Week 1
Ok lets start.
Im really excited to start this journey. It seems like its short but if its like anything the other interns in office have told me its like it is going to be very long.
I walked into office on day one in awe of an experience i hadn't had but was long awaiting. To work in a big firm in Ad. Day 1 started with me being awkward around the crowd and people judging the new face in the room. I was not assigned anything but my foresight might have landed me my first task of drawing hand. (Something i had practiced cause i knew many people were not good at it.
Slowly as time went by i was invited on the project i assisted in on the first day and i ended up taking up a part of the ad campaign. By the end of the week i was working on a Key Visual all but myself and my ideas were getting recognized and heard. Joining as an illustrator wasn't my goal but i had realized that that doesn't have to be how it goes cause i can always move into a different sector. I started understanding the woking of how the project gets to the designers and how feedback comes through the client services department. The nitty gritty was still a little difficult to get but i think in the upcoming weeks i will be able to grasp it better.
Week 2
The week started like the last. I was still not given much work and I looked around at everyone busy with their work. I know that it's a slow process but I do want to be involved. This week my group head, Anand, Called me and another intern in my office to discuss a new way to learn. Everyday we looked up sites like activation ideas to find Cannes award winning projects so we could develop our ad skills. We then got together to discuss these ideas and see how we could have done better and if we could have at all. Everyday was a struggle to see how I could not waste my time here and try to do as much as I could.
By the end of the week they saw that I was eager to participate and gave me a project to assist my senior on. The project was a wall mural where we had to make 3d designs so that they would catch attention. While assisting on that I also got another job to make A4 size posters for where these expensive methods couldn't be used. Finally, I worked on something I was looking forward to all week.
Without realising how long it had been, the end of the week was here. I was finally engrossed enough to have kept myself busy all week.
Week 3
Now that I had gotten myself settled in the previous week, I was excited to see what this week was going to bring. I talked to my lead and told him that if anyone else required assistance, I was available.
My enthusiasm was soon to be killed when I realized that everyone needed some kind of help, and so I was slumped with work. I had no time to go out for a break or even take my head up from my laptop. Nonetheless, I was excited. I had new things to learn about ads that I hadn't known of since college. In the middle of the week, an opportunity is put out. The opportunity was to go to a film set and watch and actually see a film in progress. I was absolutely thrilled about it. I asked so many questions about what films were going to be filmed and which brand was going to be filled, and in the end, I had made up my mind that I was going to go to this one film that was going to be filled in an orphanage about a social cause. But the film wasn't till the beginning at next month, so I have to get through the next 2 weeks helping and assisting, and whatever was behind the scenes of this film, I was still on going with a couple of the products, so it got a little stressful because I always wanted to live this life where every day was a different challenge, and I was very excited about it.
By the end of the week, I knew that I wanted to do more and also give myself some time to take a break once in a while to be able to think about other things than just what, and finding that balance between work and my life was something I wanted to focus on for the rest of the internship.
Week 4
Finally weak 4 the week when everything started getting real. I was very excited about getting these new roles in the internship, not realizing it was because many of the interns right now were leaving. I started my internship in July, and many of the interns were there for a 2-month period starting in June.
By the sweet, I had started handling one client on my own, which was JSW Paints, and I was very excited about handling them because they were one of the bigger clients in our office. I wasn't completely handling the client on my own because never to other people handling the client, well, I was doing most of the project that I got without the over-looking of a senior. I started the week by making an infographic for the company, which was based on the Olympics that were supposed to start soon. For that, I had to stay in the office one day till 11 o'clock trying to get as much work done as possible, and it felt like another one of the project weeks that I had done in college. I did not realize how many times in a company a project can be put on priority and you have to put the other work that you have been doing on a site to focus on that project itself, and I for the first time felt stress in this system. But by the end, the project that stressed me turned into satisfaction. I had completed and inferred the graphic, which is fully elastrated, and it was ready to go out to the client before the deadline, which was in a day, and I was very excited that I could do something that I thought was impossible for me to do. At this point I was getting along with everyone and the office, and people were coming up to me for projects because they trusted me, they were looking at my work, and they believed that I could finish these projects and do them well.
