On most Friday afternoons we hold what we call DAC Sessions — where we try to get the full team together to do something fun and interesting to round off the week and ease us into the weekend. Sometimes it’s internal skill sharing, discussing fun future DAC plans or when we were in the studio together, just having some nice dinner and drinks on the sofas. It was always a toss-up between Pigs Wings and FreshMex.

Throughout lockdown, we’ve continued to keep up the sessions. They’re a great chance for us to unwind as a team and stay connected which is increasingly important as most of us are still working from home. So far we have been on virtual adventures to online galleries, learned how to make camera filters (or watch Jack effortlessly do it), held discussions, played games and more.

Lukas Paltram, Creative Director at Dalton Maag

A few weeks ago, Lukas from type design studio, Dalton Maag, hopped on Google hangouts to give an amazing talk which we were all really captivated by. I think we were distractingly quiet for Lukas but it was only because we were all so in awe of his presentation!

Lukas talked through some past projects with loads of beautiful visuals and stepped through the reasoning behind decisions and some obstacles faced. The talk was jam-packed with interesting details about Lukas’ practice which made for a really enjoyable afternoon for the whole team.

One of the topics we asked about in advance was variable fonts. This part of the presentation was where we all were just soaking up the visuals more than ever. It was really interesting hearing about the origins of variable type and gaining more understanding of the practicalities of how and why variable fonts work.

The talk was a real energiser for the team and a great reminder that while we’re all physically fragmented from each other, we need to try a little more to connect with our team members just to do something together that isn’t a work meeting. Missing out on those micro-conversations that naturally occur in the studio has left a quiet craving for non-work interaction. We highly recommend doing something fun with your team for the simple motive of having fun!

Keep an eye out for more DAC Session articles coming soon.