The final third of the year saw me working for Bloodhound doing a whole range of design and test rigs.  It also saw me trying to keep my hand in outside of the daytime job.  These are some of the highlights.

> September
Design of Test Rigs

Although by this time I was starting on the steering wheel for the car, there was a lot of ongoing work with test rig development.  The Ground Surface Test Rig was drawn on CAD, as well as the Ergonomic Cockpit Test Rig being modified for an exhibition in the Design Museum, London.  The biggest challenge with this was the new software.  Being trained on SolidEdge and Rhino, coming to UG NX-4 was a massive jump.  Like everything though, it was a steep learning curve and one that will most certainly be of use in the future.
What I learned >

• The basic controls of NX-4.
• It is exceptionally difficult to find the measurements of a tow hitch plate online – much quicker to use a ruler.
• ‘I am designing a rig that fits to a tow hitch plate’ does not go down with security when asking what you are doing by that person’s car.

> October
Duncan McKean’s Fridge Door

As a good friend of mine and talented designer Duncan McKean was leaving on his world design tour, I decided to set him a puzzle.  This was a treasure hunt based on a puzzle that he had written some years before, and leads to a location where something is hidden.  As far as I know, this conundrum is still yet to be solved, though it is 90% decoded…
What I learned >

• I love writing puzzles.
• There is true beauty in numbers.
• There is a lot of scope for a bigger and better puzzle in the future.  Watch this space.

> November
Ground Surface Test Rig

One of the most challenging weeks of the year for me was the week that the test rig I designed in September went out to South Africa.  The engineering drafts had to be made, the parts needed to be manufactured, and then they all had to be assembled, calibrated and tested.  This was then all packaged and flown out to Hakskeen Pan, where it was used to find out just how good the ground was.  I am not going to deny it; I had my doubts whether the package would make it out.  It looked like a bomb.  It was the first piece I had designed to go to manufacture for actual use – a proud moment when it worked!
What I learned >

• How to do engineering drafts in the real world.
• Tolerances.  Always use tolerances.
• There is nothing like de-burring your finger to wake you up in the morning.

> December
N/A

OK, so this may seem like a little bit of a copout for my last month of the year, but the truth is that December has been a bit of an odd month.  With the launch of the new Bloodhound headquarters at the end of November, the run up to Christmas, the relentless emails, moving of boxes and organising of projects for 2010; design has seemed to take a bit of a back seat.  That is not to say that there is nothing to show for it, but there hasn’t been any project that immediately jumps out.  The only exception to this is was a one day project based around the Formula One in Schools Bloodhound category.  The team wanted a car that looked more like the Bloodhound, and could achieve a sub one second time.  My model did it in 0.891 seconds.  Yeah.
What I learned >

• Unless you are careful, emails will take over your life.
• Balsa wood is great to model in.
• CO2 powered cars are amazingly fast.

> 2010
What happens next?

With next year and the next decade being only hours away, I guess I must now look to the future and what my plans and predictions are for the next 12 months.  A new website is coming, with a completely new feel and setup.  There are a few big design projects in the pipeline, and maybe some videos too.  A lot is going to change, and for one I cannot wait to get started.

With that, I bid you a Happy New Year.

> May

Moo MiniCard Holder

This project was amazing fun.  The project was to design a product and take it all the way to manufacture, including costings, profit predictions and proof of concept.  Deciding to redesign the plastic business card holders sold by Moo, I aimed for a more industrial aesthetic.  Something simple and clever in its mechanism, cheap to manufacture, but still stylish and dynamic.  It had to be a product that made you take notice when it was drawn from a pocket; because in the end what you want is for people to remember you.
What I learned >

• Design for the user, not just for the material.
• Design with the material cost, not just the user.
• Prototyping with aluminium can be a b***h.

> June

BDF09

In 2008, the Bristol Design Festival was one of the highlights of my design year.  This year I decided to become much more involved.  Teaming up with Verity Gough and others, I became a guest blogger for the event, as well as official tweeter.  I also helped manning the event, entered the Grafikea competition (unfortunately though was far outclassed by my own Sister’s entry) and exhibited.  This last part was the most fun.  Myself, Arthur Chan and Matt Ohman created an exhibition called ‘Three Stickmen and a Pile of Work’, showcasing some of our design portfolio.  Mine included my natural form speaker project, complete with a working model of the piece.
What I learned >

• Rapid Prototyping is a long and slow process.
• There is nothing quite as satisfying as showing off something you have designed.
• Rushing spray paint just will not work.

