Maxwell Littledale – First two weeks at Carter Hale
“Sean Carter, Principal / Director of Design was very impressed with my strongest direction and wanted to present it as an option to the client.”
IDEA PRACTICUM, WEEK 1
This week I began my practicum at Carter Hales. For a first week, it has been absolutely great. Everyone is very nice, and I think I could easily fit in well with the team. I had already met everyone in December when I joined them for drinks on a Friday, so I was able to hit the ground running on Monday, with a quick introduction to the systems and an inclusion into their Monday morning team check-in. I began with reformatting a postcard to a digital email format, but spent most of the day animating some characters created by Andrew. Their client wants to add animation to a campaign created by the studio, so the team had me create a sample animation to show the client before getting the green light on the full project. As I’m very new to Carter Hales, and they are testing my skills, they wanted to see if we could create it in-house as opposed to outsourcing the job.
Over the following days I worked on the design of a website, to be presented as an option for a new client. I worked with Andrew on this as well, and it was a great opportunity to learn Sketch. I had never used it before but can definitely see that it is a great tool to use for designing digital interfaces.
Chelsea also looped me in on a new project she was working on, a rebrand of a local company. Although we are still waiting for a formal brief, we began picking away at it. We shared some ideas, and we both felt excited about some of the new directions we were exploring. When Chelsea presented to Sean, he was very impressed with my strongest direction and wanted to present it as an option to the client. It was a huge compliment, and I feel inspired and confident. Chelsea and I have both now been fleshing out our logos more and seeing how they could apply in brand to different collateral items.
The week ended with Friday, where Martin, Alan, Rosie and I held down the fort in the morning while most of the team was meeting with a client. The four of us had a Sushi lunch together, a tradition at Carter Hales. As the snow began to pile up outside, people were trickling out the office a bit earlier to make it home without too much pain.
I am very excited about the weeks to come, as this past week has been a great introduction to the studio so far. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures! More pictures to come in the following weeks.
IDEA PRACTICUM, WEEK 2
Last week at Carter Hales was quite busy. A lot happened.
The week started fairly regularly, where I just worked away on things to present later in the week. Andrew and I worked on a website redesign and an annual report layout, each of us creating concepts to show the respective clients on Thursday. I was able to sit in on a conference call with Andrew regarding our websites. It was interesting to hear Andrew speaking to the client, and the diction he used to describe his intentions with each concept.
Mid-week, Sean held a meeting with the creative team. He addressed the huge amount of upcoming work that was arriving at the studio, and his vision for what the next few months would entail for the team. It was great to hear him be transparent about his intentions, and also to hear the other creatives express their own thoughts in relation to his plans. I think the folks of Carter Hales have good dialogue, as was shown this week. Afterward, we all went out for drinks and snacks at Craft Beer Market. It was nice to speak to the team outside of the office, as we (mostly) avoided work talk and were able to speak more personally. It definitely is nice working with a small team, in my last internship (at a big agency) I found it was hard to get to know everyone that was there.
On Friday, as per Carter Hales tradition, we went for sushi at Sushi California, up on Broadway. When the day ended, those of us who were still around hung out over beer and snacks in the lounge area at the front of the office. I look forward to this week, as Chelsea and I are having an internal review with Sean to go over our ideas for a branding project.
