Week 1

So my 1st week of being in a real graphics studio environment.Initial meetings and greeting over, we started off with putting signs into context. Caramba do a lot of graphics for food and catering, so it was mainly placing directional and informative signs in real situations. The process starts off with a brief form Mark, who gathers all of the information from the companies, and we go through each photograph from the site and draw on where everything goes. I'm quite comfortable with this as I have done some before, but a few pictures need a lot of cloning and airbrushing where the previous sign was bigger than the new one. This was more challenging for me, but with a bit of persistence and a lot of keyboard shortcuts learned I managed to get them out in a reasonable time.Other work in the week included doing amends, where the client had changed their minds for work such as leaflets, and I had to alter the content to their needs. It is surprising that some work can be done once or twice and it is fine, yet others get sent backwards and forwards to make certain that everything is correct. These are usually the bigger clients and businesses.The studio is split up into 2 teams. The A-team works on many different and smaller projects, where as the B-team have large and few clients, such as Brantano. From talking to people in the B-team, I have found that they have little opportunity for creativity. Everything is very precise and the client has a certain "feel" that needs to come across on each piece of work.

I have also had a play around on Sketchup, a free 3D program that is sometimes used for visualising the end look of a room with all signage in place, when the building is being re-fitted etc. I found it quite fun because I haven't used anything like it before, and also is good experience for me if I do go down the packaging line.

Towards the end of the week I created a new layout for POS products (plastic casing etc). It needed to be more clean and professional and this was achieved in an afternoon. Simple things such as learning a few new shortcuts make all the difference.

The atmosphere is very relaxed, and I was pleasantly surprised to see these people who have been in the graphics industry for around 10 years still shout out for help on certain programs. As asking for help has never been one of my favourite things to do, this has boosted my confidence.