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Once I have Read an Article entitle a day in the life of a carpenter, now we have a day in the life of a graphic design agency, wooh, that’s us, at Charlotte Design!

Would you like to know more about how a day in the life of a graphic design agency would be like? Well mind you, it’ll be very exciting and full of great ideas. Every day, as many of us workers do, we wake up, take a shower, dress up and eat breakfast or have a nice, hot cup of coffee. That is what I do as I start my. And when I get to my workplace, because I have to travel from home to the office, I get a bit sleepy, that is why I’ll grab another cup of hot coffee before turning on my personal computer. I log-on to the internet and try to check my mail, oh my, my inbox, there are a lot of e-mails from friends and other agencies, well it’s alright, I still have time to read those because my official time for work will start in one and a half hour. Then officially my day as a graphic designer for a Charlotte based graphic design agency starts. Our company, a graphic design agency, is named Charlotte Design Ltd. It has been in the business for the past seven (7) years and still growing strong, growing exponentially in the last few weeks. I am working as a lead graphic designer, big time huh! For this week, I will be working in Charlotte though I am usually based in Beirut our office called Charlotte Design Middle East. So while I was trying to enjoy the coffee I had prepared, I tried to fill in the previous days’ time sheet, something that was just recently introduced in our office, and I try to compose myself and study my pending workload. Graphic design agencies work in many different ways, for us at Charlotte design, every employee, every designer have our own responsibility to our valued clients, meaning, every job, every project has 100% of all our attention, always. Also, it means that we have to keep our minds focused, because we each have around five (5) clients on the go at any one time or at any given time. As a responsible worker, I made sure that I am up to date with our schedule for our projects. I’ve never experienced midnight rushes or any issues on print. Well now its time for me to take a shower, dress up, shave and finally leave home having enough time for travel, for around an hour, rushing through Charlotte’s packed stuffy underground, and even if I left home early and with enough time allowance for travel, in the end I will still be arriving 10 minutes late. As a young designer, it would be very ideal to be working in a graphic design agency, not only will I be able to work and use my talent and education with the work I am doing, but also this is a great opportunity for me to be able to explore my ideas. In this field of work, every design must be different; none alike, just like when God created men, each design should be unique. Every job, every project is a challenge, a challenge to be better each day, a project to be better for each and every client we serve. Though every job makes me nervous, thinking how the client would like the design, or how will I try to approach my clients for their requirements and be able to satisfy them, and in the end every job satisfies my on quest for life long improvement. Traveling or simply going my ay through our office each day is a daily exhibition of new ideas, experiences, it’s like visiting an advertising exhibition each day, each morning before going to work. When I look around, I spend my time trying to analyze, trying to mentally criticize, trying admiring and scorning several of advertising pieces displayed as pieces of art wok that I come across. It’s great; it’s sort of a form of mental exercise for me, being able to ask my self, will I be able to make better designs, better art work than those. It actually stimulates my mind to work at that early time of the day. It’s mental stimulation without even forcing me to do so. So I arrive to work, I enter the building and once I got in, it seems everyone was already there, as usual, I am 10 minutes late, my apologies…. But with this type of work, I am most probably be extending my work hours up till 7:00 p.m. so I’m pretty convinced that everything is alright. One of my colleagues is working on a logo design for a well known marketing company, the other one is researching for topics on management consultancy, the ins and outs of it which he will be suing for a brochure design concept and as for me, I will be working on a large illustration for another management consultancy. This is the way, the daily routine of a graphic design agency, never a dull boring moment, schedule is hectic, varied fulfilling, and the best part, never boring! A way to visualize complex ideas in an easy presentable but visually stimulating illustration is through a rich picture illustration. The company would like to create an illustration that will get across their audience, often they are A0 size and may contain different scenes in just one concept, be it ethos or theme. The requirements for the said illustration are the following: it will contain around 300 characters, wth 30 different scenes and hundreds of separately drawn items. Our MD will be the one to direct this project, and I have seen that some of the members of the interactive team are already plugging away illustrating on some items for the piece.This is one of the besy, the many benefits of working for a graphic design agency, we’re sort of like a cult, a sect, a community, a family, brother and sisters helping one another for one common good, for one common goal. When one of us gets stuck, the other won’t hesitate extending their arms for you to be able to reach their hand and start again. When one has an idea in mind, he doesn’t keep it, he shares it with the others, so that each can contribute to the improvement if the design, and thus making us not to regret not saying what we have to say. With a project as large as this one, all of us will need a lot of resources to complete in time. I was tasked to digitally draw all the characters, I task I’ve been longing for, eagerly waited for to be assigned to me, since I’ve received the brief, because to tell you honestly, I love drawing on the Mac. Everything has already been specified, from the positions, the movements, the actions, the weights, the genders, even the ages have already been specified, and so what’s left to be done is to draw. Actually, it took me around an hour to finally realize, to finalize my design, my style. When I’m done, I immediately sent my final draft to my colleagues and to our client and waited for them to respond. Overall, with the design and everything the client was happy with them, but there was a situation, they need to be more androgynous or genderless, well that’s my problem, which was my problem, how will I draw a stylized simple character that can be represented as neither male nor female? There’ll be many attributes that will give the game away. Just for example, how do I draw the hips, their posture, the size of their legs in relation to their body size, how about the size of their hands, their thighs, these are features that ndesigneed to be reconsidered and thought of. In a blink an