Work Placement - Personal Reflection
I have worked for two different clients throughout this work placement experience practice. Both of these clients are not based in Malaysia (one of them is in Singapore and the other one in Germany) These companies were looking for freelancers to outsource their design jobs. My roles were to design and come up with a solution for their assigned tasks.
As for the first client, the Electronic Arts GmbH, my role was to edit, retouch and prepare raw images and photos for their FIFA video-game's in-game graphic data. I found this job online at EA's account on twitter. My skills, the industry knowledge I had from my past experience and the passion I have for gaming (Williams, 2008) have helped me to pass the job application test and get the job. I was working for them as a graphic designer and photo editor within their Data and Graphics team which has over 30 team members. As for the second client, I was in charge of designing and rebranding their company's identity. I got this job offer by email as they were looking for a freelance design. I was working closely with the company's CEO and their marketing manager to come up with a concept and an idea for their brand ID as well for the execution.
Both of the jobs were quite challenging and helped me learn new things. I have learned that having good design skills is important but critical thinking and having good ideas are even sometimes more necessary. Being able to come up with good ideas and solutions could also help me to improve my design skills. My work experience background and the skills I built up with working with image editing and illustration software such as Photoshop and Illustration have helped me to handle these jobs better and easier. Some other skills such as creative thinking to solve an issue during the work, taking responsibilities as a team member and making/proposing decisions to the team and communication abilities (especially when working with people in overseas / from different industries and cultures) by listening to the client properly to understand their problem (Barker, 2011) are the things I managed to learn and develop during this workplacement.
I have really enjoyed the whole process of these work placement jobs especially when I was experiencing new things that I haven't experienced before. For example, when doing graphic editing work for the Electronic Art's FIFA game, the testing part where my prepared images need to be tested on the actual in-game cards and 3d objects, was quite interesting as I could see how my edited graphics are correctly or incorrectly edited. At that point I could learn how even minor editing can affect the final result.
There were hardly any situation that I did like the least - maybe only the time that the internet connection were poor during our online meetings and I had difficulties to communicate with my clients. The timetable for the second client also was slightly tight but luckily it was manageable.
My Roles & Responsibilities
My responsibilities for the first clients (Electronic Arts) were:
- Photos retouching
- Graphic editing (preparing the retouched images for in-game content)
- Testing the images on in-game cards and 3d objects
To do the above tasks, I mainly needed Adobe Photoshop and an online tools for 3d testing which is made for this job by Electronic Arts. The most challenging part for image/graphic editing was when an image does not have good quality due to either photoshoot poor set up or the general image quality (or both) so I had to fix many things in the image including pixel recreation and repairing.
After this phase, I needed to test my edits on the actual card and objects. The first round of testing is usually done by my manager. After receiving feedback from him and fixing the possible issues, I could do the second round of testing by myself and then request my manager for final feedback.
By experiencing this job I have learnt a lot, here are some of the new things I gained from this work:
- Gained new skills in graphic design and editing (photoshop skills) such as pixel editing, tuning the adjustments and filters, improving images quality, preparing images as for in-game contents
- Learnt how to work in a team virtually and from overseas
- Learnt how to manage my works independently and prepare it for other people
My responsibilities for the other client (My Ear Singapore) were:
- Rebranding their company's ID (logo design)
- Apply the new branding and design to their corporate stationery (Including, name cards, letterhead and folders)
My duties to do this job were to come up with a concept for their identity system and design a logo for their brand based on that concept which I could successfully get it done within 4 weeks.
Here are the challenges I faced while doing this job:
- As a designer I need to consider things such as colour modes and layout guidelines for both print and screen designs. Sometimes you designs need to be compatible with the traditional platforms as well as the modern ones. So this should be considered beforehand and could be challenging.
- Clients/customers are not designers. They may not understand things about designs, so it could be challenging them to describe your logic/philosophy about your design concept. But it doesn't mean that you never seriously consider clients’ ideas. They know their industry and their consumer/customer better. Involving the client in the creative decision will also enhance my business relationship in a new way (Vukovic, 2013).
- Working with clients in overseas could be sometime challenging as things could be misunderstood amongst your communication since you cannot have face to face meetings. Thank to digital technologies, voice and video calls can make your communication more clear but sometimes this could face barriers especially when your client is busy.
After finishing this work for the client, I could see that I developed new skills for print design and especially when designing stationaries - and how to make them compatible with and convertible to other platforms such as for social media. I also had a chance to experience designing for a different target audience (Elderlies) - As this company's products is mostly for old people. This job also helped developing my networking and having more chances to get more works from overseas (Singapore). I also developed some project management skills during this project as I was required to give them a very organised timeline/time table and manage it by pushing the client's side for providing content/materials and checking etc.
As I was working independently for this project and my client was expecting me to take the whole responsibilities, I had a chance to manage the project and gain more experience on project management, time management and self management by having a well-defined project plan which could help me to manage my time as well. Also doing researches on project management and getting familiar with project management methodologies (Miller, 2019) have helped me to learn from this work placement.
Work Placement Reflection
I find that the work placement is a very good practice for people like me who are studying digital media and are looking for a career path in this industry as this opportunity will allow us to experience the actual culture of the market we are targeting. Work placement practice helped me to recognise my strengths and weaknesses better. As I'm planning my future career path more into UX design and game design, I need to build skills in 3d modelling and animation (including 2d animation). Furthermore, I still need to master my creative and critical thinking - especially the part of critical thinking process that is to identify the problem and doing research on that problem (Erstad, 2018).
The skills I built and improved during throughout this work placement would definitely help with my career in future. It also gave me the opportunity to get know more people in the industry and grow my career network as it can pay me back in dividends throughout the course of your career (Amanda Augustine). Another thing I have noticed by doing this work placement practice is that the importance of having an online portfolio. I believe that my online portfolio and website have helped me to get these two jobs, especially for the second client. I have included explanatory text within my portfolio (Eisenman, 2006) which helped the client to finish up with my portfolio when they were searching for relevant keywords on the net.
Overall, my work placement experience at EA and My Ear was productive. I am very glad with the works I have learned and experienced from this practice. I believe that this practice will provide students with the experience needed in order to find a job later on. It could be very beneficial as it could lead to a more permanent position, which is what happened with me by EA. I would suggest other students to applying for freelance overseas jobs as for their work placement - especially for Digital Media students as there is no boundaries in this industry and the digital jobs can be done remotely using the internet.
References
- Barker, A., 2011. Improve Your Communication Skills. London: Kogan Page.
- Williams, L., 2008. Ultimate Job Search. 2nd ed. London: Kogan Page.
- Miller, K., 2010. PROJECT MANAGEMENT TIPS FOR NON-PROJECT MANAGERS. [online] Northeastern University. Available at:
- Erstad, W., 2018, 6 Critical Thinking Skills You Need to Master Now. [online] Rasmussen College. Available at
- Augustine, A., 2020, The Importance of Networking (and How to Do It Well). [online] Top Resume. Available at
- Vukovic, P., 2013, 9 reasons clients don’t want to work with you (and what to do about it), [online], 99designs Available at
- Sara Eisenman, 2006, Building Design Portfolios, Massachusett: Rockport Publishers
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