Simon Griffin - Blogs - Good or Bad?

Continuing on e-mailing around to get some response on the debate about blogs, I emailed Love Creative. I happily got a response from Simon Griffin. Simon is the Commander-in-chief of LOVE's blog.

1. Would you recommend that students produce a blog? If so why?

No. Unless it's something totally new and a million miles away from all the other student blogs that begin with "I went for a portfolio crit at the Billy Beef agency today..." blah blah blah. If you want to do a blog, do it about something totally different - standinaqueue blog (now, sadly no more) was a great example of a student blogging about standing in queues, and far more interesting than anything else I've read. It's just too easy to do what everyone else is doing; like there's a checklist of things you need to have before you get a job. Website? Check. Blog? Check. Twitter? Check. Job? Soon. It can take up so much of your time - time better spent sorting your portfolio out or creating an online portfolio. A blog probably won't get you a job. A good portfolio will.

2. A lot of students aren't safe with putting there design's up on blogs due to the idea getting stolen. What would your opinion be on this?

Everyone has ideas stolen. Sadly there's nothing we can really do about it. And remember it's not just students that have their ideas stolen. But if you don't put them out in the world (with a date that says when you did them), then

 there's no way of proving that yours (at least) came first.

If your idea does get stolen, you should feel two things:

1) Happiness: that someone likes your work enough to steal it in the first place.

2) Sadness: that there is someone sat at a desk somewhere who is truly out of their depth, and has to survive by stealing other people's ideas. Perhaps they've got two children to support and they've just found out their wife's pregnant with triplets. And it's the neighbour's.

3. People see blogs as a way to publicize themselves and there work, but a lot of blogs don't get a lot of hits, so what should the purpose of a blog be?

The purpose of a blog is really up to whoever is writing it. But (and this contradicts the point I've just made) it's purpose shouldn't be to just get lots of hits.

4. Finally, what's one positive and negative about having a blog?

Positive: The whole world is your audience.

Negative: The whole world is your audience.