The Dialogue experience: work placement at an award-winning agency

The Dialogue team is made up of highly experienced content marketing experts producing industry-leading work for a vast array of luxury clients such as Harley-Davidson, Bentley Motors and Badrutt's Palace. As a result of this work, we have been recognised with multiple awards, including the Content Marketing Awards’ Agency of the Year award in both 2022 and 2023 as well as being nominated for Best Use of Imagery, Best Use of Print and Designer of the Year in the 2023 Content Marketing Awards. As such, we understand the importance of getting that experience, and getting it early. We always aim to give back, as well as doing our best to nurture the next generation of creative talent.

With our Norwich office situated just a stone’s throw away from Norwich University of the Arts, we were thrilled to be asked to take part in a brand-new work placement scheme. Of course, we said yes, and we were swiftly introduced to Design for Publishing student, Lucie Bird.

Meet Lucie

Originally from a little village in Oxfordshire, Lucie first came to Norwich in 2018 for an open day at the university.

As she explains: “When I was researching potential Design for Publishing courses, I was shocked to discover that only two universities in the country offered this course: Norwich University of the Arts and London Metropolitan. After navigating my way around London Metropolitan’s graphic design building and having a tour around their campus, I realised I just couldn’t see myself there, making Norwich the next obvious choice. 

“And so, after spending a few days exploring the lanes, eating some delicious food from Norwich market and sitting through a very impressive yet daunting ‘Intro to Graphic Design’ presentation, I knew Norwich was the place for me.”

But what was it that drew Lucie towards the wonderful world of graphic design?

“My parents are big art fans, so I spent a lot of time growing up being shuffled through different art galleries and sculpture parks,” shares Lucie. “As I got older, I became a keen reader, and books and magazines really started to grab my attention.

“After doing art and design at GCSE, A-level and then a level three diploma, I had an art teacher who specialised in graphic design and he introduced me to both Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and, in turn, graphic design.”

Delving into Dialogue

Lucie first walked through the Dialogue door in January 2024, joining our team five days a week in our Norwich office.

“This is the first year Norwich University of the Arts is offering students the chance to go on placement. To find the right placement for you, the university considers the course you're doing, what your interests are, the areas they feel you need to improve on and what you want to get out of the year. Evie Ross, Industry Link Officer at Norwich University of the Arts, then finds different companies around Norfolk and assigns you the placement that best fits your needs,” Lucie summarises. “I hadn’t heard of Dialogue prior to completing this placement, but I don’t think the university could have found a more perfect fit for me.”

Lucie spent the first six weeks of her work placement working with the marketing team at the Norwich Arts Centre, and the latter half of her placement working full-time in our Norwich office. As she reveals: “Working as a part of the design team, my day-to-day tasks have differed throughout the weeks, but mostly I’ve been designing magazine spreads. However, I have also carried out some font research for Bentley magazine, hunted for illustrators to commission for Porsche Club GB, edited photos for Cloud magazine, for our client Air Charter Service, image sourced for a Dialogue blog post and redesigned some already existing spreads across a variety of our already existing magazines. I’ve also been lucky to have some of my work published, which I never thought would happen during this placement!

“Throughout the past 12 weeks, I have also enjoyed working on an ongoing project that I’ve been chipping away at almost every day in between my other tasks, fully redesigning a magazine to a dummy brief given by design colleagues.”

Dialogue was the perfect fit for Lucie - with our extensive knowledge in crafting high-quality print magazines for some of the world’s most prestigious brands, we were able to offer our vast client base for her to engage with and explore.

What’s next?

Having worked with Dialogue for six weeks now, Lucie feels she has learned many valuable lessons.

“During my second year of university, magazine design was not one of my strong points, leading me to fully disregard it as a career option and directing my attention towards book design instead,” she recalls. “However, after my time at Dialogue, I can now see myself more likely to go into magazine design than working with books. During my time at Dialogue, I’ve had my eyes opened to the inner workings of an award-winning company, experienced firsthand what working with real-life clients is like, met and worked with an amazing team of people and had a lot of fun doing so. I am a significantly better designer and professional creative because of it. Overall, the experience has been invaluable.”

With a diverse group of people making up the foundations of Dialogue, Lucie enjoyed chatting with the team about how each of their content marketing careers began. As a student, Lucie found some of the team’s journeys surprising.

“Each person at the company found their start in such different places. This has shown me that there isn’t one specific way of getting into the creative industries and that I'll have my own professional journey that will lead me in and out of different positions. Doing this course and working at Dialogue has made me feel more prepared for this.”

The team at Dialogue cannot wait to see what Lucie does next and we're sure she has a hugely successful career ahead of her.