Practicum

April 15, 2021

Practicum – Week 7

I started this week finishing up and making revisions for my moodboards for the mochi donut project I am working on. I also did a lot of brainstorming of potential names for the shop. The client wanted a Japanese word that translated well to English, so I researched and also asked my Japanese friends if they had any suggestions for cute-sounding phrases or words.

One of the moodboard directions I made for the project. This was named “Clean + Sophisticated”.

On Tuesday, I worked on creating a brand story for the mochi donut store. The client wanted their store to have a mascot, so I needed to create a fictional story about that mascot. I started by reading traditional Japanese folk tales, and then English ones. It was difficult because the Japanese stories were often unrelated to food and seemed very detailed and lengthy. I ended up thinking of a few storylines, one of which was approved and I worked on fleshing it out more on Wednesday. At the end of the day on Tuesday, I started making some sketches that would match the illustration style the client was looking for.

A peek into some of the sketches I created for potential illustrations.

On Wednesday, I read two alternate versions of the character’s story to the team and we chose on one. Afterwards, I worked on fleshing it out and making it sound more succinct and fluid. We ended up changing the illustration direction so I worked on some new sketches to match the new style. The client got back to us on which name they liked the best out of the four we presented, so I went on a whole font exploration to see what would make the best logo.

On Thursday, I worked on vectorizing the illustrations and making it fit more to the new style we are going for. I feel like I have my good Illustrator days and my bad Illustrator days, and today was a pretty good one. Here are the new illustrations so far… still making tweaks! 🙂

I can’t believe Monday will be my last day at P&P! Time has gone by so quickly and I’m really sad to be leaving the team, but happy to finally take a break. I will probably illustrate some thank you cards for everyone over the weekend! This is my last blog post, I believe!! A last cat post to finish it off:

Farewell friends!!! Thanks for tuning in! – Oliver

Here are also some photos from a spontaneous photoshoot I did with one of my baby nephews, Maxwell.

And here’s a screenshot of most of the team from today!!

Everyone looks bored but I swear we’re all just SUPER CONCENTRATED!!

April 10, 2021April 10, 2021

Practicum – Week 6

Practicum is coming to an end soon, about 1 and a half weeks left!! This week, I made final revisions to the tea website that I was working on last week. We presented it to the client on Wednesday and she really loved it! I also got placed onto two new projects. One of the projects (which I’m being put on solo!) is branding for a new mochi donut shop and the other is helping my creative director with concept directions for branding a neighbourhood in the Greater Vancouver region. There was a really tight time crunch that the neighbourhood branding one had to be done by, so I had to work after hours to try to finish it. It was pretty stressful, but I’m grateful that I had my coworker stay with me to work on it together and we eventually got it done! The mochi donut shop branding has been a super fun project to work on. Currently, I’m working on mood boards for two different concept directions, competitive analysis, and naming. For naming, I researched and asked some of my Japanese friends about cute sounding Japanese words that translated well into English.

Mochi donuts!! I haven’t tried them yet, but there’s a new shop that opened in Vancouver and it’s actually quite close to my home. I really want to go!

Competitive research for the mochi donut shop. Seeing what other brands are doing and how their content on social media!

Also, super exciting news – at the beginning of the week, Pivot & Pilot offered me a job as Junior Designer! I was so surprised and happy! Unfortunately, after giving it a lot of thought, I ended up not taking it just because I ultimately want to pursue UX/UI and although I love branding, I feel like I want experience in an Interactive or UX/UI focused company. I was (and still am) a bit nervous about my decision because I feel a bit underqualified for many of the UX/UI roles that are posted, but we shall see how the job hunt goes!!! I’m also glad to take the rest of April off and have a proper break.

My mom bought us some drinks from a new Robson store that has been super popular – Machi Machi. The drinks were pretty good!!

I’ll end this post with another cat update. This is Oliver, who loves to sit by my window when I open the curtains though. He’s literally classified as “obese” though, so he can’t even fit the whole window sill and has to prop half of himself on my bed LOL

April 5, 2021

Practicum – Week 5

What?! How has it already been more than a month of practicum? Time flies!

I spent the entire week working on designing all the lofi wireframes for the new tea website that we are launching. It was something that I was tasked to start and finish entirely on my own, with eyes for approval, which I was grateful to be put on (but also definitely had some self-doubt moments!!) The client wanted the site to be through Shopify as well, so I had to design around those constraints. I’d never used Shopify before and was entirely new to how flexible designing around a Shopify template was and/or what we could potentially ask the developer to do. Overall, it was a big learning process but definitely a platform I would’ve needed to learn in the future anyhow, as most e-commerce sites are hosted on Shopify! The good news is, I can share screenshots of my work since the lofi is all grey and black boxes without any sensitive client info, haha 🙂

My progress towards the start of the week.

