The Workshop Warehouse is a whole sale distributor of workshop consumables and tools, selling mainly to mobile sales men and distributors based around the UK with some overseas business. I joined them in January 2017, just after new years day, and after the resignation of their designer in march I began to take on some design responsibilities. The following is a small example of the work I did. I’ve chosen to showcase these designs as they are aimed at a more corporate audience than I have previously shown.
Flyers & Retail Posters
E-shots, and target mail campaigns are still a large part of this business. Together with producing flyers for distributors and end users a lot of design work is based around product promotion. These flyers, also adapted as posters for the retail area of the shop, were used across all depots.
TWW – SAS Kit
TWW – Big Wipes
TWW – SAS20
TWW – Grippaz Gloves
TWW – Hand Lamp
TWW – Hand Lamp
TWW – Jerry Can
TWW – Tire products
TWW – HHS drill bit promo
TWW – Leeds Depot Day
Black Friday Offer
Wright part SAS offer
Fyfe AB Box Flyer
Trade Show Banners
One major problem in planning multiple shows is that the existing banners were only set up for two industries; Automotive and industrial. Due to how difficult these banners were to set up, and how damaged they had become due to wear and tear I suggested four 1.5m pull up banners in stead; easier to transport, easier to set up and cheaper. Used at the Speedy 2017 show, these Four banners were designed, with a different base image depending on the target sectors:
Industrial Banner
Trade show: Commercial Banner
Trade Show: Automotive
Trade Show: Automotive
These banners lack any branding due to the business’ nature of providing bespoke catalogues to customers. So in the event of trade shows to any of these specific customers, we cannot promote the Workshop brand and instead required an overview of products and services we offer. To compensate for the lack of branding, I commissioned a special foam board sign which can be hand on wires or attached to a table with Velcro. Two signs, one 11500 x 2000mm and the larger 1875 x 250mm can be seen below, in addition to a generic pull up banner featuring a product silhouette motif;
TV Screen
In all depots televisions are used to display products and special offers, here is a sample of the designs featured;
Automechinika TV screens
Automechinika TV screens
Automechinika TV screens
Automechinika TV screens
Automechinika TV screens
Automechinika TV screens
Automechinika TV screens
Promotional TV screens
Compliment Slips
Compliment slips were a key way of informing customers of new catalogues, dates and services changes due to “lack of digital knowledge” among the customer base. As such many were designed and distributed throughout the year and included with invoices;
Bespoke Catalogue Covers
Finally a large part of the business is centred around the catalogue. The catalogue, as well as being a “workshop warehouse” is customised to certain customers so they can sell directly from the catalogue.
Catalogue published Feb 2018
*All deals, offers, promotions and prices shown above are no longer valid. Please know that these date back to 2017 and were for a limited time only. Please do not try and claim any of them, because they will not be redeemable.
I was the Marketing Coordinator for the Union of Kingston Students for just over a year. The organisation had under gone a massive restructure and a re-brand meaning it was essentially a blank slate. Now I’m fully aware that the Job description implied the role had a hint of design, what they didn’t actually list under the job description was the necessity to be magic and stop time. Due to the re-brand, no existing banners, artwork, even web pages could be reused due to the name change, as such everything was from scratch.
Acting as Marketer, Graphic Designer, Photographer, Videographer, Website developer and IT manager I developed a fairly big back catalogue of design work so I’ll narrow it down to some of my favourites and big pieces I did.
Union Design work and Social Media
For the Union I did practically every bit of design, from website banners, Facebook group cover photos, twitter profile pictures, everything. I’m not going to display everything, but above I’ve put the Union guide (Click the icon to view), two quick public services posters which give you the gist of most poster, the updated brand guidelines (Click to view) I wrote later into the year and the societies guide (Click to view).
Freshers’ is the biggest week of the year for any Student Union. For Kingston it is the main time they sell the majority of the Sports and Societies memberships, recruit the bulk of their volunteers and sell most of their other merchandise.
The Freshers guides, posters and social media posts had to be designed and scheduled. The freshers design developed from a circus themed art board, modern club posters, and designs I liked. The triangle motif developed from my liking of the Klingande, and two triangle sets were developed. Thick triangles with paint splatter, in blue for the Fayre (day time) and more elaborate purple gradient triangles for the night events.
For the Fayre a lot of branded design work was needed; Freshers’ media pack, general signage, A1 posters with directions on them, sail flag banners (which I unfortunately cant find a photo of) and large vynl banners for Freshers fayre and the Hoodie/societies sales stalls in the atrium;
The Freshers’ Ball is the biggest night out of Freshers Week. It’s the only one the Union organises everything about. After the abysmal performance of the previous years ball, Jenny wilson, the events coordinator, blew the 2016 one out of the park. The event was a sell out and was well received by the students. Design wise the ball had several needs, all the social media for it and the physical posters printed in a range of A0 to A4 had to be organised weeks in advance. Not all the stuff I did survives but here’s a small selection.
