Internship at Wrkstn

Me: ...this includes 3 revisions. Any more than that will have additional charges. Concept change will be an entire new quote.

Client: What? Just 3 revisions? No, it should have unlimited revisions until I am happy with it. Concept could also change.

Me:

Me:

Me: good

I have been working around the clock since the week before last. It has been a little crazy, but it’s also fun!  In two weeks a lot of things happened. The logo I designed for the pet cafe has gone up everywhere! It’s on social media, they printed t-shirts, the signboards have gone up, and they printed cute little badges (I stole two of course). Every time I went to the cafe: for the food tasting, for any design help, deciding the menus, etc., I saw the logo everywhere, and it made me feel like a proud mama. I’ve worked so hard on this project. We saw at least four articles that were written about the cafe, and each of these articles starts of with the logo. It makes me happy! Out of the five projects i’ve worked on during this internship, this has been the most elaborate and most time consuming. It has taken up 40% of my sketchbook.  August has been an interesting mix. I created a lot of boring old social media posts, and then some interesting typography work for the cafe itself. Since I never really get any days off, even on public holidays (sigh), I took four days off work and hopped onto a flight. It took me back home to Bombay, so I could visit my family, my pups, and my friends. Since it was Ganpati, I have spent the four days that I was there in a food coma. I was pretty sad to leave, but I made it through three months, I was coming back for less than one, I would survive. And survive I will.

I spent two weeks working on menu designs for two restaurants, and some time working on packaging for this munchies products! Took some time to research other products and look at competition! Nothing like a little Pinterest pinning to fill my soul with happiness!

I've had a happy four days. My parents recently visited me here, in Calcutta for a weekend. It was the first time I really got to travel in this city and see some of the things it has to offer. First and foremost being the delectable cuisine.

My parents happened to come here at the most opportune moment. The Hilsa Festival is on and this short period is the only time this exquisite and slowly depleting fish is available (I did a quick google search mid-bite). Of course, now that I know it's endangered I shall never have it again.

For most of the part, we planned our trip in such a way that each meal was something different, and the area we were in had something interesting to see.

On their first day here in the city, my parents visited the design studio I am interning at, probably spoke to my bosses for an hour or more and were given a few hundred suggestion of places to go see in the city. We walked around in the evening for a bit and tried some street food: some Jhal Muri (spicy puffed rice), Chicken fry, and Fried Fish from a tiny shop called Aponjon that's been here for a few decades. It was delicious. We then went to a South Indian restaurant called Ammini, which has to be one of my favorite restaurants in this city. It serves up some beautiful mutton, and I can lick those banana leaves I'm served on, clean.

The next day started out with a trip to get my phone fixed, which took a few hours, and then a humongous lunch at a restaurant called Oh Calcutta!, where my father went all out and ordered seven or more dishes to be shared amongst the three of us. Of course there were left overs, and of course, I was more than happy about that. It's a meal I would rate 10/10. It's here that I had my first and last serving of Hilsa. We wandered around for a bit, but the heat and humidity got to us, and we ran back home for some AC time.

A quick nap, some major decision making later we finally left for a restaurant called The Bohemian. A quaint little restaurant that has perhaps 7-8 tables, and no more. A wonderful meal that was followed by some very peaceful sleep.

Sunday was a day of Firsts. My mother tried her first ever waffle, and loved it, the first time we had Puchka in this city, and the first time we went to a museum together, as a family. The Indian Museum is huge. I heard someone claim that it was once a mansion (a claim I'm far too tired/lazy to google and verify right now). A little on the unpolished side with poor ventilation, filled with perhaps a hundred artifacts, it is still quite a sight to behold. Four hours aren't enough to go through all the exhibits, and the security will promptly start kicking you out at two minutes to 5pm. A museum with a lot to offer, but in my opinion, not curated all that well enough.

The section that stands out is the Egyptian Display. Clearly, when people from outside the country are in charge, order is maintained. The museum has a lot of artifacts to view, but little to zero information that you can take away from it. Other than a small write up that's given section to section only about the particular era, the artifacts only had a name and logistical information. I would've liked to know more history about each artifact. Anything to make it more personal and memorable would've helped.

Post our museum visit, we went to a British Era establishment by the name of Flurry's. A cafe/restaurant/breakfast place. Best croissants I've ever had, and I shall leave it at that.

We hop, skip, and jumped to New Market in the rain, and were drenched to our bones. The market happened to be shut since it was a Sunday, but we did walk around for a bit and take in the sights and smells. My mother then decided that she wanted to see Prinsep Ghat so we cabbed it all the way there, and walked some more in the rain.

Prinsep Ghat is a beautified section of the bank of river Hooghly. It has trees and plants galore, benches for couples to sit on and do as they please, beneath big umbrellas that may or may not be opaque, a few street shops selling Bombay style "Paw Bhaji" (that's how they spell it), and steps at regular intervals for people to go down and take a boat ride. At the end of the long walk, the garden pathway veers left and into a huge open lawn, where there are Palladian styled columns built in memory of the Anglo-Indian scholar James Prinsep. The sole purpose of this structure, in my honest opinion, is to shelter people from the rain and another little corner for couples to enjoy each other's company, away from prying eyes.

From here we went on to eat dinner at Haldirams' own establishment. Two stories of this building are food courts. The ground floor is for only sweets. The first floor is everything else. I witnessed an engagement ceremony taking place here, amidst a hundred random people who'd come to sate their hunger. And that was how day 3 ended.

