// Internship Journey
TBWA \ Kuala Lumpur has championed and continuously built great Malaysian and International brands by staying true to its philosophy of DISRUPTION. It is known for breaking the convention and taking the brand forward with a vision.
The crucial part of internship is of course, to get interviews with the companies that I had shortlisted to intern in. The first mock interview was arranged by Fiyon and I will never forget how it went. Before entering the room with the interviewer, I had a bunch of feelings that started to stew in me. I felt excited, anxious and nervous all at once. I was mostly quiet and only responded to questions as per and did not care to elaborate my answers to lengthen the conversation. As a result, they concluded that I was “shy”, although anyone who had known me for long would swear by that I’m actually quite the opposite.
When the time came for us to drop resumes and mailers to the companies of our choosing, opportunities began to drop in my palm, as if life were giving me lemons. I was lucky to had attended the sCoolers award where I met Gigi Lee and Vijay Anand, two renown designers in Malaysia and both had agreed to give me a chance to intern in their companies. BBDO has a very upbeat, in-trend, and they had an intense energy about them whilst TBWA had a corporate seriousness vibe surrounding the office. I was intrigued by the size of the creative department in TBWA, called Creative Juice. So I made l took my lemons, went to Creative Juice and made lemonades ;) The first few days of the internship was fun and tough at the same time, briefs were coming in in such - what it seem at that point - a short deadline. I was happy to work on them knowing that these workload will better my time-management skills in the future. I now can say college gave us more than an ample amount time to work on a project and that sort of luxury rarely exist in advertising.
Besides working on the general jobs, I had been given two self initiative project by Gigi Lee, CCO of TBWA and Sa’ad Hussein, Chairman of Tbwa separately. These task were very interesting because it did not require problem solving, but it needed creativity instead. On Fridays, job briefs stopped coming in at 4pm because we have what they call TGIF. All creatives will gather and present their ideas for any open briefs given to us prior to the meeting. During these meeting, anyone can speak their thoughts aloud if they had any. For the interns, 5 ideas are mandotory. Once a month, TBWA has a Townhall meeting. Everyone has to attend, from Tequila to Disruptive to Creative Juice to MakeLab. Here, things like the company’s performances and issue highlights are presented so that all pirates (employees cute lil nickie) are aware of the company’s wellbeing. Other than that, two pirates are chosen to do a presentation on any topic they wish. I had attended two of Townhall meetings and I think the slides presented are a breath of fresh air.
Being an intern is easy. I make coffee, work the copy machine and get lunches for my bosses. Right? Wrong. Being an intern in a fast moving advertising agency can be strenuous, the hours are demanding and one must be committed. I learn that being an intern is not a piece of cake, it’s the whole shebang. I had to be ready to for a working level position because that is what was expected of me. I knew what my strength were in graphic design, I can work with Illustrator the best and photo manipulation the second best but my employers needed versatility. You are not expected to contribute ideas and sketches but it’s better if you do and at the same time, offer an extra hand even if you already have two handful and half of work.
I learn that it takes a village to come up with something amazing and everyone has to supply their equal share of labour. The general picture involves the strategy team, the suites (the people who handles the client), and the creatives. Within the hierarchy of the general picture, unfolds a narrower system amongst the creative team. First, a group is formed consisting of an art director, copy writers, senior art designers, junior designers and .. the intern (me!). We start by brainstorming ideas and pick the best of minimum two ideas. The ideas were then conceptualized visually so that it can be presented to the clients. The ideas chosen by the clients will then be executed. If things comes out smoothly, this is the process I would normally go through. However, many times that wasn’t the case. There were times where we had to repeat the ideation process 2 to 3 times before it passes by the art director, but the team often pull through high tides and nail the job.
As far as being busy goes, mistakes were learned along the way. Little things that I use to overlook are now crucial to get right by. For example, exporting files in the appropriate size. Is the file for print of just for the purpose of showing them to the clients? It’s not practical to send a 500MB file to the client, so I learned that little things, most of the times are the big things. I also learned that taking notes and scamping are the foundation of any ideas, it needed to grow on a piece of paper first before going on screen. I dare say I enjoy being busy at work, it gave me a sense of purpose and accomplishment. I take a little bit of pride in knowing that I had contributed in the company’s closed jobs.
Before getting myself into the internship, I had one thing I expected out of it. Firstly, I was hoping to get tutoring on the technicality of my design process and the knick knacks of doing things faster. The senior designers I had work with helped me a lot with how I work my Illustrator, they thought me shortcuts that easily compress the timeframe of work in half. Whenever I am stuck, I ask for their opinion. Everyone around was happy to give an input and this has helped to solve many problems. The input that they give personally improve my train of thoughts because they are usually things that I hadn’t thought of. From this I know that it takes more than one eye to spot a mistake.
The biggest difficulty I faced during internship was earning my place within the company. Working in with a large size of creatives means that you had to be either very talented and unique or very hardworking. Knowing that I’m neither talented or unique, I had to work hard and try to avoid screwing up. However, making mistakes is inevitable and I had to learn from it. Besides that, I assimilate the willingness to learn. I cannot get upset easily, instead I take comments as constructive criticism and put effort on improving my weaknesses. This is how I show eagerness and passion, to prove that I am serious about my work. The design process at workplace is a journey of lessons that cannot be found in a classroom. Failure might sound demotivating but that is how I know I still have so much room for improvement. In the end of the day, I know I’ll come out to be a tougher cookie. All in all, I realized that you had to notice your own potential to grow and take everything you can during the internship to seed your own growth because no one else will do it for you. My advice to anyone who’s going to do their internship is, find a company that suits your needs and trust your instinct. As an intern:
Be inquisitive and have your thoughts heard as well. Communication only works when it is practiced both ways.
Always be open to learn new things and don’t try to take comments personally, it’s strictly work.
Build friendships in general but also remember to keep it professional between your colleagues.
Always take notes during feedback! It’s crucial to get things right for your second draft.
When things get rough, always remember that this is only the beginning of yet another long voyage.
