After five years of perseverance Jordan Ellis cracks AWARD School and, hopefully, a long creative career

This year’s WA top AWARD School student is Jordan Ellis, who is now in the running to win the coveted 2021 National Top Student Award announced tomorrow. Campaign Brief caught up with Ellis to find out about his experience at AWARD School and found out this year’s win is due to perseverance and hard work.

Jordan Ellis studied Creative Advertising and Graphic design at Curtin University and through that he held some typical student jobs: Freight handler, factory hand, and a few other painful warehouse jobs.

Ellis first put his hand up for AWARD School in 2016. He tried again in 2019. And after he missed out on that one he did the Advertising Council’s copywriting course. This helped a lot because he finally got accepted to AWARD School in 2020.

Then Covid-19 kicked in and the class was given the option to postpone to 2021.

“So, I spent most of the year doing the same miserable jobs,” said Ellis. “I kept myself sane by interning at the Freeform Foundry and I’d get some radio briefs from NOVA when I could. Which was amazing of them, I owe those people a lot. The positive of failing to get into AWARD School so many times, if there is one, was having friends of mine experience it, and go on to get jobs in the industry. I got a lot of advice from them and knew how stressful the course was going to be.”

Ellis went to Uni with the intention of being a graphic designer and was shocked to learn he’d eventually have to design things so he took the Advertising classes.

“I had a lot of fun doing it and figured I’d give copywriting a shot. AWARD School is a natural progression for people in the Ad stream at Uni. And every time I got feedback on my Uni book, people said ‘do AWARD School’. So, I don’t know if I had a choice.”

He describes AWARD School as probably one of the most challenging things he has ever done.

“From the work itself obviously. But the pressure everyone puts on themselves as well. Because doing well in the course could get you a job, it’s hard not to think about that. The best part by far was doing well on a brief and leaving the tutorial, knowing you had something. A brief you didn’t have to stress about as much. Although, by the end there weren’t many tutorials I was confidently walking out of.”

For Ellis the biggest highlight of taking part in the course is the people.

“As cliché and sappy as that is to say, I’ve got a lot of time for everyone involved with the course,” said Ellis. “Both students and tutors. It’s hard enough without the pressure of dealing with shit people, so to be around genuinely good people made it so much more enjoyable. It’s hard to pin point a specific lesson, or things learnt that made a sudden change. You’re obviously learning heaps through lectures and tutorials. But it’s weird, you do the course for about 5 weeks, then you just notice everyone get better.”

It’s obviously early days for Ellis and he doesn’t have a long-term plan yet, but it took him so long to get into AWARD School and the position he’s in now that he says he want’s to settle into a job and enjoy it for a while. Good luck to him.

View Jordan Ellis’s winning folio

Read CB’s previous story on AWARD School winners