Internship report August - October 2015 1
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
CONTENTS (2 — 3)
Introduction
(4 — 5)
Who are Lava, why Lava
(6 — 7)
The experience of working in a studio
(8 — 59)
Projects: (10 — 15) (16— 27) (28 — 37) (38 — 43) (44 — 47) (48 — 53) (54 — 57) (58 — 59)
Posters for Young Pianists Foundation Infographics for Inspectie Erfgoed Production for KLIK! Amsterdam animation festival Logo for Grumpy Beagles United Icons for Project Moore Poopies illustration for De Struinen Lava Cookbook Small tasks and unrealised projects
(60 — 61)
Reflection on the course at the academy
(62 — 77)
Photos
Internship Internship report report — — Leeza Leeza in in Lava Lava
I’m Elizaveta (short Leeza) Pritychenko, a 3rd year Graphic Design student in Royal zAcademy of Art in The Hague. I’m looking for an internship for a period from August 3-17 till November 13 and I would like to apply for it in your studio. I am fond of studio Lava’s work, it’s use of various media, interesting solutions and technical and conceptual approach. I am myself interested in technology and the way it’s influencing our everyday lives, the way it can be implemented in art and design, the new possibilities it is giving; experimentation and interactivity. My recent focus is digital/ internet/video art and 3d animation, but I would also love to improve my typographical and editorial skills. I am open-minded, eager to learn and broaden my creative horizons, and I believe that there’s always a room for growth. If you are interested, please have a look at my portfolio and let me know about your decision! http://leeeeza.com/ Thank you! Greetings, Elizaveta
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An internship application I have sent to Lava design agency. As far as I knew that moment, it was a quite a big studio with a big name and I didn’t really expect a reply, following the principles “why not” and “there is no harm in trying”. Soon I forgot about it, since I was sending out many more applications, and when I received an invitation to the interview, I was very surprised and excited.
Hello,
This e-mail was my first step towards the internship in Lava design studio.
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Internship Internship report report — — Leeza Leeza in in Lava Lava
Who are Lava, why Lava
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Lava is a dutch design agency located in Amsterdam and founded in 1990 by it’s creative director Hans Wolbers. The agency has become internationally known for its vision on brand identities and unique design portfolio. Within Lava people from brand strategy, digital, motion and print design backgrounds collaborate to create brand concepts that enable brands to communicate in ever more digital environments. On 10 May 2010, it received the title of “European Design Agency of the year”, and at the beginning of 2013 Lava established its Beijing office. I was attracted by Lava vision and approach on working on identities and branding, things that are more broad and complicated than designing a one piece work like a poster or a booklet and things I was not very experienced at; also in it’s aim on working on international level and creating multicultural works (i.e. for 13th Istanbul Biennial, Beijing Design week 2015, Moscow Design Museum, NLRF2013) I perceived as something personally resembling to me and my design practice, since I received a Russian academic basis, studied design for 1 year in Italy and now, for the fourth year, in The Netherlands. Also, as I perceived it, Lava work has a good balance of commercial and cultural projects, so I thought it would be a great environment to try myself in a “real” design world.
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Internship Internship report report — — Leeza Leeza in in Lava Lava
The experience of working in a studio
The Lava office is located in Amsterdam Noord. Overall there are working eighteen employees, 3 of which are currently running the filial in Beijing. My main supervisor was Daan Hornstra, and also I was working under the guidance of Tijs de Boer (who left the studio in the middle of my internship), Anton Lamberg, also KABK graduate, Noortje Boer, for whom I did most of the projects, and Menno Cruijsen. Everybody was nice and patient with me, and I didn’t have to be afraid 8
to ask questions or help if necessary. I was doing the internship during the period, when there were not much new projects coming up, so there was not that much possibility to express my creativity or to develop artistically. Most of the time I was working on and finalising the projects, that were started already before I came, so I had to fit in the style defined by the project and designers working on it. I addressed this issue to Daan, my supervisor, and last month of my internship he put me to work on a new project with Menno and Anton, the name and identity development for a young and ambitious data management company. Unfortunately, my last weeks in Lava were the time that went to the development of the naming concept, and eventually the project was cancelled because of issues with clients. Nevertheless, I had a great opportunity to learn from mature and talented designers not only by doing the assignments, but also looking at other work processes, have an insight into the process of how are being developed the concepts and designs for multiple identities, have a look into the whole workflow, starting from concept development and finishing with print deliverables. I can confidently say that time, spent in Lava, was really useful for me. 9
Internship report — Leeza in Lava
PROJECTS
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Posters for Young Pianists Foundation
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Young Pianist Foundation is an organisation, supporting young pianists (up to 27 years) all over the world. It has it’s own internationally established competition and is organising series of events throughout the year, including concerts of such musicians as, for instance, Nicolas Jaar, Hendrick Schwartz, Bugge Wesseltoft and etc. The events take place in Amsterdam.
