OUGD602 // Placement // The Engine Room

Back at the end of January I did a placement at The Engine Room Design which are placed within Huddersfield.

I had previously been here over the summer between 2nd and 3rd year and enjoyed my time there. I kept in contact with them since the summer and it has lead to me being invited back when I have free time from uni / can fit it around the work I am doing. 

As i had been there over the summer, I already knew the company and the people that worked there, so going back felt easy for me and I was looking forward to it. The placement was for 2 weeks, so that was a decent enough time to get stuck in with the company and work on some of their briefs. 

The main thing that I was working on whilst I was there, was their own company branding. They felt that moving in 2014 they wanted to refresh their own branding, as they felt they have grown up and now working with bigger clients than when first started out. So this was the main brief I was working on throughout my time there, which through discussion with a few of the designers there, we came up with a complete identity at the end of the two weeks, which they were happy with and wanted to use. 

Along side this brief, there was other smaller things that I was working on, when others needed some help getting work finished for deadlines and also assisting a photo shoot, which was really interesting and great to get involved in. 

Over the two weeks the placement helped me realise, what working in industry was like. I had contact with some clients and was emailing them direct, which again was great experience in talking to clients and getting the right information from them. Along with speaking to clients and being in some meetings, it was good to see how they worked as studio and how they split the work down between the designers within the studio. 

From working in uni and on my own briefs, I had my own set way of which I worked, a lot of this was down to drawing out quick sketches here and there to get my ideas down and know what to design to. Doing this within the placement, was good for them to see how I worked, but they also liked the idea that I was doing it and it showed that I wasn't just finding ideas / creating them from no where.

Some work that I did within the placement was working on their new branding. For this I designed business cards, letterheads, invoice, quotation, comp slips, presentation templates, credentials etc for the application of the branding that I created.