DraftFCB - An Odyssey

An OdysseyT E N W E E K S T H A T M A T T E R S .

R O M A R I O S U W A N D Y

A N O D Y S S E YT E N W E E K S T H A T M A T T E R S

RomaRio SuwandyAN ODYSSEY: TEN WEEKS THAT MATTERS.An editorial written in conjunction of second industrial training at DraftFCB Kuala Lumpur commisioned by Taylors University Malaysia & Northumbria University.

Copyright 2014

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

If pain doesnt lead to humility, you have wasted your suffering.

Katerina Klemer

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COMPANY PROFILE.What Matters: Agency.

What Matters: Confidence.

What Matters: Learn.

What Matters: Humility.

What Matters: History.

THE BRANDS.

THE WORKS.

THE EVALUATION

APPENDIX.

Having the chance to humbly work and learn from the astounding people at DraftFCB KL is truly a grateful experience for me, who is still striving to learn about things that really important in the upcoming years.

Thanks to Ms. Maureen Gomez who granted me an opportunity to accomplish my industrial training here as well as Mr. Eric and Ms. Diana who mutually conducted the interview passionately.

Many kind gratitude to Mr. Maharis and Mr. Christopher for their invaluable guidances throughout these short period of cherishable internship.

Id also like to thank all of the colleagues in XPAX team who has relentlessly provided substantial supports day by day, including Elizabeth, Chee Haw, Yau, Yivonne, June, Andrew, Leonard, Siew Voon, Dee, Shashvin, Jesheila, Adzee, Waisim, Miki, Steph, Daniel, and Mr. Richard.

I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to Mr. Razif Mohamed for his infallible guidance (for the second time) throughout this internship period, as well as Ms. Prema for her applaudable supervision.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

All problems are illusions of the mind.

Eckhart Tolle

2 JAN - MAR 20141 AN ODYSSEYTEN WEEKS THAT MATTERED

C O M PA N Y P R O F I L E

DRAFTFCBO1


DRAFTFCB is an integrated advertising agency with its headquarter located in New York, Chicago. Integrated advertising agency is different from the regular advertising agency in the sense that they focused on deploying campaigns for clients through the use of multiple channels (inclusions of Above The Line, Through The Line, and Below The Line) to deliver comprehensive and impactful ideas across both print and digital media under specific strategic direction in a more consistent manner.

Dispersed throughout 92 different countries across the world, DRAFTFCB is one of the oldest advertising agency in the world under the name of Foote, Cone & Belding (abbreviated to FCB, evidently.) before the merging with Draft in 2006.

Similar to many global advertising agencies that signifies its culture, identity and uniqueness through definitive approaches, DRAFTFCBs 6.5 Seconds That Matter is invariably the catalyst strategy to drives and deliver their ideas successfully. The specified amount of time is regarded as the average engagement time between the message of the brand and the consumer, based on the conducted research. This short moment, in fact, is observed to be the best chance to effectively deliver the creative ideas and visions of the clients brands.

At its utmost importance, the whole 6.5 Seconds That Matter is all about engaging and delivering the brands message to the consumers. With the variety of brands and products to choose from, its really important for the marketers to deploy strategies that would engage and capture the audiences invaluable attention.

The Agency ModelOwned by NYSE-listed Interpublic Group, the 141 years old agency is one of the subsdiaries of the New York Citys holding company alongside with big names such as McCann Worldwide, R/GA and Lowe + Partners.

Previously called Interface Advertising, the legacy of Kuala Lumpur based DRAFTFCB Malaysia, with its partner-in-crime, Ignite, (which focused on digital marketing and independently handles different set of clients) was officially established in the mid-2006. The agency is specifically located at the 17th floor of Midvalleys Menara IGB.

PROFILE:DRAFTFCB


DRAFTFCBQ U I C K F A C T S

Were previously known as Lord & Thomas Ad Agency when founded in 1873.

DraftFCB was officially established in 2006, after its merging with Draft ads agency, and is currently a subsidiary of Interpublic Group.

The agency was the third oldest advertising agency in the world, with John Walter Thomson (JWT) and N. W. Ayer & Son being the first and second advertising agency opened in the United States, respectively. The latter was dissolved in 2002.

Key clients include: Kmart, Oreo, Mini, Kraft Foods, Wyeth, GlaxoSmithKlyne, Dominos Pizza, KFC, and Electronic Arts Inc.

Honors included 17 Cannes Lions, 4 ARF David Ogilvy Awards for Excellence in Advertising Research, and Adweeks Project Isaac Gravity Award.


The product that will not sell without advertising will not sell profitably

with advertising.

A L B E R T L A S K E R


THEBRANDSO2


In the local region, DRAFTFCB has several notable accounts and partnerships from local and regional brands that ranged from snacks, banks, to telecommunication.

Notable clients includes the likes of CIMB Bank, Telekom Malaysia, Vans, Celcoms Xpax, Nivea, Kraft and Nissan. Albeit there were variety of brands, I was only exposed and worked on one brand: Xpax, throughout the internship.

