Graphic Design Job Interview at IKEA

Personally I feel an important part of my professional practice is looking past my degree for graduate Graphic Design opportunities. This will enable me to gather valuable industry experience and officially start my Graphic Design career. I have recently been applying to any suitable Graphic Design jobs with my updated CV. Although I did apply to some UX Design jobs who rejected my suitability for the role I got extremely positive feedback from applying to become a Graphic Designer at IKEA Belfast. I was invited to attend a group assessment the initial selection stage of their recruitment process. 

The group assessment consisted of myself and ten others where we were set three tasks. The first was a page filled entirely with circles. The aim of this task was to see how creative or narrow minded we are. They told us generally children have no problem filling all the circles but adults tend to struggle.The circles had to be filled with anything circular we could think of. I managed to fill three quarters of the page. We were not given any instruction as to how to fill these in so Interviewers were intrigued when myself and several others filled the circles using words. 

For the next task we were asked to select a brand at random and a product such as a lamp. Starbucks and a lamp were allocated to myself and a team of two other interviewees. We came up with a lamp that represented Starbucks as a brand in a quirky way to stand out from the competition but also create a lamp that visualises the brand itself and its products. The lamps stand was a coffee mug visualising what Starbucks promotes and sells. The rest of the design references the brand logo and core colours white and green. 

The final task was more realistic of what the job entails we were to demonstrate working to a tight deadline of one hour on a Friday afternoon, what is the best way to promote 50% off certain products. Myself and one other interviewee came up with a minimal design with the product image name slogan, 50% off in large type with the before and after price. The slogan 'It is what you make it' was based of the products USP it was a products with multiple uses from a ring holder to an ornament so the slogan created a simple yet quirky way to market this. Other considerations such as our ability to consider both digital and print outcomes helped us stand out as we were the only group to suggest marketing this digitally and relating it to IKEA by referencing the IKEA Family card you need to sign up using an email address so this idea could be implemented via an email newsletter to these users. Other benefits of digital include its cost-effectiveness with IKEA being a sustainable business whilst being able to target a wider audience.