> July

Bloodhound – On Tour

And so my industrial placement began.  There is no simple way to explain the work that I do at Bloodhound, or for that matter no easy way to explain the project itself.  You end up doing a whole range of amazingly interesting and exciting things, and there is no time to wait to learn how to do them.  To say I was thrown in at the deep end would be an understatement.  I was hurled into the Mariana Trench.  Within two weeks I had presented to 8000 kids in Newcastle, talked in front of crowds at Rockingham and been blown off my feet at Goodwood Festival of Speed.  This is no ordinary job.
What I learned >

• Presenting to kids is scary.
• Children come up with the best and most thought provoking questions.
• Every single fact and figure about the Bloodhound can be easily burnt into your head with enough repetition.

> August

The Start of the steering wheel

Finally, the project that I had been waiting for got the go ahead.  The design of a steering wheel.  For a real car.  That will go faster than any car ever designed.  Awesome.
Like any project though, there are always the basics that you have to do.  Research was and still is ongoing, with lots of analysis of joysticks and a lot of table-tennis-esque discussion between myself, the systems engineers and of course the driver.  I expected this project to be completed by November.  I am still nowhere close to that.  It is progressing, and I am always discovering.
What I learned >

• There has never really been a steering wheel custom designed for one person, even in Formula 1.
• No matter where you go in design, nothing will ever beat blue foam.
• Andy Green has BIG hands.

It was at the end of this third that things began to change.  It was now that I was working full time with Bloodhound.  Early starts, late nights, and a more business and engineering slant on design.  This is still yet to come…
Stay tuned for some snippets from the rest of my year.  Were there any projects that really stood out for you this year?

Now that I think about it though, this has been one of the longest years I can remember.  Of course it isn’t any longer than any other year, but in terms of how much has changed, how much has been achieved and what has actually happened this year, it is hard to get a grasp of it all.  Things that happened only a few months ago now seem engrained into the past.

Luckily though, with the amazing technology of the camera and the blog, I have been able to keep track of some of it.  Let us first then cast our minds back to when we counted down the seconds to midnight on the 31st December 2008 with shot glasses, and subsequently forgot the first few days of January.

> January

Greener Gadget Competition 2009

This project with the exception of the Bristol Design Festival was my first attempt at doing a self started project.  Yes there was a deadline and a rough criteria, but the ideas were mine to bring to the table.  It was an amazing challenge, to come from doing design at University to working for yourself with no-one to guide your design process.  This wasn’t a lesson so much in design, but a lesson about myself.
What I learned >

• Throwing your ideas at potential users really helps the creative process.
• You don’t have to have a strict guideline to have fun with design.
• Someone else will have the same idea as you.  The trick is to present it better.

> February

Bloodhound Test Rig

Another first – this time my first live project.  The first one for a client, the first project that got us really hands on with prototyping, and the first project with major media coverage.  We spent a long time discussing possibilities and designs rather than trying them out, which led us to a rush finish, but the result was well worth it.  An exceptionally complicated rig, yet remarkably straight forward in operation, it did what it needed to do without having to be pretty.  It was a lesson in practicality, and a massive learning curve in team work.
What I learned >

• Anything can be achieved by a late night in the workshops.
• Build mock-ups and test pieces first.  It will actually speed up the process.
• Bloodhound SSC is awesome.

> March

Natural Form Inspired Speakers

This project was a massive release and an even bigger challenge for me.  I have always been very detailed with my sketch work, finding it hard to really do flowing concepts.  This project didn’t give me a choice.  Hours later though with a sketch pad and a red pencil helped to ease that.  The best part though was trying to take an idea and make it work, then making it work for manufacture with real components.  What I ended up with was something I am really proud of.  The full finished product shall be posted soon…
What I learned >

• CAD can be beautiful.
• Flowing sketches are not as easy as they look.
• Just because a set of speakers is cheap, doesn’t mean they are easy to disassemble.  Even with a hammer.

