Placement Report

Placement: Digital Velocity

Digital Media Executive Placement 2016-2017

Alexander Nicholson

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Placement: Digital Velocity

Introduction Excited, nervous and just a little bit eager. left I decided to hold out on the offer. This lead me to my interview at Digital Velocity, a small marketing & e-commerce agency located in the Media Centre, Huddersfield.

After an intense interview with six member of staff I was immediately impressed by the company, job role & staff members. Finally, after what felt like an eternity I received a phone call to say that I had been successful in my application & that the job was mine. I started work two weeks later!

Alexander Nicholson

After finishing my second year of University I began searching for a company who was offering a placement scheme. After handing out multiple CV’s I finally began to get interviews. The first was at a company called Focus International who were a textiles design company.

Although the interview went well I didn’t feel that the job role was right for me. The second interview was at Huddersfield Town football club.

Following a successful interview I was offered the job! However, although it was a good opportunity, the placement was part time & unpaid. As I still had one interview

Placement: Digital Velocity

My job E-commerce campaigns. professional standards. From day one I was working on live briefs with some of them getting sent out to over 100,000 people via email. Having never worked in the industry full time before, I found this extremely daunting in my first few weeks. However, I soon adapted to the tight time scale. As I became more experienced with each client I began to work smarter & faster, allowing me to produce professional artwork. Unlike many placements, I became a full time member of the team with life briefs, real deadlines & responsibility which has improved my work ethic considerably.

Alexander Nicholson

As Digital Velocity is an E-commerce agency most of the work I produced was campaign based material to run on various clients websites in order to generate revenue. I would be given a brief from the accounts manager such as “3 for 2 on T-shirts� & would then create suitable artwork in different formats such as Email, Web & Social Media. In my time at Velocity I managed various clients who would send multiple campaigns weekly meaning that I had to work to a tight time schedule, sometime only having half an hour to create a full campaign that was up to

Placement: Digital Velocity

The Clients Equiflair, full of goodies for horse & rider.

We managed to win the pitch for Equiflair at the start of my placement, this gave the perfect opportunity to see how the whole ‘pitch’ process worked, from initial designs all the way through to a completed e-commerce website. I was involved with creating various elements for the new site which helped me fully understand the brand. Equiflair had a totally different feel to all the other websites I worked on, It was clean & worked to a strict colour palette.

The site itself sold high end equestrian clothing & accessories meaning that any artwork produce

had to reflect the value of the products been sold. One advantage to Equiflair as a client was that they had some beautiful photography to work with, this massively helped with the look & overall design.

Like other clients I would receive a campaign brief roughly once a week meaning I could spend a little longer polishing the designs. From a designers point of view, Equiflair was probably the best client to work with as they had no previous branding before approaching Digital Velocity.

This allowed me & my colleges to really put our own stamp on the site making it a personal favorite.

Alexander Nicholson

www.equiflairsaddlery.com

Placement: Digital Velocity

The Clients Dugdale Bros & Co, the finest cloth in Huddersfield.

Dugdale are a high end cloth manufacturer based in Huddersfield.

They create a huge variety of material which is exported all over the globe. We won the pitch for Dugdale when I was just stating my placement year meaning I helped with designing elements for the site.

The company wanted to keep a professional, British feel to the site, making use of their product photography. From a development perspective the site was extremely tricky to build, as the client wanted live information on how much cloth was in stock & available

to a customer as well as regular email alerts & updates. Although my involvement with the site has been limited, the client has decided to begin sending out email advertisement campaigns to their best clients. I have been tasked with designing the artwork. The have also decided to commission Velocity to create various brochures & other piece of print material.

Alexander Nicholson

www.dugdalebros.com

Placement: Digital Velocity

Print Work Dugdale brochure of the business & showcase their products. I began by viewing their website which we had designed & built earlier in the year. As we wanted to create a brand style I implemented the same strict colour palate used on the website.

