Timeline

2004-2006 Canterbury Development Corporation, In-house Graphic Designer

2002-2003 Weight Watchers UK, Junior In-house Designer

2001-2002 Microdot, Pre Press Mac Operator

2001 National College of Design and Technology, Student

2000-2001 Countdown Westgate, Seafood Department Manager

1999-2000 Countdown Westgate, Bulk Food Department Manager

1999 Countdown Westgate, Meat Packer/Checkout Operator

1998-1999 Kmart Nowra, Checkout Operator

1996-1997 Restaurant 83, Waitress

1995-1996 Royal New Zealand Air Force, Technical Writer

1994-1995 Royal New Zealand Air Force, Aircraft Finisher (spray painter)

Canterbury Development Corporation (CDC)

I worked for CDC from March 2004 to March 2006 as In-house Graphic Designer. As the company's sole designer, it was my responsibility to manage the studio workload, liaise with printers and suppliers and maintain studio equipment.

The biggest projects I undertook were the annual reports. I liaised with the CEO and Finance Manager to manage deadlines, set up photoshoots for the board and managers and worked closely with the printer to ensure the project costs stayed within budget.

CDC was an excellent environment for gaining experience in a multitude of areas. I designed display banners, press advertisements, logos and corporate stationery, forms, report covers, brochures, posters and Christmas cards. I also set up templates in Word to help people with the formatting of their reports, wrote guidelines (with instructions) to help keep consistancy in graphs and charts in Excel, and assisted people in producing Powerpoint presentations.

Other miscellaneous tasks that fell in my domain were scanning, pdf creation and digital photography.

When I took over the role, the systems in place for archiving and tracking artwork were non-existant and as one of my key performance indicators was to be able to easily recover archived artwork, I developed a system for naming and numbering artwork, and built a spreadsheet to record where every job was stored so that from that point, all jobs were easily found.

I also built myself a timesheet, in order to get a good idea of how long different projects would take and so that I could see where I was spending my time. This became invaluable when I was asked to charge certain jobs out some time after they had been completed.

In order to make the workflow into and out of the studio more predictable, I developed (in conjunction with my husband, a programmer) some interactive forms for briefing artwork in and signing it off at various stages. The system wasn't perfect - at times it was cumbersome - but it did help educate people about what is required in a brief, and provided them with a checklist at sign-off time. Since implementing the system, changes to print proofs virtually disappeared.

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Weight Watchers UK

I worked for Weight Watchers from March 2002 to September 2003. This was easily the most enjoyble position I've ever had. I have never before or since worked in such a lovely, friendly environment ...and the food!

My role there was Junior In-House Designer. My primary responsibility was laying out press advertising, sized for around 60 regional papers and countless local ones. When I started, each regional press ad contained listings for every meeting in the area covered by that paper, so it was an enormous job. About six months in, a decision was made to provide base artwork to the area managers, who would then enter their own listings. Before this could be set up, we had to establish that it could work, so it was my job to find a means by which the managers could format their listings. I trialled it in Publisher and Word, as initially, it seemed that either software could perform the task. I wrote a user guide covering every aspect of the process, from receiving the artwork and laying out the listings, to creating print ready PDFs and uploading the files to the newspaper's server. We conducted a training day with the regional managers, where a few bugs were discovered and ironed out, and after that, the listings were entirely handled by the regional managers, although I was still involved in the process to keep an eye on consistancy and proof read their ads.

Aside from this, I also designed brochures, coupons and advertisements, and took several multi-page booklets from concept to print. It was an ideal entry into the design world for me as I was in such a supportive team with excellent systems already in place.

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Microdot

I worked for Microdot from October 2001 to January 2002 as an On-call Pre Press Mac Operator. This was an excellent position to really get a good understanding of the requirements when setting up files for print. I learned to preflight documents, impose them and outut them to film. It wasn't an exciting job, but I was working amongst good people and the experience was very valuable.

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Royal New Zealand Air Force

This position was very much a case of being in the right place at the right time. I had trained as an aircraft finisher (spray painter) and spent a year in this line of work, but it wasn't to my liking. A few days into my three-month notice period, I had a minor motorbike accident which meant I needed a sedentry job.

I was put in the Engineering Documentation Centre to assist with modifying the technical maintenance manuals. I proved adept at this type of work, and before my notice was up, the airforce signed me on, as a civilian, to re-create the illustrated parts breakdown manuals for their Skyhawks. This involved scanning each page (20 Volumes, 50-300+ pages each) with character recognition software, proof-reading (especially the lists of part numbers), fixing any inaccuracies, incorporating modifications and tidying up the drawings.

This job was conceived ten years prior, but without somebody dedicated to it, it was always at the bottom of the pile, and hadn't progressed. In seven months, when I left to move to Australia with my husband, the job was all but complete. It wasn't exciting work, but it was a very satisfying to complete each volume.

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