Lysandre Follet

About my Internship at Art. Lebedev Studio as an Industrial Designer (sounds good doesn’t it?)

So I arrived at the end of April on a beautiful sunny day at SVO Airport. After getting a vintage stamp on my visa and grabbing my duffle bag, Vera (Prom Design Manager) was there to drive me to the studio, it was easy to recognize her because Timur (Prom Design Art Director) sent me a photo the day before:-).

Let`s go! My first impressions driving into Moscow: big, so big everything is giant, cars, advertising, streets, bears! \\ After several miles we enter the Moscow downtown down one of the main streets and we arrived at Gazetny Per where the Studio is located. I know every intern already told you but it’s true it is really close to the Kremlin & unfortunately also close to McDonalds (I say unfortunately because it’s too easy to go there to grab Junk food isn`t it Timur?:))

My first step into the Art. Lebedev Studio is something which will stay engraved in my mind forever. It’s a groovy, vintage, creative place with so many objects, goodies, desks, people to discovered.

After shaking some hands Vera showed me my desk which was already equipped with a computer + Wacom tablet. That’s cool!

Benoit (a French Product designer) had just arrived the same day to work as a Junior Designer so it was nice to share problems (like finding a flat ha ha!) but also good times (like nights clubs & Bars) and we discovered Moscow together. About the flat: we tried to find one for three weeks (Thx to Vera & Timur for helping us) and one early morning which stared with a Fresh Orange Juice at Five Stars (I recommend this place to everybody) the Art. Lebedev Studio just provided us one for Free! Thank you so much!

About the Prom Design Area: it’s a team of around 10 people working together on different projects. The particularity is that every person has a specific task: there are designers, 3D modelers, a 3D renders guy, engineers and one manager to organize all these folks. It allowed the design team to have an broad look at the entire design process including pre-production/production. That’s a very good thing because they don’t need the service of an extra outside based engineers office for example. This brings a high level of quality to every product.

During my internship (about 2 months) I worked on several projects for the studio products. Packaging and one of Tema’s (Artemy Lebedev) ideas.

At the beginning, everything was off to a good start for Tema’s idea, after sketching we chose a specific shape and I continued to work on this shape but one rainy day perhaps due to a misunderstanding or whatever it all had to be changed. In any case, it was no longer the correct route:-(so I needed to restart from the beginning 2 weeks before leaving…

To be frank I have to tell you that if I have one problem, or if one thing is hard for me to understand about the Art. Lebedev Studio, it is that everything, and I mean all the design tasks, processes and everything, must be validated by Artemy Lebedev himself without any collective decision (I mean team design meeting or something like this) and it’s not easy to get him to change his mind. In my past experiences (other internships) I was used to having weekly meetings, brainstorming with the whole design team to talk about projects and take decisions together.

It was definitely an amazing experience, I met a lot of interesting people from all over the world in the office but also during night life, I spend a good time playing BabyFoot with coworkers, and I got the chance to visit MAMI (Moscow Automechanical State University) School for the graduation of Konstantin (A very talented Junior transportation designer & friend from Art. Lebedev Studio) it was really cool to see Russian design students and projects!

I would like to thank everybody at the Art. Lebedev Studio especially Vera & Timur but also my flat mates (Benoit, Tao, Heldar & Office Flat mates: Aziz, Artem, Iskander - Russian MiniFoot team:-)) & of course the whole Prom Design Team. Special BigUp for the Pirajok (Pijarok:-)) cooker and Tibet Restaurant waitress >>

Best,

Lysandre http://www.minigorille.com