What is it like to be an intern at Ueno?
We talked to five people who have interned at Ueno from 2015 to the present day.
Cast of characters
- Bianca Romulo, a Bay Area local, was an intern at Ueno in 2017. She is is now a product designer at Facebook.
- Adrien Laurent, a Parisian, is Ueno’s newest intern. When this was published he had been working at Ueno’s New York office for about two months.
- Julius Sohn, a native of Dresden and Berlin, joined in late 2018. His internship at Ueno SF will end later this year.
- Robin Noguier was Ueno’s first intern. After his intership ended in 2016 he joined as a full-time designer, first in San Francisco and later in Reykjavík.
- Dac Davy Nguyen, another Parisian, started as an intern in San Francisco in 2016 and later joined as a full-time designer. He’s now at Ueno in Reykjavík.
On the first day
Dac Davy Nguyen: On my first day I remember seeing Jenny Johannesson walking barefoot in the office. I thought that was weird, but I got used to it.
Robin Noguier: When I joined, in 2015, there were only five or six of us, and everything felt really new. We had no company culture whatsoever, we were just a bunch of people trying to do good stuff. At the end of every day we used to have those design reviews where we’d show the others what we were working on. I think I really grew a lot because of those design reviews, but at the end of the internship, the team had already grown too big for them.
Julius Sohn: We’re 70 now, I think. So it’s very different, I guess.
Bianca Romulo: I was really excited and nervous at the same time. Ueno’s SF office was the most playful — but also cozy and intimate — working space I had been in, with lots of video games. Najla [Ueno’s former People Experience Director] was super welcoming and left a bunch of presents on my desk — a water bottle, a recipe book, some greeting cards, a couple — which was really thoughtful.
Dac: I was in awe of Jenny and Robbin [Cenijn] and others there, because they were very kind of famous. Everyone at my school would follow what they were doing. And when I saw them for the first time, I was so shy. I was like, “Oh, my God. They will never talk to me.”
Bianca: I remember sitting across from Gene [Ross] and Jenny, who were trolling each other with photoshopped memes. I was too intimidated to talk to them because I used to stalk their work on Dribbble all the time in school, so I just laughed quietly to myself. Towards the end of my internship, though, I was trolling alongside everyone else.
On where everyone comes from
Bianca: I’m from Manila, Philippines. I studied Political Economy, a hybrid of political science and economics, at UC Berkeley and graduated in 2017. I’m now a product designer on Facebook Watch, where I do a little bit of everything, from product strategy, interaction, visual, and system design.
Julius Sohn: I’m from Germany, born and raised in Dresden. Before joining Ueno I lived in Berlin for eight years, where I worked and studied communication design. I graduated last year, and I’ve been at the San Francisco office now for nine months.
Adrien Laurent: I’m from Paris, and I am studying there at HETIC, like Robin and Dac. I would describe myself as an interactive designer with a focus on motion design. I really like making stuff move. I started my internship at Ueno in New York about two months ago.
Robin Noguier: I’m from the south of France. I was the first intern at Ueno from July until the end of December 2015. After I finished my studies I joined full time in July 2016, but a year and a half later I left again to travel the world. I’m in between visual design and product design, so I’m kind of a weird mix between making things pretty and usable.
Dac Davy Nguyen: I’m from Paris, and I went to the same school as Robin and Adrien. I wanted to be a developer, but it was a little bit too difficult, so I picked design. [Laughter.] But it’s not that easy either. I was an intern at Ueno in San Francisco, and then I joined full time, first in SF, and now in Reykjavík.
On good advice for interns
Robin: Ask a lot of questions. Even stupid ones, because those are the ones that make you grow. Don’t stand still and wait for good projects to come to you, because they will not. You need to fight and show who you are and what you can do. Just go for it, and make yourself available to anyone.
Adrien: It can be scary starting a new life in a new city, working at a new place, and speaking a foreign language. But I would say, just be open-minded and take in the positive energy.
