The week before practicum was filled with nervous knots and eager excitement! Coming off the end grad show prep, it was a surreal mental shift realizing my first day was looming! Haluka and I were sent a Welcome letter, Survival Guides, and a digital copy of their book, Rethink the Business of Creativity. As my blog title suggests, it describes their welcoming first week (also a chapter title)! The book engagingly shares their creative tools and how they run.
I was surprised that even though we are working remotely, I felt immediately plugged into their culture via emails, slack, zoom, and the network. Besides getting connected, the first task on Monday was to send an email to all Rethinkers, sharing anything about me!
On Monday, I also had my first project meetings! I got briefed by the creative director on a branding project for a local dentist. I will be joining early and helping with the 1-100 sketches task. At the end of the day, I was also briefed on my second project on brand guidelines! I’ve always wanted to learn and immerse myself in one. For this, I would be the designer, paired with a copywriter in a new phase. Jumping into a big report, I reviewed the document a few times to get myself familiar with the content, structure, and edits.
On Tuesday, I split my time sketching for the dentist branding project in the morning. We shared sketches later that day, and I got to see how the creative director dissected and identified ideas! In the late afternoon, I reviewed the brand guidelines document in more detail so I could prepare myself for my first meeting with the copywriter on Wednesday! The next task for us was to compile questions to send back to the account team.
One of the biggest things I learned about their process was how important it was to over-communicate. Rethink facilitates this throughout a project with things like check-ins and huddles. There is also a main email we interact with called Traffic who helps shepherd all projects and resources. It was easy for me to slack/email anyone to get some quick questions and even hold quick zoom meetings! We are also encouraged to have as many coffee meetings (1/day) as we can, learn and chat with Rethinkers in different roles!
For the rest of the week, I jumped between the projects. I did a second round of sketches for the dentist project. For the brand guidelines project, I made a checklist to prioritize the tasks, gathered/sent questions, and jumped into the files. I also had few more team check-ins and connected with IT for further setup.
Over the weekend, I was still buzzing from the first week. Rethink’s welcome was friendly, and while remote, I felt very connected!
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