This last week started of very pleasantly as on Monday we had our staff Pub Quiz! It was lovely to have some food and a drink with my colleagues, who before this quiz I hadn’t socialised with outside of the office. It was a great opportunity to talk with my Studio workmates about how they ended up working at the company and how they got into professional Graphic Design. It is about a fifty/fifty split in our department between people who attended University or undertook an apprenticeship, so it was nice to talk to others about the benefits of each different route into the industry. When talking about my experience of this Professional Enhancement Year and hearing others’ experience of undertaking apprenticeships, it was clear that there were many similarities between the two. Like an apprenticeship, this placement year has given me the opportunity to regularly apply my practical skills whilst continuing to learn new ones. I feel that by cutting my teeth at both The South London Club and now Premier Print and Promotions, I have become a far more rounded designer than I was ten months ago.

In terms of office work this week, the day to day duties have been fairly standard, albeit quite heavy on the supplier proofing front. The company have had many orders this placed this week which is great and has meant that I have been heavily involved in checking that the artwork proofs sent to us from the suppliers, completely match the artwork that we have sent them to be printed. Each printing jobs varies from the next, and it is my job to check that the colour printing process is accurate and that the positioning and scale of artwork is correct. When the supplier’s proof doesn’t match the design that was given to them by us, I have to make a comment on the appropriate case number and alert the production team that there has been an error made. In my comment I will explain what needs to be changed and most probably attach a screenshot showing how the supplier’s proof differs from our artwork. Proofs have been coming in thick and fast this week so I’ve really had to be on my A game to make sure I don’t miss any irregularities. Meticulously checking print-ready artwork is not something that I had done before joining the company, so I feel that my attention to detail has really sharpened up as a result. It has given me the confidence to potentially work in a printing company after I graduate, and I will be returning to Uni next year with an almost fresh pair of eyes when it comes to evaluating and checking my own work.

The company Trello board where al jobs are posted and organised

A Trello job card where I will be assigned different tasks

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!

The roller banner design

The design mocked up

My fourth week at Premier Print and Promotions started encouragingly as I was CC’ed into an e-mail inviting all members of the company to an upcoming drinks and quiz night in a couple of weeks time. It feels good that even though I am technically a temp I am being included in work socials where I will be able to get to know my colleagues even better, in a relaxed atmosphere. I’m hoping that some senior members of the Studio team will even be able to share some advice with me on how they got to the positions they are in now and what I can do to help my progress as a professional. As I have just finished my first month at the company, this feels like something of a celebration of how well I have settled in and how nice everyone has been to me so far.

In terms of work, my general day to day responsibilities have stayed the same on the whole, however this week I started noticing how much quicker I am getting through tasks such as sending artwork and replying to e-mails. This is certainly down to the fact that I feel more confident with the workflow than when I started and the speed of things has picked up as a result. I can’t help but liken this to my time at The South London Club, where around a month in I also started to properly step up the speed an accuracy in which I was completing jobs. One job that does stick out from the norm this week was a brief to create some sticker for a tech security company called Thyrotic. Not only did they want my company to produce the physical stickers, but to design them as well. Thyrotic met with our company MD Jamie, and one of the sales executives Lucie to discuss potential ideas. I was first given an idea to create the client’s current logo out of multiple small versions of the logo in a patterned clipping mask technique. After creating mockups of this idea it was mutually decided by both sides that a better idea was needed and that was when I was given a new brief from the client to create a sticker based on a slogan of theirs – “Password status: It’s complicated”. The client had the idea to have four basic male and female figures but with their heads replaced with little asterisks. The idea was immediately clever and simple so I was able to put it together using their brand guidelines as a reference for fonts and colours. They loved my design immediately and after a few simple amends they were happy with the final design which should be sent to print next week. From a personal and professional development perspective its encouraging to be doing some client work once again and it feels great to be able to flex my design skills.

