I’m very excited to finally be starting my practicum at Carter Hales Design Lab! They are one of my top choices for practicum, so I was thrilled to be accepted as a designer.
Carter Hales is an award-winning branding agency located near Broadway. They boast clients from all over the world and have a very extensive portfolio of work including packaging, web, print, and more. They’ve even designed skis once!
I officially started my practicum on Monday, February 24. When I came in, Joanne, the studio manager, helped me get set up and familiar with everyone and my workspace. After I was introduced to everyone during the morning meeting, a friendly designer named Sherry approached me to assign me my first project.
Before I got to work, though, I had to do some housekeeping. I made sure to go through the Day 1 checklist with Sean, and got my timesheet set up. I also got some help to be invited into the CH Slack channel, their Basecamp group, as well as connecting to the server and printer.
After that was done, Sean called me over to his desk to assign me a very exciting project; creating illustrations for the Arts Club 2020-2021 Season Program. “There’s no pressure,” he said to me, right before announcing that it was due before Thursday the same week.
For the next three days, I had the best experience creating these illustrations, and the pressure of finishing all three of them in three days really helped me focus and I learned not to get too carried away in the earlier stages of concept creation — which I’m often guilty for. I made three illustrations for three different plays, namely The Legend of Georgia McBride, Network, and Cambodian Rock Band. The first two felt pretty straightforward for me, but the last play gave me quite a lot of issues.
I reviewed the illustrations several times throughout the week with Sean, Martin, and Tony, who were in charge of this project. They seemed happy with my work, particularly Sean, and decided that they could present them to the Client on Thursday, along with everyone else’s illustrations (there are at least 12 in total).
On Thursday, I was very anxious but eager to hear what the clients were going to say about my illustrations. By the sound of it, the meeting was full of laughter, so I assumed it was going pretty well. After a few hours, the clients finally left and I then asked Tony and Martin what the feedback was. I was thrilled when they said that two of my illustrations were a big hit, but the third one was a flop. Despite that, I feel proud that the clients really loved two of them, and it definitely increased my confidence in terms of working as a professional illustrator.
There appears to be more design-focused work coming to me within the next weeks. I’m very much looking forward to the rest of my time here at Carter Hales.
Jennifer's IDEA Blog 