Max Hussein

Creative briefs and spiritual inspiration

In college, I was studying Business and Media so for two years, so adverts were taking up a lot of my time! With Advertising, I like how hands-on the subject is. The subject was familiar territory, but the course also had new things to offer, so that was quite enticing for me. 

I've just moved here from Brighton. I wanted a change of scenery, and I chose Cardiff because I really like the energy of the city. I like how student-led the atmosphere is and it's also a big relocation for me. It's a breath of fresh air. 

The part of the course I’ve enjoyed the most so far has been working on a brief for the Immersed Music Festival. We’re designing concepts for four different areas of the event - the main stage, the cocktail bar, the waiting room, and the cinema room. It feels a lot more hands-on than a hypothetical case study, because you’re working on a real event that's going to be taking place. The possibility of seeing your work up on the wall somewhere with people looking at it and taking photos of it to share with their friends is very exciting.  

Also, the theme of the Immersed Festival this year is ‘magic’, so a lot of the research for it has been looking into Welsh mythology, pagan traditions, witchcraft, and things like that which is right up my alley. For the brief we're doing at the moment, I'm looking into Nag Champa incense, because I'm a big fan of everything spiritual and gothic - crystals, Ouija boards, everything like that. 

Living and studying in Cardiff also really helps with being on a creative course. Anywhere you go, there is something to look at in the city because of how lively it is. It’s not just plain grey buildings - there's always some new colourful advert or people in the streets trying to promote something. There's always something new to grab your attention. I’ve also just got a part-time retail job in the shopping centre - St David’s. 

Building independence and confidence 

I attended a Taster Day and an Open Day because of how big of a move it was. I wanted to familiarise myself with the city a bit before making the decision to move here full-time. It's four hours away and I didn’t want to move somewhere far away having never been there before. All the potential students got put in groups together and given hypothetical case studies to work on. It was amazing to work together as a team and have a taste of what our classes would be like. 

Attending these events helped me make my decision, because if you're moving to a completely new area, about to spend a lot of your time studying one specific subject, you want to make sure it's right for you. Meeting the course leaders and being told in person what the next three years of your life are going to look like made the move a lot smoother. There was a lot less uncertainty and fear of the unknown after that. 

Starting university isn’t as scary as you might think. It can be quite daunting moving somewhere where you don't know a single person, but because everybody's in that boat, everyone's really sociable, so it's easy to click with people straight off the bat and find new friends. 

As a course, we collaborate quite a lot to come up with ideas, but the projects themselves have been independent so far. The course really teaches you to be self-sufficient and the course leaders are really helpful, so if you've got any questions, you always have a real person to talk to. 

I don't know exactly where I want to go after I graduate, but that's the good thing about the degree I'm going for. I don't have to have a fixed path because Advertising can take all sorts of different forms. I can stay in the city and work for a big company, or I can move to a foreign country and work for an independent business. I don't have to have my entire life planned out just yet. 

My advice for future Advertising students is: get ready to have the work hard, play hard mindset. Because Advertising is a creative subject, you have to be able to work creatively, which sometimes can be a bit of a struggle, but so long as you have the right people around you to bounce ideas between, you can make it work. And be prepared to put the work in, it does pay off!