The agency has a designated department that mostly handles ATL advertising, including social media, digital and marketing campaigns for XPAX, which presumably has the largest account compared to the other brands in the agency.

Through the creative uses of online platforms, integrated campaigns such as U.O.X (University of X), S.O.X (School of X) engaged the students from various educational institutions in inter-schools competitions such as cheerleading, dance, and marching band. has been successful in redefining the brand, leading to significant upsurge of the brands social media popularity and most importantly, the increase of sales.

Xpax is a prepaid service brand created by Celcom that has a very specific target audience: the youths. For the past few years, the success of DraftFCB in winning several integrated campaign awards can be justifiably traced back at their campaigns and executions in resurrecting the presence of Xpax as a primary prepaid service brand among teenagers and young executives.

Title Save & InvestAward Marketing Pulse Memorable Malaysian TV Ads 2008Idea

Title Xpax Voice Resuscitation The TruthAward Marketing Excellence Awards Gold 2013Idea

Client

Client

BRANDS:DRAFTFCB KL

PAST CAMPAIGNS

S P O T L I G H T

The CIMB Bank Save & Invest campaign was to help consumers meet the rising cost of living as a result of petrol price hikes. DraftFCB produced four TVCs that depicted different scenarios of the extreme measures the public take to save on expenses, using humour to entertain and lighten the mood of viewers.

The campaign aimed to re-engage audiences to refocus on voice calls a declining trend globally among mobile users without alienating the social network services that Celcom provides. The campaign wove social media with TV, cinema ads and mobile into an integrated campaign that centered on the idea of a romantic relationship and the misunderstandings that can occur when you dont pick up the phone.


Title The SOX Drum & Dance CampaignAward Bronze Effie 2010Idea

Title Facebook Caller ID HijackAward Kancil Award Rebel Idea and Innovative Use Of Media 2013.Idea

Client

Client

School of X All-Stars Drum & Dance seek out and showcase the best drumline and cheerleading performances from schools all over the nation. TV,print and digital were used to generate participants. Once the competition begun, the whole action was turned into a reality show posted on the Xpax website. Xpax successfully increase its market share in the prepaid segment after the campaign.

To prevent BurgerLabs customers from choosing McDonalds when they felt like having a burger, DraftFCB developed the Facebook Phone Caller ID Hijack which works by sending a message from BurgerLab on the customers phone when someone called McDonalds delivery service.

PAST CAMPAIGNS

S P O T L I G H T

D O N B E L D I N G

1879 -1969

03.


FA I R FA X C O N E

1903 - 1977

E M E RS O N F O O T E1906 - 1992

02.

01.


THEWORKSO3


WORKS:BEING AN INTERN.Ten weeks of internship is considerably a short amount of time to learn myriad things that matter, but this wasnt really the case right here. Job requisitions were avalanching most of the day with clients providing feedbacks that would be deemed relatively slow.

It was definitely uneasy and unsettling at first, being someone who werent initially accustomed to execute designs at fast-pace and quickly response to clients demands in a limited amount of time, but in the end its all about our ability to adapt to change and willingness to learn more than ever. Instead of treating myself as a student or intern, I find it really helpful when I tried to push myself harder to get to the next step as a budding designer.

As an interactive multimedia student, it does make sense if you would love everything on screens to flow in particular motion, where every elements crafted through the wonders of pixels could be controlled and experienced, in the same way we experience physical, sensible objects. You wouldve love it if these elements could intuitively response and satisfy your urges, your temptations, your desires in exploring more than what it looks and feel.

Lamentably, it was the call of nature that I couldnt lay my hands upon these imaginative, artificial realms and wonders throughout these period. Delivering emotions, engineering life-enhancing experiences, and discovering enlightening immersion couldve been a revolutionary bit throughout these period.

Apparently, it doesnt really matter whether I would picture myself being someone that I wished I could be, but without putting myself through all the efforts and burning the midnight oils every 24 hours, nothing would work out the way we wanted to be.

Being an intern in advertising agency where majority of the skillsets you wield wouldnt be technically utilized due to the number of established talents on set, could be somehow frustrating in the way that it might just cease your opportunities to apply and sustain your skills in the industry level.

It seems burdensome to make everything seems perfectly right, but trust me, Im trying.

Breaking it down to the simpler terms, most of the works that Ive been given by the department were anything but interactive-related. Although I would humbly claim its not particularly the perfect spell for not doing something within my niche, it wasnt too bad if I reflected back to it.

By designing static objects, playing around with old school visual effects, composing typefaces and adjusting the visual hierarchy seems to be the right thing to rejuvenate my frail design sense. I think that technical skills without the appropriate design senses wouldnt be feasible in long run as a designer, and to flourish that sense, practicing is the key.So, here were some of the accomplished works during the internship.


WORKS.IT MATTERS.REALLY.

WEEK 1 WEEK 2

Resizing images for Kraft website.

