Ali winning the Isle of Man Young Crime Writer Competition

This is a guest post from a hugely talented young crime writer who came to join the Home Strategic crew for a week as part of her work experience. We really enjoyed working with Ali and were all buzzing about the work she did during the course of the week. We were even more delighted that she agreed to write us a blog post on her week at ‘Home’. So here it is… Thanks Ali

Hey! I’m Alison Ogden, and for Year 10 Work Experience I chose Home Strategic.

A Little Info About Me

I love to listen to metal and rock music and I am completely addicted to watching CSI: Crime Scene Investigation – Viva Las Vegas! But most important of all, I’m a book-a-holic and find hours of enjoyment writing.

Recently I won the Isle of Man Young Crime Writer’s Competition, the story I wrote will be published this Christmas – so watch out for Dead End! I now go through to the National Regionals, the winner of which will be announced in June.

But anyways, my love of writing brings me onto my ideas for work experience…

My Work Experience

Firstly, I had to read through some business plans, (yawn), but I couldn’t wait for creating my own product/business idea and marketing it, yay! The only hard part of the business was thinking of ideas… what do I enjoy? What is an original concept that I would want to market?

And then the light bulb over my head flickered on.

After much research, I had discovered that no one has attempted…

… A social networking site for writers!

Okay. So it’s not exactly revolutionary, but the only other competition was terrible forums where so-called ‘experts’ tell you how to write. My idea lets you write, post your work online, get feedback, view other stories, have competitions, met others, etc.

The only downside to this is that the further I got through the project with creating flat-web pages and business cards, was that I wanted it to exist so that I could post my work on there. Sigh.

My week consisted of creating stuff for my idea, using my favourite computer programs; Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator – so I was right at Home!

Although, by Thursday afternoon I’d finished everything I’d needed to do. Time for extra work – yay!

I had to make an ‘instruction manual’ for how companies should advertise to teenagers. Simple? No way.

To say that I’m a normal teenager would be, well, my opposite. I had to understand other teenagers to really get this right. I spent a while researching and finding stuff out, focusing on the psychological aspects of advertising to teenagers.

My Feedback

On work experience, some people find that it’s terrible and that whatever they did, they will never do it again; mainly because it was uninteresting and the people were truly evil.

On my work experience, I found that the work was cool and VERY interesting, everyone at Home Strategic was helpful, friendly and great to work with. Please note that at this very moment I DO NOT have a gun at my head and I am most definitely NOT being forced to write this!!!

Joking aside, it was one of the best weeks EVER. I found that everything I did was fun and enjoyable and I really need a thesaurus right now. By the time I had to leave on Friday afternoon, I felt truly at Home! I can’t thank the team enough for the wonderful week that I will never forget.

wenlock & mandeville

So, what do you make of Wenlock and Mandeville?

They’ve certainly created a split in the Home Strategic office and I guess it goes to prove that any creative put before the mass public is going to receive mixed views. There’s no way you’re ever going to receive unanimous praise or acceptance of such a high profile project – design is so subjective – the London 2012 logo is a prime example.

David Bond of the BBC made a good point following the generally negative reception the 2012 logo received, it would have been easy for the designers of Wenlock and Madeville to play it safe. Well, they certainly chose to push the boundaries and set a new benchmark for all future Games, which I think is fantastic, so what if some people don’t like the designs at least it’s got us all talking.

After seeing the two guys in the Wenlock and Mandeville costumes on the news I was initially very cynical. But after watching the animated story of the mascots, which was written by Michael Morpurgo I’ve completely changed my mind. I’ve bought-in to the story and I think the mascots will be a big hit with their target audience – children!

Wenlock and Mandeville were ‘born’ from two drops of moulton steel, which came from the great girders used in the construction of the Olympic stadium. Girders, which were fabricated in Bolton. Using the link to Bolton is a great way to engage the rest of the country and reinforce the message that the Olympics aren’t just about London and that other areas around the country are making a massive contribution to the preparation and success of the Games.

As Lord Coe has pointed out, the mascots were created to engage children with sport and my opinion is these two steel characters from Bolton will go a lot further than a cuddly lion running around a track. They’ve got a story, whether it appeals to us as adults or not is almost immaterial. The success of our new Olympic mascots will be in how children react to these two characters and how the story of Wenlock and Mandeville evolves in the lead up to the Games and beyond.

We’ve been comfortably settled in our new offices at Tromode for just over a month now and things are going really well. Pool table, new coffee machine and dartboard aside, clients are finding all kinds of excuses reasons to call in and see us, and at least once a day a member of the general public wanders in to ask about the price of one of the cars parked outside. Considering that our new home was Barry Curran’s Subaru dealership prior to us moving in and around 25% of the workforce happens to drive a Subaru - it’s probably not surprising that there’s been some confusion.

So, to save us from the temptation of trying to sell Neil’s family estate car every time an unsuspecting member of the public walks through our doors, we thought we’d better get some proper signage up on the front of Millennium Park Studio to avoid further confusion.

As you can see from the photograph, it’s very low-key and understated as befits an organisation of our subtlety. Watching from inside the building, there were some seriously funny moments as the guys from Signrite installed the lime green 3ft-high lettering - largely due to the fact that we could only see their legs and their very scary-looking sign erection equipment (oo-er missus!)

Not-so-subtle humour aside, the new signage looks great; we now have a new exterior image to match the new interior, so if you haven’t been up to see our new pad yet, you should have no trouble finding us.