An important question that I have pondered over throughout this Professional Enhancement Year has been how different the experience of being on placement has been to my educational experience at University. I believe that despite their differences, the two experiences have complimented each well so far and have both contributed heavily towards my growth as a Graphic Designer. For me it is not a case of simply assessing which experience I have preferred the most so far, but rather taking positives from both and using them to aid my development as a professional.

As I have detailed at some length in previous blog posts, my first two years at University have provided me with the foundations from which to launch a career in Graphic Design. Having joined Coventry University from a Fine Art background, my first two years at Uni enabled me to both learn and apply new knowledge in graphics. Through a solid mixture of contact hours and independent work, the University experience has so far allowed me to develop my practical skills, design thinking and communication. University has also given me the opportunity to tackle briefs, albeit hypothetical ones. An understanding of how to approach and answer briefs is an essential skill for any designer and throughout my first and second year projects I have been able to do just that. Looking back on it, this was the perfect preparation for my year in industry as we were often set these briefs as group projects and team work has played a huge role in both my time at The South London Club my current job at Premier Print. My ability to effectively communicate ideas with others was born out of those University projects and as been put it to action multiple times across my placements so far. This has been typical of the way in which University and industrial years complement each other – learning the skill at University and applying it in the real world.

Research is another big area of crossover between University and industrial experiences. For University project submissions, us students are not just expected to hand-in finished designs, but also to show our development and research to show about how we arrived at our final pieces. In the past I have been guilty of doing some research and development retrospectively having arrived at a final piece, especially in first year, however in my second year I made a conscious decision to log everything that I created and researched as I went a long. Fast forward to my South London Club placement and I was researching and developing ideas most days. Whether it be searching for the latest on-trend t-shirt and mug designs or social media style posts I was constantly researching new ideas. Perhaps the biggest difference in the two experiences in this aspect is that at Uni I felt that I was at times researching for the sake of a submission grade, on my placement I felt as though I was researching with more of a purpose. Even at my new job I have been creating Pinterest boards for logo inspiration. This year in industry has given me a fresh perspective on how importance research is and will continue to be throughout my career. I will take this ethos back to my final year of University and I hope my submissions will reflect this.

I feel as though this placement year that I am currently on would not have been as a successful as it has been had it not been for the grounding in Graphic Design that I as given during my first two years at University. I have definitely grown as a designer on this year out and have gained a wealth of practical knowledge about the industry and how I can apply my skills into the real world. My experiences in industry and education have been radically different at times, but there has also been a significant amount of crossover which has allowed me to flourish during this placement year. Upon graduating from Coventry I plan to show a portfolio full of work from both University and my industrial year- showcasing the range of skills that I will have acquired over the past four years.

I’m going to use this post as a way of looking back on the past nine months. I’ve decided to take the opportunity to reflect on what has happened so far and look at how how this year in industry has changed me as both an individual and a design professional. I feel like a changed man since starting in June 2018 and hopefully in this blog entry I can discover where these key changes have come from and why.

Professionalism – As I have mentioned in previous posts, before embarking on this year out I had mainly just created Graphics work as part of University projects. Having joined Uni without studying Graphic Design at A-Level, these projects were the perfect introduction into how to tackle a brief, use feedback effectively and meeting deadlines. However the majority of these projects were based on hypothetical scenarios, so prior to undertaking this year out I had very little experience in creating work in a professional environment. Having undertaken the eight month placement at the South London Club and now working as an Artworker in a major print company, I have feel as though I have grown in my pursuit of becoming a fully fledged professional Graphic Designer. I now approach projects in a professional manner as everything that I have been doing has had the potential to or has ended up being published. I have made sure that I always talk over projects with whoever it is that has set the task and have written down notes of what is required of me to make sure that I fulfil the brief to the best of my ability. Aside from just the physical work itself, I have developed a professional outlook on my role as a Graphic Designer that I know will continue throughout my third year of University and beyond. I now know the hard graft it takes to wake up early each morning, commute to London and fulfil a ‘nine to five’ design job from Monday to Friday every week. I came into this placement year feeling like a Graphic Design student, but I fully believe that I will be leaving it as a Graphic Designer.

Technical skills – I have touched on this quite heavily in previous posts, but it is worth noting again the improvement and expansion of my technical design skills. Prior to this year in industry I completed the majority of my work in Photoshop which meant cutting corners when it came to illustration and layouts. This experience has completely changed that, as I now split my work up evenly between all the different programmes in order to create the best possible answer to a brief. This links in with the first point of “Professionalism”, where I now seek to fulfil briefs to absolutely the best of my ability- whatever the route I need to take. I think this will have a positive effect on my employability as I will leave University a more rounded designer as a result of this year out. It should also be noted that it isn’t just design software where I have developed new skills, but also e-Commerce tools such as Shopify and Printify and projects management tools such as Trello and Slack. I now have the ability to not just create designs, but the knowledge on how to upload designs to physical products, market my work and communicate with others in a professional environment.

