Overview of first week at Big Wave

Throughout the week I have been working mainly on design amendments (up to 30 a day!) these jobs were placed in my ‘pot’ called Proad, their online system that they work to, which tracks your time to complete the jobs, and were all colour-coded. Job codes labelled red and orange jobs meant it really had to be completed by the end of the day to send of to the account managers (to check and proofread that what you have done is correct) and then on to their long list of clients across the country. The jobs ranged from very simple tasks such as changing a telephone number, making the text bigger, replacing text/image etc, to more challenging tasks which required a lot more creative thought whilst keeping within the clients look and brand.

It taught me to read thoroughly and re-read exactly what the client has specified as I do have a habit of skimming over things very quickly. I think this was apparent on my first day as I have the attitude that ‘time is money’ and I was working at a fast pace, perhaps overwhelmed by the design amendments which were piling up in my pot which meant sometimes I missed silly little things. However, by Tuesday I got the design office-working pace down and was a lot more relaxed pace and getting the work done to a high standard and correct.

My colleagues have been incredibly friendly (and patient!) given great advice and pleased with the work I have got done, taking a load off their shoulders. I have learnt an incredible amount by doing design amendments, such as new shortcuts and tables in InDesign, which are a pain at first!  In fact just getting up at 6am mon – fri and beginning work at 8.30 and finishing round 5.30 has been a really learning curve about working life! Simply being in front of a iMac for over 8 hours a day on the Adobe Creative Suite meant on Monday evening I was simply exhausted and felt I was not cut out for the working life! However, by Thurs/Fri my mind and body had a much more positive outlook and I had adapted to the working hours. Overall, I am so happy I haven’t been a burden to the team and I am a lot more confident in my abilities.