Guest Lecturer - Tom Maurice

Last Wednesday we were lucky enough to have guest lecturer Tom Maurice from SunHouse Creative, Bath come in and talk to us about putting together an effective client pitch.

It was an extremely inspiring lecture and was fantastic to get the chance to see so much of his work.
Sunhouse has an impressive CV that includes clients such as the BBC, Danone, Marmite, Coca Cola and Hunter, it was interesting to be able to see the materials used when putting forward a pitch to a client. 

Tom explained his journey of temping at the BBC and going through a recruitment agency which he strongly advised us all to do. He also went on to say that we should never burn bridges with anyone throughout our time in the design industry as we will no doubt come across the same people later on.

Tom opened my eyes to the fact that you should always stick by the rule 'you're only as good as your last job'. You need to keep delivering otherwise the clients won't come back.

Tom ran through the process of putting a pitch across which was really interesting. Firstly, always take a printed presentation and don’t rely on computers because 1. they’ll slow you down and take the rhythm out of your presentation 2. they’ll probably crash sometime. He explained that you should always go in with positive comments and then move on to the negatives of the original design, however justification is essential! You should always show the client how you've reached your final idea and the process you went through so that they feel as involved as possible. You must always convince them that you know what they are and who their audience is.

I was pleased to hear that Tom thought it was extremely helpful to be able to have adequate drawing skills to speed up the design process. This was encouraging for me as I thoroughly enjoy that part of the design.

So, all in all, it was an exceptionally interesting lecture with plenty of useful hints and tips that are bound to help me in the long run. 

Here's SunHouse's website if you fancy having a butchers...http://www.sunhouse-creative.com/