Experience

Dewynters

• United Kingdom
• Advertising Services
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Senior Digital Creative Designer

  • Nov 1994 - Present

  I started working at Dewynters in 1994 as a print artworker and was somewhat surprised and delighted to find myself working at the very agency who had created the iconic branding for the musical which I had loved and spent so many hours listening to in my teenage years (see my 'About' section). I have loved creating the artwork for their campaigns and have taken great pride in having worked on some of the most iconic shows that the West End has produced over the past 25+ years. Nothing I did previously has filled me with more pride than working for this company. Seeing posters I have created on the tube, buses, taxis, and billboards all over London, indeed the U.K. has made me very proud of what I do. Now my work is global on the internet! With my desire for learning and using new technologies I moved over to the digital side in the early days of the internet, literally when websites were a new thing. Originally creating static banners with Photoshop and then moved onto designing and building websites with Adobe Dreamweaver and Flash (now Animate). The explosive growth of the internet and our digital department has meant that I eventually had to decide which area I wanted to specialise in as one person could not do it all! I decided I wanted to stick with the marketing side and dropped the website side of things as I enjoyed creating animated and interactive assets more. I have moved up in the company and I am now Senior Digital Creative Designer at Dewynters designing animated and interactive HTML 5 banner campaigns for our clients using Adobe Creative Suite including Photoshop, Illustrator and Animate in conjunction with Google Web Designer and Greensock animation. Occasionally these banners will also have video content which I can edit/create using Adobe After Effects or Adobe Premiere. I also design and build responsive HTML email campaigns using the Adobe Creative Suite and use Mailchimp to send out these campaigns to our clients data lists.



Grey Advertising

• Canada

• Creative Artworker

  • Jan 1994 - Jun 1994

  Not long after arriving in Australia to do some travelling (I didn't really get very far with the travelling) I worked for Grey Advertising, a leading advertising agency in Australia at the time. I was employed on a contract basis as a creative artworker to produce final artwork for brochures, catalogues, promotional material and advertisements for various clients working with the Account Directors on the final stages of production. In addition to this I would also work on material which was used for client pitches. One client was based in Adelaide and another in Sydney so this was my first experience of sending material through an ISDN network. All very new technology at the time! There was an option for sponsorship to stay in Australia, but is it a VERY long way from home and the pull of family and 'old Blighty' eventually made me home sick so I returned to the U.K.



SDL (UK) Ltd

• Graphic Designer

  • Oct 1992 - Nov 1993

  SDL were a nationwide computer distribution company with their own retail section who sold computers and exclusive game packs for the Commodore 64/Amiga and Sinclair ZX Spectrum computers. They also had exclusive distribution rights to early consoles such as the SEGA Megadrive. I was employed in the marketing department as a designer/typesetter. The department had its own high-end typesetting department using the latest typesetting RIPS, drum scanners and software available at the time. My main duties would be to create finished artwork for all advertisements, brochures, flyers, catalogues, boxes and box sleeves for the various different 'game packs' they would put together for the consoles they sold, as well as all internal stationery and their retail and trade show signage. I would see a job from concept through to final four colour film output. This not only involved typesetting and design but also the scanning of transparencies on high end drum scanners, the digital editing of these images and the final output to four colour film. The attention to detail in this company was second to none and while I was employed in this position I learnt to use a lot of new software and it was a major leap forward for my career as the technology in the print industry was changing rapidly and my skill sets were beginning to encompass parts of the previously 'specialist' sector of Reprographics as well as using Quark XPress and various extensions to their fullest. I also helped out with the day to day maintenance of the computer systems, typesetting equipment, drum scanners, and calling out engineers when required. After just over a year in this position I had the urge to experience more of the world and so decided to leave and head down under to do some travelling around Australia while on a work visa.



Scorpio Repro

• DTP Apple Mac operator

  • Jan 1992 - Jun 1992

  I joined this company in January 1992 as a DTP Apple Mac operator to create editorial pages for the National Farming Union Journal. Using the new skills I had required after completing an intensive course in Quark XPress3.0 at the London College of Print after my return from travelling. I would also assist in the design and creation of black and white adverts for other departments in the company. Unfortunately the magazine was unprofitable and production was halted shortly after my arrival and I was made redundant. It did however give me professional experience in using Quark Xpress and I was keen find something else and continue with my career in the new digital side of design and print origination.



Maxwell Business Communications (MBC)

• Magazine Designer

  • Sep 1989 - Dec 1990

  I joined MBC as a magazine designer where my main task was designing rough page layouts on grid formats for a weekly trade newspaper and monthly trade magazines with exciting titles like 'Electronics Express' and 'Cranes Today'. These were rough layouts to so we could calculate the exact number of words that the editorial staff would require when writing their articles and also the size and positions of the images in the magazines. The final artwork was produced at another site in the Robert Maxwell empire. Occasionally there would be an advert to design for inclusion in a magazine which required final artwork standards but they were far and few between and, because I was not able to use my skills to their fullest, I decided it was time to fulfil a long standing ambition... I took a year out to travel in South East Asia!



E.E. Owens & Co. Ltd.

• Trainee typesetter and paste up artist

  • Sep 1986 - Aug 1989

  I started here straight after leaving school to do an apprenticeship in Print Origination at the London College of Printing on block release for two years. When not in college I would be working for this company where my main tasks would be to take a job from customer copy to final finished artwork doing all typesetting, proof reading, artwork production, customer corrections and final customer proofing myself. These were in the pre-desk top publishing days (so for the history buffs out there) I would use an APL (Cora5) Typesetting input station and a Linotronic 101 Image Setter to create the text columns for layout, and a AGFA Gevaert Repromaster process camera for creating black and white half tone images. It was here that I also had my first experience of the future and had the chance to use an early DTP system which was using PageMaker 3.0 running on an Apricot computer and outputting to a Varityper VT600. Happy days? Maybe not... too many nasty chemicals required back then.... :)