The students from West Herts College (Watford) have been in for the past two weeks, beavering away in the basement. Keen as mustard, the lovely bunch are a big credit to course tutor Tony Cullingham, a man responsible for countless creatives careers within the industry. TC we salute you!

Check out his blog here: http://cullingham.blogspot.co.uk/

We wish them well in the big wide world. And hope to see a couple back here soon. In the meantime here's a parting note from the guys themselves:

So long, and thanks for all the bread.

Every Monday starts with a certain sense of trepidation for Watford students, as we round off our tour of eighteen agencies in eighteen weeks. Will the agency set live briefs? Will we get to meet the Creative Directors? Will there be free hot beverages and/or foodstuffs on offer? The answer to all of this at Wieden's has been yes, yes, and ‘Why hello giant breadbin and fridge full of the finest toast spreads known to man’. We were immediately inspired to get down to work.

Learning how to play the ruler.

Our first task was to work on a live brief. We can’t say what we did, so won’t reveal whether the crit was an hour of epic win or monumental facepalm. 

We’ve had loads of good talks while we’ve been here. Matt and Sammy spoke about how social media should be about entertaining, not selling. Guy F showed us lots of cool design while worrying that he was boring us by showing us lots of cool design. Kevin Chesters gave a passionate definition of planning, that mysterious job not many ‘civilians’ understand because no one in Mad Men does it, and Hollie Newton introduced us to the world of Brand Books. This was particularly interesting as it’s something we hadn’t learnt much about so far, but is integral to how Wieden + Kennedy work. 

Ex-Watfordian Will Hooke told us us about his role as a Creative Technologist, before setting us a weekend brief to come up with money-spinning digital idea. He then – bar one notable exception – killed them all with fire on Monday afternoon. Cheers Will!

ECD Kim Papworth even took the time to see us, and in a classic case of l’esprit de l’escalier, we only thought of good questions to ask him after he had left. Kim, if you’re reading this, what films and books would you say have changed your outlook on life?

We’ve also been working on two very different briefs for Visit Wales and Three Mobile. Ben and Al very patiently read through approximately 4,000 scripts featuring mountains, sheep and the Michelin-starred food that few people know you can eat west of Offa’s Dyke, and took a few forward to show to Kim and Tony.

All-in-all it’s been a really great fortnight. Wieden’s has really gone out of their way to make us feel welcome, taken the time to give us book crits and oh god, we’ve eaten so much of their toast that Ronny (office manager) has taken to simply lobbing huge sacks of loaves over the balcony down to the basement every morning.

Thank you Wieden's, it’s been great!

XOXO WATFORD