Digit

Last night Henry attended the D&AD 50th Birthday celebration. His thoughts below:

Well done to D&AD for reaching a half-century.

It was fun to look back at all the great work from over the years last night. I was glad to be reminded of how good David Abbott’s work was. My favorite piece overall was the Student Award — a great idea, simply communicated. A sincere congratulations to Martin Headon & Olly Wood. It was nice to see De La Soul, too. They’ve still got it!

HB

Sure, my sample is skewed (in fact it’s somewhat of a leaning tower), but I do think young Italians today, like generations before them, demand to know what happened to the promise of security after dutifully completing University in the shadow of marble statues.

After bidding farewell to the halls of the Università degli Studi di Firenze and the shady portici in Bologna where students flock to drink Spritz and talk about immigration law, I’ve seen more and more of my Italian friends looking to Western Europe, the United Kingdom and US for the right to dream again, a tale as Italian as Aperol itself. Of course, many more have stayed home to try to come to terms with the last volatile ten years, but watching an Italian struggle to understand the form and content of a British sandwich while recalling the regional idiosyncracies of bread at home makes me wonder what it would take to pull my friends and others like them back to Italy.

I’ve written about my love of Italian films before and spent considerable time trying to understand the inputs that make a Calabresan accent or the Molisan relationship with solid rocks and mountains differ from the notion of being Roman or a ‘just barely Swiss’ in Como. This is in part because I’ve opted for an Italian as a sidekick, but mostly because I enjoy celebrating how people identify. No Italian identity fascinates me more than the one claimed by Sicilians. That island of seismic demographic in-and-outs; Norman and Arabic Sicily, the island geologically predisposed to being given the boot. Gesualdo Bufalino has described the Sicilian sensibility as markedly distinguishable. You may or may not buy into his Orientalism:

“Sicily has had the fate of finding itself, over the centuries, as the link between the great Western culture and the temptations of the desert and the sun, between reason and magic, between the storms of feelings and the heat of passion. Sicily suffers from an excess of identity, and I do not know whether this is good or bad. Every Sicilian is ultimately an unrepeatable incarnation of psychological and moral ambiguity.”

Perhaps it’s the ambiguity — as a person who has never lived in any one place for longer than a few years — that draws me to neither-here-nor-there-but-nevertheless-present Sicily. Designer, Domenico Dolce, one half of Dolce & Gabbana, hails from the island and claims to breathe ‘the Sicilian way’ into the label’s designs. I’ve never been a very big fan of D&G’s work, or perhaps I have not, until now, had the tools to understand the Italian dream the two designers have been weaving for so many years. However this summer I finally looked up and felt something.

Photographer, Giampaolo Sgura took the brand to new heights with his S/S 2012 work – accentuated by Dolce and Gabbana’s ornate designs — in a campaign featuring Monica Bellucci, Bianca Balti and Bianca Brandolini D’Adda. It was a visual triumph which seemed to follow me from London through my summer vacation in Croatia. I couldn’t escape this image in particular. What is it about the imagery? Simple: an inter-generational summer, much like I’ve seen on the Adriatic coast in Abruzzo. The joy of living; the pleasure of real meals, health and vitality. I was smitten with the styling, the Italian-style aristocracy (remember this?) with its baubles, prints and embroidery, and delighted to see a more subdued campaign, also photographed by Sgura launch for winter 2012 this week; a caricature of the false promise of summer and prosperity.

Dolce and Gabbana recently showed their first Couture line, Alta Moda, in Sicily in July. I’m curious to see where the brand will go over the next few seasons, and if the emotional direction is part of a larger reevaluation of what truly constitutes the heart and soul of Italy and the secrets Sicily will never share. I know for sure that three key ingredients are love, bread and fantasy (says the girl who kindly asked her Italian partner for  ’a Talented Mr. Ripley sort of summer without the heinous crimes’) back in June. We’re living through a crisis so violent one could argue that fantasy is the last thing Southern Europe needs. But what D&G are on to is the tendency ambiguity has to enable fantasy, and like the Sicilian sensibility, the bedeviled fate of perpetually having to find yourself.

Lernert & Sander – Lernert & Sander all the way in Brighton

httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=T-SZYZLfZ7E

The extravagant works from the pair of Dutch artists Lernert & Sander had the audience in a constant loop of shock and laughter. Taking a slightly different approach to their projects, the pair showcased some of their favourite works which thematically, touched on topics from melting chocolate bunnies, to sex and exploding eggs. Be warned, you may find yourself inappropriately laughing a lot.

Sara Blake – The Art of F*cking Up

Sara Blake is a self-taught illustrator based in New York. Her talk titled “The Art of F*cking Up” was about her journey into becoming an established illustrator through the trials and errors of screwing things up. Sara showcased some of the insanely detailed works she’s done for clients: Nike, TEDx, and Marc Jacobs to name a few. She also mentioned the importance of collaboration. For instance, her collaborative piece with Joshua Davis is great example of how two artists from different mediums can create something unique and beautiful through their different creative techniques and processes.

