#cdatwork2012

CD at Work: Eunice

Hey Design League + friends!

I've been in Chicago interning at Doblin, Inc. this summer. Doblin is an innovation strategy firm that's been acquired by Monitor, an internationally leading strategy firm. I didn't realize I was working for such a huge company until I got here! And it's been a great experience so far.

About the city:

I'm happy to say that Chicago is just as hip, down-to-earth, and fun as I remembered it from our fall IDSA/AIGA design trip in 2009. The food and bike culture thrives, the people are kind, and it's a very community oriented place. Like Eden mentioned in an earlier post, there are festivals every weekend here from Ribfests to Blues Festivals. It's a lively, outdoorsy place to be in the summer.

About my internship:

So what exactly do innovation strategy firms do? Well, there's a lot of storytelling, organizing, research, analysis, synthesis, brainstorming, generating and communicating that goes on here. We create innovative ideas, plans and strategies for clients who are asking questions such as: "What's the next step we should take to advance our company? What can we do to take advantage of the technological upcomings in our industry? What's the best way to..? How should we go about communicating..? What can we do to shape the future of…?"

It's problem solving at a high level -- meaning that if you look at an entire process of the birth of an idea to the execution and production of the idea, what we do sits at the very beginning of the process. It can be very conceptual and abstract in the beginning. It's also an interesting place to be because visual design is used not at the production level (what you see as the final product) but at a level in which you are trying to effectively communicate the ideas and strategies you come with to the clients in order to help them understand their problem and the approach we are using to solve it. This is done in various ways including workshops, visuals, powerpoint decks (see Tina's post), etc.

Currently, I'm working on a project with 3 workstreams, so it's something I haven't experience at this scale. Some of the scopes include designing an experience and future scenario planning. I've also been fortunate enough to go on a business trip to NYC to work at the NY Monitor office in the Financial District. I'll be traveling back and forth from NY to Chicago throughout the summer -- which I'm thankful for because then I can see the progress and process of the project. I'm most interested in learning how others go about solving a problem, and how they come to a solution. We'll be starting primary field research (interviews, recordings, expert interviews, etc) in a couple of weeks to gather more in-depth information for our project. 

So that's how things are going so far here in Chi-town for me. If anyone has questions about working at a strategy firm as opposed to a design firm, let me know! Hope everyone is enjoying their summers!

designluv,

CD at Work: Eden

I've been in Chicago for almost a month now, and I've been really enjoying the work that I'm doing and getting to know the city. I'm an intern at Someoddpilot, a branding agency in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. The studio takes up a floor of an old textile factory, which the team designed, built, and furnished themselves. It's located right near Six Corners, the heart of Wicker Park, and there are tons of restaurants, thrift stores and shops around the area that make my lunch break very entertaining and expensive. Most of the work they do is identity & web design, but they also specialize in design & packaging for the music and entertainment industry. Someoddpilot as been around since 1999, but has stayed a small studio, with 6 people + me. Despite their small size, they do work for bigger clients like Merrell, Budweiser, Chaco, and Pitchfork Music. 

So far, the environment has been pretty similar to CD studio at Carnegie Mellon. The atmosphere is fun and casual, with everyone joking around throughout the day and going to lunch together, and I've gotten to know everyone pretty well. But there's also a lot of hard work going on. We work from 8-5 every day, and everyone is always willing to come in early or stay late to finish or perfect a project. Someoddpilot also owns an art/design gallery/event space, called Public Works, which occupies the other half of the floor. Public Works has new shows every couple of months, and my first assignment when I got here was to help with the branding of the upcoming July show. I've also been doing marketing and helping to spread the word about the show, and it's given me a peek into the artier side of the design world.

Already, I've gotten the chance to work on four different projects: designing a printed zine, visual exploration for a new brand, imagery for one of the big websites they run, and a brand book. The work that I'm doing is impacting real projects, and is getting shown to clients for review, which is a new and exciting experience for me. Of course I'm also doing interny duties like mail, organizing the supply room, ordering cupcakes, and scanning documents for everybody, but that comes with the territory and I'm happy to do it.

At the beginning of every week, the team comes together in the communal space of the studio where there are couches, chairs and a projector, to talk about the "to dos" for the week. Everyone gets a printed list of the projects, which tend to be around two or three pages, and the weeks duties are passed out, figuring out who will tackle what. Then we all split up and get to work. Periodically throughout the day, we'll gather again and look at what everyone's beenup to on the big screen, providing feedback and critique. These little meetings are always really helpful, and it's been great to get to see what the other designers are working on, even when I'm on a different project. 