Clara Amfo Social Media Image
Leathal Bizzle Social Media Image
Clara Amfo Poster
Joint Clara Amfo/Leathal Bizzle Poster
Leathal Bizzle Poster
Final Wristband Poster
The actual bulk of design work, digital and printed that had to be done in the six weeks of getting all the copy, approving the design and printing it, can be seen below, minus all large items such as sail flags, banners and varied t-shirt printing;
Elections are a key part of the Student Union calendar. It’s the only thing a Union really needs to do to in order to secure its funding, as such these are a big deal. For the elections I designed the printed and digital artwork;
There were 2 variants of the banner, which can be seen in one of the photos above, a two decided leaflet, badges, several social media images and 6 variants on A0 posters some of which can be seen on the photos above, which I borrowed from Instagram.
Other than the design work I had to organise the Elections on the NUS cloud system, which I still maintain is the least user-friendly website management tool in the world. Lastly I also filmed and edited the election manifesto videos. I’m aware they’re not perfect, but 34 videos in 2 days a well as all the other tasks isn’t bad considering it was just me;
Officers
Student Officers are essentially the face of the Student Union as such they do need a certain amount of promotional material in order to get their name and face out there.
I still have Nightmares
This started with a photo shoot. Half a day of individual and group shots resulted in the base for every piece of material produced for them through the year.
Business cards were printed, with a brief of they all wanted all their contacts on one side, and then just their own on the other, ignored the stupidity of that and did a business card with their group photo on the back. That way the students could see who the officer (or in the case of needing a referral, the relevant officer is) and their own personal contact details on the reverse. They also got hoodies, T-shirts, polos and a bag but I don’t have photos of any of the shirts I designed at the time.
It meant a student could contact them, and due to the secondary remits (stupid system) the relevant officer could always reply without it bouncing through referrals.
It stops the fractioning of the audience, due to them having remits and a campus, while not all students would care about the campus specific information but all should know about the Education, Welfare, Activities and Union affairs aspects of their jobs.
It was easier to hand over and encourage the officers who were afraid of social media, to embrace social media.
Officer Business Card 2016
Officer Banners 2016
Officer Welcome Banner
Wall Mock Ups
One major project was a giant purple wall with nothing on it. With no real brief apart from “Officer photos” and general promotion of the Union, I mocked up three walls, using photoshop to create realistic interpretations of the wall.
Wall 1 – Frames
Wall 2 – Chalk Boards
Wall 3 – Vectors
Wall 4 – Frames and Vectors
The fourth wall, was an amalgamation of the first and third. Having costed it up, ordered the frames and the canvas pictures of the officers, I left before it could be finalised, but if anyone has a picture of the final product, I would be interested in seeing it.
Sports
Varsity is big part of any student calendar, Kingston’s at the time was against Surrey. Taking place in March, I found out early on the Activities Manager was an idiot and saved no hi-res photos after paying photographers for two years. Predicting the impeding list of banners and promotional material to design, I commissioned the University Photographer for a photo-shoot. The boxing arena was transformed with black fabric and all of his equipment into a make-shift studio, where 14 teams were photographed in their Kingston kits. The photos were taken in October, with an editing deadline in December; I only received them in late February which caused a problem with my design schedule for obvious reasons. As such there wasn’t time for me to clean up the photos as much as i would have liked. The fabric can usually be seen in the back of the design work, however I still think the design work, with the black and blue slate stone motif looks amazing.
One of my campaign ideas for selling tickets was the photos used with the varsity logo* and text arranged similar to the Union logo. I thought Inspirational song lyrics would make the campaign fun and give it a fresh feeling, with genres ranging from ACDC to ABBA that would still encompass the competitive spirit, even if you didn’t know they were song lyrics. The Activities Manager vetoed this because it wasn’t his idea. Instead all were “Rather be a Cougar.” Above I’ve restored my original idea, which if you’re reading, would have been awesome.
*I will say at this point I did not design the ‘cougar eating the stag’ logo, I do think its half arsed, but I had to use it due to being an established sub-brand.
For good measure, here are more sporting and varsity designs including both side of the varsity lanyard:
Volunteering, SOCIETIES and other stuff…
Outside of the sporting world I designed a fair few society posters, none of which save due to the numbers, and the odd volunteering posters, but what I did do and remembered to save is here;
Student Media didn’t exist in the Kingston Student Union. As Student media was kind of my wheel house I campaigned to get it started, writing up proposals and drumming up student interest with surveys. Having acquired one amazing student to help get the content the project gathered momentum quickly. The plan was to design one and then have the student base take over after it had established itself. I was in the process of designing it before I left and If the CEO wasn’t a complete and utter tw not for unforeseen circumstances I believe this magazine would have been a great hit. Here is the finished version which unfortunately never made it to print. I would like to thank all the student who took part and believed in the project, hopefully student media will start at some point in the future.
And that concludes this post. I doubt I will ever go back into higher education again, either to work or to learn, but I had fun, and I’m happy with the quality of design which I produced, even if I was spread so thin you could see through me. A tip for anyone designing for a student audience; make it easy, editable and recognisable, chances are you’ll be reusing it for years.
NaSTA is something I’ve mentioned in a previous blog. I was the Marketing Officer the National Student Television Association from April 2014 until June 2016; in that time I designed and implemented all marketing material within that period. I thought it was about time I put them all together to maybe help/inspire the design of other Student Media bodies or just for a bit of nostalgia.