I began by sketching out ideas & using Photoshop to create a rough template we could show to the client as they were keen to be involved throughout the whole process. I then used InDesign to create the full document. One highlight of this particular project was finding a bank of photographs & prints which dated back to 1904.

Alexander Nicholson

While on placement, my main roll was to produce digital artwork, such as email flyers & web banners.

These would be viewed in a purely digital format for short periods of time. However, on occasion I was tasked with some briefs that were purely for print. The main print jobs were for the client Dugdale Bros & Co. They wanted two brochures designing from scratch. The first brochure was to advertise their “trimmings range� which they sell to various clients around the UK. The second was a much larger project, a full brochure which included information about the heritage

Placement: Digital Velocity

The Clients County Golf, for all your golfing needs.

County Golf was the man client I worked on during my time at Digital Velocity. The company sell discounted golf products, with multiple campaigns & offers been advertised daily. Because of the frequency of the campaigns I always had work to do. In the first two months of my placement I followed a creative style that had been set by the previous student, however I decided that it would be much easier to create a simple set style which would reduce design time & help establish a consistent brand for the company. Once I had set the new style I continued it

throughout the year, gaining praise form the client. As County Golf sells cheap clothing at discounted price, the artwork had to reflect this. Often, a cheap quick banner worked best as this best conveyed the quality of the products been sold. If the advertising artwork for County Golf looked too expensive, it could potentially damage the performance of the campaign, as it may put off customers on a low budget. Although County Golf’s website is approaching ten years old, it’s revenue continues to increase it’s products are only becoming more & more popular.

Alexander Nicholson

www.county-golf.co.uk

Placement: Digital Velocity

The Clients Charles Wilson, great clothing, great prices.

Charles Wilson is a clothing brand based just down the road in Huddersfield. They produce a variety of mens clothing, ranging from socks & underwear all the way up to Christmas jumpers. The company has a brand guide line & are notorious for been very fussy.

Despite this, the website always looks clean & professional. One advantage to Charles Wilson is that they have regular photo shoots to display their products. This aids massively when creating the campaigns. The brand makes use of a navy blue, turquoise & white however this is only a loose guide

line. Over they year I feel that some of the best work I’ve produced has been for this client as they are more willing to experiment with new Ideas & styles. When I started the placement Charles Wilson used a set template for all their designs however I felt that after so long the design become boring & needed freshening up. I create a completely new design helping progress the brands identity. Although I enjoyed working with this client, they were extremely fussy. Sometimes campaigns would have to go through eight minor changes before been given the ‘go ahead’.

Alexander Nicholson

www.cwclothes.co.uk

Placement: Digital Velocity

The Clients Ten Motives, the UK’s best electronic cigarettes.

Ten motives is one of the busiest & highest earning clients. They sell e-cigarettes & all the various accessories & equipment surrounding the devices. The site naturally generates thousands on a daily basis meaning campaigns are run weekly. If the offers were any more frequent the client would be swamped with orders. The brand is made up of three primary colours, Black, white & a vivid orange meaning the website & campaigns can be intense to view. Due to the sites popularity, the client is keen to keep it looking sharp, resulting in the site been redesigned three

times to create the best user experience. When creating artwork for Ten motives campaigns’ I tend to use bright bold colours with plenty of effects to catch the eye of the customer. Ten motives was one of the trickier sites to work with as they had very little, poor quality photography. This made creating the artwork particularly challenging when trying to show off what looked like a relatively boring product. A lot of creativity was needed to create a successful campaign.

Alexander Nicholson

www.10motives.com

Placement: Digital Velocity

The Clients SmartSearch, fraud prevention services.

Smart Search is a money laundering agency who deal directly with other businesses. They are unique from my perspective as I mainly produced print based work for them. Over they year we produced various business cards, leaflets & advertisements which allowed me to see a different side to the design industry. With all other clients I would produce mainly digital based material which was very fast paced, however when creating print based material I found it much more time consuming as the design has to be one hundred percent perfect before been committed to print.