This was my first project on the internship. For YPF, Lava has developed a dynamic identity which is used on the website, posters, booklets and etc, and which is based on a system, that consists of compositions that include: certain compositions of stripes, that represent the piano keys, black and white pianist’s photo and a 1-colour background. The studio also has developed a type family, where some of the typefaces are striped which is also a reference to piano keys. I was asked to create a series of images for the festival program booklet and later the posters for the events, where I had to pick the photos of the musicians, separate the figures from the background, pick colour combinations and create dynamic stripe compositions that would represent their music atmosphere. For posters the compositions should have involved typography as well. Later I had to come up with a way that would be appropriate for printing the A0 posters, since very often the images given by client were not in a high resolution.
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Final results
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Final results
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Final results
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Some of the sketches
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Infographics for Inspectie Erfgoed publications
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Inspectie Erfgoed (Heritage Inspectorate) is a governmental organisation that supervises a part of Dutch heritage and the archives of the central government. The inspection is an important contribution to the prevention of illicit trafficking of cultural goods. Inspectie Erfgoed contributes to the preservation and management of the national heritage. (from the website)
In this project I was asked to create various kinds of info graphics, including the trade map and icons for different subjects covered by the Inspectie and related to the heritage. The project was started before my internship, so I had to follow already predefined requirements, like the stile and a very precise colour palette, which was one of the crucial design elements. The designer who I was helping was happy with the results, clients as well and the publication was printed in the end of my internship. It was a good example of how the serious, almost boring down to earth content can be presented in a playful and intriguing manner. Also, it was a chance to learn how to create icons, that have to be simple, original, but clear and informative at the same time, and to improve my skills in working with vector.
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
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Nu
Internship report — Leeza in Lava
rijk
algemene regels
eigenaar (provincie, gemeente, rijk)
depot
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vondsten documentatie
opgravin vergunni
uitvoerd
gsing
er
Centraal College van Deskundingen
kwaliteitsnorm
contract
bevoegde overheid (gementee, provincie)
indieningsvereisten
omgevingsvergunning
opdrachtgever
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Straks
Raad voor Accr
accreditatie
Internship report — Leeza in Lava
rijk
beoordelingsrichtlijn
algemene regels
eigenaar (provincie, gemeente, rijk)
depot
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vondsten documentatie
uitvoerder
reditatie
Centraal College van Deskundingen
bevoegde overheid (gementee, provincie)
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kwaliteitsnorm
contract
indieningsvereisten
omgevingsvergunning
opdrachtgever
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Kloosters
Kerken
Musea
privĂŠ
6%
33 %
38 %
13 %
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stichtinge
10 %
en
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Icons
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
rijk Centraal College van Deskundingen
naarden skyline
Kloosters Kerken Musea privĂŠ stichtingen
6% 33% 38% 13% 10%
bevoegde overheid (gementee, provincie)
Kloosters Kerken Musea privĂŠ stichtingen
paleis du dam
6% 33% 38% 13% 10%
stolpboerderij
naarden skyline
paleis du dam
stichtingen/foundations
naarden skyline
Kerken/churches
musea/museums
prive/private collections?
prive/private collections?
Kloosters/Monasteries
Kloosters/Monasteries
prive/private monuments
Sketches
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Production for KLIK! Amsterdam animation festival
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KLIK! Amsterdam animation festival is an international organisation, selecting and screening different kinds of animations for a week once a year in Eye Museum in Amsterdam. They have a competition and different kinds of nominations, varying from animations for children to political cartoons.
Lava is KLIK! Festival’s designer for many years, and it created a dynamic identity for it, which consists of the main colour choice (cyan and magenta), several logos in different speech balloons, that represent the “clicking” sound, and cartoony characters, that represent KLIK! mascots, drawn by specific illustrators. The whole production for KLIK! includes the festival program booklet, serie of posters, flyer, badge for festival visitors and the flags. This year the client wanted to keep the basis of identity, but make it more “adult” looking, with a different invited illustrator and a colour palette that works better with the illustrations. I was working on the whole production process under the guidance of one of Lava designers. During that process I learned such nuances of preparing files for print as checking the colours in Pantonette, working with grid in InDesign, fixing the typography and etc. Also it was the first time I was working with the “real” client and having client meetings and exchanging e-mails, and facing the struggles of reminding to fix and send the corrupted files or missing content. This project gave me the insight in different aspects of a company identity and how they come together through different elements.
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Posters
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Flyer
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Flags
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Badge
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
27 Oct - 1 NOv 2015 www.KLIK.AmsterdAm
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Process
Booklet
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Logo for Grumpy Beagles United Grumpy Beagles United was a weird project on which I was working completely by myself and where for the first time I faced what designers usually call “terrible clients”. The project itself sounded quite fun: to create a logo for a group, called “Grumpy Beagles United”, and that consists of 3 viral Instagram accounts, run by 3 different girls, each of which is dedicated to pictures of their beagles. All of them have thousands of followers, and they plan to grow bigger and in future even release dog merchandise. So basically they needed a logo for their Instagram account and a logo with typography for their website. I thought it would be cool and make more sense to create kind of a logo system, that consists from 3 different logos (one for each 40
Grumpy Beagles United is a 3 girls collective run by the love for their dogs. Each of their beagles has an Instagram account with thousands of followers, and they plan to grow bigger and release their own merchandise.
