Honesty is the best policy

I've looked at a lot of folios during my career. Especially students and juniors.

One thing I never do is just be polite. It's really not helpful.

As I say to all the kids I see - you're not showing your book to people to see if they like it.

You're showing it to them to get criticism to help you make it better.

Yesterday I helped judge the final folios of the Melbourne students from the Creative School set up by ADMA.

To help the students get their books as good as they could be my art director and I gave up a very long evening two weeks ago to give the kids some much needed creative direction.

Some of the ideas we saw that night were a bit ropey to say the least.

The finished folios that we judged yesterday however had come a very long way from the ones we'd seen two weeks earlier.

I was very pleased that the girl who I thought would top the class didn't.

And I was even more pleased when the young lady who did top the class said that it was my 'demoralising criticism' that had helped her to succeed.

Tough love. Honest criticism. Straight talk.

Call it what you like, but always remember these words from Donald Trump:

'It's not personal. It's business.'