Day 16:

I started working on my personal project and booked in some more chats for this week. I’m hoping to see all the creatives (at least) by the end of my practicum!! We also got the social media animations I started in Week 1 approved, so we’re moving into the final art direction and production phase—exciting!

P.S. Positioning mooncakes is more challenging than I thought it would be.

Day 17:

Today was a super busy day full of meetings. I got briefed on quite a few things to do this week, with some ongoing tasks lasting till the following week. But I guess this is another challenge of time management and efficiency. One of the biggest things I’m learning is how to measure out my time effectively and efficiently. There are only so many hours in a working day.

We’re finally starting to roll into the social media animations’ production phase, meaning I can start reaching out to illustrators/animators. And I can illustrate some simple assets for Jesse (the motion designer at 123w) to animate too! We got super cool things in store!

I also had another quick chat with Mo today about how 123w is going. We also went over some brand guideline decks and tips on brand strategy and positioning. Unfortunately, I lacked sleep, so I was out of it today. But Mo was patient enough to chat with my tired, slow-brain self.

Day 18:

I chatted with Kate today and asked her a bit about her working in big agency life and small agency life. She said it’s good to learn about that bureaucracy life, but it’s nice being in a scrappy agency where you can see your ideas go through and the big guys in the agency are reachable. Kate prefers the scrappy small agency life. And she has made career advancements at 123w, from writer up to creative director, so there are opportunities there in smaller agencies too! She mentioned that when COVID hit at 123w, everyone was cared for, and the small scale played a big part in that.

I also chatted with Addie in the afternoon about industry life, the difference between art direction and design, and working collaboratively. We both miss working collaboratively in person.

Day 19:

I talked to Ryan today, and his advice to young designers was to work hard as you can and absorb everything. It’s a matter of practicing constantly and getting more efficient, and refining your craft. And talk to everyone, learn from everyone—accounts, production, etc.

I also asked him what his favourite project was in his career, and it sounded like the most interesting ones to him were where he was not just creative with the idea, but the process was just as enjoyable. The project he explained was where his team spent a lot of time and money in the research phase to build the most trustworthy character. Using the information, they hired an actor fitting all the characteristics to act as a fake scammer as part of an awareness campaign on how easy it is to get scammed. It was interesting to hear how you can distribute your budget creatively to create different, memorable campaign experiences.

Also, the CapU IDEA Grad Show site went live today!! I was able to help contribute to the quality assurance stage while at 123w, and I’m glad everything launched smoothly. There were quite a few bugs that resurfaced after a few times in the development process. I guess that shows how the creative process is never linear and that truth doesn’t change in the working industry.

Day 20:

This week has been jammed pack with different projects. I finished up reskinning a deck, clipping video clips for the deck and making some wordmark proposals for the company today.

I had to make layout options for a project with John that he brought me onboard earlier this week under a time crunch. What was different about this project was that none of the design assets will be produced by 123w. We just had to make mock-ups of the design for the client’s internal design team to replicate all in Google Slides. So that was a strange design experience because, no, Google Slides is not suitable for designing layouts at all. It has been a hectic week, and I didn’t get to hit everything on my to-do list, sadly, but hopefully next week.