Yves Peters – Two Decades of Trajan in Movie Posters

Previously a graphic designer, Yves Peters writes daily on The FontFeed about typography, fonts and techniques. He provided some very interesting insights into movie poster typography. His talk, titled “Two Decades of Trajan in Movie Posters,” ran through the psychology of movie poster typography, showing several graphs where Tajan and Gotham hit their peaks in movie poster design, coinciding with their releases in Adobe’s Creative Suite products. He also revealed the reason why film genres have particular patterns of design to others, such as the ‘floating heads’ poster design. Once you’ve watched this video, you’ll find yourself analysing movie posters time and time again.

Stay tuned for Reasons: Day 3, our final report, report tomorrow.

It’s an exciting time to be working at Digit. In light of our new partnership and a few new projects, our team is growing. This means we’re looking for new talent to join our Shoreditch studio. If you fit the descriptions below, and if you’d love to join a technology-driven design company with a unique spirit, we’d love to meet you.

JUNIOR DESIGNERS
We’re looking for enthusiastic, exciting and most importantly talented designers to join our team.

You need to be a team player who is able to take direction while being able to offer unique opinions and ideas — a Jack of of all Trades with an eye for detail. You should be multi-skilled, enthusiastic and keen to develop skills in all areas.

You should be able to create exciting design work and concepts. You’ll need to be highly proficient in all industry standard design software, as much of this role involves production tasks.

If you have up to a year of agency experience drop us a line with your CV and some examples of your work at jobs@digitlondon.com

 
SENIOR DESIGNER
We’re also looking for a super talented Senior Designer to join our creative team.

You should have a natural flair for design and be able to translate brand and brief requirements into solid, coherent work. We will expect you to produce top-class design with an impeccable eye for detail as well as brilliant ideas and concepts. You’ll need to be a good communicator and comfortable presenting to clients.

If you have between 3 and 5 years agency experience drop us a line with your CV and some examples of your work at jobs@digitlondon.com

Since the last of the WPP Microfellows packed up and returned to their lives as ambitious young people with their eyes on the Communications industry, our office has felt notably different. Apart from working on group work on their downtime (they were pitching a new marketing Strategy for social enterprise, Year Here), the Fellows worked on live projects at Digit. And they were naturals at it! Fellow, Jee Hyeok spent his final rotation with us and shared these thoughts on why he’s choosing a different path to his peers after University, why coincidences matter, and why your instinct is probably spot-on. — NM

If you’re a student nearing the end of your time at University — and facing the worst job market in recent history — I’m sure that you, like me, have been thinking about your future prospects  quite often as of late.

If you have a clear goal of where you want to go, be it medicine, banking, drama or music, making the transition into starting your career is a matter of trying again and again to get your foot in the door. And a few months ago, I envied anyone with such a clear sense of direction.

When friends in my Economics class were preparing themselves for interviews – almost universally for investment banks – I was wondering in the desert, desperately trying to find out where I was supposed to go. The Communications industry, or more specifically “Advertising”, was not on my radar. The word itself still conjures the image of Chandler Bing from Friends in my head (“Shorts: like pants, but shorter!”). But after a series of coincidences, I found myself applying to the WPP Microfellowship, and by some crazy luck of the draw, I earned  a spot on the programme.

As my three weeks come to an close, I am simply amazed at how lucky I’ve been: If I hadn’t picked up that book in the library; if I hadn’t read that email from my friend; if I had decided to go to the pub instead of that careers fair, I would be equally as lost as I was a couple of months ago. It also makes me wonder why it has taken me so long to find this area of work – an industry where creativity meets business. After a few discussions with my mentors, and a bit of research for Digit, I think I might have a few answers.

Firstly, Communications agencies like Digit simply don’t need as many people as banks or management consultancies, hence the absence of huge campus recruitment pushes to hire new graduates. With only a few places available at each agency, there’s never a shortage of applicants. However, on the hand, the companies which are supposed to be experts at communication (and do a great job for their clients) fail to catch most graduates’ attention.

What effect is this having on the quality of fresh entrants into the industry? Of course it would be extremely arrogant of me to claim that people who apply to work in Advertising are rejects from other industries – that’s probably just me. But I have encountered people who were considering a job in this industry simply as a back-up plan, something to settle on after a few unlucky interviews elsewhere. Obviously it’s not something an  intern like myself can solve, but I do wonder how the Communications business could be filled with people who are genuinely passionate about their work. Not only because this will benefit the work created here, but because it will be the right path for many of the graduates out there.

Before I realised I wasn’t cut out for working in the finance sector for the rest of my life (a heretical notion in the Economics department), I thought of applying to banks because i) it would make me a millionaire and ii) it almost felt like it was the only thing I could do after studying Economics. But I could not come up with a single reason why the industry would be right for me personally.