This variety of work helped expand my knowledge in Adobe InDesign, as well as the print based output settings required. Unfortunately SmartSearch is a relatively boring brand to work on, until we decided to inject some humour into their advertisement campaigns. We spent a morning coming up with animal puns which we could use as a tagline in the campaigns. Once we combined these with some suitable photography we had an effective advertisement campaign.

Alexander Nicholson

www.smartsearchuk.com

Placement: Digital Velocity

The Clients UNVC, great for those summer essentials.

UNVC is a clothing retailer based in Bradford. Before approaching Digital Velocity they had only sold through Amazon & Ebay, however they decided that a full website would increase revenue. From a design perspective the site shares a lot of qualities with Equiflair, however the main difference been that UNVC sells low budge clothing .

Once the site was nearing completion I was asked to create some artwork for their upcoming email campaigns. I knew that the client wanted to keep to a modernist design using a strict white & navy

colour scheme. After playing with a few campaign designs I came to a style which I felt best represented the client & the products been advertised. Thankfully the client thought so too & signed off the campaign. This was a fantastic experience as I was able to come up with the designs from start to finish relatively unaided. UNVC now sends out weekly campaigns driving more and more traffic to the site every day.

Alexander Nicholson

www.unvc.co.uk

Placement: Digital Velocity

The Clients Tow-Shop, every tow bar for every car.

Tow shop was another client we won the pitch for when I was halfway through my placement year.

As the site needed to be designed & built to a strict deadline, I was able to be heavily involved in the design process from start to finish.

Tow-Shop is a primarily a business to business site which sells vehicle tow bars‌ Not the most glamorous product. When designing the site we felt that the product photography of the tow bars was unattractive, especially when multiple products can be viewed on a single page.

We began discussing potential solutions & eventually settled with

illustrating the five types of towbar types, then simply repeating these images across all products on the site. I was tasked with the job.

Using Adobe Illustrator I created five vectors outcomes in various colours & styles, after agreeing on the best one the site was pitched to the client. To my pleasure the clients absolutely loved the idea & were more than happy to go ahead with the site build. As Tow-Shop is a business to business site they don’t send advertising campaigns, meaning that now the site has been complete my involvement is limited.

Alexander Nicholson

Under Construction

Placement: Digital Velocity

Illustration Work TowShop. on the market, quickly discovering that there are six main types. I found a usable photograph for each variant & began by simply creating a vector outline in Illustrator. Once I had a basic outline I began adding more detail & started experimenting with solid shapes. After some minor alterations I created various colour outcomes to find a style which best suited the overall look of the website. On the right are the basic outlines, however, on the previous page the illustrations can be seen how they appear online.

Alexander Nicholson

Most of the work I produced on placement was either created in Photoshop or InDesign, meaning I didn’t get chance to work in Illustrator as much as I would have liked. However, this changed when we began designs for the client “TowShop”. After various meetings we decided that having multiple ugly photographs of tow bars on the site really spoiled the overall experience.

Collectively, we decided that it would be better to create a series of illustrations to represent each type/ style of tow bar. I was tasked with the job .I began by researching the various types of tow bars available

Placement: Digital Velocity

The Clients Splashes & Spills, party makeup for pro’s.

While on placement I was lucky enough to be given a full design brief to work on independently.

The company is called “Splashes & Spills” & were recommended to us by one of our other existing clients. Splashes & Spills create a range of special FX & UV makeup.

When initially given the brief I was told that I would have roughly three weeks to come up with the full designs before I would pitch them to the client. Considering we received positive feedback from the pitch I would then expand my CSS skills by helping build the website, overseeing the build entire build

process. After initially seeing the brand I was excited to get started.

I began by choosing a base colour palate, making use of the bold bright colours radiating from the products. I then began to design the site, having regular meeting with my colleges to ensure I was keeping on track & sticking to the brief.

