One of the great things about having a little more space, and being in Cardiff is that we can welcome more students on work placements to experience what working at an agency is like. This week we've had Hollie with us, and she kindly agreed to keep a record of her time at Toward:
Day 1 — Tuesday
Up bright and early, wide-eyed and bushy tailed I was ready to start my four day work experience adventure at Toward. I walked through the studio door and was instantly greeted with a welcome round of applause. In that moment I knew that this week was going to be a lot of fun and also wondered if I would get applauded every time I walked into the room. I was introduced to the team and experienced my first morning ‘scrum’ (meeting) around the breakfast bar. I was also introduced to the ‘untidy chart’, a tally system in which if a team member leaves communal areas untidy they get a mark against their name. Shortly after I was shown to my desk and was briefed by Tom on my task for the week, this being a website design for an exciting new project they were working on. I was eager to get designing and spent most of the day sketching layouts and ideas whilst creating illustrations to be included in the site.
It was great to see Hollie sketching ideas and layouts for the website project we set. She produced some really great ideas, very quickly which helped explain her thought process.
The afternoon went really fast and I knew the time was soon approaching, the time for my turn on the ‘go-go’. I quickly learnt looks can be deceiving and I failed miserably with an unfinished time of something along the lines of 1 hour to get across the studio on it. It was approaching 5pm and I couldn’t believe that my first day at Toward was drawing to a close, it had been a great first day and I couldn’t wait to start again Wednesday.
Day 2 — Wednesday
Day two at Toward and sadly no round of applause today, maybe it’s just a Tuesday morning ritual I thought. We had the usual morning ‘scrum’ and all quickly settled into work mode. After a day of design ideas and exploration I decided I would get on the Mac and start putting my designs together in Illustrator.
With a solid direction in place, Hollie moved into Illustrator and Photoshop to develop her ideas.
As I started working on the design it developed and progressed further, I was really enjoying working on the project. However it was around 1pm when something catastrophic happened... I managed to get one mark against my name on the ‘untidy chart’, all down to putting my yoghurt pot in the wrong bin. I was devastated. Anyway moving on from the incident, it was that time again for me to have a crack at the ‘go-go’ and again it was that time for me to be rubbish at it. ‘Go-go’ 2 – Hollie 0. The afternoon soon flew by and at the end of the day I had a little catch up with Tom to show him my progress on the website design. He liked where it was heading and suggested some more development to be made on it, I agreed with his comments and knew that was my task for tomorrow.
Day 3 — Thursday
Day three was a busy day at Toward, I pushed the website design further, developing it into something with much more personality and character. Then in the afternoon Myself, Rob and Gareth went to a client meeting. It was really beneficial to go along to the meeting and I enjoyed seeing the interaction between the client and the designer. That afternoon an exciting brief came into the studio so the whole team, including me, went into the conference room and bounced ideas off each other. That was another experience I enjoyed, the initial start of a brief and going crazy with ideas and seeing what you can come up with. By the end of the day I had finished the website design development, experienced one client meeting, been part of a team discussion about a new brief and avoided the ‘go-go’.
Day 4 — Friday
So this brings me to today, Friday and my last day at Toward. As I sit here now and write this blog post I can safely say that these last four days have been so much fun and really enjoyable, not forgetting extremely beneficial and educational. The team at Toward have been so welcoming and I really admire them as a design company. I appreciate them offering me the work experience and thoroughly enjoyed my time here – I just wish it were for longer! These last few days have really enhanced my drive to work in the creative industry and hopefully in a design company that is as creative, welcoming and lively as Toward. Oh and one last thing to my archenemy the ‘go-go’ — This is not over.
It's been an absolute pleasure having Hollie with us, and we wish her all the best with her graduation. Also big thanks for the goodies!!!
