Day 1 – March 1st – Onboarding
Today was the long awaited first day at Rethink!
Most of the day was spent on onboarding: getting email, slack, zoom, universal type etc., all setup and synced with the Rethink system. It’s nice to be at Rethink with Sharleen because my first-day nerves were definitely hitting! We had a nice onboarding call with Hans, Alex (IDEA Alumni) and Maddy (Traffic). They put me right to work with my first project briefing; 3 illustrative posters for a virtual event. This project allowed for some conceptual thinking, so it was time to hit the sketchbooks to get to 100 ideas!
Day 2 – March 2nd
This morning I tuned into a Rethink Talk featuring Rahaf Harfoush. She’s a digital anthropologist and author who came to talk about work-life balance, burnout, etc. It was really insightful hearing about her experiences working in North America vs Europe and emphasizing taking forced breaks. Today was mainly an ideation day; I continued sketching concepts for the poster brief and got a rough deck ready to present my ideas tomorrow. I also had my first coffee chat with Ashley Visvanathan (IDEA Alumni), who gave me a lot of tips to make the most out of these 6 weeks, as well as a short intro on what Art Direction is like.
Day 3 – March 3rd
Today I had my first crit session with Alex! It seemed like I hit the mark on the 100 idea method, and we found some good leads to bring into digital execution. We also got a bit of time to slide in a coffee chat, and I got to hear about his journey that led him to where he is now at Rethink. Later on in the day, I got briefed on a sleeve packaging brief; there’s a copywriter for this project, so I’m really excited to see what the process is like working with one!
Day 4 – March 4th
Today I had a coffee chat with Brett Young, who attended Capilano’s communication program! She was the first non-design Rethinker I met, so I was slightly nervous about what to talk about, but it was interesting to learn about how the accounting side works. I got most of my work done during the day, so I reached out to Ashley if she needed any help and I did some file exporting work for the rest of the day!
Day 5 – March 5th
Today I started working on the packaging brief I got assigned. It feels slightly daunting to be doing work that will be printed and produced; the pressure is on, but I’m just as excited to get started too! In the morning, I met with Charmaine Cheng (IDEA 2019). It was great to hear about her experience, starting as a design intern and moving into an art director position. I also had a coffee chat with Grace Cho, an Art Director/ACD at Rethink. I had actually met her last year at Cossette, where I did my third-year mentorship, so it was nice to see a familiar face!
WEEK 1 RECAP
Everyone here is just so nice and friendly; it’s been a great first week! There were moments where things were slow here and there, but I’m hoping to keep busier next week with another brief coming my way. The feeling of guilt of doing nothing feels terrible, but I learned that I need to be more proactive and ask for more work/help. Communication is definitely key to working remotely because without setting meetings or checking in with others, you really don’t know what work is out there that you can do. I’ve been terrible with taking photos during coffee chats, but I’ll be back with more photos next week; sorry, Judy!