Media production student Tin on practical training in Croatia

Tin Novak Koletić, a first year student of the Media Production programme, travelled to Croatia as part of the Erasmus+ programme, where he undertook a practical training at IDEA Studio, an architectural studio that has been in business since 1994.

During my first practical training at IDEA Studiu, I got to know the whole team, who were very relaxed and friendly. As an architecture studio, the work is very varied, challenging and fun. Some of the employees’ tasks are focused solely on design, others are exclusively programmers, some do both. The mentor I was assigned was Antonia, who is very hard-working in the studio, but also takes the time to help her colleagues. In addition to Antonia, on the first day I also met her supervisor Davor, who showed me all the necessary knowledge that I would acquire by the end of the practical training, and also described the surroundings of the studio.

My first task was to crop and colour coordinate old photos to be used later for clients. I also had to prepare the Studio IDEA stickers, which would later be stuck on the cars and presented to the clients. That was the end of my first day of work.

During the week, I received various assignments from colleagues in different areas. During the first week I received simpler tasks such as preparing photos for use on the web and cropping or changing their colours. In the following week, I was still doing smaller tasks – cropping images, changing the order of the subjects in the photos. As I excelled at the tasks I was given, by the end of the week I had already started working on studio projects. One of the projects required additional design for an advert: “Hey!” for one of my clients’ birthday campaign. I had to redesign similar ads in a retro style for the online format and adjust the size of the print media. A4 format ad, online publication of the ad and a bulletin board. The clients as well as the collaborators were satisfied with the product.

In the following weeks, I also received one major assignment from my colleague Jasmin, who is responsible for online advertising or websites. I had to create the icons to be used for the website. He gave me all the information I needed to do the job successfully (format, style). He also helped to create various advertisements for Easter for one of their clients: “HTE”. My task was to similarly design web and print media of different resolutions.

The assignments I received in IDEA Studio were clearly explained, more challenging as the weeks went by but fun at the same time, and at the end of the assignments my products received both positive and negative constructive comments, which I like a lot, because I can focus on improving my weaknesses or discover a different, better way of looking at the workflow.