Week 4B Field trips

We spent this day visiting 3 local design firms in Lancaster. Our first stop was Synapse, a predominantly web design based studio located off of Centerville Road. I was initially really impressed with the overall environment of this studio, it was very well designed when we walked in and seemed like an upscale professional atmosphere. Bobby Deraco walked us through the studio, telling us what each room's function. I was impressed by all of the equipment that the designers had access to. As we walked through the room where the developers work, he showed us different projects that people were working on simultaneously. Some people were strictly photoshop based, designing visual graphics for the coders to then generate. Others were working on front-end development, and some people were testing websites that were in the end stages of development. It was not what I was expecting a design firm's web developers to function like. I had expected each person to have their own cubicle space within the office, not all be working side by side in a narrow dark room. I think that the set up had its perks and cons. The perks being that you could easily get help from other designers that would be able to coach you through something you didn't know. The cons would be that you had no privacy, worked all day everyday in a dark narrow room, and for me, it would be intimidating to feel like people were hovering over me all day as I worked. All in all though, I was really impressed with this firm and feel as though I learned a lot about how the web development business world works.

Our next stop was Godfrey, in downtown, Lancaster. This building ended up being very large and provided separate cubicles for each of their employees to work in. I like that aspect of this company. Godfrey was probably my least favorite of the 3 places that we went because I wasn't that crazy with the work environment and they also seemed to not be as strictly professional and upscale as Synapse was. It seemed like a mediocre place to spend the majority of your days. This is just my opinion though, I am very sensitive to the spaces that I am in, so I am really using this as a biased opinion. Other than that though, I was impressed with the presentation that they gave about the business to business world, and also the work that Erin Good has accomplished in her year's time at Godfrey. It seems like they are in a big transitional period into the web world and that she is a main component of that. 

The Infantree was my favorite stop of the day. I really liked the owner's personalities and the chemistry that they had with one another to be co-owners. I also really love their work that they have done. I think that I was drawn to their brainstorming methods where they have their clients pick images that they feel would suit their brand and end up making a huge element collage that gets picked away at until their have a final moldboard. This is very similar to my own creative process because I am also a very visual person. I was also more drawn to the smaller design studio atmosphere. They only had about 6 employees, but everyone seemed to have their own role within the company and they all seemed to be close friends as well as coworkers. I was a little taken aback to learn that they really only had one person that did their web developing. All in all, it was a great and education day that I really feel that I benefitted from.