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ZAID MURTAZA ADVERTISING KRALINGSEKERKLAAN 660C 3065CC ROTTERDAM 0641032905
HERC THE AGENCY KLOVENIERSBURGWAL 131H, 1011 KD AMSTERDAM EMILIO DE HAAN EMILIO@HERC.AGENCY
Index setup
Experiences Sorry can’t do P. 7 Shame of the past P. 9 Activities Still in the office? P. 11 Tell me and i forget, involve me and I learn P. 13 Out of the office P. 14 Wander and wonder P. 17 Assignments Eid Al Fitr P. 19 Cards Against Inhumanity P. 21 Reflection Considerations and expectations P. 23 Goals P. 24 progress P. 24 Consistancy P. 25 Profesional profile P. 25
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SORRY CAN’T DO
At the start of my internship, I felt like I had the biggest creative block while still putting a lot of pressure on myself to come up with cool stuff to show my worth to everybody. I felt uncomfortable asking for help. I didn’t want to bother others with it, Of course, this resulted in a heavier creative block. Everybody at Herc is very approachable, attentive, and considerate. But for me, that wasn’t enough to shorten the distance that I felt between me and them. I felt like everyone was so advanced This of course became the standard that I was going to keep myself to. Digging a hole deeper and deeper behind my desk, without anybody putting these pressures on me besides myself. This is a recurring situation I see in myself… Sometimes I went to the designer’s room just to chat up and feel a different vibe. Often at the end of the day, I would see Gina still working on some Herc stuff. I would ask some questions and fanboy
over the work that she was making, she was very open about it and asked me for my opinion. Gina seemed to have the same insecurities that I had which drew us closer. So I made it a bit of a routine to walk by her desk at the end of some workdays :) One day at work I saw Gina walking up the stairs, she was busy with some visuals for Timo (art director). To my surprise, I heard her say ‘hey Timo, it’s really not working. I’m not making progress, do you have some examples for me?’ To me, it was a moment of relief. The first time in the office I heard someone say that they couldn’t figure something out and ask for help. Of course, Timo’s response was that he could definitely find some better examples to give Gina more of an indication of what to do. With this simple exchange of words, I felt like I got help instead of Gina. It set a tone for me that it’s normal to not always be able to do everything by yourself. I knew this but now I felt it.
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SHAME OF THE PAST
In the second month of my internship, I noticed a curious title in my google calendar, and all of the creatives were tagged in it. It was going to be hosted by Emilio and Rogier them selfs. I was excited since it would be the first presentation I would see from them. To me, a good presentation also tells me something about the presenter, no matter what the subject is. By the end, I want to feel like I also learned something about the person talking to me. And given that I haven’t spoken to Emilio and Rogier that much since I started, I was excited to have that conversation. (expectations set high). On the day of the presentation, no one knew what it would entail. Everyone was curious as to what the two had planned :). Emilio arrived, but Rogier couldn’t make it to the office that day. We learned that the presentation was going to be held by Emilio anyway, so it wasn’t called off.
The presentation started, and Emilio revealed that the shame of the past would be all about putting all of his most shameful projects on the table for everyone to talk about. ‘Damn, that’s sick!’ I thought. This is exactly the type of conversation I was hoping for! We had so much fun looking at all the goofy work he’s made in the past, listening to the choices and thoughts behind them, and laughing. Another moment of relief. Looking at his past works, I got excited. I can do this, I thought to myself, and it was another moment to feel like it’s okay to come up with silly ideas that you think are funny at the moment. Of course, I loved the ideas he now felt shame for. Those were my favorites. This meeting felt like a group of friends having fun, this is what attracts me to creative work. Of course, professional work also needs space for concentration and seriousness, but this airy feeling just excites my creativity. The distance between Emilio and me felt like It became smaller.
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STILL IN THE OFFICE?
