Intern story - Will Marshall
Working at Yes/No Studio with Matt and Joe has been an insightful experience in the Graphic Design industry. After graduating from university, they kindly took me on for 3 months where I worked on live projects, took over Instagram and received in-depth critical feedback about my design work and what I needed to improve on.
First things first
A normal morning at Yes/No would be having a group call via Google Chat or in the Studio, we would discuss the jobs for the day. We'd often get sidetracked by talk of some weird film or article we'd seen on the weekend! For the record, I still think They Live is a great film despite how cringe, old and corny it may be haha!
The studio
Yes/No is based at Duke Studios in Leeds, which is an ideal space for creativity. Everyone is very lovely and welcoming and it’s nice to see other fellow creatives and their growing businesses. Everyone is working on something different and the range of work produced within the walls of Duke is extremely inspiring; from motion design to fashion. Not only that but the beer garden and service Sheef Street cafe provide is perfect for a summer day! I hope to one day be in a studio in which you can order pints to your desk (I can only dream).
Client work
Yes/No gave me the chance to work on beer can art for a local craft brewery. I was able to use my illustration skills to sketch various concepts based on the client’s IPA names. I am extremely grateful for this as it provided me with the perfect opportunity to show my talent and illustrative skills to clients. I loved this brief and the finished designs we created, the only way to describe working on it would be allowing a child to run wild with his imagination, sketching and drawing mythical gods and pirate ships. Possibly my favourite ever brief!
Mentoring
As well as providing opportunities to show my current skills, Matt and Joe offered to improve skills that I lacked with tutoring as well as setting tasks and tutorials with deadlines. This pushed me as a designer to move forward with software that I previously had little or a lack of experience on. Email chains would be sent with articles and tutorials attached which suited what I wanted to learn.
In summary
Matt and Joe were lovely to work with, we talked about our passion projects and where we could take them, as well as university stories and advice on first starting out as a junior designer. They provided me with resources; books, purchased tutorials and cameras for me to study and refine my craft. Taking a camera around Leeds was extremely daunting but I’m glad Joe pushed me to do it and get outside my comfort zone. I hope to make habit of this more.
Overall, I’ve had a really great experience with Yes/No and I'm really looking forward to the next stage of my journey.