I currently work in the marketing department at ParkerSteel, based in Canterbury. My role is a varied one, requiring me to be flexible and adaptable to many areas of design and marketing. On a daily basis I can be working on anything from web design to video production, social media to brochure production.

Since starting at John Parker & Son Ltd, I have worked on multiple brochures and catalogues, countless social media posts and built two WordPress websites from scratch. This included an e-commerce site which needed the content for the complete catalogue of products to be created and optimised for SEO purposes. The ongoing maintenance of these sites is my responsibility and requires not only constant content creation but also ensuring back-end of the site is up to date and functioning properly. Further to this, I have designed many pages for the ParkerSteel website, including the mobile version, which have then been coded up by the IT team as well as using an in-house built CMS to produce landing pages.

As the senior designer in the team, I am responsible for planning the marketing schedules across social media, web and email platforms. Further to this I take lead on producing plans for marketing campaigns which involve scheduling material production and delivery, assigning a team of 15+ sales people a script and customer contact list and finally collating and analysing the returning data. Often the analysis stage has a short turn around in order to proceed with a second stage of the campaign. This may even require creation of new, personalised marketing material which needs to be accounted for in the budget. These campaigns are frequently reactive to the fast paced industry and require quick planning and production.

I am frequently called upon for my photography skills and these have been put to use in producing brochure quality images of large scale steel processing equipment, staff head shots, the shop and products for promoting.

I enjoy the variety of my role and knowing that every day could be different. The flexibility of being able to work on any part of a campaign, whether that be design, planning or data retrieval, keeps me developing and expanding my skill set. The ability to combine design with marketing brings out the best in me as I look at a task from multiple angles and analyse the best way to achieve the best results.

Playspace & Marketing Designer

The purpose of my role as Playspace & Marketing Designer was to design and price innovative play spaces using 3D software, produce accurate CAD plans, create marketing materials and maintain the website.
I used 3D Studio Max and Forest Pack in order to produce industry leading, true to life artists impressions of our schemes. These were supported by CAD drawings, created in AutoCAD, for working out accurate pricing and giving informative install plans. This process involved receiving and understanding briefs from the Area Sales Manager, based remotely, and liaising with clients to ensure I achieved the desired end product.

I managed my playspace designer duties to run alongside my marketing responsibilities which included producing all brochures, branding, exhibition layouts, email campaigns and web maintenance. I am proficient at writing and often created the majority of copy required within the marketing media. A key project assigned to me was the management for the production of the new website. This involved collating and creating any content needed and giving detailed briefs and direction for the web developers. It was an ongoing project whereby I maintained, optimised and improved the SEO.

For both the marketing and playspace design I worked as part of a small team. This required good communication and the ability to manage a constantly changing work-flow, whether that be due to last minute tenders or assisting in helping a team member reach their deadline by taking on some of the load.

Production Assistant

At James Villas I was responsible for organising the photography. This included the retouching and cataloguing of photos, selecting which photographers to use and arranging their trips, giving artistic direction to the photography as well as going on various photo shoots myself. I was also greatly involved brochure production and web design.

Oven Fresh & Pie Shop Sales Assistant

I worked part time on the Pie Shop and Oven Fresh Departments whilst studying for my A-Levels and degree. This involved working individually and as part of a team, keeping to time schedules, cooking and serving hot food, and interacting with the general public.