By the end of the week, I had finally finished all the lofi screens and fully designed hifi screens for the home page on both desktop and mobile sites. Pivot & Pilot uses this process so that when they are showing the client the wireframes, the client can see how the one hifi page looks and more easily envision the look and feel of the rest of the lofi wireframes. I submitted it to my Creative Director to look over and comment on, and I’ll probably be working on those revisions this upcoming week.

Finished all lofi screens and hifi screens of the home page for both desktop and mobile by the end of the week!

Throughout the whole week, I only remember one of my lunches that I made: a turkey ham sandwich with apples. It was so good, and Sebastian thought so too 🙂

Luckily, the majority of the week was sunny which definitely lifted the spirits. I sat by my window to work on most days and absorbed as much Vitamin D as I could.

It was a long weekend at the end of the week and on Saturday, I celebrated my 22nd birthday! I spent the day with my family and ate a lot of delicious food. We bought a lobster, and my sister made a huge charcuterie board and a beautiful and delicious hojicha and oreo birthday cake! It was soo good! This weekend, the cherry blossoms were also in full bloom and everyone was taking pictures of it!

The hojicha oreo cake my sister made for me!

March 28, 2021March 28, 2021

Practicum – Week 4

Can’t believe it’s already week four of practicum, time is flying by so fast! This week, I was mainly working with Joelle! We both worked on site design and marketing for a new tea brand that Pivot & Pilot also did the branding and packaging design for. I can’t specify too many details, but the tea brand is a fun and definitely unconventional one. It was so fun writing all the copy for it and thinking of all the best puns! Aside from writing copy for the site, Joelle and I also worked on creating a marketing plan for the brand. I learned a lot about promotion strategies, such as loyalty programs and value sets, and how the different strategies portray the brand to the consumer. For example, having a product that is always on sale cheapens the brand and may lose a customer’s trust. On the flip side, having products that never go on sale can make your product feel more premium – like how you normally wouldn’t see a Saint Laurent or Coach bag go on sale. It’s a bummer that I can’t share many images from work because I’m working from home and because of NDA’s, so I apologize in advance!

I created user personas for the brand that went into the marketing presentation.

Near the end of the week, I sat in a client meeting where our Creative Director, Alejandro, presented the marketing presentation that we had been working on. It’s been great to sit in on client meeting and presentations just to see how best to communicate with clients and share creative work (especially if the client isn’t familiar with the creative process!). On Thursday, I unfortunately had a sudden medical emergency and had to rush to the emergency room. It was unpleasant, but thankfully I am okay now.

At the hospital ☹️ . Coincidentally, I bumped into my highschool friend in the waiting room and it was really nice getting to catch up with him!

I will end this blog post with a promised weekly cat update. This week, I YouTubed videos of “How To Tie a DIY Baby Sling” so I could make a comfortable pouch to bring the cats around and outside. I’m trying to get them more used to the outdoors just so they can explore a bit more. The sling was pretty successful, and Sebastian (the dark grey cat) seemed to enjoy it, but Oliver (the grey and white cat) was shaking because I think he gets really nervous when he’s outside.

Sebastian in his sling! I just took them outside in my front yard. He doesn’t look too happy in this photo (LOL).

Oliver in the sling. Really curious and nervous!

Lastly, I went for a really nice picnic to finish off the week at Gary Point Park in Steveston. I also played tennis and pickleball afterwards! It was such a nice and needed break. I’m slowly trying to incorporate more outdoors-ness and sports again to improve my mental wellbeing 🙂

Sushi and chicken teriyaki from my favourite Japanese restaurant in my neighbourhood.

March 19, 2021March 19, 2021

Practicum – Week 3

I had a very busy week this week at Pivot & Pilot! My week was filled with more copywriting and site design, which I am still really enjoying. I’ve been learning a lot about web design, especially from one of my coworkers, who’s currently taking a UX/UI course at BrainStation.

I had an especially chaotic day on Wednesday because I was tasked to do a project that had to be finished EOD , and the main designer of that project was off that whole day. I was nervous having to make a lot of design decisions (especially because these were all going straight to the developer… to be built on a real live site..). Working in another designer’s file is also nerve-racking because everyone has their own system of sorting their layers in their files, and I didn’t want to mess up all her previous designs. To top it all off, I had to work on all of it in Adobe XD, a program I never learned to use. Luckily, I managed to pull through and learned a lot through the process. Adobe XD is actually a great program and I’m glad I now know how to use it!! I’m still Team Figma though 🙂

Sat in my bed to do work for a bit. I don’t have many available workspaces in my house, but I still try to change up my working environment once in a while.

