Hello! So today I wanted to chat about an event I went to recently, Commercial Work VS Creative Passion set up and organised by SheSaysUK with partnership from Major Players. There was an all-female line up of speakers including Business Artist Lola Lansa who ran the discussion with  Illustrator Tegan Price, Photographer Catherine Losing and Designer Sadie Clayton sharing what it's like to be commissioned and working freelance, while Saatchis&Saatchi Creative Director Fabiana Xavier and Creative Consultant Sarah Williams gave insight from the side of helping and/or working with freelancers. 

The evening was largely about how freelancers can work in order to produce commercial work that helps them work on passion projects, while also making decent money. But the majority of the speakers also had either a part time or full time job on the side to support this so they spoke about the balance of that and how to make it work as well.

As someone who does work full time but also enjoys illustration and lettering on the side it was such a great talk to go through and I came away from it with lots of tips and advice about how to turn this interest into a way to make some money on the side through commissions. It also made me think about this years 100 day project and how I can look at what I'm creating and see if there's illustrations I'm interested in creating can be targeted to companies, brands or a specific social or environmental issue.

From the evening I wrote almost 3 and a half pages of notes which is mainly what I wanted to share in this blog post.  There was so many interesting questions asked and a lot of great points that the speakers came out with that I wanted to pass on some of that wisdom. A lot of it does direct mainly to people working as freelance or those who take on some sort of commissions but I think there's a lot of ways that you can alter them to work in an agency or in-house setting as well. 

Hopefully you've found these points as helpful as I have! There's so many events like this in London and I'm really keen to head to more of them when I can. So be sure this won't be the last post like this if my social calendar has anything to do with it! 

Today I planned on sharing a blog post talking about the work I did on a magazine at work but I actually changed my mind this morning to something else, so that post will come over the weekend.

The 6th of February actually marks 1 year since my first day of officially working as a designer on an internship basis but it also marks the first day of my junior designer life at SevenC3 after passing my probation period. It feels ironic that the two have married up so precisely but it does feel like a nice 360°.

With this all in mind, I wanted to discuss in this post a brief outline of what the last 365 days have entailed, some things I've learned or realised and some stuff that I hope will help other people who are trying to get their start as a designer. 

So where was I 1 year ago? 

Last year, I was starting my first day interning at Glasgow based studio, Freytag Anderson. I was given the opportunity to intern at FA through the GDFS festival which I actually spoke about in this post. I spent the week learning how a studio works and even seeing that on the business side of things, with client and internal meetings, doing some concept research and putting together design packs for competitions. The most impactful part of this internship was actually on my last day when myself and Greig sat down to speak about my portfolio and ways to utilise it in order to enhance my chances with jobs. Leaving this internship made me more hungry for 'real world' expierence and cemented my thoughts on my next one. 

One of the projects I helped on while at Venn. Check out the full project here.

From leaving Glasgow, I then went home for a few weeks to then travel almost 700miles in order to intern for 4 weeks at Venn Creative in Penryn, Cornwall. With this internship I simply found/heard about it by tracking tweets on Twitter that included "graphic design intern" with a variety of variations on that phrase. I spoke a lot about this time on the blog already, so if you fancy reading that check those posts out the Venn Creative tag. I also shared this post on Medium detailing the vast majority of things I learned during my time there too. The main thing that boosted my expierence was the vast amount of projects I got to work on, from both beginning to completion. 

After the extremely eye opening 4 weeks in Cornwall I came back to life that was dreaded normality. I got back to working in retail and applications after application, interviews after interview I wasn't really getting anywhere. Apart from joining in 2017's 100 day project, I wasn't doing much design work. From the period of April to July I got more restless and deterred. I wanted a job or even an internship in the industry but didn't seem to be getting anywhere. I was losing faith in my skills and knowledge and each knock back pushed me further away.


In July however I did go into Aberdeen based design studio, Foyer Graphics for a few days after a family friend put in a word for me. With the few days I got to see, again, another side of the design world. With a lot of their clients being non-profit there's a different way that you need to approach the work. The team that worked there were knowledgeable and on top of it. And also working in an industry where women are considered minorities in top creative/design roles it was inspiring to be in a design studio that didn't just have a single female in the office but all 3 designers were female.

Between Foyer Graphics and the next company I was at, I had a major knock back. I had applied for a role at another local-ish design studio and thought I had pretty much landed it. But thus, it wasn't meant to be. And although it did upset me at the time it was just for the best.

