This week started off pretty fast, I gotta say! My first interaction on Monday morning was with a branding specialist, Matt. Our chat was very insightful as Matt shared the branding process at Metalab including the timeline and details they go through with clients and I was delightfully surprised to know that a lot of what we were taught in IDEA is pretty accurate with the way some agencies work (here for sure so far). It was really interesting to learn about Metalab’s experience with branding as they mainly focus on interactive work and digital products but it seems to have grown really quickly and is continuing to expand to create well-rounded products.

After this lovely chat with Matt, we had a company-wide zoom call (and this is probably the largest zoom call I’ve ever attended with 120-ish people to meet the new CEO, Arif Mansuri! It was pretty exciting, they had held off giving us the name beforehand for an element of surprise (no sneaky Googling!) and it was very well received. Arif introduced himself, spoke about what his plans at Metalab would be, and showed us his adorable new pup. The meeting wrapped up with hard-hitting questions such as: “is it pronounced Gif or Jif?” and “Mint ice cream– love it or does it taste like toothpaste?”. Let’s just say he made some friends and enemies that day.

The rest of the week went by quicker than I even noticed. As I mentioned in the previous post, I was put on a project that centers around sports and it’s been a really interesting experience so far. What I was really excited about going into this project (and am continuing to enjoy) was the fact that I would be working alongside female designers, one of who is a design lead. For me, it’s been really inspiring to see more women in the digital space, especially in higher positions of power. Anyways, the first portion of the project I was exposed to was the research side. I really enjoyed digging into the research plan and learning what the process was like, which research methods were used, how they went about finding an audience to interview, and what the overall goals of the research plans were going in. It was quick learning and I hope I can take it all in before I move onto the next project in the next couple of weeks! 🙂