This is quite accurately the first productive week so far during my internship as we moved from the digital department to XPAX-exclusive department. It was Mr. Christopher, the senior digital art director of the department that brought us in since they were quite occupied every single day. The whole team mainly handles XPAXs social media, digital campaigns, visuals, as well as Celcoms e-commerce portals, including Bachabooku, Buzzaar, and The Crescent.

First task received from Mr. Chris was to do layout for XPAXs Anugerah Lagu Juara EDM (Electronic Direct Mail).

Another task received was to design the website skin for one of Celcoms e-commerce website called The Buzzaar, supervised by Ms. Liz. Chinese New Year is coming and to celebrate the festive, the website will undergo a visual revamp that would suits the theme.

Mr. Lawrence, the client service director, conducted a short orientation and presentation about the company to the newcomers.

Carousel banner visual adaptation for Celcoms The Crescent supervised by Yau and Chee Haw.

Ms. Diana briefed about doing some visual mockups forDraftFCBs website Chinese New Year post but apparently she took leave the rest of the week, which left me undone. Faridz had the visuals covered already at the same week.

Mr. Maharis Azman gave a task to conduct some research on previous successful campaigns that may be deployed for Krafts Chipsmore cookies. Several examples that I found out includes Kelloggs Krave campaign of using social media to reverberates the products peer-to-peer, as well as Netherlands-based Jamin Chocolate Christmas tweets.

WEEK 3

+ -


TO LEARN IS TO HUMBLE.

WEEK 4 WEEK 5

The angst-ridden week continued as we receivedprompt feedbacks from the client regarding the Chinese New Year themed web skin for the Buzzaar, which they deemed were too modern, too cute, and doesnt make it feel like Chinese New Year subsequently. It was quite a laid-back week in terms of the amount of job requisitions.

Well, it would be justifiable to call it self-exploration week whereby there werent much anything to cover or design, apart from fixing several copies for the MMS. Theres always going to be a time where you would be in catch-22 situations everytime you think about what youre going to do after you graduated from the university.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; for-get them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered

with your old nonsense.

R A L P H WA L D O E M E R S O N


MOST IMPORTANTLY,ATTITUDE.

WEEK 6 WEEK 7

Once we were finished with the Chinese New Year themed web skin for The Buzzaar, the upcoming Valentines Day took its toll as the client wanted us to start researching and do some visuals that should be finalized before 14th February. Captained by the talented Ms. Liz, we set to embark. Clients are, apparently clients and theyre not going to know or understand what they wanted until you gave them what they want. It could be quite innocuous and unappealling sometimes, but I guess thats part of learning - it matters how you would react towards certain things.

Another work was assigned by Mr. Christopher to revamp the layout for XPAX website promo pages.

This week also marked by the visitation of Mr. Razif to the office to conduct a brief internship evaluation with Mr. Maharis and Mr. Christopher. On the following day, the office held a belated-Chinese New Year celebration with food. Free food for goodness sake.

To summarize, the seventh week started at a pretty slow pace, with Laksmi provided several images for Malaysia Tourism to be resized to specific requirements. It seems to kicks me in when youre pondering about yourself and your ability to satisfy clients needs, chasing deadlines, and doesnt peacefully enjoy your job. Its sort of depressing in reality, but I learnt that the more I knew, the less I understand and the more ignorant Ive became.

Mainly, these week tasks involved alot of photomanipulation, playing with photoshop effects and image compositing to get the looks the clients wanted, particularly XPAX promotional banner handed by Jesheila. Another task which was supervised by Chee Haw,The Buzzaars MMS, called the Share and Win promo, also kicks in this weeks where the works were mainly about adapting, replacing copies and visuals that get modified day by day.If You Are To Fail,

Fail Spectacularly.


Brand Celcom / XPAXTask Revamping Layout for the ongoing XPAX Anugerah Juara Lagu 2013 EDM.

Brand Celcom / EscapeTask Visual adaptation for ongoing Barclays Premier League promotion.

Brand Celcom / The CrescentTask Carousel banners visual adaptations for the ongoing promotions.

Brand Celcom / XPAXTask Visual mockup for website main page revamp.

Brand Celcom / The BuzzaarTask Designing Chinese New Year theme webskin

Brand DraftFCBs Kissmas Facebook ApplicationTask Extracting elements for HTML5 conversion.


Brand Celcom / The BuzzaarTask Designing Valentines Day theme webskin

Brand Celcom / XPAXTask Visualizer for XPAX Time to Upgrade promo background and final look.

Brand Celcom / The BuzzaarTask Adaptation for sites carousel banner.

Brand XPAX / CIMB Task Visual change for EDM CIMB promo.

Brand Celcom / The CubeTask Carousel banners visual adaptations for Stand By Me promotion.

Brand Celcom / XPAX Reload PageTask Revamping the layout for XPAX website.


SELFEVALUATIONO4


INTROSPECTIVE.

Once upon a time, there was a kid who dreamt of never wanting to grow up, regardless of the circumstances. He was naive and reckless but the curiosity and his impetus to explore everything around him was unquenchable.