> April

Milan – Zona Tortona

This exhibition really opened my eyes and challenged my understanding of the design world.  It both inspired and terrified me simultaneously.  There was so much niche design and such a wide variety of work that there would surely be somewhere that my work would fit in, but at the same time there was so much work that how could any one thing get noticed?  The work there was exceptional, the atmosphere was brilliant and the whole experience completely changed my view on industrial design.  It won’t quickly be forgotten.
What I learned >

• I am going to Milan again.
• There is space in the world for every designer, you just need to make sure people find your space.
• During the Design Festival, the leaflets that are handed out are better than your CV.

So those are the first four months.  I learnt a lot from them, and am still learning from them.  Stay tuned for some snippets from the rest of my year.  Were there any projects that really stood out for you this year?

I have a Tumblr account.

Tumblr for those of you that don’t know it is a way of recording (or tumbling) things you find interesting, whether they be links, quotes, videos, photos… All to a blog style page that others can follow.  As you would expect this in turn updates my Twitter and Facebook pages, but I have restricted it from posting to my blog so that I don’t clog the blog stream.

What I shall do instead though is create regular posts listing some of the best things I have tumbled.  This is the new quicklinks – The Tumble Wheel.

Why Tumble Wheel?  It is from Tumblr, it is constantly moving, but most of all it sounds like tumble weed.  I am a sucker for stuff like that.

Rotation One

Zahada
> An amazing page of riddles and lateral thinking puzzles.  Inspiration for another project methinks.

Please design a logo for me. With pie charts. For free.
> Just a brilliant read.  Even more amusing if you have had a client like this.

Bullet time in LegoLand – Core77
> Well picked up by those wonderful people over at Core77 – a bullet time animated scene from the Matrix with Lego.

STP Bloodhound Game
> I have been waiting for BLOODHOUND related games to start appearing, in this is one of the best I have seen thus far.  A real challenge… If you don’t cheat.

Printing your Toast
> Toasters are boring.  Printers are boring.  Combine the two? Genius.

Part One > How I got my placement with BLOODHOUND SSC.

A.    Joined the supporters club.

When the project was announced back in October 2008, I was immediately interested.  Actually, interested isn’t the word.  I was wide-eyed-jumping-up-and-down-excited-and-revved-up about the project.  This wasn’t a case of ‘Oo, I could get a placement out of this’, it was a case of ‘wow, this is amazing, I want to be a part of this’ situation.

Within 3 hours of the launch I had signed up to the 1K Club.  This is the supporters club for the project; which allows you to go along to talks by the designers, the driver, the engineers and anyone else who has a hand in the project.  It also gives you exclusive access to news before it breaks, to limited edition merchandise and access to the project from the inside.  Think of it as a supersonic IMechE crossed with a Mechano club without the branded T-shirts.  Except we do have the branded T-shirts.  And polo shirts.  And caps, shirts, jackets, scarves and hoodies.

I know it sounds like I am plugging the 1K Club quite a bit, but it really is worth it, and it was a major contributor to where I am now.  My hat (BLOODHOUND branded hat of course) goes off to Ian Glover who runs it; each event is enormous fun and always amazingly interesting.

Anyway.  I joined the 1K Club.  It was there that I heard Richard Noble talk about the aims of the project and how it was being carried out.  It was there that I saw the story of the design unfold, and it was there that I met John Piper.  I got myself known through these events; and in the end it was that that sealed the deal.

B.    BLOODHOUND@University

Whilst all of this was going on, like any good battle an attack was launched on another front.  By another front, I mean the University, and by attack I mean getting involved.  As the University of the West of England (UWE) was one of the BLOODHOUND Project’s founding sponsors, a project was arranged for students to help design the cockpit for the car.

Now I know that you would immediately raise a few eyebrows about the viability of a group of twenty-somethings designing the office of a 1000mph vehicle, but the entire project was used as a proving ground.  It set about to validate both the idea that student participation would be beneficial, but also that the guys behind the desks in the Design Office were following the right track.  A few fresh minds to a job can often work wonders.  I once again was amazingly lucky – I was one of the ‘fresh minds’ that worked on this project.

Rather than go into depth about the design process itself, I shall merely point you in the direction of the media coverage that was gained from fitting the driver to the mash of MDF.  Incidentally, if you wish to go and see the rig, it is now on prominent display at an excellent exhibition about ergonomics that currently resides at the London Design Museum.