After that exhausting day, I took my two baby nephews to the playground outside my house to take a much-needed break and some fresh air!

It was getting late and the sun had nearly set already, but the sky was still such a beautiful blue.

Towards the end of the week, I spent a majority of the day remaking the mobile site for P&P’s updated site with Joelle. Even though we weren’t in the same room, it was still really nice working on something with someone else simultaneously. I love Figma and Slack so much!!

Working on mobile site design. Surprisingly took a long while to do (and we’re still not finished!) but I had a lot of fun nonetheless 🙂

For lunch on Thursday, I made some wontons and watched some Netflix. I’ve been really enjoying watching k-dramas for the past few months and have been binging one after the other.

Currently watching “Hospital Playlist”, an interesting k-drama about a group of friends who are all doctors at the same hospital. They also love music and started their own band. I don’t know how I feel about this show so far, but if you’re looking for an amazing k-drama, I highly recommend “Reply 1988” on Netflix!

Lastly, I’ll finish this blog post with a weekly cat update. I planted “cat grass” from a pack of seeds I picked up at a home hardware store. They grew quickly in the span of a week, but my cats are totally uninterested in it. I’m sad about that, because I bought these seeds specifically so my cats would stop chewing on all my other plants.

March 12, 2021March 19, 2021

Practicum – Week 2

I just finished my second week of practicum with Pivot & Pilot and, yes, still loving it here! It’s also gotten warm and sunny in Vancouver this week which definitely lightens the mood. I’m grateful to have my cats around the house who love to sit on my desk sometimes while I’m working and keep me company.

Oliver basking in the morning sun, truly living the life.

This week started with helping Lindsey with writing and perfecting all the copy for a restaurant website we are working on. Because the team at Pivot & Pilot is quite small, the designers here have the opportunity to wear a lot of different hats and experience various roles. On that day, Lindsey and I were both copywriters. It was a fun process trying to craft the perfect voice for parts of the site – from hero headings to FAQ answers! Rebecca, the creative director, gave us a lot of good tips and advice on “sales” copy and how to subtly sell a brand/product while still feeling authentic. For the rest of the week, I’ve been working with Joelle on the design of a rehaul for Pivot & Pilot’s site. There was a lot of big design edits to be made so that kept me busy! I’ve come to realize that I really, really enjoy site design for some odd reason.

Current Pivot & Pilot site that we are working to redesign. (This is not the new version)

I treated myself to some delicious lunch at Burgoo on Thursday (which is my ‘Friday’, since I only work 4 days a week)

“After-School Special” at Burgoo! So yummy 🙂

The week has gone by so quickly and I can’t believe I’ve done 2 weeks of practicum already. I definitely want to schedule a couple more coffee chats next week to meet and get to know more of my coworkers!

March 5, 2021March 19, 2021

Practicum – Week 1

I started my practicum at Pivot & Pilot this week! Pivot & Pilot (P&P) is a design agency in Vancouver that helps brands in the food, beauty and wellness industries stand out and capitalize on their first impression. The team at Pivot & Pilot is a small and cozy family of six. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has been going on for more than a year now, most practicums are remote-only. I’m sad that I am unable to go into an office and meet everyone in person! We have been primarily communicating through Slack and Google Meet.

Projects are discussed and managed through Slack. It’s also how I message people individually if I ever need help or just want to chat (instead of email, which is less personable). This image is blurred for NDA/privacy reasons, but you get the idea!

Every morning, we have a team check-in at 9 AM. Serena, Pivot & Pilot’s project manager, gives project updates and feedback from clients to everyone and checks in to see what everyone is working on for the day. I like that they do these morning check-ins because it keeps everyone on track, you get an idea of what other people are working on, and it’s just nice to see everyone’s face at least once during the day! At the beginning of the week, I was working on designing social media content for an upcoming podcast that will be released soon. A cool thing I learned was how to make moving soundwave forms in After Effects that syncs with the audio. Later on in the week, I was put on some web design projects which I am super stoked for! The projects are for a wellness brand and a restaurant brand. I sat in on two client calls that were mainly technical onboarding questions to get a sense of what the client already had on their site.

It’s Thursday today and I ordered Indian food for lunch from a local restaurant called Bombay Flame that recently opened in my Marpole neighbourhood. It’s really affordable and so delicious! I ordered the Butter Chicken lunch combo.

Thursday lunch: Butter chicken with naan from Bombay Flame.

Because I didn’t have a ton of work to do for the rest of the day today, I scheduled two coffee chats with two of the other designers in Pivot & Pilot; Jiaan and Lindsey. We talked about their design careers and any tips they had about the industry. It was so great getting to talk to them one-on-one! I learned a lot of valuable advice 🙂