Dictated by his creative impulse and feeble understanding of frivolous thoughts, creating and painting magic out of nowhere were the only things that made him happy. He didnt seem to care what others might thought about his messy, incomprehensible strokes of lines that left their footprints on his dads leftovers papers.

Being happy wasnt his choice. It was the only thing he knew, and his little piece of hope was to keep this feeling from subsiding anytime soon.

The world he used to knew froze into shimmering, thick lattices of the spectres that haunted his dreams every night. Vanquished was the rollfilms that kept his old days memory intact as the anguishing rain hammered his will and dreams all over the place. The worldwide torrential rainfall swiped all the rhetorical questions on his mind from that day onwards.

The remnants of his strength was banished, scrunched onto the roughest grounds, and decimated to pieces - to make sure he wont stand up. In the end, the series of such calamities was nonetheless a state of his own suicidal mind. He then convinced himself, itll be all over by tomorrow. Tomorrow.

Ive been wondering if every distraughted minds that walked the Earth did felt the same way that I did in certain point of their life. Weve been thinking too much, felt way too little, and failed to cherish the opportunities around us, eventually failed to seize the day.

It keeps me pondering whether what weve been through so far would worth it all in the end. As a novice, a learner, jack of all trades and master of none, its always important being persistent and thrive throughout each of our journey and hopefully, this humbling internship is more than a mere raindrop that dissipates across the ocean

- the life were living. All stories would eventually ends, but in the end, its the odyssey that matters.

The kid once fought for everything he could to be the boy he wanted to be. The broken pencils were the dumb witnesses of his fragility and insecurity in the midst of his ceaseless patience and desire to learn.

Tick. tock. The only thing that would stop his obsessively abstract thoughts from wandering around ethereal places was time, and the silencing barrage of doubts of himself, although that didnt keep him from being still from fending away the monsters that slept inside his head.

But something wasnt right. In fact, it was never right since the beginning of the time. He tried to fix it, but he ultimately failed.


This second industrial training definitely taught me several new things, if not many. DraftFCB is one of the largest global advertising agency around, and this affirms that the creative talents are more than sufficient to execute huge ideas throughout different departments, which leads to wider exposure of different creative approaches and the apparent differences of working in the industry compared to working for assignments.

As a designer, we tend to overlook copies that come alongside with the visuals for advertisement. In fact, it is substantial in advertising industry for the creatives to truly comprehend the copy, working alongside copywriters and to incorporate the idea that resonates the brand message. A brilliant visual with pointless copy will potentially mislead the target audiences, ultimately defeat its core purpose of conveying the message. Copy, most of the time, dictates the overall feel and aura of an advertisement.

Most of all, timing is critical in delivering the products to clients. Its important to work smart instead of work hard. Utilize icons and images that can be downloaded instead of painstakingly trace the visuals. Time is money.

Most of the colleagues are very approachable and reliable when technical assistances were required.

Lack of interns active involvement in campaign ideation, brand pitching and creative process.

As an intern, I think the involvement and sense of belonging to the team is pretty satisfactory, and the job requisition distributions are concise and clear.

Lack of exposure to the whole workflow and process of pre-production to post-production within the ads agency.

High-paced, dynamic and empowering working environment makes work productive all day long.

Limited variety of brands to work on, and nature of creative job is growing repetitive day by day.

Flexible break hours and sensible amount of job requisitions on daily basis.

To a least extent, clients feedbacks and instructions were rather abstract and incoherent to the initial task.

SENTIMENTS

THE GOOD

THE LESSONS

THE LESS GOOD


Being in the XPAX team is definitely an enlightening experience as it allows me to slightly polish my layouting skils and pay more attention to details. The devils are in the details, anyway. Although basic designing skills shouldnt be overlooked, it would be wise if there would be chances where we could participate in active brainstorming sessions for upcoming campaigns and ideation with the art and creative directors. It wouldve definitely improved our way of understanding things and generate quality ideas that would really matter.

Perhaps it would be wise to expose us to different brands that the agency is handling, since it would widen our perspectives on the nature of each brand, the types of clients, and the creative directions that each brand are accustomed to.

The suggestion may not be academically related, but perhaps it would be wise if the agency could subsidize parking fee for interns who drive to the office everyday since the rate is pretty expensive.

Understands what the clients want, quickly response it and take it into actions.

The need to be quicker and agile in operating softwares such as Photoshop and Illustrator. Shortcuts do help alot.

I think it can be summarized that throughout these short weeks, mental endurance, stamina, patience, reliability were my main assets. I do learn pretty fast as well.

The need to lengthen my attention span and focus on finishing the given tasks at much more comprehensive manner. Paying attention to details was apparently my greatest challenge.

The need to communicate more often and be more active in asking for things that I want to know rather than passively waiting for tasks to be received and idling the whole time.

Time management and setting priorities.

Indecisiveness and low self-esteem are seemingly my another productivity-plaguing weaknesses.

