Day 21:
Monday was also another jam-packed day making layouts for the social media campaign John brought me on last week, which is being presented to the client tomorrow. Other than that, I was also experimenting with supers for a video that I think should be due this week. I’m a little confused about the timeline for that project because the art director working on it quit because he’s pursuing another full-time job. But, I learned that supers are what the industry calls the video text in video ads. I’m not sure why, but apparently, it’s a production term?
Day 22:
After the hectic day yesterday, today was much more chill, but enough work and things to keep me going. I had a quick, spontaneous chat with Jeff Harrison, and he mentioned that it’s a great time to be looking for a job in the industry and that I should have confidence as an IDEA grad—we have some street cred to our name—and with my portfolio, if I’m at 123w. He gave me some advice and said I should build a super conceptual digital campaign piece rather than another brand identity project to add to my portfolio. As much as it’s important to be conceptual, the craft is just as significant, and they make sure people can think in digital too. So, make sure to keep your rags nice and clean because it’s something that Jeff looks at during portfolio reviews.
Day 23:
There was a lot of confusion for this supers project like I mentioned before, because the people I was working with/reporting changed a couple of times. Anyway, by the end of the day, we got the general direction for that supers project. I thank Danielle Haythorne so much for jumping in, getting a handle on who exactly is a part of the team and what we needed to do, and making the client’s presentation deck.
Aside from that, I had a quick catch-up chat with Eric, who walked me through the whiskey packaging project he’s been finishing up—super cool concepts—and met Lisa Good, a production artist on the team! Lisa assured me I don’t need to spend any time making my files organized and production-ready at all, which still leaves me uncomfortable at the thought of someone trying to navigate through a disorganized file. But she was very sweet about it all.
Day 24:
We started the day with a creative team meeting and dove into how 123w will handle creative resourcing and team structure. I’m still somewhat getting used to the 123w agency structure, but I figure there’s usually a creative team and another CD that acts as a third party to give an objective view on the project. It’s an interesting structure because almost all of the group is technically CD level, so they can’t work the traditional agency way; it would just be inefficient.
I guess I wonder because the team is so senior, how do they handle smaller projects that are fit for junior-intermediate level designers? Do they take on a lot of those jobs? I guess this is something to add to the question list on my next chat.
Afterwards, I worked on the revisions for the social media campaign we had to turn in earlier in the week and briefed the first animator for the social media animation series. It’s exciting to see things moving and hear an animator’s opinions on my ideas and see them thinking of ways to turn them into reality. This animator works in 3D animation, and my student designer heart is so happy that I can finally turn a project into a 3D illustration art style after mood boarding it.
