At my work, (Rapid IT) they have kindly let me set up a card stand in our showroom today! So hopefully this will get me some extra sales. I have written all about why my cards are ‘naked’ on the stand too to help promote the reduction of plastic packaging. This actually fits in well with my works values too as we recycle redundant IT hardware and refurbish to help promote an eco-friendly world! If you’re in Padiham/Burnley why not come check out my cards in person?
Day 21 – A Day In The Life of TeePee Creations – Yesterday this day was completed on my instagram stories, you can check it out properly here on my highlights – @teepeecreations_shop.
LCWS Website Design
Over the past week and a bit I have been mostly working on the re-design of the LCWS wesbite. This is what it currently looks like –
I was shown lots of other websites as inspiration and knew that they wanted it to be more colourful, visual and interactive but still professional looking. This was the first concept I started with, using an illustration to demonstrate the main service of LCWS on the front page and then scrolling down to other info.
After sitting and tweaking the top bar and illustration I got to this point, making the illustration look sunnier and brighter and simplifying the top bar. I also wanted to make the illustration into an animation so spent a lot of time watching tutorials for Adobe animate. I really enjoyed learning all about classic and motion tweens and used a youtuber called “AlanBeckerTutorials” –
So far it is quite simple but the more I learn the better it is becoming, a video is shown of this below. –
Creating the other pages
Most of these pages are just layouts with placeholder text and will be further developed this week.
Why choose us – this is just a simple layout pointing out the reasons why LCWS is better than other recycling companies.
BEFORE
MY DESIGN
About Us – I thought that on this page having an intro to each employee would make the website seem a bit more personal and friendly as you can put faces to the business.
BEFORE
MY DESIGN
Services – Similar to why us but showing in more detail each of the services LCWS has to offer.
BEFORE
MY DESIGN
News – I am thinking with this one it could be a bit like a news feed so new tweets, blog posts or facebook posts could appear on here.
NO BEFORE
MY DESIGN
Book A Collection – simple form to fill in for booking a collection, I have kept this clean and easy to read.
BEFORE
MY DESIGN
Accreditations – To make these a bit more visual than before I have created little illustrations for each document.
BEFORE
MY DESIGN
Rapid IT Logo
Throughout the past few weeks I have been doing more logo iterations, these are them all so far, I am struggling to separate rapid it ‘education’, ‘trade’ and ‘shop’ into 3 slightly different logos, any suggestions or comments on what anyone thinks are welcome!
3 weeks ago I started my first (proper adult!) job as a graphic designer at LCWS Recycling Ltd and their sister company Rapid IT. So far I have to say I am really enjoying it, everyone has been so friendly and welcoming, I was so nervous on my first day but after speaking to everyone this soon faded. It feels so good going to work to do a job I enjoy and love.
Cyber Seminar
Within the first week, my first task was to design some new business cards for LCWS employees. The design they currently had was like this –
I had been told they wanted a corporate and clean look so came up with several initial design concepts.
They liked the idea of using an image faded in the background, specifically the one with the diagonal line across so these were developed further with a few extra concepts too. As I started to learn what style they liked it became easier for me to come up with ideas quicker.
After creating this second set of designs I printed them off and they were handed around at work for opinions on who liked what.
Everyone really liked having the QMS logo’s on the curve as it made use of them rather then just dropping them onto the card. We also decided to remove the background image as when the card was test printed the text got lost. The environment agency logo was removed as it did not need to be there so made more room for blancco’s logo and then the font was changed to Helvetica. The company font that was being used before was quite ‘flicky,’ I suggested Helvetica as it looks cleaner, is easier on the eyes and has a more corporate feel to it.
Eventually, after having some practice ones printed on recycled paper we decided on a couple of small changes then had them made and printed for everyone on gloss cards. Originally the recycled ones seemed like the route to go down as they reflected the companies principles as they are recycling business, however, the quality of them was poor (they were flimsy and fraying at the edges). There was also no mention anywhere of them being made of recycled material. The new glossy ones that were printed looked 10x better. Here are the final designs and photos of them –
After creating this layout and style it was used across other merchandise for LCWS ready for a Cyber Seminar they held this week. I created mugs and mouse mats which were just quick tasks.
The last piece of graphic design for this seminar was a leaflet. This needed to be created to show the main services of LCWS and also had another side with the main services of the sister company Rapid IT.
The current leaflet they had was quite simple, the logo and some text outlining 5 of their main services. I didn’t think it was very visual as there was only one image on there which did not really represent what they did as a company.
To show off the services of the company I drew out 5 illustrations starting off as very quick sketches in my sketchbook to then creating them on my Wacom tablet using illustrator. I stuck to the company colours to keep it visually pleasing.
Using these illustrations, and the layout from the business card this was the leaflet designed for the LCWS side after a couple of minor changes. As I had a “style” to stick to now the amount of concepts significantly decreased compared to the business cards.
After getting this side approved by the MD I then moved onto Rapid IT creating a similar concept using illustrations to represent the services –
All this was created for the Cyber Seminar held at our building on Wednesday. It was a really good feeling seeing my design work everywhere and the day went really well.
(all photography done by me, that has been my other job on top of graphic design work :D)
PR
A couple of computer donations that LCWS have carried out to The Whitehough Centre and Blackburn youth zone were done whilst I was there and I was asked to photograph these happening for PR and social media.
Logo Design
The MD wants the logo for Rapid IT changing to a simpler look so I have been coming up with concepts in between other work tasks. These are the current ideas, let me know what you think so far –
CURRENT LOGO –
CONCEPTS –
Other work
As well as all this I have done other small tasks too, starting to create the designs for letterheads and footers, creating interactive forms for job/inspection sheets and T&C’s layouts. I have just added some photos of these bits of work too.
As you can see I have had a very busy first 3 weeks! I will make sure to keep my blog updated weekly from now so my next post isn’t so long! 😂
Getting a job and working on my own business
Firstly I need to apologise for how quiet I have been since graduating. After I had been offered my design placement in London I started working at home packing boxes in a warehouse whilst waiting to sort out moving down there. Unfortunately about 6 weeks after I had been offered the opportunity I had a Skype meeting with someone working there to be then told that they couldn’t afford to hire me as part of their budget anymore. Obviously feeling quite annoyed I then knew I had to get on with sorting my portfolio out and applying for jobs! I decided to integrate my portfolio into my blog which you can see here – Toni Pilling Portfolio, showing all my university design work in a simple easy platform. Surprisingly I got a role extremely quickly, after 2 weeks and a couple of interviews I had been offered a Marketing and Graphic Design role in for a company that runs 2 small businesses, Rapid IT and LCWS. They work with refurbishing old computers, recycling and destroying data. The position is 3 days a week for 3 months with the possibility of going up to full-time after that with a pay rise. I am really excited to start as I will be working alongside the managing director a lot, I will be the main designer there so will have more free reign on what to do and think I could learn a lot about how small businesses are run which will help my ultimate goal of working for myself. My start date is the 25th! I will hopefully start posting again more frequently soon once I have started.
Talking about working for myself I have finally had a lot of time to work properly on “TeePee Creations.” I have been using my previous designs and started on new designs to set up an Etsy shop to start selling my stuff manufactured by me rather than just through Red Bubble where I only get 20% of the final sale. More designs should be being added a lot more frequently now I have more spare time to work on this side of things which I will also post about everytime a new range is complete.
To check out my new shop follow the link here – TeePee Creations Gifts
Examples of work here –
