PERSONAL BRANDING EXAPMPLES

30 DAYS OF DESIGN

After visiting the Scottish graphic design festival at Christmas I was inspired to start doing some poster designs of my own. I am going to kickstart this by doing a 30 days of design challenge on instagram. Each day I will spend no more than 20 minutes creating a poster design.  The posters can be about anything I am inspired by at the time. This will boost my creativity by making quick fun things each day rather than planning it out. 

These are my designs:

Unfortunately I only got up to day 17 and then I managed to spill water on my laptop. This threw me off as I was doing them every day and got too far behind. I also had a great deal of work to catch up on so lost time to be able to continue. 

The designs I did do were really beneficial to me. I gained a lot through doing them. 

• I gained interest in my instagram page and gained quite a few followers.  
• I learnt skills for instagram like how to hashtag in order to boost views and likes
• I gained paid work through doing the posters as it put my name out there

PORTFOLIO

M2 PLACEMENT

I did my placement at M2 Bespoke over Easter. 

I learnt a lot during my time there, including:

• how to work quickly under pressure
• design skills in Premier pro
• design skills for web use
• how to take my design knowledge and put it into a corporate setting
• working within an office environment with a boss and collegues that you must work collaboratively with.
• learnt about the world of marketing
• how to wake up at 7am 

M2 bespoke manage the social media for companies in order to market them to clients in a certain way. I was shadowing the social media team and helping them to create content for the blog and social media.

day 1- I was tasked with creating an infographic from the article https://www.td.org/insights/why-authenticity-is-critical-to-digital-personal-branding

They take articles off the internet, reword them and simplify them and then make them into an infographic to put on the companies blog. I then made a video of the infographic for the facebook page as it is better to have it in a different format. 

Day 2- After doing developments of the infographic but unable to get feedback as the managing director was out of the office, I instead started on the video for social media that would summarise the points made in the infographic. 

Day 3- recieved feedback on the infographic and video. The brief was changed slightly as instead of illustrated graphics they wanted to use stock images. So I spent the day annoyingly redoing the whole thing

Day 4- presented the finished infographic and then made minor adjustments and continued to work on the video 

Day 5- uploaded the final infographic to the website with the social media manager. And continued to edit the video.

The article was found online and will be edited to save time for the company. This curated content is very new to me and seems a bit like plagiarism.... But this is a quick way to put out content.

The idea is to create an infographic out of summarised information from this article. The infographic needs to represent M2 as a company so it will need to follow the branding colours, typography and include the logo. 

This is the finished infographic. I learnt a lot throughout the process and seeing it be fully published was very satisfying. you can see the full article here: https://m2bespoke.co.uk/blog/reasons-why-authenticity-is-critical-to-personal-branding/

HAWRAF

from the hawraf google drive I have learnt: 

1. It was very interesting to see how much they charge clients. 

It made me reevaluate how much I charge people for my work and that I should definitely put my prices up!

2. Their business plan was interesting to see how they intend on making money and keeping it flowing. This is something I struggle to understand how I could make real money freelancing but their business plan shows me how this could be possible. 

3. The discovery questionnaire is something I would like to start doing with my own clients as it is a good way to understand the needs of the client better and decide if the job is suitable for you. 

4. I like their list of negotiable and non-negotiables, I think this is essential when working in a tight environment with people every day. It is nice to put all of the cards on the table in order to know where you stand with someone. If I was to ever work with people like this, I would definitely do this. 

YEAR PLAN

Once I leave University my plan is to move home in order to save money. 

-Over the summer I plan to work in Tesco 2 days a week to give me an income. 
-I also plan to spend time remaking my website and add this years work to the site. 
-I plan to do the brief with Avesta when she goes back to America this summer. 
-I plan to work with Abby from Mangoes and Melons on another project in May and June. 
-I have an placement set up for the week commencing 17th June at Future plc
-I will go back to my placement at M2 to do some more infographics for them.
-I intend to use instagram a lot more as i have really benefitted from the 30 days of design challenge I did as I have gained paid work because of it.
-I want to develop my software skills further and expand into motion graphics.

Once the summer is over and I have completed some paid jobs and my placement, I intend to look for a longer placement somewhere possibly in Bristol where there are a number of good design studios that I'm interested in. This will hopefully lead into some sort of paid work so I can move out. 

In 12 months time I hope to be in a full time role in a company as a Junior Designer. 

FUTURE PLACEMENT

After an initial conversation with Rodney, he stopped replying to my emails before we had fully agreed a date. I sent him about 4 follow up emails and had no response from him for over 2 months. yesterday he finally emailed me back confirming the placement for the 17th June. 

