The year so far

Catarina Bernardi
Illustration and Visual Media

A bit before the start of DPS, in August, I moved to another city to take on an internship opportunity. It was an experience out of my comfort zone to go somewhere I never lived before, to work in a place I didn’t know at all. This placement was great experience to understand the routine of an advertising agency, how each area communicates with each other - from project management to copywriting and creation - to how each campaign is developed from briefing until final product. I was able to improve the level of proficiency in my work flow - considering the short deadlines I had to deal with-; and also reflected on the impacts of my work in the real world. This experience made me challenge the notions I had about advertising, design as a practice, and what role I want to have in it. Now that I have a little of experience in an advertising environment, I became more agile in my creative process and I learned how to quickly solve day-to-day problems. 

I didn't take any photos of the office but I have this one from the office dog (Cracker!)

​Recently, I've been also evaluating what role design has in the world and how I wish to collaborate with it. Only from working in an agency I could understand if I can see myself doing this in the future or not, how well I adapt to an office routine and if I feel satisfied or proud of the work I was developing. I dealt with clients that ranged from tabloids, political parties, media companies and broadcasters. The design in this context usually serves as an asset and media for the advertising campaign.The main function is to communicate to the viewer the brand’s message and product. 

It is not uncommon for design to be attached with advertising, and therefore attract a lot of design students (like myself), as this is one of the very popular ways into the creative industry. However, there are many different kinds of agencies, with different ethos and approaches, who take different kinds of clients. From working in a place that didn’t have a limited or particularly socially engaged approach to advertising, I started to look for other agencies and studios that had a rather niched focus and clients. On my research I found a few companies that works mainly with educational and cultural institutions, NGOs, and generally social-politically aware clients.

At this point, I started seeing the design practice as an agent of change. Therefore, I’d like to invest my DPS time on gaining experience in places that communicate and support causes that I believe in, being it either via making ads, developing branding strategy, visual identity, or creating multi media content. 

This has also been a great opportunity to exercise my communication skills verbally, visually and textually. Through writing, I had reflected about my journey through the WOW blog and my personal blog. Also, I had to edit my portfolio captions and tailored emails to send out to possible employers, in order to achieve a higher chance of result. 

Apart from that, I learned to speak about my own work with more confidence by having to present my portfolio a couple of times to tutors and industry professionals. I’m able to present the thought process behind each project, highlighting parts that showcase the skills that I believe to me my strengths. 

During my recent internship, I also had a chance to practice my communication through many meetings and project check ups, where I had to present my ideas and defend them to the rest of team at the agency. That also helped me to better receive feedback and apply it to the projects I was working on. 

Parallel to this, I also began to think about my self initiated projects. One of them is the rebranding of a platform that I previously worked in with my friend called Vagina-nomics. As a team, we began rethinking the position of the platform and the public we wanted to reach. However, because of the distance and the time schedule of both of us, we weren’t able to get to started on the visuals for it, something I wish to continue in the near future, as part of my self initiated project. At this point, we wish to target a more varied audience and for that we need to rethink the way we present ourselves and our ideas. In my time in-between internships, I wish to experiment with the new approaches the platform can have in social media, strategies for raising funds and awareness, besides developing a new visual identity for Vagina-nomics new phase.

Cover from the second Vagina-nomics issue

Following that I will also invest some time in December to investigate more into my thesis, through organising my research material and doing a few reports on each of them.  My thesis question is “The rise of Pabllo Vittar - How LGBTQ+ culture has grown within Brazil’s conservative  Social political space”. For the time being, I already got in hands two of the books in my research list and started reading one of them. Devassos no Paraíso by João Silvério Trevisan explores the story of homosexuality in Brazil from colonial until contemporary times, and gives me a good historical background to start developing my thesis. Besides that, I have also been following Pabllo’s career. I archive articles, interviews and performances he has been doing, and just overall national and international media attention he’s got in the past few months. From now on, I wish to explore gender and performance theories as well, since one of the suggestions I got from my previous CTS tutor was be careful for my thesis not to be too much of an historical approach. Some of the authors I have in mind so far are: Judith Butler, Guy Debord, Raewyn Connel and Beatriz Preciado. ​