Moving on from the knock down, I'd had seen a post from a creative I knew in the Aberdeen scene and had spoken to a few times. His work was looking for a marketing design intern to join the business group that was made up of restaurants, food delivery service and a gym, amongst other things. Seeing as I had no other work or interviews lined up I figured I'd messaged him about it and he pretty much invited me to come along straight away since we already knew each other.


After that first month of being at the ACC group, I was asked if I wanted to stay on and to actually get paid! It was only on a part time basis, usually 2 or 3 days a week but it meant I could cut back my hours at the Coop to do something I had actually studied. My role at the company varied massively, I would often be creating different types of assets to use on social media from Facebook posts to Instagram stories. I also designed posters, leaflets, newspaper ads, as well as more marketing work including contacting influencers and compiling lists of possible deals we could run in certain areas of the business. My time here obviously ended once I had been offered the position at SevenC3 but I'm thankful for the opportunity I had there. Being in a more 'in-house' role showed me how you can start to develop a style for a brand and constantly develop it further. 

Overall it feels like I didn't do much experience in hindsight but counting it out in total it does work out to be 3/4months of interning and part time work before getting into a full time design role (although this doesn't include the variety of the freelance and self-initiated projects I've done throughout the years). I'm not sure if this is on par with what most people experience or not but I know that I seen a lot of even junior roles looking for one years experience which is mad tbh.

I hope this helps give you some insight to what my journey was and feel free to ask below any questions about interning or building up experience. I do want to write a full blog post on some tips I realised through my time so let me know what you would like to see within that.

How's 2018 been for you so far? I wish I could say it's been easy sailing but it hasn't, with family passings, looking for flats and needing to cancel your bank card it's been stressful to say the least. But on the flip side, there have been thins that have been going fine including making plans to see friends, feeling creatively inspired and well, my job. 

I'm nearing the end of my probation period there now and it's coming to the time where I'm starting to think about my ~almost~ 3 months in the role and what I want to continue, what I want to learn and if there's any changes I feel need to be made. As someone in their first full time design job at an agency I thought today I would kind of go through some of the things I've learned or realised so far from working. 

It's scary. But it gets easier.

Holy hell it's terrifying going into your first job with only (in total) 4 months expierence of working and even then that's split across 4 different companies all of whom do slightly different work for vastly different clients. Even more unnerving when you realise that you are most definitely the youngest person in the office.

But for me I jumped straight in, with notebook in hand to make all the notes and doing this definitely helped. Make sure you to ask for help or direction when you're stuck. The most difficult thing I felt when I started was that people may thought I was being annoying in asking about this thing or that but it is actually helpful. It means you know what you're doing and you can get through issues or hurdles a lot quicker than if you go into a project blind. So  just get stuck in, there's no point tip-toeing about.

Do actually get stuck in

For me this was my 'coping' mechanism, if that's the right way to phrase it. Basically with just getting on with my work, it has put me in a better place now. When I started I pretty much just took any work I could to learn about the different clients and get used to their branding/identity styles. Since a lot of the work done at my job varies across print, digital and motion it's been super important to learn this but because now I've helped on a lot of different client work I don't need to worry about spending time reading their branding guidelines doc.

Write everything down. Literally everything.

As I previously noted I had a notebook with me from day one. It's definitely been super helpful and I literally make all the notes. Writing down each of my 'tasks' for the day got me to remember all the clients and better helped when it came to doing my timesheet or having discussions with project managers about what work I was doing. From making the time to put pen to paper it definitely makes me more accountable and remember what I actually need to do day to day and it's a space I can use when I need to note things down in brainstorming sessions. 

But basically all I'm trying to say is to keep track of what you're doing and write that shit down.

You can learn from everyone. And everyone can learn from you. 

I feel this is one I always seemed in posts about starting out in the creative industries but it's so damn true. The main thing with this is being open with what your struggles are and not being protective about your ideas or your work. There's always something that can be expanded or learned from sharing. One day your coworker may tell you about a quick command to copy/paste styles in Keynote and then the next day you're explaining to them how you easily colour correct areas of a photo. Everyone's skills can vary and when you work in a team that are all there to do the work and progress together, you can learn a shit ton more than keeping to yourself. 

Overall these are definitely the most important things I've learnt in the past few months that isn't specifcally how to do something but more of a way of working. It'll be interesting if I have any more things like these within the following months! But either way I'll be sure to keep you updated with my progress of working, in the mean time feel free to ask any questions below or feel free to tweet me or send me a message on instagram! 

[header photo by Raw Pixel and midbreak photo by Georgie Cobbs, both from Unsplash]