eye, my feelings, my thoughts, suddenly changed, suddenly I was no longer enjoying the freedom, and so the climb begins. After an hour, I have recomposed myself again; I have found my way once again. We had a short critique session wherein other designers presented their initial logo designs to the team. After presentation, the members of the team gave their critiques, critiquing happens not just once a day, it happens a few times within the day. My colleagues who had been working in logo design already have been used to it. So here we are, gathered around computer unit, as she present her selection of six different designs for this logo, the usual thing is for her to present three (3) different logo designs to our client but she made six (6), she made a few more than the exact number required of her to do, it only showed that she was very much inspired by the project. We had a discussion for around half an hour, about the ins and outs of her presented designs, we discarded a few and suggested revision or evolvement of another few, out of the six (6) logo concepts she has made and presented, two (2) of which are bang on and the group has agreed that they should be put forward without any changes or alteration. So, going back to my characters, I have produced ten (10) by this stage, the clock is ticking and it’s nearly 1:00 p.m. I had to grab some lunch, so I grabbed some bread, whacked on some toasts and put on the kettle for a cup of nice coffee, I had no time for a full lunch, so I guess not all graphic design agency have time for a communal lunch hour, everyone has their own mind set, working on their part of the projects, so it’s up to us when we would like to feed ourselves. Everyone was running at their own pace, most of us were busy, other had already found time to eat earlier, but this time, it’s my time to put something in my stomach, or else my mind might not work with good ideas at all. So while working on my project, at the same time I was enjoying some buttered toast. While I was making my coffee, I got the chance to annoy some of my co-workers who were sitting across the other side of the room, I’ve been very eager to finish my design the whole day that’s why I wasn’t able to mess up with their CSS games and their pixilated web flats, well it’s understandable, because they seemed busy as well. They were filling in their codes and were messing around with flash. I’ve seen our web manager, and as usual he was talking to a client explaining and giving a brief presentation on our new developed system, which mind you, was developed in-house, the Content Management System or CMS. It was kind a hard to find him doing nothing, because he was always busy, as he was always running the interactive department which normally has five 95) jobs on at a time. Time passed, and it was time to look at the final draft of the brochure covers and spreads that has to be produced. Once again, the team gathered around to discuss about the design concept of the brochure, we gathered around to produce mood boards to go with each brochure, everyone’s great as they quickly illustrate the idea and on how each and everyone can work in different appearance using those images sourced out from the web. This will be shown to our client, and for sure the client will be more than satisfied with what they’ll see, they’d be blown away with the idea that was developed from the original briefing. Right now it’s around 4:00 p.m., at my turf; I have produced around 30 characters. Brainstorming and at the end we’ve decided to p has decided that we need to add more, we needed to ass a set of jugglers, a set of people putting out a fire, a set or group of gymnasts and finally a set of people climbing up ladders, would that be a relief for me? I will be left to produce another 20 before the end of the day, I started to regret and told myself, why did you not ask for help? I was too focused on producing my project, I forgot to ask for my colleagues ideas about my work, well that’s one lesson that I need to keep in mind, and learn from to. So, what can I do, I had to pretend that I’m nearly done, I won’t be the last man to finish the marathon. So I put my head down and produced. It was 6:30 p.m. I have finished, some of my colleagues had already left, but because this is a graphic design agency, as usual many haven’t left yet. I remembered that I had to prepare a design for a letter template for an insurance company the next morning. So do I go home or not? Well I decided to wow, so I created a letter template design, just to try if I could, I wasn’t thinking that the client will approve it right away, or that my work wouldn’t be critiqued, all I wanted was to be productive and produce a letter template for the next morning. I was able to create a simple letter template, all the while I was doing it, what was running on my mind were, are they going to g for it? Yes they will go for it! No they won’t go for it? But I still decided to continue with the path I was taking, I was happy with the work that I’ve done, I was happy with the result I had, so after an hour I decided to send over, before clicking the send icon, I decided to reconsider the design, I asked myself, have I just gone design overboard? Well, it was just a letterhead, I said the F word and then I remembered a quotation from a book I have read, it was by Paul Ardens the ex saatchii and Saatchi executive art director, here goes “ Making the safe decision is dull, predictable and leads nowhere new. The unsafe decision causes you to think and respond in a way you had not thought of. And that thought leads to other thoughts which will help you achieve what you want. Start taking bad decisions and it will take you to a place where other only dream of being”, so I think, and asked myself, yes I do make bad decisions in my life, does that make me a loser? No I don’t think so, making loads of bad decision doesn’t make me a loser, it does not mean I’m on my way to a conceptual end, well probably not this time yet, so I moved my hand, pointed the cursor to the send button and then I clicked it! At this point in time at the office, everyone was more serious, nobody is talking to anybody, everybody is minding their own business, and everyone is trying to get everything done before the day ends. Everyone’s sending e-mails, everyone’s following up enquiries, our boss comes in, moves towards us and informed us what’s up for tomorrow by way of work we have on, he told us about how his day was, and the load of work our company will be getting and will pouring over the next few weeks, and also about those who are late payers, making and putting up more strain on the everyday working of a graphic design agency like Charlotte Design. It was already 7:30 p.m and my work, our work for the day is done, there are still people working in the office, trying to produce more to lessen the workload they’ll be having the next day, plugging away… as for me, I had to say my goodbye, I had to pack my things ups and try to once again revisit the continuous art exhibition I am going to see as I go my way home. Another day has ended at Charlotte Design, the place I am living my dream with.

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