This week ment that the shoot was only a couple days away, and I was getting even more excited as the day neared. We got a call sheet for the shoot this week, and I read the story Lion, and it seemed to interest me a lot. The shoot was somewhere close to my house, and I was very excited about not having to travel so far. The shoot was all that was on my mind this week because I was very excited and had never been to a shoot in my life. That's it for this week. I think I didn't realize when this week I had on myself, but I wouldn't have had it any other way.
Week 5
Week 5, unfortunately, this week is going to be very focused on the shoot because even though it was for one day, it was a very new experience, and I was very excited to be part of it.
I walked into the set on the shoot day, and initially I was just intimidated by all of the vanity vans and the lights and the direct and the screen, and I was also very excited to learn new things about this equipment. I entered the shoot a little early, so there was no one out of my staff that I could go to at the moment, but I was just sad there, looking at how they were setting up and just thinking about how the rest of the day was going to be something new that I had never seen before. In about an hour, everyone started coming in, and shooting had begun because it was daytime and you want to get most of the shots done very well. The shoot was in a school, which was slightly the laboratory, and we had got in people to come and paint some rooms inside because I was also part of the concept. The rest of the day was spent between learning what a focus short is, what an 8K shot is, and learning how the same can be made better with lighting. I also realize the money of the atoms I do watch online is recorded at night, but it is made to look like it is daytime with lighting. Everything fascinated me about that day, from how they get the kids to play the roles that they want them to; in fact, I was very involved in that, and also how each actor and each person is so dedicated and committed to making this film look great. I will be very excited to share the film when I come online, which will be sometime in the future in September, but if it's not anything in the future, I will be putting it up on my portfolio, not as mine but as something that I have been a part of.
The week went on with me finishing most of the products that I had taken a start on, including the infographic, which unfortunately had come back with some changes for me to do then and against what the client wanted, and most of the part of the internship is to know and understand the client and really connect with them on what the vision is that I am bringing that vision to life. Overall, this week gave me the most amount of joy and the least amount of work, so I was very happy when I was out of this week. I am still looking forward to the next few weeks, even if there is no shoot involved, because I know how much brain power and idea goes on behind the shoot, and I also want to be part of that process.
Week 6
Shoot week was over and now it was time to come back to reality. In the next two weeks I had learnt that the company was going to lose two major designers and workloads were going to get redivided. I was very excited and nervous about this considering I already had a very full plate. We had many meetings this week with the head of our team discussing who gets what client.
While all of this was going on a new project was being layed on my table everyday. I felt the [pure stress and fear of what the future was going to bring. I knew that for at least a week I would have to finish projects at lightning speeds and prove my worth if I were to get the client that I wanted. The meetings this week had come to a close and I was stuck with a client I would rather not work on. I would still be able to complete the tasks but i very well knew that their style although easy to pick up did not have the variety i desired. I was determined to change this outcome and started interacting more with people to get an idea as to how I should approach this.
The solution I got was that I had to change how I worked. Start picking up more projects connected to the brand I wanted to work with. I also at this point started ideating for the brand thinking of ideas for advertisements. I was determined to get this brand in the next two weeks. This meant understanding a completely different brand dynamic while also working on the existing projects I had. This was the slowest week of the internship till date. I felt like everytime i would look at the clock it was only a couple minutes ahead and I had already worked a lot. By the end of this week I am exhausted and I know I have to do this for the rest of this month so I can rightfully say that I was gonna be able to handle this client on my own.
Week 7
This week started with a bang. The exhaustion of last week had to be thrown off the bus because this week brought with it a moment I had waited for all internship long. I was approached by the art head and copy head to ideate on a project with them. This was my first project where i didn't have any seniors on top of me and I was directly communicating with the leads. I was very excited. Even better, this project was with the client that I wanted. I knew this was my opportunity to show them that I can handle this brand.
The project was pretty simple. I had to ideate on the brands tagline to come up with ads. This brand had a lower market share than its competitor and i had to create something that was both unique and identified with the motto of the brand. Everyday became as thought i was in a trance. I chanted the tagline in my head to the point where i would be outside office and see something and connect it to the brand and jot it down. By the end of this week i had 5 ideas ready instead of 2. I was very excited and that caught the eye of the creative head. We worked over thursday and friday and even got a few people to assist us and this was the first time i directed someone to make a creative.
