Made By Bespoke Placement Experience

In my last PPP presentation, I had said that I would want to gain industry experience and hopefully do a placement at a design studio during the summer. I had found the Made By Bespoke studio during the final few months of 2nd year and had reached out to them to see if I could do a placement with them during the summer. They had asked me to show them my portfolio. I told them that I wanted to show them my physical work but I was still at uni and was unable to take it as it needed assessing, so I sent them my Behance website in which they liked and asked me to see them in person to discuss my work and the placement.

I wasn't able to meet them in time to get a placement as they are closed on weekends. So after the 2nd year of university had finished, the opportunity had gone for the summer placement.

I emailed them again at the end of November asking if I could do a placement over the Christmas break. I spoke to them in their studio about my work and their design work in which they agreed to let me start the placement on the 15th December.

The placement at Made By Bespoke lasted a total of 14 days (15th December 2017 - 5th January 2018) but stretched out within 3 weeks since it was the holidays.

Made By Bespoke is a small design studio, made up of designers and web developers. They specialise in web design, branding, advertising and packaging. Most of their clients have requested for web designs and so that is why I initially wanted to do the placement, so that I could develop my web design skills to see if I wanted to specialise in the area.

Experience
On the first day of the placement, I was briefed on some of their current clients, client work and previous designs that they had produced. I was also introduced to the team and their specialities. They said they are not as busy during the Christmas/New Year period so it was easier for me to learn more about how studios work.

Since I told them that I wanted to expand my digital design skills and knowledge, they assigned me to help the design team to create a website and come up with ideas and solutions for the client.

Throughout the 14 days, I had been helping with the design of a website and other designs as well as doing some printing and office work.

As I was helping design a website for their client, it was difficult sometimes to input my design knowledge and skills into the website as the client knew what they wanted and didn't want. It was a little frustrating as my design skills felt very limited and I felt like I had to do what they wanted rather than compromise and suggest ideas as a designer. The experience has made me realise that I do not want to design because I have to, I want to design because I want to help others make good, informed design decisions where I am also able to negotiate and have a voice.

Overall, the experience was beneficial and helpful however, the 10-day placement over the 3 week period made it seem like I was there for longer and gaps in-between made it difficult to stay motivated.



Walsh Solicitors website design
The only creative experience that I did to re-create some of Walsh Solicitor's website which consisted of replacing images, adding type boxes and I had to copy and paste it from a computer webpage, to a tablet device webpage and also a smartphone webpage. The experience was quite inflexible and a little mundane for me as a designer. I'd like it if I had more creative control and would appreciate if clients would trust designers as they know what they are doing rather than the client thinking they would know what's best as they shouldn't hire a designer if so. Made By Bespoke offered me a job after I finish university but based on the placement, that particular design studio is not going to work for me.