Leah Wild

I hope they don't mind me posting up photos from when I was on placement there...

I was offered a 2 week placement at Fudge Studios in Bolton in the last couple of weeks in September 2008. Getting up at 6:30am and not getting home til gone 7pm some nights, those 2 weeks were a real shock from the cushy college communte and workign hours! I knew it would be worth it at the end of it all though. I was very nervous on my first day, I didnt know what to expect at all. Andrew Birley gave me a tour of the studios, showing me where everything was and I was then given a computer to use in the Designers room.. for the first week Gav and Robin the senior graphic designers were in and in the 2nd week it was mainly Gav and Christian, Christian being a junior designer. I was asigned the task of designing a blog for a new project management program Fudge had made and seeing as though i'd never done anything like that before, I found it really difficult, but every now and then, Gav would ask me how i was getting on and show me a few pointers. It was interesting seeing what they were up to too. When Gav got given a new brief, I noticed he worked in a very similar way that we do in college. He would research competitiors, see what design was out there and then rought mock-up on the mac some quick ideas and then post them up on the wall and call everyone round to get their opinions. This is something we do at college, but this was a much more quicker working pace... did he all that before lunch!

It was interesting to know that they had a seperate room for all the technical and website making side of things, and they had more tech staff than designers.. eventhough they were in a different room, everyone got along even realised I got on the same train as.... I want to call him Pete but i'm not sure... but we used to walk from the station to the studio together and i got to ask him a few questions about what he did once he graduated.

Also, though general chit chat, it turns out me and Gav had the same tutor on the ND Course at Stockport College so we got to talk about that too.

Whiclst I was there, they were working on the England Squash Identity.. I had to stick those 48 A3's on the wall that you can see on the phot above.. but I got insight on how they prepared to present their solutions to the client.. gathering everyone round to discuss how it should be presented and in what order. Again, very similar to how we work in college.

On my last day, Andy Eccles had a talk with me asking me how it went and what I got out of the placement and just told me some words of wisdom, and also mentioned that I could contact him agan should i need any references which I thought was extremely nice of him.

Following on from the placement, I bumped into Dave Eccles and Gav when Peter Saville did a talk for GF SmIth and he seemed keen to know what i was gettin up to at college. And I also got an invite to their end of year party which was a lot of fun.. hopefully I'l pluck up the courage to get networking and start making more contacts :)