This week was full of excitement and nervousness. Getting the creatives approved from the CCEO was the most nerve racking. I was not in the room with them but having to sit outside taking a peek once every 10 seconds wasn't helping either. They came out with a couple ideas rejected but some of them held up. Excited, I worked extra hours on friday perfecting the creative. This week, although exciting, was also very exhausting and I couldn't be happier to have reached the weekend.
Week 8
At the beginning of this week the creative head came and asked me. “ So Sam, do you want to take the handover from Sahil?” This meant I wasn't doing the brand that was directed to me before. I got the brand that I wanted. I was very excited. By this point I was already handling half of the brand and taking on a couple more projects seemed like a great idea. I would be getting the whole brand by the end of the week. Which meant I would be handling communication, packaging, identity and all the smaller details that came with the representation of the brand.
I have done internships before but nothing lasted more than 2 months which meant I never got to this stage of being given a brand to handle. I was both excited and nervous but mostly excited. This week went on as usual with a small edition of taking a project at a time for my colleague. I was excited but by the end of the week I felt like I had more on my plate than I could handle. But I had taken this on and I was going to manage it. I was also working on a sales conference deliverables and I realised how much branding goes into simple sales conferences.
The sales conference had to have 8 total revisions until the brand finalised on a concept. This was the first time my idea and execution had gotten rejected by the head and I was very disappointed in myself thinking I had done a good job at what I had made. But nevertheless I kept going and made the necessary changes and made a creative with what we both agreed on looked good.
Week 9
This week I understood what it meant to handle a brand. It's no cakewalk. Each and every minute detail of communication in the market we see has to be made and has to be ideated for. I hadn't realized that it would require me putting in all I had. I was struggling this week, to say the least, and even though I could have easily at this point said that I didn't want to handle this client anymore, I was more determined than ever.
The brand had packaging needs as well as some small-scale advertising needs. This week I was also going to put out things on my own. Yes, I still had guidance, but no one was telling me exactly what to do. I was talking to the client services team and doing projects on my own.I was taking feedback and improvising like I was taught, and it finally felt like I could use the skills I had learned over the last two months. This week I was also told that I would have to train the new employee joining next week.
She was going to be working on two brands I had worked on before, and it was my job to familiarize her with the communication that the brand displayed. I was excited but also nervous the whole week I was going through the previous posts to be absolutely sure that I had gotten the brand voice just right.
Week 10
Wow, this week arrived too soon and didn't leave half as quickly. I love a good challenge, and this week was one. The week started with the new joinee, and I was happy to see that there were more hands on deck. She was very well skilled, and I was excited to work with her as well. She sat beside me this whole week trying to learn how the company works and how the brands work. But between explaining stuff to her and handling my brand, I had my plate full.
This week we had an urgent project that had to go out the week of briefing. It was for inam. So we could not just wait. So I was doing a quick job, and after I learned that it would be on display across India, I was even more stressed, but that's ok; nothing I can't handle. The project went faster after I got a hang of what the client was looking for. They were very adamant on a couple of colors, and I learned how to negotiate with them to get them to agree on something that looked good too.
All in all, I feel this was the week I felt less like an intern and more like an employee. I was happy. I think by this point I knew I wanted to work in an ad agency. It had the correct balance of branding, packaging, and advertising for me. I had space to explore my ideas, and even though I was an intern, I now knew that experience wasn't much different as an employee. When I started my design journey, I never thought advertisement was my goal. I always assumed I would end up in branding, but this internship made me learn something new about myself.
Week 11
All the weeks have started to blend together. The weekends are a nice break, but they don't last as long. But then again, I'm always excited to get back to the grind and leave exhausted by Friday. Each week usually has its own projects, but the week I just worked on changes for the previous week. But still I managed to learn new things in terms of the software.
Even though weeks seem repetitive at this point, I still think it's necessary to stick through because that's what my experience is going to be later on as well. And for every week that I spend doing labor-intensive or mundane work, I know there is a week of interesting ideas and fun creations. I have started to also ideate proactively. Suggesting campaigns without being asked. The intent is to create an idea that could go for awards—not that it has to happen in the next month and a half, but that I want to see if I have the capabilities.
This week the blog is short because the week was mundane. But I am sure that the fun stuff I get to do compensates for this. The team building on these days makes everything worth it. Each person supporting each other through the struggles is what makes agencies of this size worth it.
