Junior Designer at a Mexico City design studio after an Instagram DM and a paid trial week

I'd been following a Mexico City design studio on Instagram for almost a year before I worked up the nerve to do anything about it. Their CDMX-Roma client work kept showing up on my feed, and every time it did I'd save the post, screenshot it, and think "someday." The editorial sensibility, the way they handled typography on physical installations, the restraint. It was exactly the kind of studio I wanted to learn inside of. By then I'd sent two other cold outreach attempts to studios in the city, both completely unanswered, so I knew a plain "I love your work, here's my portfolio" message wasn't going to cut it. I spent an afternoon looking through their recent open briefs and picked the one I had the strongest instinct about. Instead of a long cover message, I put together three quick concept sketches responding directly to the brief. Nothing overproduced, just clean directional thinking. I attached them to a short DM to the founder and kept the message to maybe four sentences. He replied the same day. I don't think I fully believed it was real until I'd re-read the notification twice. He invited me in for an in-person studio visit at their Roma Norte space, which went well enough that they offered me a paid trial week at their ↓