A day in the life of a Designer
What do you do?
I’m one of the many senior designers here at TurnbullRipley. My job is to come up with creative solutions tailored and targeted to various client problems.
What kind of skills do you need to be effective at what you do?
To be effective at work, it sounds strange but it’s to not take it too seriously. Creativity starts as ‘Play’ and ‘Fun’, being silly sparks different ideas and arms you with creative thoughts that then become serious. Without this the work blends into a sea of everything else and ends up being ‘same, same’. You also need to go against the norm. It’s not a skill it’s more of an attitude. Get up, walk around, look up, do things you might not do and never sit still.
What do you do on a typical working day?
My working day usually starts with reviewing what happened the day before. Deciding if anything can be improved from yesterday and trying to finalise as much as possible before moving on to whatever the rest of the day has in store. Usually that’s branding and concept work along with producing strategies and ideas to help our clients’ businesses.
What are the best and worst parts of your job?
I love my job, it’s why I do it. I’m very lucky that I have this passion to create. And that is my favourite part. Taking something from a spark of an idea into a fully-fledged brand or campaign – and then seeing where it can go. It’s a sense of excitement and apprehension. You’ve created this thing and the interest to me is whether it will it do the job it’s been designed to do. What I hate, at the route of it is ‘Tradition’. Playing it safe and not pushing. If you do this you get left behind. We live in a world of snapchats and Insta stories where things are shared and then gone. Your brand, campaign, product needs to live in this changing world and not be so defined why what you think it is defined by.
What are your favourite tech tools that help you get your job done?
Photoshop… it allows me to quickly pull an idea together and can create surrealist and unnatural imagery. I’m terrible at drawing so this lets me work quickly and show the idea in a visual way. Without it I’d be stumped.
What advice would you give an aspiring designer?
For anyone wanting to design, I’d say this… don’t have an ego. Take on everything you’re told and use your own judgement if it’s relevant. I worked with 2 creative directors once. One was fast with great ideas one was slow but brilliant at execution. I took the good parts and left what I felt was bad. You never stop learning.
What’s been the favourite project you have ever worked on?
I don’t have a favourite.
Where do you find inspiration?
Everywhere. You can’t just use one source. Get out and see an exhibition. A gallery or even a drawing class. I’m always open to the possibility of doing something. And from that random act of doing something comes something you’d never thought of before. There’s a book (I forget the name) about 7 people going for a walk around a city. They’re all from different walks of life. Some are smaller than others and catch different views of the city. Some are looking up at the beautiful buildings no one looks up at anymore. It’s all about changing your pattern and not becoming robotic.
Finish this sentence…The ideal way to start my day is….
Going for a run. But I’m so lazy that I’ve never done it… there’s always tomorrow yeah…