March 7, I just finished some concept visuals for Shoeby and started talking to Emilio Franquelo (copywriter). He was busy with the script for a Meatless Farm voice-over and kept joking that I would do it since it will be cheaper than professionals, and I had the voice for it. Anyways, we were joking around, but if he’d had asked me I wouldn’t have to think twice about saying yes. Instead, he asked if I would like to join the VoiceOver session at the recording studio Audentity. That got me excited, it would be my first time seeing collaboration with others outside of Herc. That’s what I’ve been looking forward to, collaboration. So we took the uber on the company’s expenses and made our way to the studio. We arrived a few minutes late, which is apparently normal in Spain according to Emilio. I got greeted by Miles who I later found out is the girlfriend of Timo (art director at Herc). I loved the atmosphere in the studio and saw a familiar face, a young artist who goes by the name of Ian. I’ve met and hung out a few times before but never worked with him. Almost no one knows this, but I see him as my secret rival. Ian is a skilled musician, photogra-
pher, and has a creative mind. But it’s the way he moves around that I want to top. He moves around with focus, and seemly not scared to try new things and ventures. Anyways, he was going to do the VoiceOver for our script. We went over the mood/tone that we were aiming for, which didn’t take long since Ian understood the assignment. After a few questions and suggestions, he went straight to the recording booth and he hit the spot after the first take. To be sure we tried a few more versions with some slight punctuation changes but other than that we were already satisfied. Afterward, we introduced ourselves once again but this time with a bit more background information on where we’re from. All of us in the room were very interested in each other’s stories so we just kept talking and listening. To me this was one of those key moments where I see the beauty in creative collaboration, working with people you like and care about. I feel like an art director has the position to but people in motion. With this kind of activity, the connections become clearer. I am happy to be reminded that someone’s voice is also something you can collaborate with.
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TELL ME
AND I FORGET, INVOLVE ME AND I LEARN I see myself as a copycat. So, the best way for me to learn would be by helping others with their work. That’s why I started off my internship by playing assist. While still finding my way around the office, I was asked by Naomi Brusselman and Elif Albayrak to help with some ideas for Shoeby. It was fun since I would’ve never seen myself thinking of concepts for a shoe store that I’ve never visited before, but doing research and coming up with ideas together felt good. Way better than the teamwork I’ve had during my practices at WdKa. This project led to me helping them with another one. Elif And Noami were busy thinking of a breakfast format so everybody could organize/theme a breakfast for the office. They needed a poster for this Idea which I got to work on. The poster needed a concept, so we planned a review session and I started working. Sadly the project didn’t get off the ground. I’m still happy with the project since I experienced what it’s like to be briefed by junior art directors on making a visual, even if it was an in-house project.
Throughout the internship, I kept making use of my photoshop knowledge by making various concept visuals for Stefan. By doing this I also kept seeing a ton of different ways how you can visually support your idea. To me, this is an important skill since I have the tendency to keep ideas in the form of words and sentences. Talking about visuals, I’ve been grinding my image/video searching skills like never before. There’s so much material out in the world already that you can pull out of its original context and put it in yours to support a new idea. This is something I already knew but now understand on a new level. I remember putting a storyboard together a few years ago before I had any knowledge of how they were made, and I felt so cool for making this stich of different images and clips to visualize my storyboard. And now years later, seeing this being used in a professional setting gives me more confidence in my ways of working. If it works, it works.
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OUT OF OFFICE
On the 3rd of March, the creatives and designers were asked to come together by Emilio. In the meeting, he told us that he felt let down/disappointed by the fact that no one in the office had suggested an idea of how we could show support to Ukraine. It had been a week since Russia first invaded Ukraine. For some reason, I felt like I was caught off guard. I had a lot of feelings and thoughts going around in my head, like why should we as an agency involve ourselves in this war if we haven’t done this in the past for any other wars or conflicts? What makes Ukrain different or exceptional, it felt like a hypocritical request. And I wasn’t the only one thinking this at that moment. But what makes this moment memorable to me, is that I felt like there was space for this dialogue. Emilio asked us to from now on suggest ideas for topics we care about, and to use the platform of Herc to broadcast our ideas. So to me, this was an invitation to not be hypocritical and think of an idea for these ‘other wars’ that I was thinking about. At the same time, others took this as a call to action and started thinking about ideas for Ukraine.
