About me
I'm an ebullient, youthful student who is confident in meeting new people and working in new environments. As a mature and motivated worker, I have gained experience in a professional environment from a young age. I am able to work under pressure and meet deadlines, both in individual projects and in a team setting.
Work history
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Assistant Graphic DesignerROXOA Group
- Newcastle upon Tyne, United KingdomFull Time
I worked as Assistant Graphic Designer on a six-month contract with Roxoa Group in 2017. Roxoa are a global e-commerce company based in Newcastle who own and manage a portfolio of online jewellery stores with a customer base of 70,000 and multi-million pound turnover. I gained a large amount of experience working in a professional, tightly knit and highly driven small team environment. My roles included:
Product photography – Using a professional DSLR with various lenses, lighting and accessories to take professional product shots of diamond and gemstone jewellery (earrings, rings, necklaces and bracelets) in a bespoke studio. I took a variety of still images, optimised images and 360-degree turntable shots ready for post-production and upload.
Creative photography – Using a variety of studio equipment and props, I created compositions for jewellery product sliders, promotional mailshots, marketing banners and social media, using professional studio equipment and a combination of Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Bridge for post-production, before sending finished assets to be published on the websites.
Image manipulation – Using the Adobe Creative Cloud suite (Photoshop, Lightroom, Bridge and Illustrator) to retouch my own product photos and composition shots, as well as Photoshop batch scripts and Bridge actions to resize, sharpen, crop and sort product and model shots.
Social Media – Professional creative photography inside and outside the studio for blogs, articles and social media with a following of over 50,000. I used Hootsuite to schedule and maintain a portfolio of social media campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest across 3 Ecommerce stores.
Planning and collaboration – I was able to maintain my own schedule and use Mural boards to put down my own creative ideas, hosting meetings to discuss them with the rest of the team and scheduling tasks for other departments using a Project Management system.
Analysis, testing and reporting – I took part in regular testing and analysis of Roxoa’s website portfolio and competitor’s websites to suggest design and functional changes.
Following on from the six-month contract, I was offered a full time Apprenticeship with the company in August 2017 at the age of sixteen, but due to commitments to gain further experience and qualifications before taking on design and photography full time, I made the decision to instead continue my studies while building my own photography portfolio.
Education
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Graphic DesignUniversity of Salford
- Salford, United Kingdom
I studied Graphic Design at Salford for two years. The early part of the course involved working closely as a team to collaborate and come up with different ideas for projects, my favourite of which was “Time and Space”. This involved expanding my creative outlook on everyday surroundings, using Photoshop, Lightroom and After Effects to manipulate them using digital surrealist processes. I was able to combine live action and animation to achieve this.
As the course progressed I began using more contemporary methods such as pixel art, combining photography with post-production in a Digital Media Applications module where I made more use of Photoshop, Lightroom, Bridge, InDesign, Media Encoder and Illustrator. I created a number of publications and presented them in a Dragons’ Den style environment to gain experience in pitching and entrepreneurship. I also worked with the Salford Museum & Art Gallery and The Whitworth, Manchester.
I left the course in February 2020, as I felt it wasn’t for me. I was eager to get back into the industry, and I felt that another two years would be better spent building on my existing experience in photography and design. It was a decision I did not take lightly, but I am determined to find a permanent, stable role in the industry.
Awards
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V50 & V30 Volunteer CertificateNCS Yes
During a number of times volunteering with the National Citizen Service (NCS), I have gained confidence in speaking publicly, working within a team productively and efficiently, and building self-confidence.
Not only did I take part of NCS / National Citizen Service in 2016, I the began to continue working with them as a photographer, photographing a number of charity events such as the 2017 Charity Event.