My name’s Claire and I’m currently doing a two-month placement at We Are Empire. I have recently finished my degree at Salford University studying Graphics.

Getting a Placement

At university it’s been drummed into us that we need to secure a placement to stand any chance of getting a job; either that or keep doing freelance work. With that in mind, last year as part of our brief we had to contact different design agencies and ask them questions about the industry. This was so we could find out what it’s really like being in the design world, what to do to have a better chance at getting a job and just general handy tips.

This is how I first came to meeting We Are Empire. They let me and three of my friends come in last year to pester them about how to get our foot in the door of the design world. Pete and Drew answered all our questions and made the meeting easy going, just like them. From meeting We Are Empire in this way it broke the ice for me to ask for a placement, so a few months down the line when they weren’t quite as busy, here I am.

In the meantime I was trying to get placements from other places, mainly by offering free cakes if they took me on! This tactic seemed to work even if I just got a reply back to say no, everyone loves free cakes after all.

A bit like buses placements seemed to come all at once for me - I was offered another the same time as We Are Empire and asked to come in for a meeting elsewhere. I chose We Are Empire as I had met them before and I knew they were friendly and easy to get along with. For any student reading this I would just keep pestering people, someone will give in at one point, don’t give up (maybe offer them cakes as well).

Why Did I Want a Placement?

I wanted to get a placement to gain experience. I knew that what I’d learnt at university would only get me so far, and wouldn’t prepare me for the real world. With university it’s very laid back with long deadlines so the speed of my work isn’t the fastest. I wanted to learn new methods and tricks of how to become faster at working, but while still producing good work.

I also wanted to see how design studios go about generating ideas and completing briefs. Gaining confidence was a another key factor. As it stood I wouldn’t be confident enough to apply for a job without any placement experience behind me as I wouldn’t have a clue what being in a design studio is like.

How the Placement Went…

I’ve been at We Are Empire for two months now and have already learnt so much. Louise and Stuart have both been great in helping me if I was stuck or unsure on what to do.

One of the main things I wanted to get out of this placement was to be able to work faster while still producing good work, and I feel I’ve gone some way to accomplishing that. Although I already knew the importance of font size, spacing and kerning, this placement has really drilled in to me just how important it is in making a huge difference to a design.

From this placement I feel I have developed a better eye for detail, but I’m still not quite up to Louise’s eagle eye! Another major lesson I’ll take away is that less is more; I was worried I wasn’t adding enough to some pieces of work, but I’m learning how to find the happy medium.

I’ve worked on various tasks such as designing newsletters, menus and wireframing website designs. I’ve also had an insight into WordPress and how that works.

The menu was great to work on, as that was something still in its concept stage, giving me a bit of freedom to experiment with what worked and what didn’t. The task at first seemed a straight forward one, but there were many problems along the way.

I started playing it safe and making it look like every other menu I’d seen. Stuart pointed out that just because many menus look the same it doesn’t mean this one had to, so with that I went back to the drawing board and thought of something different that would match with the brand.

I’ve also been able to continue designs for websites, which has been a great insight into how the coders work once it’s passed on to them, and how important it is to have clean and understandable layers.

What I’ll Take From the Placement

As far as first placements go I think I can safely say I managed to bag myself a good one. I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction into agency life and the fact that everyone is so friendly and easy to get along with made it that bit more enjoyable. I’ve learnt a hell of a lot from this experience and will be able to build upon all the knowledge I’ve soaked up to help me in the future. Plus they have a dog, so that was the cherry on top!

Thanks We Are Empire, it’s been great!