JPL Integrated
Marketing Agency Tour
On
September 26th, about fifteen students drove up to Harrisburg PA to receive a
studio tour at JPL Integrated Marketing Agency. I was excited to go because
this is the first time I was going to see a company that was set up like this. The
culture of the other studios I have been to are more creative based because the
employees were mostly designers or developers. JPL has a lot more employees
involved in the corporate side so it was very interesting to see how the groups
interacted.
From
what I could tell during the tour there were creatives and business people
spread out on both floors of the building. Each group was fairly separate but
everyone seemed to collaborate at some level. On the second floor near where
the developers sat there was a kiosk that had all types of devices, which were
held up by Legos. When the main screen was used all of the devices followed,
this allows the team to see how the site and different pages look on all types
of screens. This set up was really fascinating, I wish we could have this sort
of set up in the department because we are always talking about what our
designs would look like across multiple devices.
Reflecting
back on the tour, the only thing I would change is the amount of designers we
talked to. It seemed that many of them were not in so that made it difficult
but I really would have liked to hear their thoughts about the company and
work. Near the end of the tour the discussion of jobs and internships was
brought up, they said that while they are often hiring; internships are very
competitive. Our tour guide did mention that they do allow students to shadow
and that most designers enjoy having students there. I thought this was very
exciting and I may go back up to JPL with another student to shadow both the
motion graphic and design departments to get a better understanding of the
agency.
