Brief
Creatively direct with two other 4th years an in-house design agency, third and second year designers acting as senior and junior designers. They have to apply to the five agencies with an interview process to become part of that agency. The agency project will last the whole year and each one will be given mentoring by a professional agency that is based in Edinburgh. The mentor agency will provide help, give briefs and offer support. The outcome is to run professionally with all the right paper work, as well as provide team management of your agency.

Solution
Jennifer Pearce, Melanie Findlay and myself first created an agency initially called Maven, and as the year progressed we developed and became Fetch!

Outcome
We had a series of ups and downs but learnt throughout how to team manage, have team fun, invoice and send estimates. Without this experience I would not know how to deal with potential clients professionally and now feel much more prepared for the future.

Reflection
The agency started off slowly at the beginning of the year, however as people settled into their roles things picked up and we were in full momentum by the end. Not many people can say they ran an in-house agency in their 4th year; the experience makes me feel much more prepared for entering the design world, having worked through potential initial problems at this early stage.

Brief
Document anything relevant to your agency that happened over the year in anyway that is appropriate, create enough identical copies for each member of the agency, your mentor design agency and two for the eca design office.

Solution
The most important thing for Fetch! this year was ‘the journey’ and addressing different problems with running an agency. The idea was to create a box of cards, each of which held a problem we faced, the solution we went for, the outcome and finally a reflection on what we did. The box also holds a lot of information on what works and what doesn’t work from our experience, so the year below can use it to run their agency more efficiently without having to go though the same problems.

Outcome
A series of 12 sleeved cards in a box that targets the problems we faced, all visually described as well as set out in text. We printed the sleeves and boxes in the college printing workshop.

Reflection
The project was really fun and hands on, screen printing and creating packaging that was custom designed. Going though the year and categorizing the events into problems and solutions showed collectively how much we went though and what we learned.