March 16th, 2019

On the Side

Marta Úrbez GMD

A year ago approximately, I started drafting out what my year out in industry would look like. As many of us have experienced, I haven´t ticked many of the boxes I had initially set out for myself, however, I have ticked many other exciting boxes.
One of my major goals for this year was getting involved in personal projects or any projects where I’d be able to explore the areas of design I’m the most interested in. Which included a variety of topics, but ultimately just meant projects where I had some freedom.
I tried to chase after them or start my own, which didn't seem to come into fruition and being at an internship 9-5, it felt easy to excuse myself for not trying harder. However, the start of 2019 brought me a nice set of them.

In this blog post, I’d like to look back at them and analyse what each of them has provided me with, and how they differed from each other.

The first opportunity was a freelance commission to design the website of a Music Producer. This was an interesting project as I got to work hand in hand with a developer for the first time, as well as being one of the first times I had full responsibility for the Design, as well as timing and budgeting. Besides that, the project gave me major insight into what working for fellow creatives is or can be like; as many times it proved to be more challenging to reach an agreement as far as the visual aspect of the project went.
Generally, this was a good experience as I created a website that I’m happy with despite the many visual, technical and economical limitations I had. For example, one major requirement was to have the producer’s face as the main website feature, which was a funny thing to try to figure out.

The second project was a group effort involving over 60 female and non-binary creatives worldwide. Everpress, a t-shirt company, commissioned each one of us to create a design that would honour International Women's Day. This was a very fun project to be a part of because it was really fast paced and there wasn't much time for overthinking, as well as being my first time selling any of my work. Most of all it was amazing to be featured next to really great designers and artists. (One of them being Ester!)

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Finally, what has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my DPS year so far: developing an identity and all of its printed applications for an exhibition. The show is the first one held by 2020 Collective, which unites 20 second year photography students from LCC, who, ahead of their graduation want to kickstart their relationship with the industry. 
This has been a great project for many reasons, the main one being that it was great working with fellow UAL students who put full trust in me and gave me something near to total freedom. The fact that it has been a fully student-led endeavour, and seeing how we've been able to pull it off together has been incredible. 
It was really interesting to navigate the different aspects of the project without any past experience from any of us, but we all learned a lot through it.

Another aspect of this I want to reflect upon is how I have organised myself to do this while interning. And why it felt like now I could take on side projects - whereas in past internships I felt like they took up 100% of my brain space.
I am having such a fulfilling and inspiring experience at my current internship, that it makes me excited to work as much as I can and take on every opportunity that comes to me. I am having fun with it, which is sort of new, and really great.