A new breed of creative talent - Red & Yellow students shine in 2015

On the evening of 19 November over 230 alumni, industry leaders, and proud friends and family gathered to celebrate the hard work of our graduates at Red & Yellow School's 2015 Graduate Showcase event - and to scope out the country's most promising young talent.

The event capped off what has been an exceptional year for our students, proof that great ideas, hard work and pure creative talent still win in an increasingly data and technology driven world. It's therefore not surprising that many of our graduating students have already been offered jobs in the industry.

Graduate Showcase

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Student exhibit by Kirsten Bennett

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Here are some - but by no means all - of the achievements our students have racked up this year:

• Student-created campaigns for brands like AirBnB, Garmin, and Project Literacy scooped up 2 Silver and 5 Bronze Loerie Awards in categories ranging from packing and industrial design to integrated campaigns.
• Graphic Design & Art Direction student, Kirsten Bennett, was one of three students nominated for the AdFocus Student Of The Year Award
• Our superstar Art Direction and Marketing student Tshego Mogotsi-Phetlhe won this year's ADC Portfolio Night (a second win in a row for Red & Yellow) - and was treated to an incredible week in New York City with the global All-Stars
• Not to be left out of the graduating year's successes, second-year Graphic Design & Art Direction student Kayleigh Garrett was one of the winners of the Pharrell Williams x Woolworths t-shirt design competition

But it's not just shiny awards that attest to our students' success - just as important for us is their ability to enter the industry with a confidence and readiness that puts them firmly ahead of the pack.

Wouter Lombard, talent and transformation partner at M&C Saatchi Abel, says, "I look forward to receiving CV's from R&Y graduates, because I know I'll meet a young professional candidate as opposed to a student. They easily adapt into the work environment and bring with them maturity, confidence and smarts that you cannot learn from a text book."

Crossover group and client

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Final year Red & Yellow students take part in "crossover", where Marketing and Creative course students team up to create real campaigns for real clients, who can then choose to use these for their brands. It's an intensive two weeks of planning, research, and crafting of creative strategy that culminates in a presentation and feedback session with the client. All three clients who participated in this year's crossover unanimously said that they were impressed with the students' level of professionalism, the high calibre of strategic work and their creativity and enthusiasm.

Work placement then builds students' portfolios by exposing them to agency life. All final-year students are placed in advertising and marketing agencies for two weeks, where they are given the opportunity to work on real projects, network with industry professionals, and find their fit for the future. After hosting Tshego Mogotsi-Phetlhe for the two-week internship, Veli Ngubane of Avatar said, "We really felt a gap and missed her presence when she returned to Red & Yellow."

As Red & Yellow alumnus and celebrated copywriter Iain Thomas rightly said at Graduate Showcase, "The good news is, this is only the beginning. The point of this portfolio, is to get you in the door to start building a better portfolio, and once you've built that one, you can walk into an office and say, "google me." This is 2015 and you are not going into the advertising industry, you are going into the creative industry. And there has never, in my opinion, been a bigger need for honest, creative, great work that solves real business problems."

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Our students have proven that this is a skill they have in spades, and there is no doubt that the future holds many more successes for each of them.

Want to see what the fuss is all about? The Graduate Showcase exhibit is up until 27th November. A big thank you to our showcase sponsors, Castle Lite Lime, Flying Fish, Oude Meester, Get Wine, RedBull and Theuniskraal Wines.

The Red & Yellow School has been producing industry leaders and game changers in the fields of marketing, graphic design, art direction and copywriting for 21 years. Applications for 2016 are still open. Find out more on the website (www.redandyellow.co.za) or contact Red & Yellow on 021 462 1946 / .