Julius: Be inspired by other people around you. Stay confident in your work, and be inspiring to others. Also, your internship isn’t just about work. Take time for yourself personally, to grow and meet people and get new experiences.
Robin: Exactly. An internship should be about the overall experience you get living abroad. For me it meant joining a soccer club and a boxing gym, and meeting a lot of people that eventually became friends.
Julius: I’ve been hiking outside San Francisco, DJing and producing music.
Dac: I took salsa classes in Oakland, and here in Iceland I travel around a lot and discover places that I’ve never seen before.
Robin: And please, if you’re French, don’t just hang out with the French people, there are plenty of them back home.
On living abroad
Dac: I wanted to go to New York, but then I read the report Robin wrote after his internship in San Francisco. It sounded like it wasn’t real, so I was like, “Okay, let’s take the risk.” And I always promised myself that I will live in California, so… It was a good choice, a really good choice.
Adrien: This is the first time I’m coming to New York. It’s very different from San Francisco where I was a year ago, but that’s why I like it. The city is full of good vibes and way less stressful than people might say.
Julius: The weather in California surprised me the most. [laughter]. I thought San Francisco would be always sunny and always warm. Then I found out it’s probably the coldest city in California, and has the most moody weather. People told me about many things, but they didn’t warn me about the weather.
Dac: I’ve been working in Iceland for almost a year now. I don’t love the country as much as some people do, but I travel around a lot and discover places that I’ve never seen before. So yeah, I like it.
Robin: I worked four or five months in Ueno’s office in Iceland. It was great for me to discover a new culture. I love Iceland when it’s always sunny. I hate it when it’s always dark. But that’s Iceland. People are really welcoming and it feels like a big family. The office is also really cozy and it feels great to work there.
Dac: The Reykjavík office is different. It’s much more chill here.
On internships
Bianca: I had done product design internships for startups and big tech companies, but Ueno was my first internship at a mid-size agency. Being exposed to all the great branding and motion design work inspired me to push my visual design skills and overall craft. In comparison to the other internships I did, I grew the most, both professionally and personally, from my time at Ueno, for sure. It was also where I had the most fun.
Adrien: Last year I did a four-month internship at Upperquad in San Francisco, and that was cool. New York is really different but at the end the process and the people have been kind of similar, I would say.
Dac: Before Ueno I did two internships, at Dan Paris and at Beaubourg Paris. I really liked them but being an intern at Ueno is definitely different from being an intern elsewhere.
Bianca: I was lucky to have two fantastic mentors, Carolyn and Steph, who helped me improve my hard and soft skills — presenting to clients, interpreting client feedback, working collaboratively with clients and fellow designers and developers at Ueno, sweating the details when it comes to visual design. I also had really supportive coworkers who were always willing to help me with whatever I needed at the time.
[From the archives: Bianca Romulo: How my apprenticeship at Ueno made me better designer]
On finding — or being found by — Ueno
Robin: I met Halli [Thorleifsson, Ueno’s founder and CEO] in Barcelona in 2015, but I was afraid and shy to talk to him. When I launched my portfolio a month later I emailed him. He replied, “Do you want to chat?” Everyone else was sending me super long emails telling me exactly what their company was doing, why they thought I was a good fit, how they were making the world a better place, but I really liked the simplicity of Halli’s approach.
Julius: When the bachelor’s thesis I did with my friend Julius Gehrig came out last year it got a quite a bit of publicity and a lot of people tweeted about it. Halli sent me an email which was rather short compared to the other emails I got. I think it was just like, “Hi. My name is Halli. I’m working for an agency called Ueno. Are you interested in an internship?” I had actually wanted to go into an in-house product company, but I ended up going to Ueno. I don’t regret it.
Adrien: A year ago someone at Ueno found some motion design that I did. So they sent me a message on Twitter saying, “Hey, do you want to chat about an internship?” And I was like, “yeah — hell yeah.”
Bianca: I found Ueno first. Right before I graduated, Linda Eliasen gave a talk about her art direction work at Ueno at the annual design conference my school hosts every year, and the work she showed blew me away. I remember thinking that at some point in my career I had to work for this agency. After her talk, I naively asked her for some portfolio tips and whether Ueno was taking interns for the summer. The rest is history.
