Virtual networks, online presence and more.
Virtual Networks week 1 and 2.
We had an extra class added to our weekly timetable this term. It is called Virtual Networks and it is supposed to support us, graduating digital artists to curate and create our summer show, and digital presence, and improve skills needed to search for future opportunities.
It is a pretty intense 6 weeks program including 2classes every week, with a different focus every week.
During our first class, we talked about the learning outcomes for this unit, and assessment criteria and had a reflection on our goals and plan for the future.
We also touched on the creative industries and immersive media possible work positions.
Later that week, during our second class, we were talking about the modern ways to present our professional profile and our work online. We researched some good and bad examples of work/art Instagram accounts and discussed them.
One of the elements we discussed was deciding if our online presence will be strictly related to our professional practice or if it is going to include some extras (skills, interests, hobbies) that are beyond our main work. It is a personal choice and there are no bad answers here. Trends seem to change and what is accepted now, wasn’t necessarily well perceived in the past etc.
We briefly touched on the mood, colour palette and style that should be consistent throughout our website, or portfolio.
Another two topics were hashtags promoting our summer show and our work in general and the importance of the LinkedIn account and building a professional network through that channel.
During the second week, we had a lecture on website preparation and building. It was highlighted that the purpose of the website we want to have has to be decided before we start building it. We may want to have it as a portfolio, promotion, contact card, or sale site. The audience is also important, who do I want to attract/interest? Next, I need to know the content; what exactly I want to include in my professional website. It would be great to create new, website-specific content such as logo, cutout etc. – this can be a task for the future. The content should be of good quality and spaced with some kind of logic, not randomly uploaded. Composition, colours, concepts, components, hierarchy of the content and typography are all important.
It was also highlighted that we need to make sure the website looks as intended and works as expected before going live.
Towards the end of the session, we started a Wix session where we were looking and the available templates, already existing websites etc. to get inspiration for our own websites that we are about to build (as a part of this program and as one of the assignment elements).
Thursday’s session was focused more on CV writing and job search. We discussed our skills, both technical and soft ones that could help us identify professional roles we would like to have. We then had a couple of exercises on researching our potential job positions and companies we may want to work at. We had a presentation on writing a successful cv and our task for the next week was to bring our own CV so we will have a chance to discuss it. We were also to prepare images we think are suitable for our digital portfolios.
Virtual Networks classes are rich in content and have a quite demanding assessment including several elements we need to submit in April. Considering that we work on our final major projects at the same time, having to switch the focus and build a website, a reel, update the Linkedin profile, CV etc. is pretty stressful.