Noah Kawamura puts his design chops to work at Will Creative
by Noah Kawamura (IDEA School of Design Grad 2020)
PRACTICUM WK1: HI WILL
Will welcome package.
It’s practicum time!
Wow. Hard to believe that week one is done. This Monday I
I was welcomed by the Will crew and oriented by Rory, my work buddy and past IDEA grad. My work station was ready to go with a shiny new @hiwill email account and a (matte) debossed Will notebook. After going over the practicum checklist and getting a tour of server, I was briefed on a development project going up in Burnaby. My task was to make changes to an existing print ad and create alternate design options.
I was happy to be put to work soon after arriving. It felt good to get designing again. It definitely feels different to join a project midway as opposed to starting from scratch (as we do at school). There is already a brand guide to follow and you’ve got to get with the program and get to work. In some ways it’s freeing.
My place in the office.
The first afternoon I was also briefed by Paul on a large tourism project. At the end of the day I joined an hour-long internal meeting about that project. It was interesting to see a designer, copywriter, and accounts person talk through different aspects of the project and present their work to a CD (Nick). That’s a dynamic I hadn’t seen before, but it’s so important to agency life. The running (and unintentional) gag throughout the internal was that Paul and Nick kept wanting to advance slides without reading Katie’s copy, which Katie refused to let happen.
My first bit of work for this project was reskinning some maps to reflect the new branding. Then I sketched and developed illustrative icons (which I’m still finalizing).
Will’s well-stocked! I took full advantage of their sharpie drawer.
To end the week off we had Show and Share. At 4 on Friday, people grabbed drinks and headed into a boardroom to see what each other had been doing the past month. Anyone who wanted to took turns showing work on a big screen. It was super inspiring to see the projects. It was particularly cool to see a recent client pitch from Ute (strategist and co-founder).
I went into this week excited but slightly apprehensive. I left feeling welcomed, and earnestly looking forward the next seven weeks.
FUTURE GRAD TIP: These guys like their snacks. The blondies were a hit 🙂
PRACTICUM WK2: WILL WORK
Week 2 done! Somehow it passed more quickly than the first.
I was kept busy this week mainly working on the tourism project. I had more icons to create, as well as interior maps to reskin. There’s a presentation next Tuesday and I can feel the time crunch. We had a team meeting with Nick on Friday morning. We went over where the project currently stands and the changes that are needed.
“I realized I had actually never worked on a corporate magazine like this in school. That being said, the skills I did learn were transferable.”
I also received feedback from the highrise client on the print ad options I had modified and designed. Essentially they wanted to add an image to an already packed page and to change the text. Working on this ad I realized I had actually never worked on a corporate magazine like this in school. That being said, the skills I did learn were transferable. I definitely found it was helpful to have Rory sitting right behind me so I could check in with him.
I completed a couple of ad options midweek and then produced a further revised version on Friday. I think the ad is in a good place, but this client is well-known for making changes so I will see if they have more edits next week.
“Will made me do it”
I also helped Rory out inputting updated text into a document he had designed. The catch? It was in Punjabi so neither of us knew what the words meant. It wasn’t the most stimulating task, but it didn’t take too long and I got to see how the file was set up.
I was also briefed on a new project I will be helping to produce. It’s a digital/social media campaign for a certain national park. The concept and execution style has been determined, so I will mainly be building out a ton of different layouts/sizes for each ad. The good news is that I will need to use a significant amount of design sense for this task, because each layout requires me to arrange text differently.
There are a lot of files to be delivered for this new project, but the account people are doing a great job of organizing what and where things need to get done. I will probably start working on this next week, and I think to plan is for me to do some simple animation for this once the layouts are complete.
Stanley Park Brewing bottles in the conference room
The last half hour of Friday nearly the whole crew grabbed drinks and talked in a corner of the office (the big conference room was taken). Ute talked briefly about the visioning session she and some other employees had had that week offsite. It was cool to see how Will is actively working to define who they are and who they want to be. There was almost a familial feeling in the room. I noted how committed Will is to being place where you can say “I have too much on my plate”. Someone made the comment that Will is no longer a startup, that they’ve been around for 5 years. Now they’re in the process of asking “what next?”. And also, “how are we supposed to work on our own brand when we are so busy?!”
As graduation approaches, I am asking myself those questions as well.
PRACTICUM WK3: WILLING PARTICIPANT
We’re currently in the thick of covid-19 mania so it’s to hard think all the way back to the beginning of this week. Speaking of which—the office is working remotely next week in an effort to socially distance ourselves and be good global citizens. I was hooked up with a laptop to bring home and given remote access to the server. Will is basically already set up to go full remote, though it was slightly comical seeing some people lug their full desktop mac out of the office on Friday. Overall the Will team seems to have handled the situation very well—the communication was organized and calm, both digitally and in person. It will interesting to be part of a fully remote office for Mon–Wed next week (they will test it out for 3 days and reevaluate after that).
Will’s Week—A meeting every Friday where the next week’s work is allocated.
But let’s rewind to the start of the week! The team was presenting the tourism project Tuesday afternoon so there was a big push to get designs ready. The final product (let’s cal it a flexible multi-page document) seemed like it was in a very good place by the time they presented to shareholders. I didn’t attend that meeting (it was out of office and the room would already have quite a few people) but it was cool to be part of the internals leading up to it and to see how my work fit into it all. For this project I did lots of illustrative, thick-lined icons. I also reskinned maps and selected photography. At this point all there is to do is wait for feedback.
Thai Truck—a pillar of Will culture. There isn’t much food in the area so if you’re buying lunch you’re buying from a food truck.
I also worked on digital ad layouts for that tourism project I was briefed on last week. The task is fairly repetitive, but also requires a decent amount of design chops, as I had to rearrange type to fit the different layouts exactly. Jenn (designer on the project, IDEA grad, and person who sits next to me) described the task as solving puzzles, and I’m inclined to agree. I got feedback from her and will implement that next week.
Rory (IDEA grad and office buddy) briefed me on another project this week. More icons! But they are in a very different style than the previous ones—isometric and multicoloured. They are almost like mini-illustrations. I find them quite fun and I think Rory was happy with what he saw when we checked in on Friday.
End of week unwinding.
To end the week, it was not only covid time, more importantly it was Instagram takeover time. I’ve posted a few images from the takeover in this post. Enjoy!
FUTURE GRAD TIP: Think about icons every now and then. You may end up making a lot during your career.
Follow Noah’s practicum journey at noahkawamura.wordpress.com and check his portfolio out at noahkawamura.com.