There has also been talk in the Studio of the possibility of me being trained up to start taking on “Cases”. This is where a client’s design is sent to a member of the Studio to be positioned and laid out correctly on a chosen product. This could be anything from a logo on a pen to a design on a pack of sweets, Premier Print and Promotions really do offer an extensive range of products ready for printing! This is an important role within the company as it the physical stage of making a client’s wishes come true once they have been convince by the sales team to use our companies’ services. Whether or not I do end up taking on some cases it’s good to know that they could potentially be trusting me with a big responsibility within the Studio department. I am continually inspired by the efficiency in which the Studio is run and how effective group work can be back to University next year. I know that a big part of the course in Third Year is the Degree Show, where a lot of opinions and ideas will be put out there on how best to raise money and brand the show. Through what I have learnt from my old boss Tom at the South London Club and now Charlotte at Premier Print, I hope that I can show others that it is possible to work almost seamlessly as part of team when everyone follows adheres to a professional level of communication and respect.

The finished Thycotic sticker

My third week at Premier Print and Promotions has gone just as well as the first two. I feel settled in the relaxed office atmosphere and am able to hit the ground running every single day as I know what is expected of me. I was given a bit more responsibility on Friday as my boss and another co-worker from Studio had taken the day off, meaning the workload for the day was left to just me and another Artworker. We were able to handle the work all day long and kept in regular communication to make sure that we stayed on top of all the day’s tasks. It feels good to have gained the trust of my boss who feels confident enough to leave me in the studio with just another designer to fulfil the whole day’s work. I feel as though the responsibilities and expectations of working at The South London Club have prepared me well for handling larger amounts of work and meeting deadlines.

There was a particularly good feeling in the office this week as the company smashed their monthly sales targets which is especially important as we enter into the final month of the financial year! Despite only being at the company for three weeks, it feels good to have contributed towards this success in some way. During the his monthly roundup speech I was thanked by the company Managing Director for coming in as a temp to help the studio out. It felt nice to have my efforts recognised by the “Big Boss” and I am glad that I have been able to settle into the office so quickly.  In terms of the work itself this week was really a continuation of the previous week, I’ve been replying to e-mails, sorting artwork and checking over supplier proofs. This usually takes up the majority of my day, but in the spare moments I have been working on the Sales Executives’ photo gallery slideshows. I have added a new set of roughly twenty slides that will prompt the sales’s team about questions to ask potential customers and the actions needed to take after a phone call. Next week I hope to complete this slideshow and hopefully get back to working on “The Great British Promotional Show” artwork, but I will do whatever is required of me throughout the week.

Following a whirlwind first week at Premier Print, I am writing this blog post having just finished my second week at the company. I feel just as excited and enthusiastic about the job as I did at the end of last week and feel that this has really been the best possible step to have taken following my eight month placement in Lewisham. I have been introduced to new staff members, given new responsibilities and settled well into what I see as a role that has furthered my design thinking and creative practice.

As I wrote about in my previous blog posts, my mains tasks on the first week were to examine logos, re-format artwork and check supplier proofs. I hit the ground running at the start of this week as I was able to just carry on with these tasks by constantly keeping on top of my e-mails and the company Trello boards. My boss seems happy for me to keep plugging away and has given me the opportunity to get on with my work with far less guidance than I required last week. I feel comfortable to sending e-mails around the office and even just walking up to new peoples’ desks to discuss artwork and the usability of certain files. I can appreciate that this is great experience for the future, where there is every chance that I could end up working for a company with multiple departments and have to communicate my thoughts and ideas on a daily basis. The South London Club had a much smaller team -there was only three of us, so I’ve really had to rise to the challenge of dealing with many different new people each day. I have always been a sociable person and find it comes naturally to lead University groups, so I am applying the communication skills I gained in those first two years as much as possible.

Aside from just carrying on with the daily tasks mentioned above, I have been set some design-based projects to work on when I have spare time. I was given these tasks at the start if the week and felt an immense sense of pride that they were willing to trust me with design work after only one week at the company. Below I have detailed the tasks that I have been set and have worked on in the last seven days:

Sales Executive Slideshows – I was asked by my boss Charlotte to continue working on a slideshow presentation that had been started by some of the other members of the studio team. The idea of the slideshow is that it will serve as a reminder to the sales executives of what to say on the phone when selling products to potential clients. The slideshow will eventually be played on a loop all day long on digital photo frames that will be placed on the sales teams’ desks. I have been carrying on creating the slideshow in Illustrator, making sure to refer to the company design guidelines when selecting colours and imagery. The presentation is bright and up-beat, full of inspiring quotes and uplifting imagery. I have been able to transfer some of the presentation creation skills that I acquired at the South London Club, where I produced promotional presentations for GrowPro Digital. The project has been fun so far and I was given good feedback by the company MD Jamie Marshall, who really likes the style of the slideshow so far.

