Work placement with george home, asda

On Monday the 26th of March i started my placement with Asda home. While on this placement i experienced a range of things such as their design process, about the company and also sat in on a meeting with the buyer.

The design team at Asda is a small team that has their own area of George home to design but the team work together or askes other people for designs/patterns if they have time and if the person's who's department it is can't get the design right. I found this to be very welcoming as the team knoweach others strengths and they played to them.

I was surprised to find out that the team didn't have to think of the practical element of the design and how it would be made in detail, which is unlike how most graphic designers would work, but in their case the manufacturers figure out the most of the finer details, this allowed the ideas to be creative and out the box as they were not restricted by how it would be produced.
Although thinking about the production was not as important the team still had to create a brief sheet before sending things to the supplies to be prototyped.

After a few days of designing, i got to sit in on a meeting with the buyer for George home, when a team member was showing the buyer what they had so far. This meeting was interesting as I got see how the decisions were made and how they thought about the products as different ranges while also considering how they would look on the shelf. I also picked up on a bit of the lingo that they used to reference certain things.

In my 2 weeks of work placement, i work on 7 different designs, that included hand-drawn type, illustration and mocking up and idea for bookends. Out of all these designs, a selection has been sent for prototyping so will hopefully be in stores next year.
(was ask not to show any designs as they are unsure which will be used)

Things that I learnt while on work placement :
I like to work in small teams
how to create repeat patterns using photoshop
the design process at Asda
how to work in a professional environment
that corporate design offices are not always as bad as they seem
i have strong illustration skills
i can do more than just traditional graphic design

My overall experience from work placement was a positive one, I really enjoyed working in the small team creating something that could be in someones home one day, this made me realise I enjoy making physical pieces and digital design is now something I want to pursue. I also found that i am a quick worker as the team were surprised when i had finished a set task in a day.