Again, it would be wrong of me to assume that all students who apply to the finance industry don’t have an honest passion for it – we all have different interests and talents, of course. But if anyone feels the way I did no matter what industry they are thinking of entering, they should stop telling themselves, “I’ll be miserable, but I’ll retire by forty.”

Yes, it will be scary to turn away from the jobs all your friends are considering. Yes, it might take a long, long time of searching and wondering before you find something that’s right for you. But once you do, I highly doubt you’ll have any regrets.

Our second WPP Microfellow, Timi Merriman-Johnson writes a blog called Negative Buoyancy and swears he can’t float. But he sure can write. See his thoughts below on his rotation at Digit last week. Timi tweets here – NM

Social media has completely changed the way we understand certain words. Before 2006, the act of following a complete stranger would have been the prerogative of the criminally inclined. And writing on the walls of those we knew would’ve been a sure-fire way to lose friends, not gain them. Funnily enough, it has also changed the way we view relationships. Nowadays it’s quite common to come across a Facebook profile casually boasting an excess of 1,000 friends. A thousand?! I barely have five. Two years ago, evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar claimed the human brain was only large enough to manage 150 meaningful relationships at a time. I’m more than inclined to agree with him, as over the course of my 22 years I have come to realise two important things:

Sometimes, less is more. And that bigger isn’t necessarily better.

These sentiments could not manifest themselves any better than the fluid, bustling machine that is Digit, London. Digit isn’t the largest design company in the world, neither does it rest atop the tallest of buildings, and yet that’s what makes it so great. With the exception of the meeting rooms (and the toilets) a conversation held at any point in the studio can be heard by the rest of the team. The faint buzz of the coffee machine frequently makes its way from the kitchenette, all the way to the strategy department. And the muted hum of music manages to permeate all four corners of the open plan workspace.This interconnectedness informs the way in which Digit works on their projects, the relationships the employees all have with one another, and the way they treat individuals who don’t actually work here. Simple. Human. Interaction.

Enter me. As an industry rookie, I had no idea what to expect when I turned up at Digit four days ago. But thankfully I can report that the folks here at Digit were genuinely kind. In my time here I’ve been given the opportunity to speak to members of the team about their respective roles in the company. I was sent on a field trip to Oxford Circus to conduct research on the in-store presence of four major clothing brands. And lastly, I was given a week long auditing task – an exciting opportunity to contribute to a live, on-going project. Everyone has treated me as if I work here, and not once have I been made to feel like ‘the work experience guy’.

Many thanks must be given to Nomfundo Msomi, my mentor, for looking after me this week. You are funny, efficient, considerate, brilliant. And a huge thanks to the rest of the Digit staff too. You did the unimaginable. You made the daily morning commute, pressed up against various members of the general public worth enduring. Thank you. Dear reader, in all seriousness though, I’ve had a great week and I’d love to come back, should the good people here be happy to have me again.

Digit: a design company with technology at its core, and an Xbox 360 in its communal area. This is a cool place to work.

The past two weeks have seen our Digit family expand, albeit temporarily. We’ve hosted two WPP Microfellows, a young designer, and a Strategist in the making. Grace turned 15 this week, and today is the last day of her two week stay at Digit. These are her thoughts on our studio — NM

My two weeks at Digit have been phenomenal. I’ve had the opportunity to discover and understand what life is like in the working world, at a digital company. I was introduced to the different departments: Strategy, Design, Tech and Production. I mostly worked on the Strategy team, and although I initially thought it would be quite dry, I was asked to look at brands I liked and to write about them (a fashion brand I like, and a supermarket brand I really don’t like!). I was then asked to do some research over the weekend on the brand I didn’t like by asking people if they felt the same way. Lucky for me, they did. I also evaluated Digit’s website, blog and twitter page and compared and contrasted them with similar companies. I  then looked at how magazines are structured, who their target audience is, how they differ and if they have websites that are similar to the print version. I looked at Vogue, Asos, Square Meal, The Big Issue, Motherland and Design Mind. The best thing about doing research was being able to give my own opinion on brands.

Not only has Digit given me an insight into their company, but also into how the big world out there truly is. First and foremost, I live all the way in Peckham and I hardly ever travel to the City. So doing my work experience here at Digit has given me a chance to to explore and experience London in a different way. I have also been able to socialise with the loveliest, most down to earth people. The most important thing I will leave understanding is the power of humility and kindness which I learned from my supervisor, Nomfundo who always took time out of her busy schedule to give me work to do and to make sure that I was settled every day. However, it was not just Nomfundo but everyone at Digit who was kind. On the first day I was taken out to lunch by Digit’s Creative Director, Henry Brook and co. Every other department took time to give me an introduction to what they do, which I really appreciated.

I will miss Digit very much. My work experience has been breathtaking. It would be my pleasure to come back. Thank you to everyone!