Award School: A View From Within The Top Ten
Top ten graduate Rob Gordon shares his view on Award school 2014 and his road to the top ten.
No one can fully prepare you for Award School, but that’s what makes it so great.
I found Award School to be extremely challenging. I’m not going to lie, it was 12 of the most work intensive weeks of my life. Like many others in the course I had a full time job working five days a week, with two nights at Award School, and basically every other minute working on the briefs. It really does take over your life.
But it’s not all bad.
During the course, I met a whole bunch of awesomely creative people that I’m sure I’ll bump into in the future. Tutors, lecturers and students alike.
The best and by far the most invaluable part of Award School for me was the lectures. Hearing from so many talented creatives and advertising pros that are still in the game today was amazing. On top of that I was fortunate enough to have three awesome tutors; Scott Mortimer and Wellison D’Assuncao from Ogilvy & Mather and Michael Kennedy from SapientNitro.
You hear about the big bad Award tutors that just tell you how shit you are. I guess I got the exception to the rule because my tutors were a great bunch of guys that really cared about the work, and clearly had a passion for creativity. They made the course a whole lot easier for me, so a big thanks to them.
As any creative knows, there is no finite amount of time or magic number of hours it takes to come up with a great concept. Especially when there are 101 other people trying to have that same spark of genius. The shear amount of work you have to go through is the sole reason Award School is so challenging. The beauty is that you control the amount of work you put in, so the more you want it the more work you had to do, and I wanted it… a lot.
That’s why it was such a satisfying and validating moment when I was announced in the top ten.
Congratulations to everyone else who made the top ten, and to everyone who completed Award School in 2014. Good luck to anyone who undertakes Award school in the future. It is a great course, if you’re up for the challenge.
Click here to see some of my work.
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