MDS AdSchool over and out for 2018
It’s a year that opened with four student teams winning One Show Merit awards in MDS AdSchool’s first month; its students going on to win a Future Lions ranking, a D&AD pencil and more awards in the innovation category at AdStars than any other school globally. A year that began its wind down with a very crowded end of year show at the Love Bucket in K.Rd with the final full stop happening last Friday, after Rueben Halper from Google, Haydn Kerr from DDB, and Shaun O’Conner from Saatchi’s all valiantly interrupted their end of year mayhem to pick the Google Student Shortlist for Axis judging next year.
Says Kate Humphries: “Now with the staff about to wearily crawl out the building for the last time in 2018, we’d like to end our year with a huge thank-you to all our other industry guests, panellist, mentors, judges and end of year show attendees. Every single one of you deserves a standing ovation. For the last twenty years, input from industry has helped nourish and grow what is now an extensive network of creatives working in industry both in Australasia and across the globe, and its helped make our creative advertising programme into made Australasia’s most awarded one. A big thanks also to Aaran Birchenough from Getty and all the peeps at the Communication council for twenty years of support.
“We’re doing all this 20-year jawing for a timely reason because our diploma is well and truly over and out. For next year, we’re back rebooted and muscled up as a Graduate Diploma (something that, again, wouldn’t have been possible without the support of people in the industry and the Communications Council. So, double-Karma points to all involved).
“Students with degrees have always made up a good two-thirds of every intake, but we have been getting quite a few enquiries about what the new qualification means for non-degree students. In short, it means about 6 years of work in a broadly relevant field (with two years less if you have a level 5 qualification, four years less if you have a level 6 qualification). On the question of relevance, in our qualification document, we made it clear that creative industry has always thrived on variety, and successful students have come from a widely different backgrounds (humanities, fine arts, design, programming, architecture, film, law, comedy, communications, marketing, geology, dentistry, childcare, animation, teaching, acting, finance and theatre), so don’t be deterred: just get in touch with. sophie.hawke@mediadesignschool.com and she’ll talk you through whether you have, with a good application task, a case to be made.
In the meantime, the merriest of Christmases & the happiest New Year to all.”