C.    Sent off my CV.

When the time came and the shadow of placement was looming just over the ever approaching horizon, I broached the topic of Industrial Placement with John Piper and the engineering team.  As you can imagine, John is quite a busy man (being lead engineer on a supersonic-world-record-breaking-car isn’t exactly a walk in the park), so I didn’t harass him.  I mentioned that I was looking for something and showed just how keen and enthusiastic I was.

When it came to sending off my CV, I was honest.  There is a lot of misrepresentation and truth-bending with CV writing, and I don’t think that is fair.  Yes, say that you have done freelance graphics work if you have gone and designed some leaflets and posters for a restaurant, but you probably shouldn’t if you have done a headed agenda for your local gardening club.

I made sure that all of the covering letters were polite and respectful (and spell checked!), and used the time in-between correspondents to apply elsewhere.  Granted, BLOODHOUND was my main choice for placement, but I had backup plans.  Always have a backup plan.

D.     Patience.

The hardest part of the entire placement application process is the waiting.  You have sent off your CV and taster page, you have had pleasant conversations with the designers and management, and they have said the second worst line you can hear.  Obviously the worst is ‘no thanks’, but a close second is ‘thank you, we will be in touch’.

Now you have to wait.  And wait.  And wait some more.  The temptation at this point is to ring them or send them an email every few days just to make sure they have read through your polished and well presented profile.  The problem is that doing that will in most cases annoy them greatly, turning your expensively printed CV into the world’s most expensive paper aeroplane.

What I did was use the time productively.  During the response time, I sent off other applications, I kept up to date with all of the latest news on the project, and redid my portfolio for the umpteenth time.  Every three or so weeks I would send an email asking (politely) if there was any update on the application process, but would combine this request with a few samples of recent work.  This was I didn’t sound too desperate, or if I did I still diverted their attention away from it.

E.     The Interview.

Again this is a hurdle that a lot of people tend to fall down at, and without sounding too cocky (and most likely failing miserably) I am never really sure why.  Interviews are about being yourself, or at least making everyone else think that they are seeing you being yourself.  As long as you are relaxed, well rested and reasonably confident in your abilities you will be alright.  Once again, there are thousands if not millions of pieces on interview technique out there, so go take a peak.  I went in to that interview slightly nervous I shall admit, but I was prepared.

I was wearing a full suit; something that not only shows you are taking the interview seriously but also gives you that extra boost of confidence.  I knew every detail about the organisation I was going to and about my own work.  Best of all though I was armed with a freshly printed, £120 portfolio.  It was printed on high quality paper, at an excellent printing shop, and was displayed in a nice case.  It sounds like a lot of money, but this is something I can add to and use again for years to come.  Worth every penny, especially if it makes your work stand out over everyone elses.

And that was it.  Six months later I have travelled the length and breadth of the country, designed test rigs that have been used in South Africa, I have done basic concept work on steering wheels, made models, produced documents, made carry cases and CAD files, learnt drafting and email etiquette, and also learnt that no matter where you end up getting placement; it will most likely be kept afloat by one magical substance.

Part Two > What advice would I give for getting a placement?

1.    Get yourself known.

With social media and networking being in abundance, the easiest way to get yourself recognised is through the internet.  If you are not already on Twitter; join it.  Most big design firms and high profile companies have their own twitter stream – follow them, read what they have to say and ask them questions.  This does not mean bombard them with enquiries, but merely show an interest.  ReTweet stuff you find interesting, send them links to articles and posts that you think they may like.  In the end what may make your name stand out from the rest in a pile of CVs is simply the fact they recognise it.

This goes the same for other forums on the internet too.  Comment on blog posts, look at Tumblr accounts, read their LinkedIn and view their Flickr page.  Again, don’t become their stalker, but do enough that the small voice in their head that says ‘Hmm, I recognise that name’ pops up when they see your cover letter.

2.    Go to meet them.

The majority of design and engineering firms with the exception of the defence industry exhibit at certain points.  Go along.  Not only will you expand your knowledge of the company, but you will also get to see other similar opportunities.  Chat to the designers.  Try to understand why they do and more importantly, how they do it.  This again will help stand out for the crowd, but also give you the reassurance (or perhaps dissuade you altogether) that this is the company you want to work for.