Knowledge of industry – Perhaps one of the more obvious changes one would expect from a year in industry would be an increased knowledge of the industry they have spent time working in. Despite being obvious I take none of what I have learnt on this year off so far for granted. Due to helpful mentors in my boss’ and co-workers I have been able to build an understanding of how certain aspects of the industry work. When working at The South London Club, I learnt all about digital marketing and the role a Graphic Designer plays within it, due to the fact that the majority of the work was Social Media based. I learnt about the what makes good online content and when to post it, as well as tips and tricks on  e-Commerce and how merchandise should be listed. As a broader point I also learnt about the role of an In-House Graphic Designer at a company and what it takes to create work for a broad range of different media and platforms. In my two weeks at Premier Print so far, I have been learning about the process of an initial customer enquiry all the way through to finished products being printed. It would be impossible to have learnt about every facet of the design industry in nine months, however on the placement I have completed and the job I am currently in I have gained a wealth of knowledge to carry through with me to my final year of University and beyond.

Confidence – In one of very first blog posts on this site I set out my aims for this year in industry. I made it clear that my biggest aim was to grow in the confidence as a designer and hopefully reaffirm my ambition if becoming a Graphic Designer after University. My confidence has grown and grown throughout the last nine months, culminating in me being hired by a major print firm just two weeks ago after a storming interview. The  initial pressure of being the sole Graphic Designer at The South London Club soon turned to enjoyment as I began relishing the opportunity and consistently creating working that was being published within a professional environment. I started to love being the in-house designer where anything that was needed creatively came through me and allowed me to broaden my skill set in doing so (as mentioned above.) Documenting all of this in my blog has also helped in growing my confidence even further as I have been able to look back at what I have achieved and appreciate how far I have come. In my latest job I have the confidence to show new designs to my boss without worrying what they might say, this doesn’t mean that I’m immune to criticism or feedback, but rather I won’t take it as personally as I might once have and will now look to build on what I have started or scrap it in pursuit of a better idea. I will return to University a more confident designer than ever ad I hope that it will be reflected in my work and grades.

As my time at the South London Club has come to an end I have had the chance to reflect on the past eight months. I couldn’t be happier with how the placement has turned out and am proud of what I have achieved as a designer. I feel as though I have fulfilled my aims for the placement and have gained more knowledge about the industry than I ever could have imagined. I have nothing but good memories of the South London Club and I feel that the placement has set me up nicely for the future.

Turning up on my first day and finding out that I was going to be the sole In-House Graphic Designer was both exciting and terrifying. It had always been my plan to have some responsibility within a professional environment on this sandwich year, however the responsibility I was given on my first day was more than I could have imagined. However with my boss Tom’s guidance from the start and some manageable briefs early on, I was able to ease into the role. I created a poster for the new summer “Beer Boxes” which was an instant hit around the office, as well as some presentations for their digital marketing platform ‘Grow Pro Digital’. I got to grips early on with the work communication software ‘Slack’ and was able to easily navigate my way around the company Google Drive account. I never let the pressure of being the sole designer get to me, and I think that this is what has made the last eight months being so personally successful.

One of my biggest aims for the internship was to leave with a solid body of published, professional work. At the time of writing this blog post I have just finished sorting through the vast amount of work that I have created over the last eight months. By working as a designer for the South London Club and Tom’s three other business ventures, I have had the opportunity to create work in a range of different media including video, print and digital. I have acquired new technical skills and strengthened old ones as I have created designs for social media, merchandise and the company website amongst many other platforms. My portfolio now looks better than ever as it showcases a variety of skills and professionally, published work. It is a healthy mix of University projects and work that I have completed on this placement year, giving me much to discuss in interviews after third year.

I feel grateful for the opportunity and mentoring that Tom has given me over the past eight months. I have been able to apply the design skills that I learnt during those first two years at University and continue to learn and grow as a designer. I have enjoyed commuting to London five times a week and have had the chance to explore and socialise more than ever in the capital. I have grown in confidence as a designer in the past eight months and feel surer than ever that Graphic Design is the right career for me. I still have a lot to learn but I certainly feel that the foundations have been laid for me to continue to grow and develop as a designer.

