Friday - our last day of class and our final presentation. The students meet in the London Wall conference room one last time to turn in sketchbooks, to evaluate each others performance, and to go over logistics. At 9:30 we are walking to the tube - it is already hot - the tube is sweltering - some stop to grab an extra bite to eat - we take the Northern Line south from Old Street, switch to the Central Line at Bank, and continue on to Tottenham Court Rd. There we disembark and walk up Oxford Street packed with cars, buses, people, and construction. At our clients we all sign in and in short order, set up our presentation. It is all business, so with little fanfare we begin.

The presentation is about 40 minutes long comprised of 64 slides. Our clients listened attentively, taking notes and nodding. Then it was time for feedback. They were pleased: "Excellent Structure" "Fantastic Graphics" "REALLY Good Script" "The class, as always, gave a very good account of why you are no 1 graphics program in Cal. And, again as always, they were great ambassadors for the University. "

We could not be more pleased with the result. There is a very good chance that our work will go on to our clients client and will go on to the Creative Agency they work with.

Now it was time to go to the local pub to celebrate at 11:45 am.

The students learned a lot about what it takes to make a great presentation. It wasn't just creative and compelling graphics, nor just story, nor just research and facts, but a well orchestrated combination of the three. They worked so hard to make the presentation seem logical, compelling, and effortless.

Thanks to the primary script/narrative/research team: Cameron Kerkorian, Rivka Saydman, Claire Karalla

Caitlyn Mumaw, Mark Schneider, Julia Ramirez, Ashley Lynch, Brandlyn Keahi, and Sydney Cheung.

Thanks to the primary Graphics/Asset team: Sasha Coughlin, Lily Turner, Alexandra Mogelvang, Travis McClure, Caroline Cogliani, Nikita Srinivasan, Lindsey Rempalski, and Kyra Brandman

I say "primary" above as all members contributed to all teams. Please plan on joining us for a recap of  our trip and work in the Guggenheim Gallery on November 12-16, 2018. Reception date TBD.

Thursday was all hands and brains on deck. We worked long and hard perfecting all the details of our presentation. We viewed, reviewed, edited, added to, and refined everything. We took at early lunch at 11:30 and were back at it at 12:30. By 5 o'clock we were all done but for some production details. Thanks to Caroline and Kyra all was completed by 5:30.

Here is a sneak peak at some of the 60 plus slides.
Tomorrow is the big final presentation to our client.

Wednesday was a packed day. All phases of the presentation were worked on. with each phase team (narrative, graphics, and assets) combining to work in focused and frenzied ways.
Lunch happened at 12:15 - slightly behind schedule. We closed down our "office" at 4:54 as we could not and would not get anything any better out until after a break. We will pick up again fresh tomorrow.

Tuesday began with the students in three groups sharing all their notes from Monday's presentation and making lists of all the things that could be improved upon - from narrative, to graphics, and anything else we could think of. Then each area began chipping away at the "to do" list.

We broke at mid-day to head by foot, tube, and train to Hampton Court Palace, the summer home of King Henry VIII. The palace is about a 35 minute journey to the south of London. We ate lunch in the town before heading into the palace to enjoy the buildings and gardens. Warm days, lots of walking, and gentle train rides can lead to naps.

Monday of our final week of class and our final week in London. Today was also our penultimate presentation to the client. Today it was also 88 degrees. In London. With Humidity. None of the tubes we take to our clients are air conditioned and we need to dress up... a recipe for marinating in humanity...

The morning session included more fast and furious work preparing for our meeting. Narrative portions were rewritten, graphics were enhanced, and pacing was refined. All this while the projector came on with everything upside down and backwards, then the regular Monday morning fire alarm test went off while we rehearsed all five times.

We left the hotel for our meeting by 12:30 and made it, sweating profusely, by 1:05. We grabbed lunch and were ready to present at 2pm. The client was pleased and gave us the feedback we needed to move forward on refinement for Friday.

Friday was an intense day of working on the presentation. We were hoping for rain (it was in the forecast) and we were hoping to be finished by 5pm. The rain never materialized and we are certainly not done. Herculean efforts happened late in the day from the groups, but at close of day we were only 75% done.

Below you can see me holding the HDMI cable waiting for the presentations to be done to a point we can go through them together as a group.

The weekend will be a nice time to relax and get away from the project a bit. With clear heads and renewed energy we will enter our final week in London soon.