The designs have now been signed off by the client with a few alterations. We will begin building the site in the coming weeks & hope to have everything finished by then end of August 2017.

Alexander Nicholson

Design Stage.

Placement: Digital Velocity

HTML & CSS “Another string to my bow� to good use. I started by helping build email templates for new clients. These usually consisted of the logo, social media buttons, Images & company information.

Once the HTML template has been written, it is uploaded into a website called Mailchimp (A service that can send emails out on mass to various databases). Then, unique tags are added into the HTML to allow us to add new artwork to the email whenever the client wants to send an email. I have also practiced my development skills by creating holding pages for new sites as well as building full page case studies.

Alexander Nicholson

While on placement I was given the opportunity to attend a two day training course in basic HTML & CSS at Leeds Beckett University.

The course consisted of writing & editing basic pieces of code in order to edit a fake website. Throughout the course I used code to edit text, images & layout while learning how sites are hosted & maintained.

This is essential as I hope to return to Velocity after I graduate. After graduating, my job will slightly alter from pure design work to design & front end web development work.

After completing the course I began putting my new found knowledge

Placement: Digital Velocity

Highlights The whole year?

I am slowly building up my skills to help with web development work at Digital Velocity. I plan to expand on these skills in my final year of university. The third & most important highlight as been the social side of the placement.

Everyone has welcomed me & treated me as a full time member of the team, not just “The placement guy�. The team as been willing to help me with any technical process I have been struggling with & has increasingly given me more & more responsibility over the year, For example, later this year I will be pitching designs to live clients.

Alexander Nicholson

The entire placement has been brilliant, but there are some key points I can pick out as particular highlights. The first is simply been given the responsibility to work on live briefs from day one, getting the satisfaction that my work is been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people & receiving positive feedback from the clients themselves. This gave me an overwhelming sense of pride & only encouraged me to keep working harder. The second highlight Is that I was able to attend an NTI course at Leeds Becket University to enhance my HTML & CSS knowledge, as

Placement: Digital Velocity

Low Points Fussy clients. been sold. Another downside to the job was one client in particular called ‘County Golf’. The company sells cheap golf clothing but has an aggressive marketing campaign.

Two emails & web banners would be sent daily meaning I would have at least four pieces or artwork to create every day. However, on Fridays I would have to create all the artwork that would be sent out over the weekend meaning a full afternoon of designing County Golf artwork. Black Friday weekend was also a challenge, with all the clients wanting extra content produced.

Alexander Nicholson

Although the placement year has been fantastic there have been some minor annoyances. The main culprit been fussy clients. As explained earlier, there are strict time restrictions which I had to work to. Sometimes I would create a campaign which we thought looked great but, unfortunately the client wasn’t so keen. Other times we I had to create artwork which aesthetically didn’t look great but it was exactly what the client wanted.

On occasion a client would say that the artwork looked too good & would ask us to make it look ‘cheaper’ to reflect the products

Placement: Digital Velocity

Conclusion Do I have to go back to uni? projects & enhance my development skills while a new placement student from the year below takes my place full time. Following further discussions with my manager, he has decided that he would like me to come straight back to Digital Velocity after I graduate, working as a full-time ‘digital designer & Junior front end developer’. A role which I was more than happy to accept. My advice to anyone would be to complete the placement year.

It’s incredibly valuable & will help develop your skills as a designer tenfold. I’m excited to rejoin uni life & continue work this year.

Alexander Nicholson

As my time on placement draws to a close, I couldn’t be happier with how working for Digital Velocity has helped me progress as a designer.

I have gained an incredible insite into the working world & how businesses interact with each other & grow. My design skills & software knowledge has vastly improved along with my work ethic & time management, skills which will massively benefit me in my final year at University. I am incredibly pleased that my manager wants me to continue working two days a week while I’m at university, allowing me to continue working on more live

Placement: Digital Velocity Alexander Nicholson

Student ID: U1457513 Placement Tutor: Sara Nesteruk