From this placement I hope to learn:

• What it is like in a bigger office environment- my last placement was only in a small company employing around 10 people, whereas future is a massive company with at least 1000 people employed. 
• About magazine design and the process 
• I hope to develop my software skills further over the week with whatever brief I will be set.
• hopefully I can network some more in order to progress in the future
• Learn some more web design skills and possibly coding?

SELF EMPLOYMENT WORKSHOP

Russel Smith and accountant ran a workshop teaching us about how to be Self- Employed. 

How do you become an expert? Say you are an expert!

Told that you were the best uk accountant for artists. 

How confident are you with self employment? Not at all! 1 out of 5 

What do you want to know? 

Doing things for free, 

Delivery/ operations

Sales and marketing

Finance 

HR

Amazon 

Amazon is a massive successful company with a great delivery and operations sector

Registering 

When you become self employed you are being paid any amount from 

If you are being paid £1000 pounds a year you should register

Multiple sources of income. You can be self employed and have a job. 

To register for self employment

HMRC google that and and fill in the form 

You get a unique number and then you have to do a tax return

Companies house website to check if there is a business with your name.

The founder

Numbers on the tax return

profit=income-expenses 

Always better to have more profit 

What are you getting paid for?

Services 

Selling work

Workshops

Grant income

Freelance income 

Expenses

Materials

Travel

Studio rent

Studio utilities

Payroll

Software

Computers

Equipment 

Phone 

Advertising 

Website

Insurance (public liability, professional idenmancy)

Maintenance 

Accommodation for trips

Entertaining

Car

Working from home

Events

Delivery 

Printing 

`Tax brackets

£0- £11,500 = 0%

£11,500 - £46,500 = 29%

£42,500+  = 42%

Best to put 20% aside from each person that pays you. 

Log your expenses on a spreadsheet 

Keep all receipts for 7 years

Getting Paid

When you do some work for someone, send them a sales invoice 

So all of the payment details are addressed beforehand

Direct Debits 

Go cordless

Pricing 

People don’t buy on logic they buy on emotion 

People buy from people because they like each other not necessarily because of their 

Graphic design and branding 

Sell yourself to people that you know who know a lot of other people. 

3 tips

1-Don’t read the newspapers or watch news, small businesses are frowned upon so its not good for you news is negative 

2-Get rid of your family and friends, most people don’t want you to succeed 

3- Who you are is really important 

I can start your business - Russell’s book 

VALENTINA- SUSPIRA MAGAZINE- CREATIVE CONVOS

Suspira Magazine

 What did you do before suspira?

-fashion design and then fashion journalism
-w project x tate exchange women at tate modern
-worked 3 days a week unpaid

Did you always want to be a creative director?

The aim was not to be a creative director but the more she did masters she realised creative director is a multitude of things that is taking ideas and making them into concepts wich is what she thinks she was made to do.

biggest challenge?

how to pay your bills without selling my soul

feminist angle took some time to come about. 

how important is women

very important, i think that showing any minority is important to 
different ethnicities gender 
horror in graphic design 

monster issue design?

inituition- get an idea and a feeling 
covered mental health and tackling your inner demons putting a name and a face to it
face of fear 
clowns- should be a face of joy but has been turned into something scary, phobias
fear mongering
evolution of the monster

do you always see suspira as print or will you move into digital?
the prints and the materials and the way it sits in your hands doesn't do it justice as you cant see things that you do in the flesh like the metalic 
logo is embossed 

theme 
hard to keep it the same but kept some of the typefaces and the paper and the logo 

process for research where were you looking?
organic decision 
monster issue had people come forward that couldn't be included
knew that she wanted it to be late 60's and graining 
graphic horror and making it aesthetically pleaseing 

sabbath instagram and social media her friend and editor of the magazine

Did you have any setbacks?

not really any 
maybe the relationship with the printers 

she luckily had a great network of people around her 

ANDREW ODONG- CREATIVE CONVOS

Creative Production 

University of Leicester -Physics with Astronomy 

He didn't want to be defined by his degree 
wanted to serve people and their interests

conference producer

seeing people behind the brand

he learnt skills in: 
-communication 
-empathy 
-listening
-acting accordingly
-negotiate
-project management
-understanding job titles

conference producer working from home 

wanted to set up an organisation bigger than himself
wanted to give some legacy
uses his name and we instead referring to himself to give the illusion that the company is bigger than it is. 

Pesa productions 
supported by virgin startup
Pesa is the name of his great grandad and also means money
gives people money to create commissioned work 

worked with brands such as: 
-intern 
-ID magazine
-we work
-modern matter 

interview different producers 

now is the time to tell your own stories

to be a producer you need to: 
-be proactive about your ideas
-galvanising people resources around a common vision
-holding yourself accountable
-being a creative problem solver

5 things i think you should know
-value based networking
-identify your value
-customer and client experience
-ideas are useless without action
find your advocates

put the same value in your own work as you do for others

use linkedin