3.    Wording is very important.

A common problem with coming from a design or engineering background is that people seem to have an issue with traditional spelling and grammar.  From personal experience, the number of people who send out letters, CVs and portfolios without spell checking them first is absolutely shocking.  With almost all word processing programmes now having spell checkers built in, there is no excuse for this.
One other problem that you have to sidestep around is the way you word letters.  Naturally be polite, be courteous and be respectful in your tone, but don’t lose all of the individuality in your writing.  You still want to stand out, so keep an element of yourself in the text.  Do not, however great and desirable your skills may be, assume you are already a part of the team.  Making suggestions for improvements or general ideas to companies can go down exceptionally well, but phrasing it in a way that says you are heavily involved in the running of the company can rub people up the wrong way. You – yes. We – no.

4.    Don’t give up.

It is very easy to get disheartened whilst searching for placement.  I saw it happen to some of my closest friends.  They would send out requests, and get rejected, and then have to do it all again.  Do not give up on the chase.  If you get turned down, then thank them kindly and move on.  Still keep in touch with them via point 1 and 2; situations may change in a few years time.  Keep trying, keep sending out requests, and keep your enthusiasm.  Sometimes it is easy to see that someone will get turned down for a placement – they have already given up.

So there we have it.  I cannot guarantee that you will get a placement if you follow these guidelines.  I cannot say that you will go out and get an interview with the first company you follow on twitter.  I am not even going to wish you luck on this one.  You don’t need luck.  You need to believe in yourself, and know you are a good designer.  Who else is going to believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself?

Go now, and produce another draft of your CV.

I am going to go and get a coffee.

Every designer needs to take time off, and in my experience one of the best ways to do this is through game play.  I am sure that someday, in the not too distant future, a company that spends millions of pounds developing platforms for games will manage to create games that are more entertaining and interesting than those little flash games you find on websites; but as of yet they have not done it.  Yes the new regions such as X-Box Arcade do allow small flash-like games to emerge, but the viral gaming market still rests on the internet.

Why am I talking about this?  Well, as a gamer, I enjoy spending my time playing well developed and challenging games such as the Halo series, but occasionally there is nothing better than sitting down and having a go at a flash-based game.  The past few weeks there has been one game that has kept amused through all of my lunch breaks; Contraption.

Challenging? Yes.
Thought provoking? Yes.

Don’t take my word for it.  Try it.

Once you have found the joys of this game, even more interesting is the gallery of how other people have done it.  Some are pure GENIUS.

Back at the beginning of my first year at University, I was set a challenge.  To be historically accurate, everyone was set a challenge.  An exceptionally talented designer; Duncan McKean, wrote something called The Campus Code.  This involved solving a series of clues in order to locate a silver ring hidden somewhere on the University Campus.

It was this puzzle that got me into puzzle solving and puzzle writing, and for that matter, it was this puzzle that got me into puzzles altogether.  At the end of this month, Duncan McKean, who first laid those seeds of ingenuity, is leaving the country.  To celebrate (or commiserate?) this, I wrote a puzzle of my own and posted it through his letter box in an envelope complete with newspaper-cut-out letters on the front.

Duncan is exceptionally close to solving this challenge, but time is rapidly running out.  Below is the information sent to him.  If you think you are up to the same standard as my good friend Mr McKean, you are welcome to try and solve it also.  There are no more clues than this file, everything you need is contained in the picture.  All that I ask is that you drop me (and/or Duncan) a message if you decode it all.  To quote Airplane – “I just wanted to say good luck. We’re all counting on you.”

Below are listed five free applications for the iPhone that are exceptionally useful for the creative type and that all designers should have.

Units
Sometimes the best design is simple design. This app is one that I use very frequently for all sorts of things, whether when in the workshops, doing research or just in general conversation.

At its most basic it is a conversion tool. Pick any sort of category; length, time, weight, speed, and convert one unit into every other format. Instantly millimetres can be changed into miles and hours into milliseconds. Exceptionally easy to use, simple and a necessity for designers.