As my time here at the South London Club has nearly come to a close, I have had to start organising my work for the next designer to use, and start creating the ‘Graphic Design Notes’ document that I need to leave my successor. I was left a Graphic Design Notes document by the previous Graphic Designer Pierce, which outlined all the main fonts and styles used across the designs that he had created. I have used the document many times to refer back to the fonts that Pierce used on certain logos and t-shirts, when I have had to modify designs that he had done or to create new ones. The document that he created is simple in style and clearly shows what typefaces and effects he used across his designs. I decided that I to would prepare my own ‘handover’ document for the next designer, as Pierce’s one has been incredibly useful to me over the last eight months.

Based on what original designs I have created during my placement I have decided to create two documents, one for t-shirt designs and the other for mug designs:

On this placement I have been set numerous briefs and tasks for the three businesses that are owned by Thomas Page. A usual week of work consists of a conversation between Tom and myself on Monday morning, where he outlines everything that needs to be completed and new tasks that need to be started. During these conversations I also take the opportunity to let Tom know what progress I have made with the current tasks that I am working on. After this briefing it is then up to me how I manage my time and in what order I go about tackling the week’s tasks. As I have mentioned in previous blog posts, I have been able to apply the time management skills that I acquired during the first two years of University. Like the work I have been doing for Tom, our University coursework submissions required us manage several different briefs for the same hand-in date. I was already in the good habit of making checklists of what I needed to be completing using the Notes app on my iPhone and MacBook. In my Year 2 PDP submission for University I acknowledged the usefulness the Notes app, as it syncs up the notes you make in real time on both your phone and laptop. This has come in particularly handy on this placement year, as I have been able to make notes on my phone during the my travel to and from work, and have it saved on my laptop and ready to access when I arrive at the South London Club office.

I understand that in pursuing jobs as an in-house Graphic Designer, my time management skills will have to be exceptional. Very rarely will a company need one set of work doing at one time and being able to manage work loads is essential as a result. My placement has given me the opportunity to demonstrate my time management skills as the responsibility of delivering designs on time as laid solely with me. I’ve made sure to keep regular communication with my boss, whether that be in person or on our work messenger Slack. By having regular communication with Tom, I have been able to let him know how far a long the project is and by showing him work in progress shots he has been able to gauge whether I am on the right path with what I have created. Each week it has also been my responsibility to fill out my section of the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) spreadsheet. This is where all of us at the South London Club quantify what we have done in the previous week and input it into the general spreadsheet. For example I put down the number of designs and mockups that I have created, or the amount of emails that I have scheduled. This has been a useful way for us to track our progress and see if we are hitting our targets. It is something that I aim to carry on doing during third year, where I can monitor how much work I have done in the week and see how far I have come. This will be useful for when we have to present our work around submission time, where I can refer back to the spreadsheet that has all of the data in it that I need with regards to output.

During my first two years at University I was often asked by tutors and fellow students what I want to do after I graduate. My answer would always be a fairly standard one- to work as a Graphic Designer in an advertising agency. In all honesty I had never given the question too much thought and the answer I gave is a fairly common and generic one amongst design students. Since taking this placement year I have given my future career much more consideration and have asked myself what I really want to do when I graduate. My original plan of working for an advertising agency has shifted more towards becoming an in-house designer, and in this blog I will explain why.

Studying Graphic Design at Coventry for has so far given me an idea of what it might be like to work for a Graphic Design agency. During those first two years we worked on multiple briefs for a range of different “clients” all at one time, just like a designer would in an advertising company. I enjoy balancing different briefs and the variation of outcomes it brings, but at the same time had never really given a thought to in-house design. In-house design differs from agency work as you only work for one company, doing all of the necessary design tasks that they require. This has been my role at the South London Club, where I have been doing the design work and e-commerce for one boss, Thomas Page, doing anything that he needs done digitally. I have enjoyed liaising with one boss and building up a repertoire where we understand each other’s creative vision and visual goals. By only dealing with one company I have got to know the inner workings of it inside out and have a strong understanding of what is expected of me when set design tasks. As the sole designer here I have also been able to demonstrate a wide variety of my skills, whilst learning new ones on the job. For example I came into this placement with little experience in video making, but will leave with a portfolio of different Vlogs and adverts to showcase. It was my responsibility as the in-house designer to learn how to create and publish these videos when they were needed.

I have enjoyed being the ‘go to’ man when it comes to anything design related here at the South London Club. It has been hugely beneficial for my confidence as a Graphic Designer and has left me with a broad range of new skills as well as strengthening any that I arriver here with. I am not completely ruling out working for an advertising agency in the future, I will have to to consider what opportunities come my way. However I can confidently say that I have a much clearer idea of my preferred role within Graphic Design and have eight month’s experience to back it up.