Escape

Posted on 12 Jul 2007 at 14:52

 

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With Internet access and other business tools being so widely available, Jennifer sees no reason why everyone has to move to the Big Smoke.

Designers, eh? You know the type: square-spectacle-wearing, olive-appreciating, Daft-Punk-listening bohemians. Call ideas 'concepts' and can say the word 'briefs' without sniggering. Find eggboxes endlessly fascinating. I love designers, mainly because I used to be one until the lure of six-week holidays and school dinners turned my head.

Those of you who share my admiration for the latte-inclined will be aware that, as we speak, 4000 of the UK's hottest young designers are showcasing their wares at the concisely-named New Designers event in London. Every design discipline from animation to furniture and jewellery is represented, with new graduates in attendance to talk to potential customers, clients, employers, and to scope out the competition. Big British Names can be spotted if you know who you're looking for, and sponsors include Mr Dyson himself and, more bizarrely, Bombay Sapphire Gin. (Although, thinking about it, I did consume a lot of this at art school, so perhaps it's actually a genius piece of marketing.)

Five long years ago, I was one of these eager young upstarts. Along with 70 other jewellery design students from my art school, I arrived at New Designers degree-show-battered, sleep-deprived and at the very bottom of my overdraft facility. I'd literally spent my last £8 on a pair of retro charity shop sunglasses, which I really didn't need. To be fair, no one really needs a pair of retro charity shop sunglasses, least of all people who live in Dundee, but I seem to have wandered off my point somewhat.

I spent a week manning my stand, mostly staring mournfully at all the people ignoring my carefully transported work. To this day, one of my biggest claims to designer-fame is that I was blanked by Donna Karan. The New York fashion guru charged about the place seemingly at random, although she seemed to know what she was looking for. The girl whose work she eventually nodded at was fallen upon by the rest of us later, prodded, questioned and lauded as the new messiah. 'Quick, touch her cardigan! Rub her hair! Harvest her DNA!' We were very tired.

I did make a few good contacts, many of whom were very kind and patient with my lack of business acumen. There were interviews, jobs I did for very little money, orders too big for me to accept and one unscrupulous multinational corporation that was only too glad to nick a few of my ideas at a point when the idea of me hiring a lawyer was on a par with me hiring a unicorn and flying to the moon. A harsh but valuable lesson on intellectual property management; I subsequently discovered my ideas in the shops courtesy of said company, although I'd neither signed a contract or indeed been given any money at all.

It seemed, at the time, essential to be in London if I wanted to be taken seriously as a professional. The place to give out cards, to have work photographed by the media and to scope out the lie of the design land. Ironically, many of the potential clients and employers I met had travelled to the event from my locale in Scotland; we lived within an hour of each other but never would have met without travelling to the Big Smoke. The novelty of being able to walk into a specialist store for jewellery tools instead of raiding B&Q and confusing the assistants with requests for tiny files and miniature hammers was fantastic.

Eventually, I moved to London. Freelance agencies expected me to be able to pitch up to a meeting in Edgware Road at 9am with a day's notice; the fact that I lived 400 miles away wasn't their concern.