Wired
Almost all products since the turn of the new millennia have had a microchip in them somewhere, and those that don’t probably will do soon. Because of this, it makes sense to keep an eye on the latest innovations in technology related products.
With reviews, videos and my personal favourite WIRED blogs, this is a brilliant way to keep on top of tech and inspire you on your next project. It is also a great read when you are sat on the bus in the morning rush hour.

TED
Speaking of inspiration, this is the ultimate source of design related inspiration you will find either on the net or on the iPhone.  TED frequently post talks by creative individuals on a whole range of topics; from inspiration to why they chose to do something in a particular fashion.  All of the videos are well worth a watch and work remarkably well on the iPhone, meaning you are never short of known designers to influence your work.

Bump
Social networking always comes across as sounding dirty. It sounds like something you do to get ahead rather than because you want to get to know people. It isn’t. Bump is a little application that helps you with the networking side of your life.
The way that it works is, like most of the best apps, remarkably simple. You meet someone with an iPhone, you make sure that they have bump too, then you ‘bump’ the phones together. This swaps your contact details, much like handing out a business card.

SketchBookX
There are lots of drawing apps out there, all with varying features and interactivity.  This though is the best one I have found thus far.  The little brother of the £1.79 SketchBook Mobile, this drawing app is like Photoshop for the iPhone.  You can zoom, you can use varying brush sizes and colours, you can even do layers.  Want to do an illustration on the fly? This is the app for you.

What though about the poets? There were those days where the shy poet would sit on the bustling tube train, write some romantic verse and shyly look up. At this point the pretty girl opposite would smile at his emotionally sensitive self, and he would carefully go back to his work, perhaps even daring to glance back once again.

It occurs to me that this will not work with an iPhone (despite extensive attempts by myself and others). When writing on this small black piece of flirting-killing-technology, you either look like you are gaming or answering an email. Neither of these are particularly creative, nor do they impress.

There must be a solution to this. Us poets and creative individuals must unite to devise a way to show that we are different. That we are unique. That we are emotionally sensitive and doing something special with our time.

Will someone please then come up with a solution to this challenge?
How can you make an iPhone not look like an iPhone, without ruining the reasons why you use it in the first place?
This is my challenge to all of you budding designers out there, you who live for a creative problem that not only needs to be solved, but will help you in your everyday life.  Give me a way to hide this piece of geek chic in a sensitive and thought provoking disguise.
Any solutions that are sent in will find a proud home on my blog.  Sketches, doodles, models, working prototypes; all are welcome.

I will leave you with one final thought.  Next time you are on a bus or train and see someone tapping away at their iPhone, pause and think that they may not be chipping their way through the corporate quarry or wasting their time on perplexing puzzles. They may be creating something beautiful, so give them a smile.

Congratulations, you have spent the past two years of your life working your way through your A-levels to gain that small set of silver keys that open the gates to the garden of higher education.  During this time you have had to come to grips with the adulthood that you have been continually being dipped into – rather like a brand new paint brush and a fresh pot of paint with the hue of age – and have tried to develop yourself into the stylish and smooth character who is now going to go and leave their mark on the world.

So with eager hands and wide, enthusiastic eyes, you have unlocked that gate (or perhaps even scaled the barbed wire fence that sits next to it), bounded in, and have landed softly in the garden of a design related course. Bad news though my fresher friend. Your landing spot is no bed of roses; you are sat in a thorn bush. It is time to take all of those preconceptions you had and shred them along with your financial status for the next decade.

What have you let yourself in for? Are you about to be confronted with scented flowers or a vicious guard dog? Here are a few of the realities about the environment you have launched into and some things to remember if you want to really succeed.

Your coursemates are better than you.
Even the most modest individuals tend to enter a course thinking that they are reasonably good. Not necessarily the best designer in the world, but not half bad. You made it onto the course didn’t you? Well one of the hardest truths to swallow is that you aren’t as great as you thought. Your coursemates are stiff competition. There will be someone who’s renderings are hot. You will see them and a little part inside you will hate them. There will be someone who can make gorgeous models, someone who takes amazing photographs and someone who is unbelievably good on CAD.
There are two ways you can deal with this. You can either sulk along and focus on the strengths that you have, or you work your socks off and hone your toolbox of skills. Yes those people are good, but if you can take the fall, you can get running and try keep up with them. Competition is a plus, not a minus.

