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This week I have been at Infiniti Graphics doing work experience where I learnt about marketing, web design, logo design and much more.

My name is Stephanie, and I’m a year 10 student from Kings Ely. I’ve lived in Ely my whole life and have been at Kings Ely from the very beginning. I am currently studying Fine Art alongside my other choices and core subjects. Art has always been something that has excited me since I was little, I love to sketch and doodle when I can, and believe I have quite a creative imagination.

I had never really looked into Graphic design, but recently it has been something my art teacher suggested to look into and after doing some research, I came to discover a whole new aspect of art that really interested me. When it came time to look for work experience I knew that I wanted to do something in this field of work, but I then looked into local design companies in Ely, Cambridge and many other areas.

After looking at a few different companies, I came across Infiniti Graphics, a local business that specialised in design. I was immediately drawn to their vivid and bright website and got in contact with them with a strong hope.

When I received the positive email back from them, I was overjoyed as their business was just the sort of place I had been wanting to do my work experience at. I had hoped to get a better understanding of what kind of work they do and potential branches for the future. What really drew me to the company was their outstanding, interactive website that was up-to-date, easy to use and very visually appealing. They also had all positive reviews and was the number one company that came up when researching in Ely.

When I first arrived I was briefed about what kind of things I would be getting up to, and given an overview of the week ahead, although I was nervous, I soon settled in as the team were more than welcoming. The first thing I did was observe the process in writing the weekly blog posts for the Infiniti Graphics website and I got to see how carefully each idea is pulled together, to in the end make some incredible writing.

I then had a chance to try my own writing, as I was given the task of creating a sample email about promoting their newsletter, and trying to gain some new subscribers. This was a great opportunity for me to test my writing skills in a different, and more persuasive tone.

Next, I sat down with Rian and he showed me how he manages the social media side, and I learnt how to schedule and upload updates across each social media platform all at once using a program called Buffer. I also had to chance to post a few updates about checking out older blog posts to attract more people to read them.

Upon completing this, we then moved onto looking at the Infiniti Graphics website and I was given brief training on editing aspects of the website and how to make it more visually appealing. I found this very interesting as web design was something I wanted to learn more about, so getting the opportunity to learn first-hand was amazing.

After doing some work looking at their website, we broadened our horizons to using Sp Page Builder and I learnt more about constructing websites from scratch and creating the perfect website for the client. I looked through some of their creations and got to understand how websites can start looking exactly the same, but then develop into two completely different sites based on the client and their criteria and the brands identity.

The last part of the day, I was set the task of working on an actual design brief they had received from a client who wanted a re-design of their logo, business cards, website and almost everything else for their crafty upcycled horseshoes, country-style business: Anvil Cottage Crafts.

I began to do some secondary research and pull together a few images from Google and Pinterest to eventually create a moodboard on Illustrator, which I hadn’t used before,  containing colours, styles, and textures that could potentially be used. I had this task set as my own to work on throughout the week which was great as it meant I had my own freedom to produce something the customer wanted, but with my personal touch on it.

The next morning, Luke and I travelled down the Maltings by the river, where I met Naomi  who co-organises The Ely Hero Awards with Luke and his team. The ceremony is coming up in a few weeks. I got the chance to see how everything would be laid out on the night and watched the lights being tested.

After lunch, I continued my work on Anvil Cottage Crafts and started some primary research based off my moodboard I had created yesterday, and produced some shapes and forms which eventually I turned into a few drafts for the logo.

This had been my first time trying logo design and it was very beneficial going through the whole process of secondary and primary research to get the logo ideas, as it gave me a better understanding of what the company wants to see.

In the end I had produced quite a few different logos that I was happy with and one that I could continue to develop the next day on some business cards. I felt like I was beginning to understand Illustrator a little bit better.

We were halfway through the week and I felt extremely comfortable coming into work now, I sat with Rian and we reviewed clients Google Ad Campaigns for the morning. I got to see the analytics and data from each business’ ads and make adjustments where necessary.

We had a closer look at the specific keywords and searches being made for each business and I got a chance to sort through and discard the ones that the business did not want to be associated with and the ones that were irrelevant.

After learning how, I also changed some of the adverts individual keyword budgets which were not allowing the ad to show up on the first Search Engine Results Page (SERP) , according to the client’s budget. This was great as I had to make my own intuitive decisions about whether each change would put us over the daily budget or not.

