Behind the Brand:
Inside Singapore’s Creative Industry
Programme at a glance
Level
Secondary 3 to 5, junior college, polytechnic and ITE
Duration
4 hours + 7-day digital learning journey
Cohort Size
Up to 30 participants per workshop
Format
In person at your campus or at our Creative Lab in Woodlands
What participants will take away:
Team’s brand response, written panel feedback, and a creative industry roles map
A real brief, not a simulation
What students learn changes when the work is real. Instead of working through an invented scenario, participants are given a genuine creative challenge and have to think beyond the classroom, considering the business, audience and constraints behind the brief.
A Real Business, Real Context
Most careers programmes describe an industry. This one hands students a piece of its work.
From Creativeans’ Portfolio
The brief comes from the portfolio of Creativeans, the brand consultancy C-Academy is the education arm of, established in 2012. It is sanitised for confidentiality but the problem is the one the client actually brought: a real business, a real audience, a real constraint.
A Different Way of Thinking
That difference matters more than it sounds. Students working on an invented brief optimise for what they think a teacher wants. Students working on a real one have to consider a client who has a budget, a deadline and an opinion. It changes how they think within about twenty minutes.
What happens in the session
The brief
Teams receive the brief and interrogate it the way a consultancy would. What is the client actually asking for. What are they not saying. Who is this really for.
The industry behind it
A walk through who would work on this brief in a real agency, what each of them does on a Tuesday morning, and how they got there. Most students have heard of two of these roles.
Developing a response
Teams use EDIT Design Thinking to move from the brief to a concept. Facilitators work the room the way a creative director would, questioning rather than correcting.
The pitch
Teams present to a panel of award-winning brand consultants, international design experts, and relevant industry professionals or NYC representatives. The feedback is professional and specific. Students are asked to defend their thinking, not just show it.
The creative careers most students have never heard of
For each one the session covers what the job involves, what a route into it looks like from Singapore, and what someone in it is doing this week.
Brand strategist
Works out what a company should stand for, before anyone designs anything
Design researcher
Interviews real users and turns what they say into decisions
Visual identity designer
Builds the system a brand looks and behaves through
Copywriter and verbal identity specialist
Decides how a brand sounds
Service designer
Designs the experience of dealing with an organisation, not the product
Design manager or account lead
Runs the relationship between the client and the studio
Why we can run this and a training provider cannot
- C-Academy is the education arm of a working brand consultancy.
- The briefs are ours.
- The facilitators bill client work when they are not teaching.
- The panel features working professionals, including Kimming Yap, a 50+ award-winning designer and Vice President of the Design Business Chamber Singapore.
How schools and organisations run this
Behind the Brand is commissioned by schools, polytechnics, ITE, youth organisations and public agencies. We match the brief to your cohort’s level, and where you have a specific interest such as sustainability or technology, we select a brief from that sector.
C-Academy has been appointed by the National Youth Council (NYC) to deliver Behind the Brand: Inside Singapore’s Creative Industry as part of its Discover programme, supporting youths as they explore career pathways and transition from school to work. Programme information and registration will be available through the Discover platform.
If you are a young person looking to join
You will not be sitting through a talk about the creative industry. You will be doing a piece of its work.
Your team gets a real brief from a real client, a few hours to develop a response, and then you pitch it to someone who does this professionally and will tell you honestly what works. You do not need to be able to draw. Several of the roles you will meet involve no drawing at all.
Behind the Brand runs through schools, institutions and national programmes rather than individual sign-ups. If your school is running it, your teacher will have the details.
Questions schools ask
Do students need any design background?
No. The brief is a thinking problem before it is a making problem, and several of the roles covered involve strategy, research or writing rather than visual work. Mixed cohorts work well.
Is the brief really from a live client?
It is drawn from real consultancy work and sanitised so no confidential information is disclosed. The problem, the constraints and the audience are real. [[CONFIRM: current client permission position]]
Who gives the feedback?
[[CONFIRM: name and credentials of the panel]] The point of the pitch is that the feedback comes from someone who does this work, not from a facilitator playing a role.
Is this suitable for polytechnic or ITE students?
Yes, and the brief is pitched differently for them. Post-secondary cohorts get a tighter brief and more emphasis on the commercial constraints. [[CONFIRM: whether any post-secondary delivery has taken place, and remove this answer if not]]
What if our students are not considering creative careers?
Most participants are not, and that is a reasonable use of the session. The transferable part is learning to read a brief, develop a position and defend it in front of someone senior. That applies to any pathway.