Berlin. A land of creative opportunity?

Julia Fontes Lessa is spending the first part of her DPS year in Berlin. Here she tells us about her experiences.

I always heard so much about Berlin, mostly about its party scene, but also about the thousands of creative opportunities. And it was not a lie. In one month I managed to find loads of stuff to do.

I’ve been working almost everyday with a freelance designer. I go to her studio apartment and we sit together and discuss my designs. She gives me freedom to do my own design while she does hers at the time. The first task she gave me was a Brazilian Forró festival poster. She showed me all of the requirements, the mood board she had done and asked me to create something from that. I had to do about 20 designs and she didn’t really like any of them. At first I was very frustrated, but when she sat with me and gave me detailed feedback I could see she wasn’t disappointed withe me or anything, she just genuinely wanted me to improve. The jobs after were way better. I think the harder part is getting her style right. In the end that is the biggest challenge of an internship, getting the style right.

I also didn’t stop there, I started doing a German course, and as always had in school, I doodled during class. That was enough for my course mates to see that I was a creative. A girl from the class introduced me to this conceptual caffe/clothing store that changed their window design every few months. I went there one day and they asked me to do their window! It was really fun. They wanted something water themed, because their new logo was a gold fish. Recently I’ve been drawing fishes and corals and all sort of sea inspired creatures, therefore it was perfect. I eded up doing some crazy corals and seaweed, making the shop a gigantic aquarium!

Even though designing is fun, no one will ever enjoy everything in their job. We have a couple of constant clients. One of them is a blogger that posts about recipes, furniture and flowers arrangements, that sort of thing. Every week I have to the blog posts of the week for her. There is also a beauty bloggers that works for Vogue Brazil. I also have to do her blog posts of her lifestyle. It not exactly a fun job, but doing it every week really helps me with my layout skills. Another constant client is these guys that organize techno parties. There are loads of parties happening at the moment, meaning a lot of posters to do. I mainly help her out with vectorizations and cutting of images. It is really helpful though, because I’ve been mastering Photoshop.

Recently I got a job from a music company and she does vinyl covers for them. So the latest project I’ve done was designing a vinyl cover for them. They are strongly connected to science and mythology. It’s all about the natural elements. So I had to create a design with the amethyst stone. My boss hasn’t given me a detailed feedback yet, but overall she liked it, which is a very different response from the first job I did.
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