Instagram account) that are still made in the same style and are quite recognisable. The keywords given by the client for the logo were: “simple” “timeless” “minimalistic” “design”. I created several proposals with different icons that represent “grumpy beagle” face. I wanted it to be funny and unique, basing on impression I got from their accounts. After sending out those proposals I got a response that it looked like MS Office clipart and got a batch of examples of how they wanted it to look like, with horrible vector stock images of dogs in it. Ok, I thought, so they want something generic and common-looking, and since then I was working on 1 icon of a dog face, more normal, boring, and realistic-kind-of-looking. They liked it but since then we exchange a lot of e-mails where after their approval and me sending the packages of deliverables they were asking to change something again, or combine something with something else and then I was sending the deliverables again, and then again they were asking to change something and the this story repeated several times. Nevertheless, I thought that the first logo proposals I have made were quite interesting and probably I could use it somewhere in the future.
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Original proposals
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Final result
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Sketches
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Icons for Project Moore
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Project Moore is an Amsterdam law firm specialising in IT-law and privacy.
Project Moore is an Amsterdam law firm specialising in IT-law and privacy. They needed a set of icons for their website and print production. This project was started long before I came to Lava, and other interns were involved. There was already a set of icons, which i had to stylise a bit, to make it look similar, and several of them I had to design from scratch, under the guidance of a Lava designer. It was a complicated assignment, since the icons had to represent complicated concepts, and during the process I learned a lot. Also, it was interesting for me, how to fit an elaborate concept into a small and simple icon. I enjoyed working on it a lot.
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Final result
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Input
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Poop illustration for De Struinen
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De Struinen is a magazine about dunes in Amsterdam, sponsored by Waternet, a dutch water organisation.
De Struinen is a magazine about dunes in Amsterdam, sponsored by Waternet, a dutch water organisation. In each magazine there is a page for kids with a game or a story and a simple illustration. This time the topic of the story was “How to track animals in the wild?�, and it was revealed that animals can be found by their footprints and feces. So for this story I got an assignment to design a vector illustration with 5 different animals icons (a duck, a rabbit, a deer, a horse, and a fox), their footprints and, as you can already guess, their poopies. To make a precise illustration, I had to research on these different kinds of poops, and looks at their pictures the whole day. When the client received the first proposal, he was happy with the animal icons and the footprints, but stated that 2 of the poopies needed more character and texture. After I fixed it he was happy with the result.
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Process
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Lava cookbook
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It was a present!
During my time in Lava, there was another intern working with me, called Clemance. Clemance was doing management assistance internship and she was there for the period of in total 6 months. Clemance was french and liked to cook, and she was cooking a lot during her time in Lava. Her supervisor came up with an idea of asking everyone to send me their favourite recipe and asked me to make a PDF with a photo of Clemance on the cover. It was in the end of my internship, and I was not that busy during that time, so I thought that I can do something extra and design a cute booklet with pictures of food and Lava members’ faces photoshopped on it. It was quite fun and a surprise not only for Clemance, but her supervisor as well. Everybody loved it.
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Cover
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Spreads and illustrations
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Small tasks and unrealised projects
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Besides the projects I have mentioned above, I have also completed a list of small tasks such as preparing presentations, fixing illustrations, made by others, making magazine covers proposals, drawing the maps etc. Also, I was participating in brainstorming and sketching the proposals for 3 big projects, 2 of which were cancelled and 1 was taken over by the designers without my involvement. Besides that, my tasks as an intern were including preparing the lunch, cleaning from the table, loading and unloading dishwashing machine, occasionally cooking, meeting the postman with food and such.
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Internship Internship report report — — Leeza Leeza in in Lava Lava
Reflection on the course at the Academy
With the start of my internship I noticed how well I was trained by KABK in some aspects of design and how not well in others. My academy background helped me to think analytically, to conceptually frame my ideas 62
and make them relevant in my design practice. It helped me a lot in the brainstorming phases of the projects i was involved in, and during the client meeting for one go them, the client even told that my concept proposal was the most intelligent one. But during the whole work process I noticed, that in “real” world, the concept required by clients is more often practical rather than ideological, and this is the opposite of how we are trained in KABK. Also, I noticed that I lacked some knowledge of the technical part of the designing process, so I had to ask for help from the designers, or to look it up, and it would save me more time if i would have this knowledge already. This is what internship is for, but I think that in the academy we are raised to be more thinkers than makers, where the concept becomes more important than it’s realisation, knowledge of the composition or the typography, and there should be the balance between the two, because personally for me the clash between reality and academic environment was a way too big, and that many aspects of the profession are being completely missed out. Nevertheless, I prefer to see my internship and studies in KABK as two complementary things, and I learned something from one, that I couldn’t learn from the other, and the other way round. 63
Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Photos
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The entrance door
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Everyday morning on the train
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Goodbye lunch
Meeting room after the brainstorming session
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Working desk
LAV
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Daan’s dog
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Stusio
Stusio
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Stusio
Stusio
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Flags and decorations left after birthday celebrations
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The swing
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava
Daan’s dog
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Internship report — Leeza in Lava