What I've learnt so far on my Graphic Design placement

Hi, I’m Sarah and I’m a third year Graphic Design student currently on my placement year at a Graphic Design company near Leeds.

So it’s around about now – if you have decided to go for a placement – that you will start panicking!

At least you will be if you’re anything like me, where uncertainty is both fun and TERRIFYING. In order to ease your mind a little and give an insight of what’s to come, I’ve written the below about some of the things I’ve learnt about the process of getting together a portfolio to show, how I contacted people and how I’m finding my placement.

Setting up your portfolio is an entire project in itself, as you not only have to navigate how you want to best get yourself across, but also how you can make your work stand out in a concise way.

I chose a to create a website to show the work I’ve produced and the work I would like to make in the future. For this I can only recommend:

• Trying out multiple websites and exhausting all options! I went for Adobe Portfolio as it ran cross platform really well and it came free with the adobe subscription I already had, but there’s no right or wrong here.
• Using gifs to show off segments of videos/animation. This allowed me to show off the best bits of each project and it’s a great way for anyone scanning my work to get an overview, without a play button getting in the way.
• I chose projects that showed off the skills I have, are relevant to the part of the industry I want to work in and showed my passion. If you can’t talk about the project with excitement, why should the person viewing it be excited?

When looking for a placement, I started by trawling online sites advertising junior roles. I also made lists of companies I would like to work, and those with internships in the north - anywhere between Manchester and Leeds as I would be getting public transport to and from work.

Having completed my portfolio, I tailored each email to the companies I thought may be interested in taking me on and the organisations work I could see myself contributing to. The personalisation of the email was something tutors and the placement office made sure to state the importance of.

I didn’t interact with the placement office as much as a few of my friends, however when I did have questions (mainly about how to log work) they were extremely helpful!

The waiting game can be excruciating, but you’ve just got to keep on it. I know I nearly went mad the first week, but by the second I had a place nearly secured. It really can move that fast!

So I managed to get a place (horrayyy) and have now been working at Boom Marketing, a design and marketing agency in Mirfield for four months.

In this time, I have learnt a great deal about the creation of artwork and managing working life:

• I’ve started working with clients on an almost daily basis. This has been a new experience for me as previously the only thing between a project starting and ending was a deadline and a tutor. At first the prospect was slightly daunting, but I’ve come to find that they give you direction and purpose.  You have a person saying ‘that’s great’ and then it’s out there – be that on their social media, printed or otherwise. The most challenging aspect is to make sure you have the right end of the stick in terms of what they want and need. This is a hit and miss step, but you will get better at picking up the clues as you go! You’ve just got to accept that not everything will be right first time and, in the end, if a client doesn’t like something you found was the best option shelve that idea and use it again when you feel it’s more appropriate. No time spent designing is wasted as it will help in the future, even if you don’t realise it right now.

• It’s good to feel a sense of pride with the work you do – not that you’ll love everything, but just acknowledge how far you’ve come! Personally, before my placement, I’d barely touched InDesign as I felt it to be restricting, but now one of my favourite projects was created using this software and I can only hope that over the rest of my time on placement I’ll only learn more! 

• Days off are like magic! This is polar opposite to the days I had off when in uni, as I would just be worrying about the stuff I needed to do/procrastinating time away and not truly making use, or taking note, of the time off.

• You get to leave work at work. In uni, I found that my work followed me everywhere. There’s always more to do and a deadline is looming. When you’re employed in a 9-5, five days-a-week job, you get to experience not having to think about work outside of work.

All this is to say that I really recommend taking a placement year to see what the industry you want to go into is really like. You can only know so much going into anything and to have a year in which you can not only learn, but are expected to learn and not be perfect is a blessing. Even if you end up going somewhere that you don’t see as an end goal, you’re now at the beginning of finding that place and taking the skills you’ve learnt so far with you. 

I truly look forward to coming back to uni, to learn new things and grow with how I approach work; but at the same time, I also want to stay working in the industry that fuels my need to create and help others.