Skive

So last night was my first experience of the YCC-organised UNITE event, hosted at Cargo in Shoreditch, throwing a load of graduate creatives and their carefully assembled folios in front of a load of industry veterans and their carefully hidden cynicism.

It didn’t bode well, shoddily arranged on Champions League Semi Final Second Leg night with United holding a tenuous two nil aggregate lead and fielding a much-changed team. My thoughts were as black as the cab I trundled over in.

Inside Cargo, however, the place was buzzing with youthful exuberance, so I left my cynicism at the door, pinned a lopsided Y badge onto my trendy man-cardy and mingled with the next generation of advertising talent.

It takes a lot of guts to spend an evening showing complete strangers your work, so I resolved to be kind and attentive. Sadly, I’m a tactless twit who never hides his disdain well, so apologies to the young folk who may have suffered either my vacant stare, non-committal ‘Hmmmm’ or downturned face.

Luckily, I think those instances were few and far between – largely because the quality was generally pretty good, and I was well-lubricated by the £10 minimum spend at the bar, which I selfishly chose to lavish upon myself each round rather than buy any of my peers a pint.

Like all good creatives, I managed to avoid doing any actual work for a while, ducking out to Bar Kick to catch snatches of the Reds causing German misery. But it’s testament to the event that I actually ran back ay half time to sneak in a quick crit, as well as leaving before the final whistle, denying me the pleasure of witnessing any actual German tears or players on knees.

Everyone seemed to be loving the night (“It’s epic!” said a voice at my side at one point, something which I thought was only attributed to Hilary Mantel novels or Danish police procedurals).

No, epic it wasn’t. But it was well-organised, packed with people who came despite being officially chosen but managed to peddle their wares nonetheless (which I admired), and well-supported by industry folk.

While my memory is understandably hazy, I do recall being slightly underwhelmed by the lack of digital executions; do I really need to see a third iteration of an idea in print? But I see that everywhere and it’s a common lament. Also interesting was the common mistake that people with smart phones all use iPhones and have the incredible ability to read tiny text. Andy Sandoz  has some better and more insightful feedback on book crits you should read.

Anyway, I’ll be going again, if the next one doesn’t clash with a crucial England qualifier or a Radiohead secret gig or something. And I’ll try to look at more work, and say stuff more constructive than ‘Oh, I like this’, or ‘No, doesn’t work for me’.  And I’ll hand out more cards, and I’ll try to drink less, and not call the barman a toad.