The past week at Premier Print has been an exciting one as I have been able to flex my design skills in and amongst my usual day to day tasks. At the start of the week I was set a brief to design a roller banner, promoting the partnership my company has with travel company Thomas Cook. The aim was to have the printing process of the banner filmed by the company’s new supplier and sent to Thomas Cook as promotional material. The brief was simple and clear in its aesthetic aims, detailing how the banner had to include both company’s logos whilst adhering to our brand guidelines. Content wise, the promotional poster had to include the details and pictures of our company Managing Director and Sales Executives. I put the roller banner together within a couple of hours and it was an immediate hit with my colleagues in the Studio department, and most crucially the sales team who commissioned it. I kept the design simple, slicing the banner into three descending sections- the top part for the logos, the middle for the Sales Teams’ details and the bottom section for a stock image representing togetherness and unity. I chose an image from our company image file of a group of people standing in the circle with their hands all meeting in the middle. The image clearly depicts a union of people, much like the partnership of the two companies, and as it is a sunny scene I also thought it gives the impression of a holiday, tying in Thomas Cook’s business plan. I am well aware that this is corporate design at its finest, where perhaps the finished product is as functional as it is artistic. However in this role I am constantly seeing how design is needed for everyday printed materials and how important the role of the Graphic Designer is in making it happen. I am delighted with how the banner has turned out and can’t wait to see how the finished product looks in real life!
A little later in the week I was tasked with re-drawing a logo for a funeral services business who needed their logo to be printed on round stress balls. Re-drawing logos is something I have been doing a lot of in this job, as customers don’t often have artwork that is vectorised and outlined ready for print, so I take their design and re-make it as a vector in Adobe Illustrator. However what made this re-draw so unique was the input I had in guiding the client towards a design that would work better for the print job they needed. The customer had already told our sales executive that they bird on their logo needed to be redrawn in less detail, as the feathers were at risk of infilling when printed so small on a stress ball. I made the bird as simple as I could however the illusion of the bird was completely lost once the feathers had been almost entirely removed. To get around this problem I advised our sales executive that the design should be changed- instead of a small bird on top of large text of the company’s name, the bird should be made much bigger and sit on top of smaller text. This way the bird would become the focal symbol of the stress ball and would hardly need simplifying. The sales executive showed my idea to the client who immediately placed an order for the stress balls to be printed with this new design. It has been immensely beneficial to negotiate successfully with customers and aid them in their design based decisions, as I now know that I can tell a customer when I believe that their design will look better in a different form. I will take this confidence back to University when it comes to crucial decision making!
Joe's Professional Enhancement Year 