Behind the scenes of a start-up design studio
A day as an intern with Sangfroid!’s creative team
Slack messages start to come in as I stretch into downward dog on my yoga mat at home– it’s 7:45 am, and everyone at Sangfroid is already up and ready to work! As I make breakfast, our #status channel starts to fill up with each team member’s daily rundown, a virtual post-it note of their to-do’s for the day.
I scan through the messages as I head out the door to the office downtown– it gives me the big picture of what the Sangfroid! team is working on and prioritizing, which I appreciate even if it’s not all relevant to my own projects. We’ve always got a lot going on (of course– we’re a start-up agency growing just as fast as Austin), and as the creative team’s design intern, I’m excited and ready for whatever comes my way today.
I walk into the office (sometimes to the welcome surprise of breakfast tacos or kolaches, both unfamiliar food groups for a recent Texas transplant like myself), and post my own daily rundown. Every day, my list begins with “CT stand-up,” the Creative Team’s morning check-in call, where we each go through what we’re working on and divvy up tasks. I usually go into one of the soundproof phone booths we have in the office to join the Google Meet, but every now and then we’re all able to make it into the office to chat in person.
Some mornings these meetings are more productive than others, but teams that genuinely like each other and can have some fun are overall better at getting things done together, so the jokes and life updates are definitely worth it. Plus, when things need to get done, we can really kick into high gear thanks to the effort we’ve spent to build trust in each other.
Our flexible hybrid structure means I could work from home too, but nothing beats our downtown space. Not everyone is here every day, but I like to go in at least four days a week– there’s always a different combination of us here, which keeps things interesting. There’s also nothing like drinking coffee out of a Pantone color swatch mug to make you feel like you work at a marketing and design studio (Green Ash is my go-to). And sometimes our non-human friends come in to join us! Moose is just as huge as Tito is tiny but they’re both great at their jobs as unofficial company mascots.
Some days, however, it’s great to have the flexibility to work remotely. Our team is made stronger by the option to work from wherever works best for each member’s preferences and productivity. When we get to choose our ideal work environment, everyone is happier and more things get done. It just means we have to be even more diligent with our communication to keep everyone on the same page, and the time we do spend in the same place is all the more precious.
Once our morning stand-up is over, it’s time to get things done. I hop on Udemy and make some progress on a 30+ hour training that I’ve been powering through to get more comfortable with Figma (a prototyping design tool) and Webflow (a website design and development tool). Both programs are really intuitive and I like the hands-on assignments, but nothing beats the real-life experience I’ll get later in the morning when a client project gets thrown my way on Asana– sometimes it’s picking a new set of photos for a website prototype, designing user personas or a visual graph of our services in Illustrator, using Procreate to illustrate assets for a website concept we’re pitching, or updating our New Business slide deck.
Today, I also have a few meetings in the morning: a blog writing session, social media strategy brainstorming (a project that I got myself involved in just by asking to help– that’s encouraged here!), and our biweekly “All-Hands” meeting for all four teams (Accounts, Creative, Media, and Biz Dev) to go through goals, challenges, and successes of our current quarter and touch base on everything going on.
At lunchtime, I usually head to the fridge to grab food I’ve brought from home, but my favorite lunch so far was my first week, when the creative team went to Cooper’s for barbecue– it’s nice to have our office in the heart of downtown because there’s so much we can walk to. I’m from Virginia so I’ve had barbecue before, but nothing’s quite like Texas barbecue, and I was lucky to have people there with me that could explain to me that yes, that big white piece of waxy paper is actually your plate.
In the afternoons, I’ll usually keep working on a client project, take a walking meeting around the block with a coworker, have a one-on-one with my internship coordinator for goal setting or progress updates, help write a blog post (about bonsai trees and branding) or participate in a whiteboard session with the creative team to brainstorm ideas for a pitch to a new client (which I look forward to most).
Our team is the perfect size to bounce ideas off each other, and everyone brings their own brand of brilliance to the table. I love the energy of being together with five creative brains, a whiteboard, and a problem to solve– group creative sessions are probably what I’ve missed most the past year or so, since I last worked on design teams for theater productions my senior year of college before COVID. Having the whole team in the same room also makes me understand why we have a bit of a friendly rivalry with the Accounts team: everyone on the creative team (including myself) is both encouraged and expected to contribute, and we can seem a bit chaotic until the dust clears and a solid plan of action emerges. I love the frenzy and ambition, everyone adding on to each other, bringing in new perspectives. It’s a rush, and it’s a team that I’m proud to truly feel a part of.
Besides the overlapping voices of creative brainstorms, the soundtrack to my day includes the occasional whistle of Ruben’s ocarina, the gentle rumble of chairs rolling over for a short (or long) chat with someone at a nearby desk, keyboards tapping, the triple pop of new Slack notifications, and the back door making a sound kind of like a sneeze every time someone opens it to come in or out.
I hear it again now as I leave the office at the end of my day, passing the phone booths on my right and the foliage wall flashing “Sangfroid!” in bright colors on my left. I let myself out of the building onto the streets of downtown Austin, Lime scooters littering the edges of the sidewalk, and take my time walking back to my car a few blocks away. I’ll be back tomorrow, and ready for whatever comes next.