Finally, we moved onto looking at the headings and descriptions of each advert and I attempted the tedious task of coming up with 30 character long headings, which was a lot harder than I thought, but in the end we produced some fantastic work.

The descriptions were much easier as they each were 90 characters long but we had to carefully select sentences from the client’s website, but there was not always enough information to make a full description, so we had to look further on the internet which took time and precision. Overall, there was much more detail involved than I previously thought, though a bit challenging, it was very interesting to see and I really enjoyed this task.

In the afternoon, I continued the work on Anvil Cottage Crafts. After having some time to play around and get to grips with Illustrator, I was much more at ease using it. I had a few logo drafts and enough material from the previous days to start to pull together a business card.

Then I combined my favourite logo draft with the shapes and ideas from the moodboards I had made and began to piece together something I thought could work. The hardest part was starting off, as I seemed to be deleting everything after I had put it in because I didn’t feel like the logo was fitting in very well.

I was reassured that sometimes the best option is to just get some information and get some sort of design on the card first as a foundation, and the logo can always be rearranged and moved around to see what fits best with the style I was trying to make. By the end of the day I had produced an idea for both sides of the card and was happy with what I had managed to come up with.

On Thursday I met Greg and brought him up to speed with where I had got up to with the Anvil Cottage Crafts project. I showed him my moodboards, logos and newly made business cards, as we were going to revisit this in the afternoon.

As for the morning, I sat with Greg we went through the checklist he had, which was mostly polishing a few website details for a client. One of these items included changing a Vimeo video to a Youtube video and working out how to embed it in the website.

We also revisited SP Page Builder, where I had already learnt the basics, but now I had the chance to apply what I had learnt alongside looking at the slightly more detailed features and tools. It was all very new and confusing at first, but after listening and watching how Greg did it all, I soon picked it up and was able to do it on my own.

We worked on website for an architect, uploading and changing images and text and fixing a few details like how it looked on a phone/tablet too. I also learnt the process of adding new pages and saw how you could create different effects with each image, such as parallaxing the image so that when you scroll through the page it almost sits behind the page. This process was long and at first extremely confusing, but after breaking it down and after trial and error, it seemed a little less scary.

During the afternoon I worked again with Greg, but this time on the work for Anvil Cottage Crafts. He talked me through the process of how he creates logos and gave me a few pointers and some tips about Illustrator. Using Freepik, we found some free vectors that we transformed into our own designs.

We developed some improved logos from what I had already done by myself and began to look closer at the potential fonts for not only the logo but the website too. He also showed me how to use a Wacom tablet and talked me through how to trace vectors and draw out images. We managed to produce some great vectors within the time and I learnt a lot more about logo design and in particular using different features Illustrator.

On the last morning, I sat down with Rian and we went through the Friday checklist. On this list we re-visited some of the websites and programs we looked at back at the start of the week.

We started by using Buffer to schedule some updates and posts for the next week about previous blogs and showcasing some of their portfolio work for clients, whose brand image had been re-designed. Like previously in the week, I got to write a few of them and contribute my ideas as well.

After checking that off the list, it was time to review the Google Ads again, but this time for Infiniti Graphics only. Looking over the keywords, we extracted the unwanted ones and set them as negative keywords, so they wouldn’t appear again.

Adding some new headings was next and there were already quite a few down, so creating up some new and innovative ones within the character limit was again tedious, but slightly easier now I had already given that a shot on Monday.

Continuing with the list, Facebook tagging was next. This was a fairly short task as Rian explained this was unable to do in Buffer, so it had to be done manually. He just needed to tag a few people in some of the previous posts and then we could move onto the next item.

To summarise the week in just one word would be impossible to do! The amount that I have learnt and experienced is absolutely incredible and it still hasn’t quite sunk in yet that it’s over. Though a shame to be leaving, I can feel proud of what I have achieved in such a short time and I know now so much more about this industry, and that I definitely want to pursue a career in it.

Working at Infiniti Graphics has been a whirlwind of web design, social media marketing, logo design and so much more. I’ve been so lucky to experience all this first-hand, and get a chance to both improve some of my existing skills and even develop some new ones.

The highlight of the week for me was designing the logos for Anvil Cottage Crafts because I had a chance to demonstrate my ideas, exactly how I had imagined them in my head and then develop the idea further with the design brief and help from the team.

I’ve really loved doing my work experience at Infiniti Graphics and want to thank Luke, Rian and Greg for giving me this opportunity and I wish you the best of luck for the future and hope to come back one day!