A Day in the Life of…
Welcome to our latest feature. ‘A Day in the Life of…’ will follow different members of the studio, digging deep to find out more about their role within team K2L. Get ready to dive into some of the brightest minds in digital marketing…
First up, in the hot seat today is our Head of Design, Pete. If you dream of a dazzling career in web design and have a natural flair for pixel-perfect, Picasso-worthy web projects, you’ve come to the right place. Read on, to find out all there is to know about a ‘Day in the Life of a Web Designer.’
Morning, Pete. Let’s start off with an easy one. Your alarm’s gone off; you’re ready and raring to go. What’s ahead? What does a typical day at work look like?
Morning. First things first, get the kettle on. Much needed to start off another no doubt busy day at K2L. Then the work day starts with a quick catch up with the other heads of departments to outline the days plans, what needs doing and highlighting priority jobs.
Then it’s on to the days tasks; designing, reviewing, progressing and managing the creative work in the studio.
Web design is obviously a very creative vocation. What inspires you most? And what motivates you?
I’ve always been into the creative fields. Once it was clear I wasn’t going to be a footballer at an early age it was always where I was going to end up. Obviously web design is a massive part of the industry now and surrounds your day-to-day life so I try to absorb as much of that as possible and keep up on latest trends, styles and techniques.
My love for design reaches out far beyond just digital design though, print, typography, art, product design, architecture, photography… These are all areas I draw inspiration from and think it makes you a better designer when it comes to web design having more of an understanding for different design media on a whole as these things all come together when you are creating any design work.
Which programmes do you use and what for?
I work across a range of programmes across the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. It’s all about using the right tool for the right job. Personally I prefer to create my web design layouts in Adobe InDesign. With the latest updates it gives you great control over your designs and being able to sync your Typekit fonts with it is a great tool. But along with this I use Photoshop for any image manipulation or editing. And when it comes to creating icons for your designs you can’t beat Adobe Illustrator.
So you’re a busy guy. What’s your favourite thing about the job? What makes you smile?
Cracking an idea. The best feeling in my role is when you come up with ‘that’ solution for a brief that you might have been wrestling with and it gets you and the team excited about working on the project. It has to work though. It’s no good coming up with a fantastically creative idea that the client isn’t going to go for.
The other thing is when a job is finally complete. You can have been working on a project for months sometimes, so it’great when you finally get to see it out there in the wild.
What has surprised you most about working in web design? Are there any downfalls?
When I started my career as a designer I predominantly worked on branding and print design. As web design has evolved so has my job role. It is something that I have taken to and really enjoy working on. The biggest task for me to get used to at first was having to work with the developers and digital designers closely to create designs that were as functional as there were creative.
Understanding what was doable and the technical side of web design helped me to focus and streamline the designs that I was creating so that the user experience was at the forefront of anything I created.
I Will always love print design though and think there is still a part for it to play in this digital world we now live in!
Go on, spill the beans. What made you want to get into web design originally? How did you go about pursuing?
Well as I say, I started out in print and developed my skills as a web designer as I progressed my career in Graphic Design. Art, Product Design, and IT were the subjects I was working on at college and when it came to deciding what career path I wanted to head down I combined these skills and went on to do my degree in Graphic. From the moment I found out what Graphic Design was I knew it was the career for me. Web design is a completely different subject now to what it was then and will continue to evolve. It’s all about staying up to date with these changes though and trying to get ahead of the curve.
How did you first get involved with K2L?
I was looking for the next step in my career and a new challenge. It was the time for me to move on from my previous agency and really start to stretch myself as a designer. I saw a vacancy here and a couple of weeks after applying I was working at K2L!
3 years seem to have gone so fast and the agency has changed so much since those early days. My role too has evolved, grown and developed in my time here to where I am now as the head of design. I’m proud of the part I’ve played in us growing as an agency and am looking forward to where we can go in the near future.
Which projects throughout your career do you feel most proud of?
I suppose the one I have to say is the Red Devilution campaign that we did for the Salford Red Devils. We had 10 days to come up with, create and execute an entire campaign to launch their new season and unveiling of their rebrand!
The results were great and the campaign smashed its targets. The campaign went on to win K2L it’s first awards and the first for me as a designer on a project so that’s something I will remember.
What are your predictions for the future of web design?
Who knows where it could go! It is a constantly evolving and changing media. Where it goes will be lead by changes in technology though, as the rise in mobile and tablet use has shown us over the past few years. Web design will have to change to suit whatever people go on to view websites on in future.
And finally… Kettle’s boiled, it’s brew time. How’d you take it?
Tea, strong but milky. If that makes any sense! No sugar for me though thanks.