Dac: I found Ueno thanks to Robin, who was there before me. I was like, “Maybe I will try Ueno. If they answer me, fine. But if they don’t, I won’t die.” And then Halli sent me an email and was like, “Hey. Let’s do a quick interview, and we’ll see if we take you.” It was like 15 minutes.
Robin: I remember being super stressed and learning almost all what I wanted to say by heart. When I did the talk with Halli, he wasn’t the most demonstrative person, but I could feel I could learn a lot there. I talked with almost 20 companies for my internship, some were really prestigious and would have looked good on my resume, but Ueno was really new and kind of unknown. I knew Halli’s work and I decided to choose a mentor instead of a company and that’s one of the best decisions I ever made.
On not “feeling like an intern”
Robin: On my first day I worked on a project for Red Bull. I remember being amazed by how free I was to propose new ideas. At the end of the day, I had to present my work to the team with my broken English that I had learned from watching Friends with subtitles. It was hard but this was the best way to learn because I didn’t felt like an intern from day one.
Adrien: The first week at Ueno I was already involved in meetings and stuff. So I was already part of the team. I did two internships before. The first one was in France and there I didn’t feel I was part of the team as much as I am at Ueno. There wasn’t room for me to explore and be more than an intern. So that was kind of frustrating. Then I did an internship at Upperquad in San Francisco last year, and it was kind of similar to my experience at Ueno. I think there are some agencies that really want to empower their interns.
Julius: I think most agencies say they’re treating their interns like real employees, kind of. Everyone at least says that. But I think it’s mostly — well, sometimes it’s just not true. [Laughter.] At Ueno I feel you really get actively pushed into creating your own responsibilities and ownership. You don’t really have a choice, which is great. And you handle your own clients and everything else. It’s just a fact from the first day, and it’s not like it’s up to you to choose.
Robin: I worked on Uber.com with Halli and Ben Mingo. I remember at the beginning of the project Halli looked at me and said, “So, what do you want to do?” I stopped for 10 seconds and I thought, “The CEO is asking the intern what he wants to do for a project for Uber.” For me, that was kind of crazy.
On memorable moments
Dac: My first five minutes were the most memorable. Halli, the CEO, came to welcome me, and I said “welcome to you too!” I was so red in the face. But everyone laughed.
Robin: For me, one of the best moments was when I was sent to New York to work on an outdoor campaign for Reuters TV, and a few weeks later the ads were everywhere in New York and San Francisco. To see the work you did on the streets was pretty cool.
Bianca: My most memorable moment is playing “Secret Hitler” in Iceland with 15 other people in a candle-lit cabana, facing the Icelandic mountains.
Julius: I’m really bad at recalling favorite moments. [laughter].
Robin: When I was planning to go on a trip around the world for a year, a lot of people were saying it was risky for my career. A lot of bosses would have tried to convince me to stay for their own benefit, but our boss told me the that I needed to go because I’d learn so much traveling. “You’re 24 years old, and when you come back, you will be 25. So just shut up and do it.” I’m still thankful for that advice that lead to the craziest adventure of my life.
On getting to know your colleagues
Robin: Have you all been to the retreat? Or not yet?
Julius: No, both Adrien and I joined after the last one, but we’re going to the next one in August.
Robin: The retreat is a great way to connect with everyone.
Bianca: The retreat to Iceland helped me grow a lot closer to my colleagues. After it, we started a casual happy hour every Friday. We also took a bunch of trips together. The friendships I made pretty much defined my time at Ueno, and I still keep in touch with these folks to this day.
On lessons learned
Bianca: The most important thing I learned was that there is no “wrong or right” answer to design. At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to figure it out together, and the best that we can do is keep pushing our best recommendation, which should be flexible enough to scale, adapt, or change based on external or future circumstances.
