Making online placements work

Last week we did an online placement with a pupil (year 10) from a local school. Five days, each day looking at a different stage of our design process. We booked it in at the beginning of the year and we were both keen it still went ahead. So we did it online. But would it work?

Every year, for the past 20+ years, Mytton Williams has organised placements where design students come into our studio for typically a few weeks. We have always felt it’s important for professional designers to give time to those starting out. To share our experiences and the best way to tackle a design problem.

Placements, whether for a week or a month, provide the best insight into the real world of a designer. I often hear the students finishing their placement with us, say how much they have learnt in such a short space of time. It is also benefits us as a design studio to have new faces, fresh ideas and different thinking. 

As well as second and third year design students from university, we usually have a school placement for a week in July. These are usually one week to provide a taste of what it’s like in a design studio and being a designer. We set a series of simple design tasks and get them involved with project studio discussions – as well as telling them the importance of making the tea! My hope at the end of the week is they get an insight into the life of a designer, what it’s like working in a design studio and at the end that they want a career as a graphic designer. But doing it online? How would that work?

We spoke about the placement a few weeks before it started. He was interested in learning more about designing a logo and a visual identity – and I could have set a brief to do just that and we would review the logo ideas each day. But I thought it would be more interesting to share our whole design process.

So, I set a brand identity brief for a local museum (one he would know) and every day we worked through each phase of our five stage design process: Research, Strategy, Ideas, Craft, Delivery. So, Monday started with Research, Tuesday we looked at the Strategy, Wednesday the Ideas and so on. 

My aim was that he would get an insight into the different aspects of the design process and how it worked. I explained that what we were doing in a day, typically took weeks and we would only be scratching the surface of the work that went into each stage, but this was more about sharing the best way to approach a design problem. 

So, each morning at 9.15am, we talked through the day’s tasks and at 4.00pm we reviewed the work via PDFs and sharing the screen. There would be three or four tasks for the day. The research phase for example, included interviewing some of my team who knew the museum, looking at competitors and thinking about the target audience. 

It did require time to prepare each day and to be on hand to answer questions. Plus it depended on each of us being available and speaking at the agreed time. I looked forward each afternoon to seeing how each task had been tackled and it was great for both of us to see how the identity developed over the week. Defining the specific tasks and keeping them simple helped. 

Did it go well? Well, for a start, by committing to the times and tasks for each stage, at the end of the week we had a smart logo, visual identity in front of us. 

What I found most pleasing was that it had developed in a way that neither of us expected and resulted in a far better design. We could see how working through the different design stages had made a difference, helped inform a successful outcome and make the process go smoothly. 

While I would not recommend designing a complete identity in five days, it is always surprising what can be achieved in a short space of time by following the design process, collaborating and keeping an open mind.

And finally, when I hear at the end of the week “I learnt a lot and enjoyed that more than school” and “I think I’d like to be a graphic designer” – it makes it all worthwhile.