A brief encounter: giving students a taste of the real world.

By Emma Birch – Art Director

Ever heard of a ‘Mac test’? Most students haven’t… until they’re sitting in an agency, sweating over a borrowed laptop, trying to impress a panel in just a few hours.  

It’s one of the most intense parts of the creative interview process, and yet it’s rarely mentioned during university courses. That gap between education and industry is exactly what inspired A Brief Encounter – a one-day sprint workshop designed to give students a taste of real-world creative pressure. 

For the past two years, I’ve been lucky enough to work alongside Ellie Kilburn, Course Leader for Visual Communication at Solent University, and her brilliant students. From FMP review clinics to setting branding briefs, these collaborations have highlighted a crucial truth: while degree-level learning equips students with strong creative foundations, there are gaps when it comes to preparing them for the realities of the workplace. 

Skills such as collaboration, pitching, market research, and articulating design choices aren’t just nice-to-haves; they’re essential in the creative industry. Recognising this, Ellie and I wanted to create an experience that would help students flex those muscles in a way that mirrors industry challenges.  

That’s where A Brief Encounter came in. Welcoming Ellie’s third year students into our Southampton design studio, we set them an ambiguous brief: develop a campaign for a food waste charity aimed at an audience of their choice. We gave them some statistics, a loose plan of how they should focus their time, and that’s it – the rest was on them.  

The key thing we wanted them to learn is  that early decision-making  should shape everything – channel strategy, design approach, tone of voice. It’s the kind of behavioural-change thinking we thrive on at Cavendish, and it’s something students rarely get to practise. 

Our entire creative team was on hand, offering guidance but never dictating. The students had full freedom to choose their outputs: social assets, logos, video storyboards, websites – whatever best aligned with their campaign vision. At the end of the sprint, they pitched their ideas and received constructive feedback on both their creative thinking and presentation skills. 

The response was incredible. They left feeling empowered, having stretched their creativity beyond the boundaries of university projects. And that’s the point – bringing business into the classroom isn’t just valuable, it’s essential. It gives students the confidence to tackle the unknown and prepares them for the pace and pressure of real-world work. 

I’m really passionate about helping students and juniors grab their first steps into the creative industry with confidence. Through our pro bono work with the South Coast university network, we’re proud to be making waves – and hopefully inspiring the next generation of creatives to dive in headfirst. 

For the final year students to be in a real working environment working on a brief was such an awesome experience. They got to see how a studio works, and more importantly be a welcome working part of that studio for a day – we are very grateful to Emma and the whole team at Cavendish for making this happen. Emma’s input to the course over the past few years – and especially with this and the current course rewrite, has been invaluable.

Ellie Kilburn – Course Lead, Visual Communications at Solent University