Because of the constant critique and feedback, projects here go through a ton of iterations very quickly. This is pretty different from the 2 or 3 rounds we get at school, and it's much more fast paced. It also means that what you spent three hours on today will probably be completely different come tomorrow, and I've learned to not become too attached to my designs. But just like at CMU, it's all about the process. 

Like Sabrina said in her post about Design Week, it's been really nice to be able to go out and explore after work without stressing about deadlines. I've tried to make use of this freetime, and explore the city as much as I can on my bike. There also seems to be a festival here every single weekend, which is nuts. I'll post about those as the summer goes on.

^that's a gif!

I've been working at Infinia Group for half a month and although I wasn't sure what to really expect in the beginning, I am really enjoying myself now. Unfortunately, I can't delve in too deep about specific projects because of privacy issues and non-disclosure agreements that I'm confined to, but in each project I am learning the responsibilities of a designer while working with a strategy-oriented team. 

Infinia Group is located in the Meatpacking District in Chelsea, and across the street I have direct access to the Highline — an elevated railroad but now reconstructed to be a park/walkway. I'll be sure to post photos when the weather is a lot nicer. The Chelsea Market is really close and I have a grand selection of choices for food along with a tasty gelato to finish off lunch breaks. 

Infinia Group considers themselves a middle-sized company, the team consists of maybe in total 30-40 people specializing in either business/strategy or design. I think there is great appeal for a firm sized like this just because there's a sense of community, teamwork, and a longer (more manageable) timeframe to work on client projects. I've learned that there are some spearhead designers and strategists, young and old, who work here. On the design side, there's people here who've worked for RGA, Siegel + Gale, Futurebrand, etc. On the strategy side, there's a lot of knowledgeable marketers who really delve into the meaning of words, company positions and profiles.  

One thing I really appreciate about this internship that I didn't know I was going to experience is the incorporation of strategy + design. I get to really hone in on what I learned from my business minor (such as positioning statements, targeting + segmentation) and see how the strategists and designers work together to create moodboards, concepts, positioning ideas, and general ideation. (I'm really glad I took marketing this year because I feel like I would have been a fish out of water and it's really validating to be able to use what I learned used in real life.) 

During lunch today, my boss discussed how design and strategy are two critical fields when it comes to working with clients. Infinia approaches brand positioning and company profiling through a process that is centered around "design-thinking" — meaning: a process-oriented and thorough approach. When Infinia responds to companies with ideas and concepts, these ideas are presented through words and images. The strategists come up with the language (with rhetoric, prose, and etc) and designers come up with a visual language (with image, color, etc.) that can make abstract concepts tangible to clients. These things then instruct how websites, logos, mission statements, future goals, internal/external structures should look/be. 

It's been two weeks since I arrived in Chicago, and the city is quickly growing on me. I'm still adjusting to the different pace of life now that I don't have schoolwork to worry about — it's an odd feeling when work is not accompanied by the constant stress that has become second nature at CMU, but I'm quickly learning to just accept it instead of asking questions.

I'm not entirely sure about Morningstar's disclosure policy, so for now I will blog about other designy things. This past week was AIGA'S Chicago Design week, with a lot of design-related events happening throughout the city. Chicago's AIGA is pretty active, and it was nice to go out and meet designers, and even fellow interns from the area.*

After getting off work on Monday, Eden, Mike, Tim, and I attended the opening reception for the Chicago Design Museum (CHIDM). It's a temporary pop-up museum started by a group of designers at Morningstar, and it's situated in a nice space, albeit in a rather sketchy area. Exhibits included one about IBM in it's now 100th year, works by Debbie Millman, and a celebration of Rodchenko, as well as pieces by a number of other artists and designers.

On Tuesday I ventured over to the Guerrilla Truck Show after work since it was close to my apartment and nobody else had plans to go. The show consisted of several rows of pickup trucks that were parked against raised sidewalks so that visitors could easily enter to see the displays. The back of each truck had been transformed into a showcase for either an individual or a firm, and some of the setups were actually quite intricate. While some groups had essentially left the insides of the trucks untouched and simply placed their work within, others had taken the time to build custom walls so as to bring proper attention to their pieces. Works displayed included everything from furniture to paintings to photography and even clothes, which in itself was already of some intrigue to me.

