What is industrial experience?
Industrial experience is not simply doing placements in different graphics companies for several days at a time. It is trying to get an incredibly broad knowledge of the entire industry, whether you like aspects or not.
It is learning to work at industry standard, to a set time and to strict criteria and budget.
To explore a wide variety of jobs in the industry, to talk to people, to ask questions.
Visiting different agencies, both large companies and small, finding out how they run on a daily basis, what the different jobs are and seeing how wide the variety is.
It is about learning processes, from start to end, from the client portraying what they want... to the final finished product. To be there for every different part and understanding every step.
From a 2 week placement to a 1 day explore of a studio, everything is useful.
It is first hand experience, to help you decifer what and who you want to be as a designer.
What can you learn from industrial experience?
You can learn an unbelievable amount from industrial experience and there is no end to its uses.
You can learn what the designer/client relationship consists of. Be there for a proposal and learn how much communication there generally is between them.
You can learn technical skills that are completely up to date and to industry standard that you might not be able to learn at university.
You can learn the workload of a designer, see how much work this industry actually entails, work with a designer for an entire day and see what is actually asked out of them.
You can learn about all the different processes and different jobs you would never have even thought about before, how specialist the separate processes are and who is behind each one. Finding out job titles if you will...
Learning what it is like to work in a team, to rely on people and to have other people rely on you, understanding the importance of pulling your weight and seeing in real life how different jobs are allocated.
You can get a better understanding of what kind of work you want to do... freelance? studio? alone? group?
What form/format could industrial experience take?
There is such a wide range of things you could do which would come under the term 'industrial experience' as any experience, however long or short which gives you an insight into the world of graphic design comes under this bracket.
You could work on live briefs, to move your work from being purely conceptual to real life work, for real life clients.
Enter design competitions... from t-shirt designs, to logos, to posters. Even if you do not win, the experience working to the brief, to the allocated time and specifications will give you brilliant insight into the kind of thing you will be doing in the future.
Exploring a print company... learning about all the different processes and variety about this integral part of graphic design.
Work with a freelance graphic designer, do a "day in the life" with one. Find out what his job entails from start to finish.
Similarly work for a company, if possible, both a large, and a small one. Find out as much as you can.
Talking to as many people as you can.
What are your concerns about industrial experience?
Firstly, I am afraid that I will see a lot of aspects of the industry that I do not like and it will put me off. I am also afraid of being put off by the workload.
I am afraid that I will see people's work and think "I could never ever be as good as this".
I am worried that I will fall in love with my dream job... and then find that I cannot get a position like this.
Similarly I am afraid that I find a job that I've always wanted to do, to be completely the opposite.
I am afraid that I won't have the guts to contact big agencies and companies and put my work forward... worried about not having enough confidence to sell myself properly.
What areas of industry are you interested in?
Design for the music industry -
posters/promotions
flyers
merchandise
album art work
web design
Branding
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