOVELIDGE

FREELANCE CREATIVE DIRECTOR
PORTFOLIO NIGHT 7 AMSTERDAM PARTICIPANT
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What are you hoping to experience at Portfolio Night?

“I’m looking to be around creative people, to see what’s happening out there in the dark corners of young creative’s minds and help answer any questions that these free thinkers may have about their ideas, their possibilities and their futures.

“It’s a real tough time right now so this is an ideal way for young creatives to meet and greet senior creatives in one place without having to traipse all around town to do so.”

What single piece of advice would you give a young creative before he or she sits down with you at PN7?

“Have a great portfolio of work to show me as well as 5 questions you really want answered. Write them down. Do you have doubts about your work? What will land me my first job? etc etc… I’m there to help you, so in return, help yourself by having an idea of what it is that is troubling/perplexing you right now.”

Looking back, what was your own first portfolio like?

“My first portfolio was a bunch of papers that had “ads” on them. They were mere pieces of thinking, nothing more than that. That thinking got me on to the copywriting & art direction course at Watford College (UK). From there my thinking was crafted into ideas, those ideas became campaigns and those campaigns became my first portfolio. It was a solid piece of work with sound thinking and plenty of energy. For a student book it was just the right weight and thickness to carry 4 pints of beer and a couple of packets of crisps… (I met a lot of creative directors in the pub when I first started out)”

What was the reaction you got, the advice you received the very first time you showed your own book?

“I can’t remember the very first time I showed my book but Peter Souter, the creative director at Abbot Mead Vickers (London) who saw my portfolio kind of liked it.
He liked the products I’d chosen, he liked the thinking I had but then he asked me one question that I didn’t know the answer to. With that, he zipped up my book and said I needed to learn my craft and to do that I needed to go to the Westminster Reference Library (London) and study the backlog of D&AD annuals they had there… That’s probably one of the best bits of advice I ever got as a junior. One week later I appeared bleary-eyed from my D&AD quest and my portfolio took on a totally new lease of life.”

Do you prefer to look at work on a laptop or in a physical portfolio?

“Either way is fine by me. But I still prefer seeing young creative work in a portfolio as it somehow feels much more hands on, more free and open in it’s approach to ideas.”

What is the stupidest thing somebody has done to get you to see them or their work?

“One girl came dressed totally in yellow with a black head of hair and a black hat on… At the back of her portfolio was a picture of a yellow D&AD pencil… The headline read- “Sitting opposite you now is a future Gold winning creative.” I thought she had an OK book but terrible dress sense.”

Finish this sentence: “Kids these days…”

“…need to step away from their techy toys and get out into the real world. Experience real events at face-to-face value. Touch, smell, hear and see things as they really are, not through the screen of a computer or a handheld gaming thingy.”

What are your biggest pet peeves about the work in most junior portfolios?

“Too much time spent on high-end execution. Spend the time on your thinking. If you get a consensus that the idea is great, THEN spend time executing it.”

How important is it for a portfolio to be highly polished?

“A portfolio needs to demonstrate your thinking. Scrap art and rough drawings (to a relatively decent standard) will be more than enough to show what it is your ideas are trying to say.”

What would get your attention more, a portfolio full of amazing ‘traditional’ work (print, poster, outdoor) or a portfolio of pretty good boundary stretching work (digital, interactive, wild new guerrilla concepts etc.)?

“I work to my own maxim of: Idea Crucial, Media No Obstacle. I like to see excellent ideas in all their formats whether they are traditional, digital or experiential. They all resonate, stand out and stop you in your tracks… and that’s why I want to see them.”

How many pieces should be in a portfolio? How many campaigns?

“If you’re going to be showing campaigns, I’d say 5-7 of them would be good (that’s 3 ads per campaign). If you’re showing me single ads, I’d say a maximum of three. If you’re going to show a mish-mash of work, I’d say don’t. I want to see that you’ve thought about and respect the work you want to show me in your book.”

List three adjectives that describe the ultimate junior creative.

“Be a COK - Curious, Original and Keen.”