Blog Post 1 - January 24th - 27th - Hours 0-32
- Kiera McGrory
- Jan 28, 2022
- 8 min read
Updated: Jan 30, 2022
This blog post details my first full week at STENCIL, from moving to Nottingham to creating work for real life clients!
21st - 23rd January 2022
This is where my journey begins, I left my house in Glasgow at half 5 in the morning and by half 6 I was on a train heading towards Nottingham. Come Monday morning I will be an intern at STENCIL creative agency in Nottingham, almost 300 miles from Napier's campus, I will be learning what it is to be a graphic designer in a real studio and will help with client work, editing and anything else I am needed to do. I believe that this experience will be so much more beneficial to me than attending my classes at Napier and will give me a better understanding of the work done in a studio setting.
I will be working at STENCIL for 3 months, 4 days a week and 8-hour workdays, I do believe that this will act as a great introduction to the world of working in the creative industries and will improve my creative and communication skills, while also giving me ample network opportunities.
My first full day in Nottingham I decided to explore the area, being able to scout out where I will be working as well as the surrounding area will prepare me for my first day and help me understand the unfamiliar place around me. I went for a walk around the city centre and visited Nottingham Castle and some of the other Nottingham landmarks such as the Robin Hood statue and Old Market Square. After this I scout out the closest supermarket to me and get in my food shopping.
On Sunday I get prepared for work the next day, I have been in regular contact with Andy from STENCIL and have been given my instructions for what to do when I arrive on Monday, I’ve also been told about dress code and given advice on what to bring with me. I pack my bag, shower and re-read all of my emails to prepare for the coming day.
Monday 24th January 2022 Hours 0-8
Today is my first day at STENCIL, I am excited and nervous, I almost didn’t expect this to come and instead have it cancelled at the last moment, but here it is finally.
I arrive at the building just before 9am and go to reception as I have been instructed, I let the receptionist know where I am going and she calls someone to take me up to the third floor.
I arrive in the studio and am greeted by Andy Afford and shown around the new offices. I have been informed that they have only been in this new office for a few days and are still just settling in. I was introduced to several other people and shown where to set up my computer.
The next 2 hours are occupied with meetings with the 3 managers of the company, 2 of them in person and 1 over a zoom call. I am briefed about how they run things at STENCIL and get set up with my accreditation pass and invited to the company Discord server, where they run all communications between all colleagues.
After all of this I am briefed on which client I will be producing work for.
My task for today is to edit, recolour and improve the iconography for a company called North Sands – they specialise in building multi-million pound houses. We are designing for their new ‘Bespoke’ range of houses in which the customer can be a part of the building process and thus have their ‘dream’ house.
I am provided with old icons and told to improve these, making them more consistent with each other, changing line weights and such.
My first set of changes made the icons more consistent in their line weights but overall, still visually different from another. I sent this over into the chats and was given feedback within 5 minutes, I was explained to that I had much more freedom than just changing line weights and should use some of the other files from this project to gather colour schemes and inspiration from.
My second set of changes was much more well-received, and I was able to get a direct line of feedback from the discord server (as can be seen below), I received suggestions on how to improve the icons and another icon
which I should make was introduced.
After the icons had been finished, I was instructed to create a poster using the icons and another file, This would be presented in an info pack which the client could hand out to potential buyers. The poster would show the step-by-step journey of the Bespoke service and have to feature 80-100 words from each step.
I made my final changes to the icons and then it was the end of the day, I sent a end-of-day email to one of the managers detailing what I had completed that day and how long each task took.
Tuesday 25th January Hours 8-16
Today when I got into the studio I already knew what I was going to be working on, I brought up my files from yesterday and continued to work on the poster, I was having trouble at first trying to find the best way to arrange all the different elements that needed to be in the file.
At around half 9, I was called in to talk with Andy about how my first day went, I explained that I enjoyed it very much and that I was really pleased with the work I completed yesterday and showed my appreciation for being able to bring my own ideas to the project.
