Off Campus Event: JPL agency tour

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.