SENTIMENTS

MY STRENGTH

SUGGESTIONS

MY WEAKNESS


THEAPPENDIXO5


WEEKLY JOURNAL.excerpts from http://www.tds.my/internship/romario/

First day at DraftFCB. Well, the typical scene of the capital city congestions greeted the morning as the clouds hovered across the azure sky. Couple of new interns arrived this morning as well. A soon-to-be Taylorian lass, Wai Lynn will be interning for the next two months. Nicole from our junior batch, alongside with me, will be supervised by Mr. Maharis for the next 3 months. The office wasnt enormously space V. although the modernistic and dazzling coloured walls gave it a sophisticating flair.

The first day was rather irrevocably unproductive and arguably barren as the only thing we did for Mr. Faridz was to resizing 78 images (which we divided equally to half) from 250z px to 45W px.

Our supervisor didnt make it to the office throughout the day so we had the freedom to do other things on the first day, albeit its not a satiating first day.

Let that be it for today. Just today, hopefully.

The team are currently ideating on a campaign for Krafts Chipsmore in which you can find at 7 Eleven or like, 3 bucks? I never had any of those since too much calcifies would be deposited as saturated fats, if you are not physically active. (and its processed, of course.)

The target audience would be teenagers around 13-15 years old. Basically the whole idea is to get as much insights and ideas about successful brand activation campaigns that had been executed previously and choose 3 that generated most impact. Brand awareness campaigns ought to translate the audiences actions and permeates it to the message and values.

Of course, such marketing activations requires to establish some sort of emotional attachments between the products and the prosumers (rather consumer).

As the target audience are mostly Gen Y and Z. the brand awareness can be significantly amplified through the use of digital content, social media, and user generated contents While the preferences may vary, the largest pool of audiences are considerably technologically literate and highly self expressive.

Talked to Mr. Maharis about the campaign research that he assigned to Nicole and me, and he was pretty much interested on this one particular campaign by CMW London.

The concept was pretty engaging because it revolves around the audiences rather than the products. In fact, the most reverberating campaigns doesnt need to directly boast its features, taste, or its beneficial factors. Many popular brand activation campaigns (like Gatorades Replay & Volkswagens Ping Pong) jumped onto a much indirect and subversive approaches in creating brand loyalty.

Mr. Maharis mentioned that Nicole and me might be involved for the upcoming Krafts Chipsmore brand activation campaign pitch, doing reviews on the research ideas and possibly work alongside the creative directors to develop the idea into a working one.

Will definitely look forward on it.

The end of the first week wasnt that bad. It wasnt surreal, but it wasnt strenuous either. Particularly, I wasnt assigned any important tasks by our supervisor(s) and thus spent most of my time researching for my finals.

Scripting and model texturing would be potentially a mountain to climb on the later stage so I guess it would rather better to start earlier or mourn about it when the time comes.

Well, we started the day by helping Eric and Diana to cut several Hawaiian-themed graphics and gimmicks styrofoam boards for DraftFCB annual dinner. We were invited to attend the dinner but I didnt manage to go though. Some staff in the office was pretty much occupied with the dinner while the rest were busy on clients works.

The social media marketing department was currently handling an ongoing project by Celcoms XPAX, called the Anugerah Juara Lagu 2014, in which their primary tasks were to generate promotion contents on social media and analyzing SE0 (search engine optimization). The campaign itself was started about two weeks ago.

6/1/14 MONDAY

8/1/14 WEDNESDAY

9/1/14 THURSDAY

10/1/14 FRIDAY

WEEK 1



// WEEK 2 WAS SKIPPED DUE TO LACK OF SUBSTANTIAL TASKS.

We were relocated into the arguably the warmest looking cubicle with orange-walls-and-stuff to work closely with the Celcom XPAX team. Mr. Christopher, the digital director for Celcom team approached Nicole and I to brief us about the things that we could assist. Basically there were two things (Well, actually there were much more.) that the team was currently working on: XPAX Anugerah Lagu Juaras E-DM (electronic direct mail) and Celcom banner redesign.

Few moments later Yi-Vonne brought another job requisition about designing Celcoms Buzzaar websites skin for Chinese New Year and Valentines Day. The job need to be finished as soon as possible so I was under Ms Elizabeths supervision, the art director, to design several options for the web thematic skins. The polished E-DM was emailed back to Mr. Chris to seek for clients approval, while Ms. Liz provided some visual guidelines and references for me to work on by tonight.

Continuing with yesterdays works, Mr. Chris just received the clients feedbacks about the E-DM in the morning. The copy requires minor revision while the visual had been approved.

I was mostly occupied with several iterations for Celcom Buzzaars web skin design throughout the day as Ms. Liz ran through few visual options for the clients to choose from. The deadline for the first visual mockup was supposedly today so its tolerable to mention its a rush job.

We look through several Chinese New Year ornaments and oriental pattern designs. Ms. Liz suggested to tweak the design to suit it with modernistic and contemporary feel rather than ancient China styles, so many of the visual references given were simple, clean yet identifiable visual elements.