Sleep is for the weak of mind.
Remember those days where you used to go to bed at eleven and get up at half seven for school, and used to think that you were having it rough? You will long for those times again. Exceptionally late nights will become a thing of habit. Whether deadlines or the rare designer’s social scene, you will be up to the crack of dawn. Then there will be the days where you have to be up at that time to do some extra work.
What you will quickly learn is that naps are invaluable. Twenty minutes here and there will get you through this course.  As a final piece of advice on this point, sleep before a presentation. If you haven’t then be warned; you won’t be competent and may slip up, forget something or just be generally rubbish at answering queries. This happens all too often, so please, please, please get some rest before a presentation.

You will hate your flatmates for not doing design.
By far the most difficult thing to deal with whilst doing a design course is yourself. Moral is almost as important as your skills, and a positive attitude will do you wonders. There is one thing that chips away at this though; the social scene. There is nothing quite so depressing as coming back to your student accommodation at the end of an exceptionally long day of lectures to find that your flatmate has only just gotten up, and that they are now going out whilst you have to stay in and work on that rendering. It sucks.
Once again how you deal with this is up to you, but it never hurts to go and let your hair down once in a while. Your brain needs to recoup sometimes too. It will aid the creative process. Maybe.

You are in charge.
University is a whole other world from school. Whether you turn up to tutorial sessions is up to you, whether you do the work or put in the effort is a personal choice.
Remember though that you are paying to be there. Every session, every lecture, every hour in the workshops is coming out of your pocket, so get your money’s worth. By the time you add up tuition fees, top up fees, living costs, accommodation and every other expense you incur, each lecture costs you roughly £60. Don’t throw that money away because you cannot be bothered to get up that morning.
In addition, you are paying for your tutors. That means that, although some may disagree with this, you are in charge. If you don’t think you are getting good value from them then tell them. Make them work for you, and learn everything you can from them in the process.

Deadlines are like buses.
There is one piece of advice that is given every year to students. It is the one that will help you the most, and is the one that everyone ignores. Start work early. With the sheer amount of work you will have to do, you will most likely pull some all nighters to reach deadlines. Sometimes even the best planning can’t avoid this. There will be a time though when you have a bit of downtime; some ongoing bits and pieces but no imminent hand-ins, so you will take your foot off the accelerator pedal. What will happen though is that three deadlines will suddenly rear their head and you will struggle to cope. If you start the work early then you will end up with a piece of work that shows your effort, and more importantly a piece of work that you are happy with, whilst others are rushing around trying to get theirs done.

There is no such thing as new design.
Every student wants to be the next innovator. The next James Dyson. This can very quickly overwhelm you with work. It is common for a new student to set out to prove themselves and take on a project that is far too big. This can end up with an uncompleted mess rather than a polished project, and is often accompanied by a whole load of stress.
Don’t be afraid to take an existing design and change it. Think of chairs. Few people try to innovate a new way of sitting. Lots design a new style of chair. 95% of design has been done before – use it. Give it your own touch, improve it, make it sexy and call it your own.

Get to know people.
No doubt you have heard the phrase ‘it’s all about who you know’. Well this is more relevant in the design world than anywhere else. Although ‘networking’ sounds like a dirty word, it is something I implore you to work on. Chat to your coursemates, your tutors, the workshop technicians, anyone who is involved in design. Go to design events, to exhibitions and talks. Get yourself known. In the end this may be the thing that helps you the most. The chances are that these people are also a depth of knowledge; the more you can learn from them, the better a designer you will become.
As for your coursemates, these people are going to be your sounding board for the next few years. Make friends and keep an eye on them. Learn their strengths and weaknesses. In group work this will allow you to capitalise on your talents so that you all come out on top.

Don’t underestimate yourself.
When all is said and done, no amount of advice can prepare you for life within the garden of design.  A lot will change, both personally and professionally. When people say that these are the best years of your life they really mean it.  Do not doubt that you can do it. It is not just about becoming a good designer – it is about understanding yourself and what you are capable of.
It is going to be hard, it is going to be tough. You are going to end up pricking yourself on many thorns and probably burning down a few hedgerows. In the end though, if you are keen enough, you will develop into a sculptor of form, an engineer of function and a master of your own creativity. If you are lucky, you may even have a bloody good time doing it…