Year 10 student Lauren Miles spent a week with Happy Creative, spending time with the team and learning what it takes to be a Happy. Here, on her debut blog, the 16-year-old looks back on her week at Happy HQ.
Work experience – the two words that strike fear into many a student.
When you hear those words, a flood of panic washes over you. The panic of meeting new people, being given tasks that are beyond your capability, working for much longer hours than you would be during school time…
Despite the pre-work nerves, as soon as I stepped into Happy HQ I immediately felt at ease and – apologies for the obvious irony – I was submerged in happiness.
Experience
On my first day in the office, I took part in the Monday Morning Meeting with the rest of the Happies. The Creative Challenge is designed to get the old grey matter working at the start of the week – it worked and I recommend every school take up this challenge.
Whilst you might think that this is a truly trivial thing, the Creative Challenge immediately showed me the kind of fun, exciting atmosphere that is present at Happy Creative.
One of the most interesting aspects of being at Happy is every person is an expert in their own field. Creative Director James took me through the basics of Adobe programmes such as Photoshop and Illustrator. As a person who enjoys a challenge he then set me the task of observing tutorials based around these programmes before setting me a task of designing a brand for a Blackpool-based dance studio.
Next up, office manager Louise introduced me to the different tools and settings on In Design and set me a creative task of completing a newsletter.
Expertise
No day is the same at Happy with difference people working on different projects using different expertise. Account manager Marilia took me through what it takes to juggle clients and keep them all happy; PR and content manager Nick took me through the various types of PR and Social Media, while web wizard Damian showed me coding and how to build a reliable website and Hakim took me through the animated world Happy offers.
I gained a lot of knowledge based on these conversations and I am very grateful to the Happy team for their patience and for spending their time discussing the different job roles with me. In addition to this, I continued with my Creative Time throughout the course of the week which gave me a great opportunity to get used to the programmes and to gain experience in using them.
A happy team
Building a happy team runs throughout the vision of the business so the team took to the driving range as part of its monthly social activities. The Village Resort in Blackpool the chosen destination and a chance to test of our golfing skills – with varying degrees of success and a lot of banter!
I think it’s safe to say that overall, I have learnt a lot of valuable information during my time here at Happy Creative; I am very thankful for all the encouragement, advice and teaching that I have received from all of the team and I am extremely appreciative of being given this opportunity.