I was told that if there were any issues to just mention these to him. After this I went back to work and was able to speak to one of my managers about the issues I was having with the poster.
I was given a lot of advice with how to move forward, arranging the elements, it gave me a much clearer vision of how to move forward. The poster was to be made in InDesign, a programme that I was very unfamiliar with, having used it only a handful of times, but I was given some very helpful tips on how to use it correctly. I was then called into a call with another person to be briefed on another part of the North Sands project. This was to edit some Instagram posts which show the step-by-step process – these would use the icons I have previously made.
For the instagram posts, I had to properly align and configure the text to make sure it stood beautifully on the page and edit my icons further to fit the posts, this included; slight recolouring, and expanding some of them, eg, adding more bricks to the wall. The social media posts that I created were well received and I got quick feedback on these then told to mock them up on an Instagram template.
Wednesday 26th January Hours 16-24
Today I was still working on the North Sands project. I spent my time slightly editing my work from yesterday and continuing to work on the poster. I was asked to create another 2 Instagram posts to add onto the ones from yesterday so I worked on these for a few hours while also creating the mockups.
I was given the advice to send the finished images to my own phone to make sure that they looked right. This was to make sure that all of the fonts, weights and illustrations were not strangely proportioned when not looking at the larger screen from my laptop.
Still continuing with the poster throughout the day I made sure to keep sending updates into the discord for feedback, this proved to be very valuable and I was able to make quick changes which overall made the poster ‘flow’ much more smoothly.
I was able to finish the North Sands Instagram posts as well as the North Sands Poster today, able to get it sent to be shown to the client tomorrow.
Thursday 27th January Hours 24 – 32
As I had finished everything that needed to be completed for the North Sands presentations today, I was briefed for another task. This task was to edit and work through a brochure for PKF Smith Cooper Systems. This task had me choosing and replacing photos as well as fact checking and making sure everything on the document was correct. For this task I was working closely with another member of staff who had taken 600 photos the previous day for the project.
First I began checking the information and found that almost all of the location and telephone details were incorrect so I had to change that. This had a knock-on effect which meant that another page which showed a map of where all of the locations were, was also incorrect. I then had to gather the correct details and re make the map so that it was all correct.
After this, I had to go through the 600 photos that were taken and choose around 20 that would go into the brochure, this took around an hour to do so as there were so many. I had to secure portraits of all the workers to go into a grid, and these alone had at least 20 photos per person to look through. After doing this I started on putting them into InDesign and editing the brochure.
One annoying problem I found was the grid of portraits, the original grid was set up for 12 portraits, however, I was informed on the day of shooting that one of the employees refused to get her picture taken, and as such we only had 11 images. I had to then get creative to fill the space without making the spread look deliberate and messy. However, my solution made the spread look neat and not out of place, I was complimented on this.
After lunch I was called into another meeting to discuss how my first week had gone, it gave me a good opportunity to reflect and hear 1 on 1 feedbac
k about how I fit into the studio work ‘life’ I was also told that the client presentation that morning had gone very well and the clients were very happy with my designs, and as such I would be put back on the brief and my assignment this time was to create a front and back cover for the poster which would be folded to create a leaflet. I was told that everyone was happy with my work and progress this week and that I have settled in nicely.
For the remaining hour I created some quick concept ideas for the front and back cover -which I was very happy with.
Overall, this week has been very eye-opening for me. It is very strange how different working in a studio environment is to working in uni. There is a much faster turn around and everything doesn’t always fit (11 portraits instead of 12) I was told “that’s real-life design for you!
One thing that I am so grateful for – even though it is only the first week, is how much patience I have been given. For example, this week I have worked about 50% of the time in InDesign, a programme I have had very VERY little experience in, yet the people around me have been so helpful and I have actually learned a good amount from it, although I am definitely not an expert on the programme, I now can navigate through it okay!
Comments