Thomas Cook Pitch Presentation – Premier Print do a lot of work for Thomas Cook, and on Wednesday they were asked by the travel company to give a pitch on the following Monday about a range of new products they are interested in. There was going to have to be a quick turn around as they had only had a few days to prepare for the pitch. I was told that I was going to be needed to help in the creation of a presentation to aid the sales team for when they go to pitch on Monday. The company leaders and sales team drew up a basic ida of what they wanted to say on each slide and gave some rough information to my boss who started to create a professional powerpoint in Illustrator. I was asked to create four slides of the presentation  which included a mind map, chart and infographic. Like the slideshow I mentioned above, I have been able to draw on the skills I gained creating work for GrowPro Digital, especially with the infographics. I feel privileged to have been asked to help on the project and I hope the pitch goes well on Monday!

The Great British Promotional Show – Finally, and in my opinion the most exciting opportunity that has presented itself this week as been my inclusion in ‘The Great British Promotional Show’ that the company are planning on putting on in the summer. This will be a chance for Premier’s clients to all get together to discuss all things print, give presentations and make new connections. I was ‘CC’ed into an e-mail from company MD Jamie, who outlined exactly what the show is going to be about and most importantly for me- the aesthetic that they are going for. Jamie wants the show to be British, retro and punk – think Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the Sex Pistols. My boss informed that she would like me to be a part of the project and to start drawing up some early ideas for logos. I was honoured to have been asked to be a part of the show and excited at the opportunity to brand a high-profile event. I have started creating some early ideas for the logo which have been approved by some of the company’s leaders and I cannot wait to get back to it next week!

Some of my early ideas for the show’s logo!

After my placement at the South London Club came to an end last week I signed up with employment agency Brook Street in the hope that they could find me some work. Having left them my CV they got back to me letting me know that a vacancy for a Designer/ Artworker had come up in a town not too far from my own. I jumped at the opportunity and on Monday went for an interview and portfolio check at the company – ‘Premier Print and Promotions’. This was the perfect opportunity for me to show off my recently updated portfolio and explain the roles and responsibilities that I had at the South London Club. The interview went well as I had plenty of work to show them from this site and could back up the Marketing & Design Manager’s questions with real life examples. I was hired on the spot, started the next day and have just completed my first week at the company.

Premier Print and Promotions are a multi-award winning distributor of promotional merchandise and print based in Kelvedon, Essex. My role within the company so far has been to assist the design team in a range of different tasks including the checking of supplier proofs, saving artwork files and checking the usability of logos sent into the company from potential customers. It has been a big change from my role at the South London Club, but I have been able to apply the skills that I learnt during my time there. The design team here mainly use Illustrator, so I have had to adapt to my colleagues’ work flow of doing most things in that programme. I shifted out of my previously “Photoshop only” mentality during my time at the South London Club and have continued to break out of bad habits at this new job. I have also been properly introduced to the web-based project management application ‘Trello’. I had briefly used the tool at University during one particular project but never fully understood it’s capabilities and uses for a professional company. It is the perfect tool for different departments to send projects and requests between each other, where everyone can see what needs doing and win what order basis the urgency of the task. I feel that my knowledge of the software will be key to my development as a professional as I now have an understanding of how companies spread work between different departments and make sure tasks are delegated properly. This is an insight into professional work spaces that I never knew about during University and is a skill that I will take into third year, where I will start organising my work using Trello and encourage others to do so when working in a group.

Working in the ‘Studio” department of Premier Print I have been mainly dealing with print as the name of the company would suggest. My work at University and at the South London Club has mainly been digital, where I have not had to give much thought to the printing process. Here at Premier I have had to re-educate myself about the importance of DPI resolution, colour set-up and bleed areas. Part of my job has been to check that supplier proofs match the artwork that was sent to them by the company I work for. Having been shown the ropes on Tuesday (my first day) I made a note of everything I was taught and have been been carefully checking proofs ever since. This is already having a big impact on my creative practice as I am widening my skill set to print as opposed to just digital. At the South London Club it was someone else’s job to check that t-shirts and mugs were printed correctly, however that responsibility now lies with me. Checking proofs has been a great introduction to the company as it has given me an idea of the workflow here and has had me talking to multiple departments including admin and sales. Not only have they have been asking me to examine supplier proofs but they have also been getting me to check the usability of logos that they are sent by customers for print. I have been letting them know whether the logos are vectors (which they should be) and whether text is outlined and ready for print. Like checking proofs, this is another part of the design industry I had never been exposed to at University or the South London Club, but I now know how essential it is for things like this to be checked in the printing world.

