Creative Futures Week - Fran O'Hara

Fran O'Hara - Creating 'Brand Me' and the Future You Want

Fran began her talk by talking about the idea of a brand and that we are all our own brands. She quoted Walter Landor when she said that "A brand is a promise" and she also quoted www.buildingbrands.com when she said that a brand is "a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer". This means that our brand has to be reliable and how we are perceived by potential clients and customers is very important. 

Fran's talk was very interactive, she had a worksheet for us to work through. It first asked what the pivotal points in your life and career have been so far and for me, the main one is when I realised that I did not want to study IT and Psychology. I realised that I did not want to write essays or code, I liked designing and being creative, which led me to investigating other courses and finding illustration.

She also got us to make mind maps of our personal and professional skills and some of the words and phrases that I wrote gave me an idea of the kind of thing I want to be doing after university:

• Working with kids
• Sensible ideas
• Organising
• Teaching
• Telling people what to do
• Keeping moving, don't do the same thing for too long

The most important thing I took from this talk was that I need to think about who I am and what I do. The mind maps really helped me with this, and they helped me to learn about myself.