One of them that made it through was ‘Streets for Ukraine’ which was presented by Stefan Wittemann, our creative director. The idea was simple: The core element of the campaign is bright yellow stickers that turn the typical blue Dutch street signs into the symbol that everyone knows at the moment: The Ukrainian Flag. An opportunity that makes it possible for everyone to be part of this movement. These stickers needed an average size and places to be put on. So I was asked to go outside and measure signs to find out what the average size would be for our stickers. During this task, I also found a street named ‘Rusland’ (Russia) very close to our office! I suggested using this street for our press foto, so we could say that Russia stands for Ukraine. They liked it and a few days later we went out with the whole office to put these stickers all over Amsterdam’s street signs. For the Rusland street, we asked a photographer to help us make photos and we send out the press release to different news outlets which decided to pick up on this story.
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WANDER AND WONDER
19th of April, Marieke my study coach came by the office for a small evaluation moment with Emilio, Sandra, and me. During this conversation, we discussed how I was doing, what I was doing, and how I was doing. Work-wise, things were going fine. I got to help and work on multiple projects, and I was getting along with everyone. But I still felt quite uncreative, and as if I was having a creative block that slowed down my creative thinking. I normally find it hard to discuss negative feelings, since I don’t want to bother others with them and I feel like I should figure them out by myself. But a day before on the 18th I had a long conversation with Fleur Neeleman about this bad habit of mine, so now that I had an opportunity to work on this I hesitantly took it. Which turned out to be a good choice. I got reminded by everyone that I don’t have to be creative from behind my desk, but that I’m allowed to move around and go work in different places and environments. This internship is for me and I can make it work how I want it. Emilio told me to go to the cinema, and museum, to take a boat
tour through Amsterdam, and to buy paper and pens to draw with. This got me excited and revamped my internship almost exactly at the halfway point. It made so much sense that I didn’t have to spend my whole internship in a support role, this is something I decided on myself. Now it was time to also move and wander around to get inspired. 2 days later Jade Schaap whom I work with as a team in Herc decided to go out and visit Foam museum which I’ve visited before when I needed inspiration and when I wanted to see new things. We took the office Creditcard and enjoyed the day outside. In the beginning, it felt like this isn’t what I should be doing during my internship, I need to be in the agency and be learning from the people around me. But I gradually started feeling ok and also understood that I had more places to learn from besides the office. This is something I really want to embrace in my workspace. This is something I want to make a norm for myself, something I will demand in the future.
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EID AL FITR
After nearly a month of fasting it’s almost time for celebration. EID AL FITR is coming up, in dutch also known as ‘Suikerfeest’, and translated to English ‘Holiday of Breaking the Fast’. I got the assignment to create something for Herc to share on their socials. I started off by writing down what this day means to me and asked around what it meant to others, I noticed similar answers but still each unique to their own situation and lives. Just like Ramadan, Eid is not really well understood by most people who’re not practicing Islam. So Elif reminded me that it would be good to clarify to people that it’s about more than food and sweets. This set me on a path of finding ways to visualize what more there is to Eid. After some thinking, I realized that in Islam symbolism plays a big part in the culture. Since it’s forbidden to draw images of prophets, people started to draw floral patterns to symbolize a characteristic of prophets and in some places even symbolize ALLAH’s beauty. So I focussed on the topic of symbolism. During lunch one time,
I was explaining some of my ideas to Elif and she misunderstood what I was saying. But because of this confusion, she let me discover the art of ‘Ebru’, also known as ‘Turkish marbling’. This is it! This is what I was going to make the artwork with. This way I can be away from my laptop, learning something, and introduce others to marbeling too. After some feedback rounds, Jade and I decided on making the tulip, a symbol used often in ebru art to symbolize ALLAH. I found an artist that has a studio in NDSM that gives workshops in Ebru making but also allows for free working. I prepared well by watching a ton of YouTube videos to ensure that we could leave that day with the flower artwork that we wanted. The man turned out to be extremely helpful and basically gave us an entire workshop. In the end, we managed to make some beautiful Ebru artworks and got to share in on Herc’s Instagram account. It was a rather small assignment, but I believe that approaching it with a sincere attitude made it a meaningful project. A project that also means something to me.