It is crazy to think that at the start of the week I didn’t have any job and have now just completed my first week as an Artworker for a major printing company. I am learning new skills all the time that are helping me to grow as a designer in an industry I had not yet been a part of. I am grateful for the opportunity and can’t wait to se what next week has in store!

The company logo

The beautiful company building

Sorting Social is an online tool that I have used throughout my time here at the South London Club to sort and search for t-shirt designs and slogan ideas. The website allows users to search through media on websites such as Pinterest and find content based on what they search for. This has been the perfect tool for me as I have had to find on-trend t-shirt designs throughout my placement. Examples of these include finding political t-shirts for ‘Incredibly British’ and funny t-shirts for ‘Humerous Merch’. Social Media platforms can be useful ways to discover on-trend slogans and visuals, however due to the vast amount of users on each platform it can be difficult navigating through the vast amount of content on a website such as Pinterest. Using Sorting Social I have been able to easily filter through Social Media content and find slogans and designs appropriate for the  businesses that I have been designing for. I will continue to use Sorting Social throughout my third year at University as a way of collating inspiration and research for my final year of projects.

A screenshot from Sorting Social

At about two thirds of the way through this placement, my role expanded even further into carrying out email marketing for the South London Club. I did this via an online tool called “Mailchimp” that allows companies to send out emails to vast amounts of customers and those that have signed up to their mailing list. Mailchimp allows businesses to target specific audiences based on the information people give when they sign up to the scheme or buy an item from the online shop. For example here at the South London Club we could target “females living in Balham” or “males living in Lewisham”. Having the ability to tailor emails to different groups of customers is a crucial one. Users will receive emails unique to their area, for example merchandise of their area of South London. I have learnt and and seen first hand how this helps to drive sales of products when these emails are sent out.

My role in email marketing has been to personlise each email to specific areas of London. This has meant adapting the title and subject of each email, selecting the correct area but most crucially updating the product list to suit each part of South London. We target around 50 areas of South London, meaning that I have had to work efficiently and effectively to have the e-mails done on time. We have been selling four categories of merchandise: T-Shirt, Mugs, Prints and Hooodies. I have designed the banners for each category that can be found on the website shop and also the general emails that get sent to all on the SLC mailing list.

It has felt rewarding to be able to not just create my own designs, but upload them online and market them myself. I have been able to carry out the process of creating merchandise from the conception of an idea, right the way through to marketing it. Mailchimp is the industry standard tool for email marketing and like Printify and Shopify, I can say with confidence that not only do I know how to use it, but I have experience in using it professionally.

Mailchimp logo

During my time at the South London Club I have been able to consolidate skills that I had prior to undertaking this placement, but I’ve also had the opportunity to learn new technical skills. I have always been a fairly advanced user of Photoshop and during my second year at University gained my Adobe Certified Associate Photoshop certificate to prove so through my Add+Vantage module. Photoshop is an incredibly versatile piece of software that once you know how to work can be used for a wide range of design briefs. However in the past i have had it pointed out to me by tutors that I can rely too heavily on this one software alone. A prime example of this being for my typography project in the first term of year two, I used Photoshop to lay out my magazine using artboards, when any designer would tell you that this really should have been done in In Design. I new that I should have been using a combination of different programmes to achieve the best possible results. Fortunately on this placement I have changed my old habits and made a conscious effort throughout my time here to use a variety of software on projects:

