Saskia Schmid decided to study “Information Design” at FH JOANNEUM in Graz and she completed her internship at EN GARDE which is a design agency in Graz, Austria. The office had lots of open space and you don’t have a fixed desk area where you are supposed to sit, which Sakia thinks was good. Personally, I think that this is a cool feature that can be beneficial in a lot of situations but it can also be challenging if you have no space to put your stuff for more than one day.
Saskia Schmid then worked at Studio Grau and Wednesday Paper Works, which belonged together at the time. The project “Museum Friedland”, which is the name of a place where a big refugee camp was situated, became the main topic of her bachelor thesis. After she had finished her bachelor’s degree she started to work at a company where she was about to become creative director, but it didn’t work out as expected and after this job, she worked at two other agencies, where she could do what she loved. It can be challenging to have a lot of responsibility. Working on many projects at the same time is exciting, but also energy-draining as I know from having to work and study at the same time. Of course, doing what you love is important and should be part of your daily routine.
Saskia strived to be independent and after quitting her job once again she began working on a project together with EN GARDE. Then, she got a call from Studio Grau informing her that their boss was pregnant and they needed a substitute for some time, so Saskia decided to return to Berlin to work at Studio Grau. In Berlin, she also worked on “fyta”, which is a blog about plants and a lifestyle brand. The network that she built during this time helped her to become independent. She currently works for agencies like Jack Coleman, Studio Grau, Novozamsky and Kopfstand as well as other studios and she says that the best network you can have is a network of friends. I think it’s great that she had the courage to follow her heart and leave her former jobs to work on something else because those jobs did not appeal to her. She is now an entrepreneur in the field of communication design. I’ve come to realize that she is right about the fact that being independent and being an entrepreneur is a process and an extensive network of contacts is needed to be successful. Of course, if your network consists of friends this is even better.