Hey everyone! I'm Aleenah (Aleenah_14 on Twitter) and I look after the OMB Instagram page!
I first got into OMBs back when I was in college. I was doing Creative Media, things like graphic design, video production and animation, and came across a tweet by One Minute Briefs - something about women in design. I was interested and from there, I started to take part. It's great for building up a portfolio and you meet a load of nice people and friends.
With the help of One Minute Briefs in my portfolio, I was able to get a place at my first choice university, doing graphic design. By then, I was probably about a year into doing OMBs and had also taken part in the Merry Critmas advert - which was A LOT of fun to film and something great to show universities. I truly believe that One Minute Briefs helped me to get a place at university and that that was the thing that placed me above other candidates.
Design aside, as I mentioned that One Minute Briefs allowed me to network, I have met some great people. Back in 2019, I had my first proper pet - two tiny dwarf hamsters. Unfortunately, one of them did die and I was absolutely devasted. I wanted a way to still remember her so I decided on a pet portrait and through OMB, I was able to find John, who I then commissioned to make a portrait of my hamster and it was absolutely beautiful!
I also really love having my work put out there, especially when you have a prize brief say with The Drum, and then your work gets put on their website. It's pretty cool to be able to say that your work's been published on a big platform.
I guess my top two most favourite OMBs that I've made were 1) The Young Life Writers brief and 2) the #WeAreOne brief. The Young Writers brief was the first prize that I won and I still remember seeing the tweet when I was out to a family function (when you could still go out and have big meetups 🤣🤣) and then my parents told everyone as they were so proud! The #WeAreOne one was also great because I loved getting everyone's photos to add to it and it just made me feel connected to the community more!
Overall, this is such a fantastic and supportive place and the (prize) briefs are incredible: I mean who doesn't want to win a lump of cash? I love telling everyone about OMB and even mentioned it when I recorded for a friend's podcast (check my episode out on @PiratedMaterial on Twitter). And don't forget to send your entries to Instagram as well so I can share them!