Wednesday evening saw Eden, Mike, and I return to the design museum in order to attend a Debbie Millman lecture. Aside from having her work featured at the museum, she is also President Emeritus of AIGA, President of Design at Sterling Brands, and has written a number of design books. Prior to the lecture we had expected some sort of a success story, but what we got was quite the opposite. She had us engaged and attentive throughout her entire lecture as she told us about failed endeavor after failed endeavor, and eventually about how she found success and happiness over twenty years into her career. "The longest way round is the shortest way home."

We didn't attend any events on Thursday or Friday, but Saturday night there was an AIGA Mentor Party. This was more of a social event than anything, but we met some people, danced, and had some interesting conversations.

   I've been in New York for three weeks now and the time is already flying by. I'm loving living in the city, but more importantly, I'm loving what I'm doing. I am lucky enough to be working at two different part time internships this summer that are basically complete opposites of each other. Three days a week, I am an intern for the art department of Vogue.com at the Condé Nast offices in Times Square. Then, the other two days, I am working as an intern at Hovard Design, a small graphic design/branding/packaging studio in Brooklyn. They are both very different but I'm so grateful to have both experiences.

I'll start off by telling you a little bit about my experience working at Vogue's offices. Going in, I was extremely nervous and didn't know what to expect. We've all see 'The Devil Wears Prada,' so I was afraid I would be working in a cutthroat and extremely stressful environment. Thankfully, the Vogue.com team is the complete opposite of what I had feared. Everyone is so friendly, relaxed, helpful, and understanding. There are about fifteen people who work in our section of the offices on the website: designers, editors, producers, and a fashion marketing assistant. There is one other art dept. intern, two editorial interns, and a fashion intern working with us. The team is extremely collaborative and there is a lot of overlap between what everyone does. Even though everyone has a specific job and expertise, we all work together to determine and produce the content of the website. Most of the office is in about their mid-twenties, so it's a really comfortable and familiar environment.

Every morning, we meet and discuss the different postings that will go up for the rest of the week and delegate who will work on which piece. We also discuss new ideas for what we can include on the site in the next few weeks. We then meet again at the end of each day to go over everything we've done and what still needs to get finished.

Right now, there are two designers on the team and my job is basically the same as what they do. We split up all the different tasks for the day and work on producing images for each piece. Sometimes, that means arranging type and images for slideshows and designing "heroes," which are the different banners that run on the top of our site about featured articles. Other times, it means editing images in photoshop and silohuetting runway looks or collecting images from either the Condé Nast archive or other websites that could be used in future pieces. This past week, the Resort 2013 runway collections came out, so a lot of my job was to resize and edit the images sent to us from the designers and upload them onto the site. Even though doing that could feel a bit repetitive, I loved just getting a chance to really see what all the designers were putting out this season.

This internship has really been exactly the experience I wanted to get my feet wet as a graphic designer in the fashion industry. I've always been extremely passionate about it and I am so grateful to have a chance to combine two things that I really love. It's also really great to be surrounded by people who are just as passionate and excited about the same things I am. My internship is a lot more than being a designer, it's also just coming up with ideas and determining content for a specific audience. I get to work directly with the editor-in-chief of the website, who works directly with famed editor-in-chief of the magazine, Anna Wintour, and really get to see how the industry as a whole is run. It's not a traditional design internship, but it's a once in a lifetime experience.

The Vogue offices feel like hallowed halls and there are always racks of clothes with beautiful furs and dresses lining the hallways. Beyond that, I get to work in a building where so many major publications are produced every day under the Condé Nast name (Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, Architectural Digest, etc). Even eating lunch is exciting, the cafeteria is beautiful and was designed by the architect Frank Gehry...I've even seen some celebrities eating lunch there. So far, so good.

The cafeteria 

Flash forward to Brooklyn and my internship with Hovard Design. The offices are in Dumbo and it's a small, independently owned studio with about 3-6 people there on a given day. The team is made up of a mixture of freelancers and full-time employees and I am currently the only intern. On my first day, I already got to dive in to a branding and packaging project. We started off with a meeting about the client and an overview of the product we would be designing for. Then, the two studio heads gave us some examples of the look they envisioned and presented three different directions to go in with the project. Me and two other designers were assigned one of the directions to go in, so I'm basically treated the same as a regular employee. Then, we spend the day working independently, listening to music, and periodically checking in with each other to give suggestions and see what we're working on.