There were a couple more things to say but apparently I stayed up until 9 PM before the design was approved by Ms. Liz. Its pretty interesting to work on the creative side of agency; an experience I didnt get (unfortunately) during last internship. Production, production and production was the only thing back then, but I guess things were changing over time.

The day took flight as newcomers were invited for a (supposedly) exciting short orientation held by Mr. Lawrence, the client service director of DraftFCB + Ignite. The contents of presentation was actually pretty much textbook Wikipedia materials and moderately interesting in profounding ways.

Back to work. I was pretty much settled as yesterdays job requisitions were accomplished, so there was only 1 task given by Ms. Yi-Vonne in the morning, that is to restructure the layouts for Celcoms Crescent banners into 15 different sizes. Supervised by Mr. Yau, the art director and Chee Haw, I guess its pretty much a straightforward since what I need to do was just to resizing the copies, inserting the logos, balancing the whole layouts and images. Iterated by Mr. Yau once before sent the final outputs back to Ms. Yi-Vonne in the afternoon. Its something that looks like below, just different sizes.

To conclude, I didnt have to work overtime for today and Im grateful either way. So little time, so much things and people to learn from.

Chinese New Year is coming, and most of the designers computer screens in the office were populated by fiery crimson graphics as their pencils danced across the table. Todays tasks were basically revisions of Celcoms Buzzaar web skins and Crescent WAP (wireless application protocols) banners after yesterdays clients feedbacks. Not much of come hell or high water, but I learnt that haste makes waste.

Ms. Jane passed two job requisitions as early as 10.30 AM, so I managed to finish re-layouting the similar banner (shown in my last post), in exclusion of several elements within the graphics.

Continuing with personally-I-find-it-more-interesting Celcoms Buzzaar project around 2 PM, the client mentioned that the art direction was too cute, in preference of some solid, oriental ornaments with horse (since its Year of the Horse) for the website skin.

Pretty much occupied through 9 hours but its arguably a field day. Weekend just feels good when you were engaged with several things throughout the week.

21/1/14 TUESDAY

22/1/14 WEDNESDAY

23/1/14 THURSDAY

24/1/14 FRIDAY

WEEK 3



Im not sure how to start, but professedly I was occupied with only a task to design Buzzaars Chinese New Year web skins (still doing that since last week??). Received the job requisition from Ms. Jane after the client replied that the second iterations visuals looked rather too modern and clean as opposed to traditional China. (But.. but the client didnt mention anything about that in the initial job brief!)

In a nutshell, Ms. Liz took another direction that were more ancient, dynasty, Chinese impressionism-oriented styles to dominate the white spaces. Less vectors, more rasters.The whole thing is quite strenuous albeit there were still much things to learn. Ill post it once the client agreed with the visuals.

Presumably, clients will not understand what they really wanted until you gave them what they think they wanted. Still, its dreadfully important to learn how to resonates with the clients (customers) in every single thing we did, regardless of the scale of impact. Sanguinely I wish the clients would just get over it and proceed with the Valentine day visuals.

After the client requested for the whole calligraphic, ancient China artistry styles fuss yesterday, Ms. Liz and I were pretty much dumbfounded after Ms. Jane distributed the job requistion, wherein they decided about the art direction they wanted.

The whole ink, landscape painting skin styles were rejected, and they improvised by putting in the light horse graphics that were used in another XPAX TTL banners. Below were the designs that were turned down by the clients. All were just retouched stock images obtained from 123rf and Shutterstock, so calculatively, each version would cost the client about MYR 70 for commercial purposes usage.

The feedback somehow eased the whole job since I did not need to recreate the whole thing, nevertheless well scrap out some previous elements and replace it with XPAX horse. Pretty much that was the only thing I did for today. Anyway, I might ditch out tomorrows post since expected tasks would be fixing several minor iterations with the design. Ill post the end result here only once its published in their website.

27/1/14 MONDAY

28/1/14 TUESDAY

WEEK 4

HAPPY NEW YEAR. IM RUNNING BACK HOME. WOOHOO.



I wasnt sure if its nervous breakdown or whatsoever mental tremors, but Im pretty sure that everybody had been in a state where they were losing some sort of reality grounding that attached their preconceptions towards their surroundings. It just felt like there was a fathomless emptiness that astringed your thoughts. How would I say it.. a hypothetical dilemma?

Whatever was that, I felt that theres an important part of us that radically changed every single day -making us less us, day by day. Coping with this transition was quite a major challenge for grown ups, especially when you were bombarded with various critical choices which could lead you to different paths in your later life. The real challenge during this transition isnt about defying changes, but to react from the undesirable and unpredictable consequences.

To survive these changes, we need to be prepared. To be prepared means being ready to welcome the arbitrariness when the time comes. As human, we tend to undermine the possibilities of all negative consequences and bombarded ourselves with all the positive prospects. The essence of positive thinking might sound intermittenly hopeful for most people out there, but not for me. In fact, it had burdened me a lot in many ways an ultimately disheartening experiences. Im losing my grounding. Really.