Week 12
The shoot I attended had finally come back from the first cut stage. All the lighting was fascinating. How they had shot into the night and still managed to make it look like early in the morning fascinated me. Now I had nothing to do involving this project, but I requested to sit alongside to see how this would get made into an ad.
While this was going on, I was also working on the last couple of changes before one of my shop gates went live. I was very excited and had to figure out what the client exactly wanted. I also had to figure out how to manipulate my design according to printing criteria this week. One of my designs was approved by Tuesday, but we spent the next day figuring out what we can remove or move to another location so that the printing won't completely change the design. Even though I knew about bleeds at this point, I now figured out how much bleed changed according to printing equipment and printing form.
I also started working on a shade panel this week. It was a nice break to go from something very ad-based to something that involved more brand language and a little bit more freedom of expression. Instead of this being a way of “let's try to fit as much as possible in the space we have,” it became about what will make this more aesthetically appealing, and that was the two sides of this brand. I really like having it so my work never got too stagnant or used to a certain style.
Week 13
This was the beginning of the end. I knew I had to do a handover this week since a new employee was joining the team. I was not too happy about it, but I was excited to try new styles. The work would still be interesting even though it wouldn't be what I sought out to do. But this week went on without a single discussion of a handover, and I soon realized that they had to test the waters with the new employee before handing over a big brand to her.
This week was when I felt the worst about the work I was doing. The brand I was working on wasn't exclusively mine to work on, and I knew that, but I was not aware that a campaign release would make someone who was handling the brand of significant importance. This week was the first time I felt that I wasn't handling the brand but just was under the illusion of doing so. I expressed this to one of my seniors, who pointed out that I'm an intern, and as long as I had helped in a significant way, which I had, according to everyone in the office, I had contributed my part. My work was still getting released, and I was being insecure for no reason, so I decided that I would move past that and just think of what I can do.
In this week I helped out my colleagues with other work as well, like an airline client and a bank that had significantly different jobs, but I had the resources to assist with both, so I didn't hold back. I think part of that was from the dilemma I had had previously, but I'm glad I put it to good use. Overall, I learned something more emotionally intelligent this week, but that was also an important skill to learn for me.
Week 14
Another short blog for this week. I only went to the office for two days this week because I felt sick. But I did work from home. I have realized that the design or ad industry can survive on WFH but can't thrive on it. I did prefer to be around my colleagues, bouncing ideas off of each other. Sitting at home not only coops me up, but my ideas, according to me, aren't as well rendered. I have always thought every morning of saying I don't want to go to work. Or why do i even wake up but it is fun and it is exciting.
The last two days that I went to work, all my ideas were clearing out. I was getting all my briefs figured out, and I realized that where you work does make a difference. I had a lot more confidence after getting comments on my ideas from other people, and I also had more concentration with these people around. Being in office was a tremendous help to me, and I had never realized it.
Week 15
This week felt bittersweet. All my projects were slowly being directed to other people. This meant I had more time on my hands, but I felt like I still wanted to go on with them. I stood on the sidelines looking at the others get into meetings about workflow exactly like how it had happened before. I've also realized how much this workplace has changed me, and I've started to think about how going back to college is going to be so different. It's a mix of emotions, but I've just been focusing on finalizing my projects.
This office has taught me so much despite being so fast-paced that I was in awe of it. Even a couple of my colleagues were moving offices around the same time, and there were a lot of goodbyes for this week and the next, I was sure. I knew this chapter of my life was coming to an end, and unlike my other internships, doing something so dedicated for 4 months made me feel like I was a true part of this office and that the office had truly influenced me.
I was excited to go but not excited to leave. My colleagues, though happy for me, were also sad that we were soon going to not be spending time together and going for spontaneous idea sessions or morning tea breaks.
Week 16
My last week was shortened because Diwali was around the corner. I didn't do much this week other than work on the one project that was under my jurisdiction. I then started handing my brand over to three employees according to what plan was set out for the future.
On my last day we had a Diwali party, and we played a lot of games in the office and had a lot of sad goodbyes. TBWA, when I started, was an ad agency I was excited to work at, and by the end, it became a home of all my ideas and creations that I was very sad to leave. I really hope I get to have the opportunity to connect with other companies and employees the same way I got to do here, and I will always be grateful to my seniors, heads, and clients for teaching me things that a simple college experience can't teach you.
With that, this season comes to an end.