To help with recruitment we needed a video. Not being an amazing editor I decided to go to the best one I know. That video above was edited by Giedrė Balsevičiūtė. While I story boarded it, collected the Alumni quotes and helped collect the footage, she did all the editing, colour correction, typographical animation and put up with my demands of minute tweak so all that glory should go to her. it definitely sets the tone for those who don’t know NaSTA.
Affiliation guides
Before I became the marketing officer, affiliation guides were always on the cards but never materialised, both years I decided to make them fun as well as informative. These guides were printed and sent to every affiliated station.
I will apologise now for having to click the images to see them in all their glory. ISSUU and word press aren’t the most compatible of programmes. When I embed them they are too large with no way of editing the dimensions on the page. Click the images for an ISSUU digital copy.
Affiliation guide for the 2014/15 academic year features a nod to a great Douglas Adams’ classic hitchhikers guide to the galaxy on the front page. All NaSTA red, it features the first map documenting all the stations across the country.
Affiliation guide for the 2015/16 academic year, designed as homage to Harry Potter. The silk pattern was in my mind, a pun on the texture of silk finish paper. This guide also features and info graphic about station’s budgets and facilities conducted by myself during the build up to publication.
I believe this has become a tradition now with the Affiliation pack/guide being sent out after affiliation.
AFFILIATION CAMPAIGN
The quotes from the video formed the affiliation campaign in 2015/6. Alumni quotes from stations up and down the country; from alumni who have advanced into a verity of careers thanks to NaSTA were used in social media and email marketing campaigns. Coupled with images sources from NaSTA’s back catalogue created galley of names and faces for students to relate to while highlight NaSTA’s benefits.
Awards Tickets Campaign
For two years NaSTA had to get people to the awards, selling tickets is big business considering there’s no back up budget and we don’t want an angry SU after us for money we don’t have. So NaSTA needed something to drum up interest. In the last two weeks. The images with accompanying mail chimp e-shots were posted on social media, groups and became a staple of the sales campaign for the awards in 2015 and 2016.
Awards 2015
The Awards apart from the official “NaSTA awards 2015” logo which was the best of a horrific bunch of suggestions from one of the hosts stations, I designed most of the work. PSTV the main hosts took the reins very late into the year and as organised as Mr. Murphy was, design wasn’t his priority so I offered my hand.
As well as the Awards programme, lanyards, wristbands, general signage and table plan I also did the award certificates which were presented on the night. In 2016 the team at Leeds did most of the design, but I did do a version of the 2016 award certificate.
SOCIAL MEDIA
The social media channels had existed for ages in NaSTA, with Facebook being the focus, splintering into groups. As well as maintaining the various NaSTA groups, I took the helm of the Facebook, Twitter and Youtube channels for my 2 years in office. Youtube was the most underused form of social media, which for a Student Television based organisation was stupid, so came NaSTA News, short update videos started by me and continued by all members of the Exec. I filled Twitter and Facebook with special designed images to complement the content (which you can see some examples of below) and started the Instagram in my second term. Overall engagement across all three improved during my terms and hopefully they are still be used to their fullest effect.
NaSTA’s social media was always fun to run, and relatively easy with scheduling tools such as Hootsuite and Gramblr. If you want to follow them its /NaSTAuk on Facebook, @NaSTAuk for twitter, @NaSTA_uk for Instagram and NaSTAchannel for Youtube. Hopefully the stuff I did will still be up there and the photos of my face won’t.
REGIONAL CONFERENCE LOGOS
To give each regional conference its own identity and to make it feel more like and event, each conference got its own logo which emulated something about the region in which is was hosted.
Hosted by DUSA TV
Hosted by Kings TV
Hosted by NSTV
Hosted by Guild TV
Hosted by SUSU TV
Hosted by Campus TV
Website
In 2015, me and the then Technical officer, Louis Clift, decided to redesign the NaSTA website. The old wordpress website had become old, poorly maintained and started to break. After it and the wiki became targets for spam bots we decided to scrap it and start again. Louis being a genius, said he’d code a new one, so with me mocking up the layout and him coding we end up with www.nasta.tv as it is today. In case they change it in the future here’s a screenshot of mine and Dr. Clift’s silver-light website;
POST 2016
In the few weeks before the 2016 Awards, I had an idea for a marketing campaign for selling tickets for the awards. “What’s your NaSTA story” would be a collection of stories, from alumni and current NaSTA members, of their best moments at the awards themselves. While I didn’t have enough time to action this, I found a small flip camera and gave it to a man I knew was a prolific snap-chatter. I edited this POV video to start the “Whats Your Story” idea, hoping that the next team would finish that idea, unfortunately I doubt they will now…
That’s all folks…
Well that’s as much as I can remember/ have kept hold of. There’s probably more I designed, but having travelled up and down the country, been to 5 NaSTA award ceremonies, hosted a peoples choice award and did a strange spoof series called Know your NaSTA, I feel that I did alright. NaSTA will continue to grow, it’ll probably stumble a few times but overall it will improve, just glad I did my part. For the last time:
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