CARDS
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AGAINST INHHUMANITY On the 3rd of March, the creatives and designers were asked to come together by Emilio. Yes, I’ve said this sentence before in this report, but I have another story to tell. To refresh your memory, this meeting was about the lack of initiative shown by the creatives concerning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On this day I had mixed feelings, I felt hypocritical if I spend time at Herc addressing this problem while I’ve never heard anyone consider making something for other countries that drastically deserve help and attention. But Emilio told us that he wants more work and ideas for the conflicts that are important to us, not just Ukraine. So I took that seriously and In some free hours and some hours after the internship I started working on creating a project. I asked Timo and Fleur Neeleman my creative partner outside of Herc for feedback and managed to put together a presentation for an idea. Though on the day of pitching these ideas to each other, I had run by a camera store to rent some gear for a different internal project, causing me to arrive late to the meeting. When I entered sweaty from biking fast, they were already going through some ideas. At this moment my fear of failure (faalangst) kicked in and I decided not to present my idea, in my head I had many reasons to justify my choice. But when everyone had shown their work, and Emilio asked if anyone else had an idea Timo pointed to me and said ‘you have work’. Well…if it’s announced like this, I might as well show it. So I presented a card game that will help people talk about topics that are important but hard to form an opinion about. As an example, I showed an image of me at a climate march in the Hague holding up an empty sign since I didn’t know what to say, but I did want to be there and support the others. The playing method and the name would be taken from an existing game called ‘Cards Against Humanity’And I would rename it to ‘Cards Against Inhumanity’. If you don’t know the came you should look it up, but it’s basically a humorous game that lets you create horrible yet funny sentences and phrases. With my version, these could be about topics like climate crisis, racial inequality, and conflicts around the world. I proposed working together with writers, poets, musicians, and comedians who have a history with these topics to create the specific card packs associated with them. The presentation went well and the others liked the idea, the only feedback I got was to make the presentation a bit sharper. This presentation boosted my confidence, and I was able to show myself that I can think of ideas that people will like. Since then I’ve worked on the deck, had feedback moments with Pim Gerrits, Matthijs van Haagen and Bas van Boden. I have now enough feedback to keep working on the project. At the moment of writing this, I haven’t worked out how I’ll continue working on this after my internship is over…but I trust that I’ll figure that out!
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CONSIDERERD AND EXPECTED
My three internship choices were Herc, Top-Notch, and Ewoudt Boonstra who’s a creative director at superheroes. All of them had their own appeals but I needed my gut instinct to tell me which way to go. I was looking at the workplace environment, the people, and the work but it was also important to me that I would go somewhere that was in touch with the world around them. To me, it’s important that I make work that has meaning to important people around me, and often I feel like this lacks in most commercial agencies. I noticed this when I looked at the work that is produced by superheroes, to me that’s a sign that the people who work there probably aren’t the people that will help me achieve my goals, but I still thought that Ewoudt himself is dope and I would love to work with him, so I waited on making a decision. Topnotch reached out to me, and after doing a test assignment and having a meeting they offered me an internship. I was excited to work for musicians and to think of video ideas, but I couldn’t make a decision without talking to Herc first and Top-Notch did not have time to wait for an answer. So I had to decide to let go of that opportunity since I found it more important to have a talk with Emilio de Haan.
