In July we welcomed our second intern from the Inspiring Digital Leadership programme, Julia. Screenmedia was her second stop in the programme, which sees five promising young graduates rotate around some of Glasgow’s top creative agencies.
Julia studied History of Art and Digital Media at university, and spent her spare time cultivating her interest in animation, illustration, graphic design and WordPress design. Alongside some freelance work she discovered that her interests lie in digital design and was keen to gain an insight into how a creative agency works.
Having already completed her first month of the IDL scheme focusing on UX design, Julia was able to build on this work by getting hands-on experience with web development at Screenmedia. She’d been researching online ticket purchasing for the Southbank Centre in London and had redesigned the purchase path accordingly. Here at Screenmedia, she was able to build her designs into a functional path, adding donations, payment information and details to the purchase pathway.
Julia had some self-taught experience and had dabbled in development at university, but was able to widen her knowledge by learning JavaScript, SAS and jQuery, as well as delve into pipelines and the development process more widely. We got a chance to sit down with her and ask her about her time with us.
What’s been the best part of your experience at Screenmedia?
The general atmosphere is very social but still very hardworking. There’s a broad range of skills in the team, and everyone was very happy to talk to me and explain things. You can tell that people are genuinely doing what they enjoy - there’s real passion there.
What’s something you wish you’d been able to do if you had more time here?
I'd hoped I might be able to work on a project in mobile development or even back-end. Though I only had time to work on one project here, as one month is very short, it’s given me more confidence to work on more web development in my free time.
Was there anything that surprised you?
I didn’t expect to do as much JavaScript - I'd worked on it before and found it difficult so I was a bit nervous going in, but it worked out well and my site ended up better for using it, so I'm really happy about that!
What’s something you learned while you were at Screenmedia?
I realised that development is very collaborative, it’s not just cracking on alone at your computer. It’s a very collaborative process where everyone is helping each other out.
How do you think this experience will help you in your career?
Because of the programme in general, I have a much better idea of how different agencies work and what they do, as well as discovering what kind of working environment I’m most comfortable in, which has been a very valuable opportunity. At Screenmedia specifically, doing development has been beneficial because, although I see myself as more of a design person, having first-hand experience in web development will help me to work with developers in the future and understand their process.
What are you looking forward to about the other agencies?
The remaining three disciplines are Marketing, Brand Strategy and Client Services. Those are the areas I know the least about, so I think it will be exciting to learn more about them and possibly find something which I might want to do in my career that I hadn’t even considered.
We’ve had a great time with Julia in our studios, and we wish her all the best in the rest of the programme! If you’re looking to take the next step in your career, check out the roles we have on offer, and see where you could fit in!
Alex
Producer