Adobe Ilustrator– I arrived at University with very little experience in using Illustrator and so I decided to undertake the “Beginners Guide” course as my add+vantage module that year. I ended picking up the skills very quickly due to the crossover many of the tools had with Photoshop and ended up gaining 85% in the module assessment. However like I said above for actual University briefs I very seldom used any software other than Photoshop so didn’t use Illustrator much after this add+vantage module. Here on my placement I have made an effort to use the software as much as possible, a key example of this being the work I have done for Incredibly British. The style of this brand is highly illustrative so I have used Illustrator to produce posters of British cakes and biscuits, as well as illustrated about Britain as social media content. I also used Adobe Illustrator to entirely produce the three infographic posters needed for GrowPro Digital. Using the software gave the infographics a playful, flowing feel that would have been much harder to replicate in Photoshop. I was always told by University tutors about the benefits of creating vectors through Illustrator and I have really come to understand what they meant. The skills that I learnt during the first year introduction to illustrator have proven to be vital to the knowledge that I now have in using it. Through a mixture of Youtube tutorials and lots of experimentation I can now confidently say that I am a comfortable and skilled user of Adobe Illustrator.

Adobe InDesign– The first task that I was set when I arrived here at my placement was to re-make a PDF using Adobe In Design that had been created in Photoshop. I definitely had SOME experience in using In Design prior to this internship, however as I have already explained Photoshop was what I used to create just about everything. I have had quite a baptism of fire when using InDesign , as I have had to re-familiarise myself with it on the job. I have used it to create multiple PDF documents detailing the services provided by GrowPro digital, as well as introduction presentations or ‘Decks’ as I now know they are called professionally. Through using InDesign on this placement I feel confident that I can use it competently and will continue to learn more and more about it in the future. I still have a long way to go with it but I have laid a good foundation to build on.

Adobe Animate– I decided on this placement to use a programme that I had never used before and that ended up being Adobe Animate. I didn’t just decide to use it for fun, rather the need to use it came about through an Incredibly British project, so I opened it for the first time. I needed to somehow turn the British facts illustrations into gifs that could be published to social media. I soon learnt that the crossover from Illustrator to Animate was an easy one so I loaded the Illustrations into the animation programme and away I went. Through some basic web tutorials and videos, I managed to add some movement to the previously static illustrations. For example I made a stamp rotate completely to show how it must always be posted with the Queen’s head up and I managed to make some potatoes appear like they were growing out of the ground to represent British agriculture. The gifs are simple but effective in my opinion and have helped me prove to myself that I can pickup new skills as and when a job requires them. Adobe Animate is a software that I endeavour to use more in the future and could even be my third year University add+vantage module.

As my placement has progressed my role within the South London Club has continually evolved. Perhaps the most notable change would be when Tom asked me if I wished to learn and carry out the e-commerce for the online shops and Etsy stores. My dream has always been to become a Graphic Designer in the classic sense however on this year out I have been keen to pick up as many broad digital skills as possible. I leapt at the chance to learn how e-commerce works and get involved in that side of the business. I picked up the skills quickly, and soon enough I wasn’t just designing the merchandise for Tom, but I was sorting and uploading it online as well. I have broken down what I have learnt about e-commerce into the different online tools that I have used to carry out the process:

Printify– This online tool is what I use to upload my designs onto physical products, in this example we’ll say it’s a t-shirt. The t-shirt design document needs to have very specific attributes, for example it must all be done in CMYK and have a dpi of 300 (the higher the dpi the better.) What I learnt in second year through Paul Hill about DPI has been useful this year, as I know that physical designs require a higher DPI for the best possible appearance. After loading the design onto a t-shirt template, it is then my job to position and scale it according to what looks best for that individual design. When this is done I sort out the variables for the t-shirt, for example what colours and sizes it will be available in. I then fill out the basic information such as title, description and size chart as the final stage of the Printify process. I can confidently say I am experienced in using this online tool and will definitely be putting it on my CV.

Shopify– Shopify is the next stage of the process where I now know how to edit variables such as prices and tags in bulk for different lines of merchandise. I have learnt the importance of tags as they are what drive people towards items when people search certain terms. Shopify also allows me to edit the SEO of a product. SEO stands for “search engine optimisation” and is essentially what people see when the item appears on Google. Like the tags, I have learnt the importance of SEO as this is what will appeal to a potential buyer when they see a listing on Google.

Since learning how to use Shopify and Printify, every set of designs that I now do I upload to the company stores myself. Being able to sort and publish my designs online will be a useful skill to tell future employers but also if i want to put my own designs online- i know how to do it.

Shopify online shop listings

Printify online listings

Printify t-shirt generator