Taxi – Stephen Coomber

This week's speaker was an alumni who also graduated from the Web Design Program back in 2005. His name is Stephen Coomber, who is currently working as a web/flash designer at Taxi. We were very excited to see him in Class today.

Taxi is one of the largest awarded winning advertising agencies in North America and it has multiple locations around the world, such as New York, Toronto, etc. During the presentation, he shared with us "What a day is like in Taxi" and advice for new designers.

BACKGROUND

Stephen Coomber graduated from a Fine Art Program from University of Guelph and he had done some photoshop and illustrator courses where he developed his interests in digital design. After he graduated from school, he decided to peruse the creative field further by taking the Web design program at Sheridan. 

"A DAY AT TAXI"

• 8:30 a.m. – arrived at Taxi. (It's located at King west of Toronto)
• 9:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. – meeting with the creative director, copy writers, programmers and information architect to discuss projects.
• 11:00 p.m. – sit down back in the office to check emails.
• 12:00 p.m. – lunch time/decided to eat out
• 2:00 p.m. – another regroup for better ideas
• 3:45 p.m. – start designing

Then later on, as the presentation goes, we started to ask different kinds of questions in regards to the industry/company.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

What does Taxi mainly do? Digital or Print? 

S: Taxi is a company for everything. You can pretty much get the chance to oversee different kinds of projects whether it's for print or for digital. For me, I was initially working there as a Flash Designer, then later on, I figured I wanted to do more than just the execution of projects. Therefore, I proposed to my boss that I wanted to work on more design stuff. As a result, now I am mainly working as a web designer. 

What do you like about Taxi?

S: One of the cool things about Taxi is that they have multiple offices around the world. If it's needed, you have the chance to travel to different part of the world to do work. The company will reimburse all the expenses. Last time, I was fortunate to go to NYC to work on a project and I got the chance to see a photo shooting with a model. I have never experienced that before. I also got the chance to stay in a cool hotel that was arranged by my company.

How is the creative process like in Taxi?

1. get a brief from the clients.
2. define the demographics and narrow down the messages we are trying to convey.
3. get into a group for brainstorming ideas and do sketches.
4. get approval on ideas from creative director. Generally, we will be narrowed down to 2/3 concepts.
5. go and present the concepts to clients.
6. clients decided what the final design is.
7. final execution of the projects. (flash animation, etc) 

Can you show us some of your work?

S: Here is one of the latest projects I have done for Canadian Tire. Here is the link.

How many people are there in Taxi? How many designers?

S: In total, there's 150 people in Taxi. In my team, there's 4 or 5 digital designers and there's more traditional designers who are doing more printed-based work. It's about 8 or 10. 

How is the turn over in Taxi?

S: I would say 2 to 5 years will be normal. I have been working here for 2 years now and I like it. Some creative directors have been working for 10-15 years now.

Do you like an open office or you prefer to have your own room?

S: It all depends on the situation. They all have pros and cons. I like to have my own office where I can play the music while I am doing design work. Open space is easier for better communication between different people.

What is the designer's role in Taxi?

S: It all depends on projects. I am working as a digital designer so I will be working closely with the information architect and digital writer. We do site maps to layout the design of the website. We throw in strategies for projects. We also have in house people who can handle different areas such as programming and video editing, etc. We also do lots of websites, 3D and Aftereffect work.

What is the differences between a big company and a small company?

S: I don't know much about small companies as I only worked at large firms before. There's certainly one thing: large company will have more money whereas small company will have less money. There's always benefits for both. In small firm, you can get the chance to see all different kinds of work so in a way you can actually learn more.

PRESENTATION AND KEY POINTS

• Find a Mentor: They know your job better than you do and help you to grow.
• Never Take the Shotgun: You should be in control of your career and be promoted and work hard to achieve what you wanted to achieve
• Tweet: Let others tell you what's happening. There's a few of them I would recommend: mashable, thenextWeb, TaxiCanada, ConanOBrien.
• Drink Beer: Wine, Vodka, pepsi, cranberry juice. Go to a pub with coworkers and being socialize.
• Don't take yourself too seriously. There's going to be lots of pressures so take them easy.
• Be passionate and have fun for what you are doing.

Here are some useful links that i would recommend to put into the inspiration folder. 

• inspiration
• mashable
• thefwa
• creativity-online
• twitter
• engadget
• youtube
• bannerblog
• noupe (for resources such as vector graphics, etc)
• linkedin
• Facebook.

STEPHEN'S CONTACT INFORMATION
Stephen Coomber

Stephen.coomber@Taxi.ca
Taxi Canada Inc.
495 Wellington Street West, Suite 102
Toronto, ON M5V 1E9
T. 416.342.8294 X 424
F: 416.979.7626