Robin: The biggest lesson I learned at Ueno is not a secret: Bring the chocolate. It became one of Ueno’s five culture values. I was talking to our COO at the time, and he told me, “when someone asks you for coffee, bring the best coffee you can, but always add a piece of chocolate.” I learned so much because of that.
Julius: I would tend to agree with the “bring the chocolate thing” but I think we get to do that because most of our clients know the value of design. That gives us a lot of time and room to experiment and play with things, which leads to better results and allows us to learn new things along the way. In the end that pays off for the clients and ourselves.
Adrien: I’ve only been here for a short time, but it’s been an intense experience so far. I feel that Ueno pushes people to explore different stuff. Also it’s great that there are people from a lot of different disciplines here. Not just designers. It’s people who do photography, people who do motion, people who do branding, UI and everything else.
Julius: Yeah, I agree. Another thing that I’ve seen here is how working with super-talented people has really pushed my boundaries and showed me what I’m capable of.
Robin: I remember when we were interviewing people, the first thing Halli wanted to know was “are they nice?” Before asking if they were good at their craft. I think that’s a good lesson to learn if you want to hire people.
Bianca: We have one intern at Facebook wrapping up her internship in a couple of weeks. A lot of the visual feedback I gave her this past summer was the same exact feedback I received from my mentors at Ueno at the time.
On being a European in the U.S.
Julius: People are way nicer here than in Germany [laughter]. The first impression when you meet people is very different from Germany. I don’t know how it is in France.
Robin: It’s the same [laughter]. People are really welcoming. I would tend to say maybe too welcoming sometimes, which is weird for French people. I mean, I don’t know about German, but French people are more direct.
Dac: Californians are so nice. That was the only thing that was weird to me, because New York people are much more grumpy and to the point, and sometimes super rude. American people are positive but sometimes it’s a almost too much.
Robin: In San Francisco, everything is always amazing this, amazing that. So you need to adapt to that. But other than that, working conditions are way better. At least at Ueno.
On working in a second language
Dac: It’s super exhausting. When you go home, you just want to go to bed even if it’s only 7 or 8pm. You just want to take some rest and not think in English, and blah, blah, blah. It’s hard, but I’ve learned to deal with it now.
Robin: It gets better with time. Designers need to be good communicators and it’s really hard when it’s not your first language. But it gets easier, and once you start speaking fluently, you have so many more opportunities in your professional life, as well as in your personal life. A long internship abroad is a great way to learn English.
[From the archives: Andrea Mata on designing in a second language.]
On whether they would recommend doing an internship at Ueno
Robin: Yeah.
Julius: Yeah.
Adrien: Yeah.
Robin: I think internships are the best way to learn. As a young designer, you need to surround yourself with more experienced and talented designers, and you’ll find a lot of those at Ueno.
Dac: Yes.
Bianca: Yes! Out of all the internships I’ve had, I grew the most at Ueno. Everyone is incredibly talented, supportive, caring, generous, and fun, and I came out from my time at Ueno both a better person and a better designer.
On what’s next
Adrien: I don’t know where I will be next year. Probably somewhere between motion design and interactive design. I’m in my fourth year at school now, and next year I’ll do my apprenticeship. Maybe a studio, because I’ve never tried that before. Something related to video.
Julius: I mainly worked in agencies so far, so I think I’m interested in joining a product company next. I want to do product design and interaction design. But I don’t like to plan too far in the future. I’m going back to Europe in November, I already know that. I always planned to go back to Berlin because my friends are there and the people I do music with. But if Ueno opens an office there I would definitely consider working there.
Robin: I just got back from a year of traveling. I went all over the world, and in each country — Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, everywhere — I looked for designers, went to their workplace and took pictures of them, interviewed them. And now I’m building a website for the project, which is called Esperanto. I’m also freelancing, mainly for companies in San Francisco.
Dac: I don’t know. It depends.
This interview is pieced together from conversations that took place over video and email in July and August, 2019, with Robin in the South of France, Dac in Reykjavík, Adrien in New York, Bianca in the Bay Area and Julius in San Francisco. It’s been edited for clarity, levity and brevity.
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