I managed to get a meeting with Emilio and we talked via zoom, which makes sense since we were still in a pandemic. He started off by telling me that we didn’t need to go through my portfolio since he already looked through it, he just wanted to see who I was and what I wanted out of an internship. It’s blunt but I appreciate the straightforwardness, I wasn’t sure yet what I wanted out of the internship. What I did know was that I’m looking for an inclusive place where I’m free to move around and involve myself with the different parts that a project has to go through before making it out to the world. I wanted to work in a place where the people also make dope work in their free time. We talked a bit more, but I already made up my mind that it was going to be Herc. Emilio told me that he would like it if I interned at Herc, so all I needed to do was to inform Ewoudt that I found my internship. I told Emilio that I would join Herc under one condition, he had to call Ewoudt (whom he worked with before) and tell him that he stole me. It seemed funny at the moment, Emilio told me he would do it in front of me to prove it but sadly Ewoudt didn’t pick up so he messaged him instead.
GOALS It was important for me to be busy with concepts and with the visual translation of them since I wanted to grind on my advertising skills. I needed to see how the communication is done between the different people in an agency, so I could understand what mine is. Coming from WdKa I needed to learn how to communicate an idea internally and to a client as an agency. As I said before, I wanted to know how to include the people I care about in my work and learn from the different ways people in the agency are already doing that. And it was important to me that I kept communicating with people around me, the focus was on Emilio but not exclusively.
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PROGRESS I put up goals not knowing what it would be like in an agency, so I picked rather safe and tame goals. So yeah, I managed to hit all of my goals. I got briefed on projects, brainstormed, and came up with ideas, I sometimes managed to land one of my ideas on the client presentation and also got to see clients’ responses to it. That process did involve practicing and failing. I had to learn how to formulate ideas into short paragraphs and how to find/make the right visuals to support the ideas since this could sometimes make or break the idea. I had a lot of important talks with the people around me and understand now that working in a healthy environment can feel like the most normal thing. I learned subtle ways of working with people I care about, like involving their voice in a project or making it a standard to have representation of different people in all of my work processes. From inspiration to presentation and of course the final work.
CONSISTANT For the most part, my internship was consistent with my goals and expectations. But I learned that I put those in the wrong place at the wrong height. I focussed on goals that would help me blend into the advertising world in a more traditional way, even with my small personalized adjustments. Emilio pointed this out during a review moment with my study coach Marieke. Emilio told me what his expectations were of me after the online talk we had. He said: ‘I expected you to come to the office with a bag full of art supplies, ready to set up your own studio and make sick work/weird/new work’. I never thought that this was an option. At that moment I also learned what someone thinks of me after seeing the projects I’ve done. I hit all my goals but I have so much more room to grow. I feel like I learned so much during this internship, every night I had the craziest, most intense dreams I’ve ever had, trying to process all the things I did during the day. Still, I don’t feel the ‘This is it’s feeling I hoped to have at the end of my internship, that gut feeling that tells me this is the direction I can go full speed ahead in.
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PRO PROFILE
I’ve started to realize how much I value the side that wants to make work for myself and for people to see and appreciate, rather than for a client. I still enjoy client work, but I’m very curious to see how I can involve more art in my work. So as a beginning professional I’ll focus on finding my inspiration from art studios rather than advertising studios. I’ll concentrate on autonomous work. I like to make work that starts a conversation, so I’ll be involving myself more with the world of expositions and galleries. And to sustain this direction I’ll make use of my skills in design, direction, and photography. I’ve noticed that I like to do artistic research on topics that make me go outside and talk to people, I work better when I’m moving around in my environment and when I involve my surroundings in my art/ work. Like when I joined the voice-over session at Audentity or, when I worked with a Turkish artist to make some beautiful Ebru art, and how I still want to work with poets/writers/artists to make card decks that will help spark conversations on important topics. A lot of my ideas come from my curiosity which I follow on intuition, but this way I can’t justify my actions, which is why I haven’t done this during my internship as much. So in conclusion…I’m embracing my artistic and autonomous side.