Well, to be honest, Im scared. There would be a day where everybody you knew would just completely disremembered you, so I guess its really important to do things that would really substantial rather than chasing something ingrained with false intentions within.

Let go.

6/2/14 THURSDAY

WEEK 5



Received 2 major tasks in the morning, sustained with another 1 minor task in the afternoon after lunch. The 1st major task from Mr. Chris is to reiterate and restructure the visual mockup for XPAXs website Reload Page.

Not much of a difficult-kind-of-task, but there were quite a number of tabs that were required to be added and deleted onto different layouts, while most of the copies were projected for alteration as well. Its kind of revamping the step-by-step visuals, like the example below. There were 5 more different pages that required changes on the tab and the content below the tab (obviously), so its more-or-less a painstaking task.

Second task was from Ms. Liz, that was to continue with designing the webskin for Buzzaars Valentines Day theme. On account that Yi-Vonne mentioned that the client didnt give any art directions about the design, Ms. Liz proceeded by providing several visuals for the guidelines.

Its halfway through this second internship and time indeed passed quickly.I remained idle throughout the morning since several account managers who usually gave out tasks, including Yi-Vonne, Miki and Jane were on leave throughout the day. The only task I received was a continuation of Buzzaars Valentines Day webskin from Waisim in the afternoon. The client has reviewed the first submitted visuals, and the feedback that we expected from them was classic: too cutesy and colorful. They wanted a Valentine theme that was more traditional-driven, subtle and old-school visuals.

Honestly Ive always had hard time dragging anchor points to stack up the perfect curve and dynamic-looking arcs throughout the canvas, but thats what I need to pick up as soon as possible right now. Vector graphics intimidates me. Euclidian vectors did not. Again, I digressed.

Spotted a shimmering-looking guy at 2.30 shortly after lunch, and he was none other than Mr. Ajeep, who came to save the day. Subsequently to the short talk between him and Mr. Chris, our current supervisor, Nicole and I had a short meeting with him, discussing about several matters and potential issues concerning the current internship experience.

This morning Mr. Chris approached Nicole and I, informing that well be invited for the brainstorming sessions every Friday together with the whole XPax team. The ideation session would involve everybody, and each of us has to come up with new XPax brand engagement or marketing campaign ideas to be presented to Mr. Richard, the boss every weekend. Frankly speaking it sounds exciting for someone who had never been involved in ideation process in previous agency, and would definitely looking forward to it. I guess Mr. Ajeeps mantra worked. Hehe.

Received only single task from Yi-Vonne about the Buzzaars Valentine Day skin design, and the clients suggestion was to tweak the movements and colors of the pink ribbons make it resonates with the Buzzaars logo. I guess I really had hard time in drawing ribbons on Illustrator without any guides. To my disappointment, Ms. Liz ended up sending me some EPS and AI ribbon templates for me to play around with rather than starting from scratch. I guess Ill really need to properly observe the minute details, shades, rhythm and movement of things in physical world.

In the morning I received another visual revision for the Buzzaars Valentine theme from Yi-Vonne. Based on the clients comment, most of our previous designs were regarded bastardizing the main logo, and they werent happy about it. Consequently, minor adjustment were made whereby the flow of ribbons would be placed behind the logo instead of coming out from the plastic bag.

After the lunch, the classic case strikes back the client changed their mind, and preferred us to design the batik-motifs (below the navigation buttons) into series of ribbons. Not as straightforward as the previous one, since Ill need to slowly warp and map the low-res motifs into less-flowy ribbons from other files. To make it less flat-looking, burn and dodge some part of the ribbons were necessary emphasizing the highlights and cast shadows. Its kinda similar to the procedural mapping in Maya, but its kinda manual in PS and AI.

Finished the whole mapping around 8.30, but I hope its pretty much the finalized visual since tomorrow is Valentine Day Friday already.

10/2/14 MONDAY

11/2/14 TUESDAY

12/2/14 WEDNESDAY

13/2/14 THURSDAY

WEEK 6



17/2/14 MONDAY

19/2/14 WEDNESDAY

20/2/14 THURSDAY

21/2/14 FRIDAY

WEEK 7

Regarding about today received tasks, there werent much things to explore on. Im not really sure if Monday actually felt like Monday without any mental turbulences.As Lakshmi came over, she provided several Tourism Malaysia images that needed to be resized and standardized. Straightforward. There was actually another XPAX related job that were sent over by Ms. Jane, but since the deadline is tomorrow, well, you understand.

Still in the midst of dilemma whether should I kickstart my career or pursuing further education. Myriad pros and cons, but the process of learning should be everlasting until youre stationary on your deathbed. So, learn as much as possible while youre young, they said.

The first task came from Yi Vonne, wherein Chee Haw supervised babysitted me throughout the day for every iterations that I did. The client is none other than Buzzaar which had seemingly grew fonder day by day. We were required to produce MMS and carousel banner for the upcoming promotions, and most of the images were already available online.