15th of August is Indian Independence day and my father decided to spend it watching a movie in the theater. His logic: We'll get to enjoy the National Anthem in the theater. My mother and I were forced to watch a movie called Mohenjo-Daro. I classify this movie as a tragedy and a comedy. Tragedy because it's so bad. Comedy because it's hilariously inaccurate and plain stupid. The less said the better. Post that, we went to my favorite cafe, the 8th Day and spent a few hours playing Uno there (and by playing I mean teaching my parents). The owner of the cafe came and spoke to us for a bit, which made us really happy and feel pretty special! It's always the little things.

Life is good, everything is fun, you’ve been working hard on one logo for the past three days. From sketches to photoshop sketches, to vectorising it, to finally having the finished product on your computer screen, looking incredible. Looking so good, so fine, you wanna take it out for a date. And then comes the time to dress it up in a pretty looking dress. BUT WHAT COLOUR SHOULD THAT DRESS BE?

Looking up colour palettes to go with your design, and the brand image is hell. It is harder than life itself. There are only so many hues in this world to chose from, but they have their shades, their tints, and their tones; and to sit and go through those colour variations takes time. Colour preferences are a very personal thing. I may not like what you like, and you may hate what I like. Where do we compromise? How do we compromise? Fine.... we chose one colour. We chose a Red. A beautiful red, but with that red comes a hundred different shades. “This one’s too light”, “that one seems to be too dark”, “Ugh, this one is so bright, it hurts my eyes”. Where does it end? It ends when we’re so annoyed with it, we just compromise. “You like that shade.. sure. Final. Done deal.”

Sometimes you get those colours instantly. Other times, you go through more than a hundred options, create different boxes with colours in it on one mood board, you have a hundred logo colour variations, you go through 15 cups of coffee and pull half your hair out. And then… it finally happens. That one colour you’ve been waiting for appears before your very eyes. You can’t believe it, but you’d better. The logo is complete, the process done, and you can finally let go of that breath you’ve been holding onto the whole time.

Fin.

Now all that is left for me to do is sit and work on the menu and the packaging for the restaurant.

Gotta get back to work..

Wrkstn Diary:

Ever since I have moved into my new apartment, I haven’t had the time to sit down and collect my thoughts, let alone put them into words. Today though is different. There has been a slight lull in the momentum and I am going to utilise this time to finally write. Over the past two weeks, the studio has gotten four new clients, and all of them expect their work to be finished first and need the most attention.

How does one prioritize? We have been working at a breakneck speed, trying to accommodate everyone. There are two restaurants to be branded, a clothing brand, and one cafe.

I know we’re not supposed to play favourites, but I think Rupinder, Kunal, and I collectively agree that our favourite so far has been this cafe called ‘The Love Room’ that has the coolest concept ever. It is a pet cafe. The owner has 11 dogs and 2 cats. It is animal heaven. I initially went over to their house to meet the pets, and we spent two hours just playing with the animals. Now, I am a dog lover and I do not support the buying of pets, and I promote adoption. But these pure breed cherubs are just adorable. I do wish they had adopted dogs though, instead of buying them. There was a husky, a pug, a French pit bull, two Shih Tzus, a Lhasa Apso, a cocker spaniel, a golden retriever, and many more. Heaven.

I have been working on their logo for a few days now. Our brief has been to go the Shabby Chic way, so as to match the interiors of the cafe. Recently we had a dinner meeting at the client’s house where I gave them a small presentation of mood boards and showed them my logo exploration sketches. The clients also commissioned some artwork to be placed inside the cafe and as such Rupinder came up with the idea to photoshop the dogs in old oil paintings, in human clothing. Thus we had a photo shoot. Now I have been to a photoshoot before and it was boring, but when there are animals involved, it’s just the best.

One of the reasons I chose to work in a small design studio is that I could get more work, and I’d be able to learn something about client interaction. Clients are funny creatures. Some of them are a breeze to work with, and some are difficult. But then there are some that are downright stupid. On one of the restaurant branding projects, we had a client come in with his brother. They both lacked any design knowledge but considered themselves to be the authority on all things design. They told us to brand their restaurant in a particular way. And told us exactly what the logo should look like.

“That F, yeah from the center line, make it look like a fork. And the A in the second word, make one side a knife and make it really big, and old looking. Kinda vintage? Mmhh yeah. And um wait, there’s a restaurant with the same name in Australia and we like their logo so just… Here wait, let me show you what it looks like”, hands over the phone with a photo of a particularly distasteful logo, “Here do exactly this and give it to us this way. We want this logo. Copy it exactly as is”.

We sat them down and explained to them how it’s pointless to hire a graphic designer if you want to take another preexisting logo for your restaurant. And also how it’s a bad idea to copy. We told them we’ll give them something new and definitely better than that one, keeping what they wanted in mind at the same time. It took us an hour to convince them. And then we showed them our designs. They said they wanted it to be more aggressive. So we said okay, we can fix that. Once the meeting got done, and then went home, we got a call from them half an hour later, and they said that maybe it was already too aggressive and we needed to tone it down. Idiot clients are awesome :D

Nevertheless, I’m thankful about this because I get to learn so much through client interactions. However, in my two months here, I’m grateful that we’ve had only one such client. It’s hard to figure out where to draw the line. As students, we’ve been taught do as the client says, the client is always right, and to make the client happy. But what if the client is a child whose hand you need to hold and gently guide them through life, towards better design? How do you handle that without upsetting the client? Challenges like this are what makes work exciting.

If everything was easy, nothing would be worth it.