Dave provides an insight to his time as an intern at Sugar.

It all began when I finished my degree in Advertising & Brand Design in Swansea. I was always in love with design from the age I started school and was given the tools to express myself. I started to think about setting my own personal goals, one of which was to get stuck straight into the design industry and not to take any time off as I am very passionate about design trends and didn't want to fall out of the game and miss anything.

I first found out about Sugar when I noticed a poster stuck up in our 3rd year room in Uni, It was advertising the internship, I thought this could be a chance for me to show what I have got to people who have greater experience of how to actually make money from design rather than just produce 'great ideas' which is what I was used to doing.

Long story short I got a place at Sugar! on the two week intern programme. Well done me!

So let's talk about some of the things that went on during the time I spent at Sugar, the skills I learnt, the projects I was given to work on and what its like from a graduates perspective to work in a team of professionals. 

Week 1

I arrived at Sugar, meeting the team. First thing I noticed was that my somehow imaginary thoughts of a design agency being scary, intimidating & posh immediately vanished as the team greeted me as if I was someone important, the surrounding area looked cosy and I was given my own Mac! This Mac was my toolkit to show these guys what I was made of.

My boss, Dan Clemo was very humbling of the work I produced to get the place at Sugar which overwhelmed me a huge amount and already I had overflowing confidence to get stuck in.

I am very much used to using the Adobe Suite,  so I started cracking on with the work I was given, which was primarily print work and ideas for the games & apps company 'Marshmallow Entertainment'.

As the week progressed I was given client projects to work on, I had worked with clients before but Sugar taught me that the process before the outcome is very important and it determines the outcomes quality, for example in Uni I would go with one of my first 5 ideas, but here I was given much more time to focus on one thing and develop it over and over until it was something I was proud of. I also had a team of industry professionals around me to give me advise rather than a bunch of drunk Uni friends.

The week moved on and I was given a BRANDING project, yes capitals for that! As you can tell I love brands, especially creating them and everything they stand for. This is a skill I learnt to love throughout Uni. I was always really into brand experiences and putting myself into different worlds of which exist through smell, colour, and touch. A place you visit consciously or sub consciously of which can make you imagine things and catch your attention. I am getting a bit deep now. My bad...

Anyway the week came to an end and already I had probably more work by my side than the whole of my first year in Uni! and the funny thing was It didn't really feel like work to me, it was more like I was improving my ways of thinking and getting around problems I was given (problems meaning the briefs I was set). I was starting to produce some real clean design work of which flourished from having the right people being around me and the right tools to work with.

I realised that Sugar did everything in their own way, I enjoyed working in this new method and wanted to introduce my passion for design into it which would hopefully grab their attention and think 'we should keep this dude!' I also started a working friendship with the Senior designer Graham, of which shared alot of the same interests as me which was a massive help, he gave me endless amounts of advice with my work too (unfortunately he supports Everton).

Week 2

Okay, so the first week went very well, it was weird how comfortable I was doing live work, I expected a big shouty boss and ALOT of criticism for my very free-form ways of doing things.

This week I was given the chance to do what I always have wanted to do from a small 'Sonic the Hedgehog addicted child', which was get involved in the MAKING OF A GAME! If you didn't know me before yes I am a massive gaming geek, and I love everything about games, the story it tells, the characters it involves and the psychology of wanting to carry on. 

So I was given the task of creating the SFX for a new game Sugar were working on called 'Word Whiz', a contemporary game changer for the obvious boring word games out there.

I had experience on making beats from the age of 16 but never SFX for a live game! This was a challenge, but that's what I was here to do, learn new things. At first I was a but shaky into the fact it was lying on me to make these sounds, I thought to myself 'I am not producer' but the more and more I was telling myself that the more I wanted to say yes I AM. My love for music is in a horse race with design, these are two of my greatest passions.

As the week progressed I began to realise whatever I am doing I have 5 days to do it, which isn't that much, but I was finding new ways around it and starting to get results that the team around me were really starting to like.

I was really starting to enjoy working at Sugar, doing these things I had been passionate about my whole life and doing it for the purpose of business.

So the internship came to an end, sadly. But I did get to meet some wicked people, people who had very different skill sets & worked in totally different ways, but when jelled together amazing things could happen. I felt I really fit in the team here at Sugar, even though I am a very quiet individual and like to let my work do the speaking, Sugar brought me out of my shell socially and gave me confidence to discuss ideas and my work. It excites me so much that ideas from my head were being given the chance for once, the chance to be used in the real world. Sugar were very impressed with my work ethic and work I produced at the time I was there, this was extremely overwhelming I had a smile ear to ear driving all the way home on that Friday afternoon.

Here's some advice to anybody graduating and hoping to get involved in the design industry, in three short sentences!

• Show them you really are interested face-to-face and not over e-mail or phone.
• Even if you have the chance to work with them for 1 day, do absolutely everything you were born to do, it develops your skills and shows them you are more than capable.
• Everyone has a role, a different personality, apply this to the team even if you are not great at one thing you will always be greater at another.

Over and out.