So far, I've come up with a bunch of design options for the project that are going to be presented to the client next week along with the other designers' work, which is really exciting. Everyone is extremely laid-back and nice and it's a very relaxing environment. It reminds me a lot of how we work in our studio classes so it's nice to be in my comfort zone. One of the other designers there is a CMU grad, so it was great to talk to him and see what he's doing now. We even got to reminisce about our favorite CMU Design professors. It's like having a piece of CMU with me during my crazy summer, which is nice because I definitely miss it.

Overall, both work experiences have been great. I'm thankful to be getting both in and out of house design experiences that are so different from one another. I can definitely see myself doing both things as a career after graduation, which I guess is good but also is kind of confusing in terms of planning my future. People keep asking me what I'm specifically interested in and where I want to be after graduation, and the real answer is that I still don't know. I love going new places and experimenting with all different kinds of work and it's great to be able to do that now. I don't think I would be as happy if I were working at either job full-time by itself.

Anyway, this post is pretty long, so sorry. Also, sorry my photos suck...I'll try and get better ones next time. TTYL!

I am interning at a small company in San Francisco called Flite. They are an advertising company that approaches ads in a new and innovative way.  They have created a software platform that creates interactive and live ads. By this, I mean that the ads can have live twitter feeds and other media that are constantly updating themselves. Their ads are also interactive. You know those crazy ads that play videos and expand when you roll over them? THAT'S WHAT FLITE DOES! Though Flite's platform has a lot to do with coding and CS, they understand how important design is. They have an amazing user experience team made up of people who have a design background, but also understand how to translate their ideas to code. My boss, George told me on the first day, that he calls the most desirable workers "unicorns." It's apparently not as common to find people good at both design and CS, and so they are really valuable. 

The atmosphere at Flite is really welcoming. Everyone is very friendly and it's very team oriented. They meet each morning in meetings called "Scrum" to group up and talk about the problems to tackle that day. It's a fast paced environment because they release a new and better version of their software each week. 

I am an intern on the User Experience team, but I went into this with literally no knowledge of coding. They were understanding of this, and my first project was to teach myself some basic HTML and CSS. That was really fun because I was basically being paid to do something which really interested me and that I wanted to do anyway. Now I'm doing things like mocking up new versions of their Careers page on their website and brainstorming ways to update their Showcase page. These are all manageable projects, but I'm learning a lot about working in a team and with other people. It's important to understand how to ask for help when you need it and how to figure things out yourself. The other interns who joined me a week after I joined are all in different departments, and we are supposed to plan a company event together ... apparently it may consist of bowling and beer. 

So I am interning at the Barbarian Group for the summer. I have to admit that I didn’t know too much about this company before I applied and interviewed, but I knew they worked on some cool stuff and that was enough for me. Here is some background on the company. The Barbarian Group is a digitally focused advertising agency based in New York with smaller offices in San Francisco and Boston. It is a really exciting atmosphere to be working in. There are clients coming in an out to discuss project, pitches being made to future clients, and a lot of passionate people all over the place. All projects involve account managers, strategists, visual designers, UX designers, social media people, developers and more groups that I probably forgot.

As the user experience intern I am working on a few different aspects of the job. Research on current web trends, comparing mobile to desktop websites, interface wireframes, and creating presentations to give to other members of the team to show what I learned are some of the things I have done in the first week alone. It is extremely rewarding to see my work directly benefiting clients, the rest of the team, and eventually real users. The fast paced energy of The Barbarian Group is pretty fun and exciting. There are lulls and pick ups of activity so taking time to grab lunch or watch a video emailed around the office aren’t a problem.

The most beneficial part of my job is being submerged in UX. When I have free time I’m trying to read about new things going on and learn what I don’t from the past. My department is small with only about 6 people (with around100 employees in the entire company) but they are helping me to get into the swing of things. We have weekly meetings to discuss our projects, ask questions, and get advice.

Here is some vocabulary I quickly had to pick up in the first week:

Deck: A set of slides in a presentation

Hero: The featured content on a website

Responsive Web Design: Web Pages that change when the window size is altered. It's a way to create one website for desktop to mobile sizes and everything in between (tablets, laptops.) Here is a example. Try pulling your window narrower to watch a change.