Half of it already?

It's been a month and a bit since I've started my internship in Interbrand...
Before I started work on May 26th I was nervous. What is it going to be like working in a real design team, among people who worked in the industry for years? I was expecting things like cutting boards and running errands for people.
Turned out I was wrong. For these three months I am an official part of the team. Christoph Marti, the creative director, is a Swiss designer who has 30 years of design experience. During those years he went to The Basel School of Design, worked with Frutiger, was a tutor in Politecnico Milano. A very funny and easy-going person. Christoph is definitely a fan of Swiss design and I learn a lot just from seeing how he works: everything is structured and clear.
The design team consists of professionals of different ages and you really learn from most of them. The atmosphere is very personal and friendly, the design team is connected to the rest of the office (consultants, marketing managers, financial managers, directors). There are staff meetings when the whole office meets to discuss things. I'm present at every single one! Once a week we have BLINI (pancakes) when someone from the office makes a presentation about what they're working on. Sometimes a guest visitor from another Interbrand office comes to talk. These presentations are very relaxed and are usually during lunch (hence the name BLINI).
One thing that was a big surprise was the amount of hand work and sketching. It remins me of the work we do in KCAI. Hand-rendered drawings or illustrations are taken into Illustrator or Photoshop and are refined, refined, refined.
During this month I got to participate in production (pretty stressful sometimes) and I even got to talk to the client (great learning experience).
Right now I'm working on a project for one of the Russian companies. We're redesigning the whole branding system. Here are some things I'm currently working on:
- window dressing design
- brand manual desig (editorial design)
- stationary
- corporate fashion (how the sales people will be dressed)
I also make some ppt presentations that we show to the client.
The office is in downtown Moscow, five minutes away from the Kremlin, so I get to see ancient architecture every day and experience the city life. Working every day is sometimes tiring (mostly because of the time it takes to get to and from work), but you get to be the part of the process and see how everything's working.
I still have half of the summer and I'm happy I do. Working here is a great experience in design and life in general.