Another JR was from Mr. Chris and Ms. Jesheila, which is for XPAX Prepaid Bundle Promo. My task was to polish up the visuals, rearranging the layout, then add up glaring lights, flare the layout up, lighten the background up, blitz the phones up, or whatever-it-was-to-shine-the-spotlight-on-the-phone task with photoshop. I guess XPAX love lights too much. Just. too. much. I can felt my rods and cones screaming for breaks. To ease my job a little bit, Chee Haw provided this set of lights that the department peeps has abused recycled for XPAX visuals. Mr. Yau also provided a set of visuals for lights aura, flares, and laser lights to adapt into the visual.

Anyway, this morning Yi Vonne notified Chee Haw and me to change the visuals into something more subtle so that it can clearly represents the products that Buzzaar are trying to sell. Finished up the visuals around 1.30 after Chee Haw suggested visual modifications.

Coming back from lunch, we received clients feedback for Buzzaars Share and Win promo carousel banner and MMS. Guess what the client replied. After all of the time we spent yesterday and killing our precious, unretrievable time on thinking about redirecting the visuals from bombastic and expressive to subtle and this and that, the client requested to just reuse the original image and make it like a slideshow.

Following that, we continued with the weekly initiative for XPAX brand whereby well send our idea for brand engagement campaigns synopsis to Mr. Chris to check on every Friday.

Todays first task was assigned by Yi Vonne, where in Celcoms The Crescent will be launching six new brands (3 batches) soon. Our task is to adapt the visuals and copy into MMS, carousel banner, and EDM. Its pretty much the same thing all over again, but apparently this time the client would only like to see the 1st batch of the visuals before proceeding with the another pair of batches. The due date was supposedly next Monday, but since its a concise job, then lets overcome procrastination.

The second task was to update the Buzzaars Share and Win promo copy to BM after Indra sent it over. Quickfire.

Last task in the afternoon was assigned by Jesheila regarding the XPAX Prepaid Bundle (The one with lights, lights and lights.). Since Mr. Chris suggested to send the client to sets of visuals (One with his original art direction, and another one with client-requested light blinks over 9000 version). The client preferred the first visual set, but they would required us to tweak the hue and remove the copy. Finished couple of the visuals around 6.20.



25/2/14 TUESDAY

26/2/14 WEDNESDAY

27/2/14 THURSDAY

28/2/14 FRIDAY

WEEK 8

Anyway, Mr. Chris showed this DraftFCB + iCRMs Merry Christmas Facebook application:Merry Kissmas!

The application is a simple, interactive rendition of the Christmas kissing under the mistletoe tradition whereby you can send a kiss to anyone in your Facebook friend list.

From what I understood, Mr. Chris mentioned that they are planning to convert the whole application from Flash into HTML5, therefore Ill need to convert the visual elements inside the application into tiles, as it should be as lightweight as possible. I spent the whole morning dissecting the patterns that can be tiled and generated few files for each assets.

However, Mr. Chris didnt want me to export the whole assets as images, but rather to create the tileable assets inside the photoshop layers, organized those, and to be passed to the ICRM guys.

Hi.Its the midweek again.Apparently I didnt receive any new task from the team, which sums up my pretty monotonic day. In the afternoon, Yi Vonne requested a little tweak in the copy of Buzzaars Share to Win MMS, which shouldnt take very long time to get it done. Continued doing research and mockup for my report design and few competition initiative ideas.

Anyway, I do think that room temperature and ambient noise really affected productivity. As far as Im concern, the worst working period is always after lunch. The blood is diverted from the head to the stomach after some time, and people said food with high sugar content would make you sleepy. Especially fast food.. which is practically packed of fats and sugar.

Anyway, theres supposedly two tasks to be completed by the end of the day due to some non-technical issues (I hope it was.), I only had one given task from Mr. Chris, that is to create the digital wireframes for upcoming XPAXs website revamp.

Check the current website here. It surely isnt an embodiment of The FWAs best website nominee or whatever awards are out there, but if anybody would glorify its design, I humbly beg to differ.

Anyway, the whole task was to create layouts for both desktop and mobile version of the current website, with both expanded and collapsed version of the tabs. The Windows 8 Metro tiles-style would still be the key elements, although Mr. Chris wanted it to suit the design towards XPAXs visual signature curves and the two key hues.

Anyway, todays task was to continue a bit of minor changes on the Xpaxs wireframe visuals. Pretty straightforward. Another rather-exciting task was the opportunity to help Mr. Chris & Mr. Richard (our CD) to develop some storyboard sketches for the XPAX initiative campaign. Currently its still a classified project, but the keywords are: football & cats.

The last minor task was to help Yivonne to resize and adapt the current The Crescents Banner into smaller size. Could say that I was pretty impressed when Yivonne showboated her witty photoshop skills. For account manager, thats a plus. A great big plus. Yay.

T H A N K Y O U .

2014

Date post:	22-Nov-2015
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DraftFCB - An Odyssey

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