Marks is a brand design and experience agency. Uniquely built for the boldest brands to gain access to premier multi-discipline and multi- channel talent, teams and capabilities so brands can deliver dynamic and disruptive content at the speed of culture.

Over the last year and a half I have been working on the LEGO account. The leading toy manufacturer in the world. Where I create the packaging for Disney, Duplo, Spidey, Bluey and Gabby’s Dollhouse. LEGO has 33 franchises and Marks is contracted to work on 8. The LEGO Group is a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark.

Day to day tasks involve researching and story telling with the Lego product, using photography to provide initial vision for packs. Art directing CGI artists on product posing. Creating detailed backgrounds within the box die-cuts to be tweaked by illustrators. Briefing in lighting experts and making character positioning refinements within Maya to enhance the story.

Disney = Featuring your favourite princesses from well known Disney films and shows.

Duplo = Is a brand that bring parents and toddlers together through play. Peppa pig fits within this franchise.

Gabby’s Dollhouse = Is filled with mini-worlds, irresistible kitty characters, and super fun adventures for ages 5-7 years.

Spidey = The show features young versions of the Marvel characters and is the first full-length Marvel animated series targeted at young audiences.

Bluey = Is an Australian animated preschool television series, characters based on a range of dog breeds.

Marks along with other design agencies collaborates with Mondelez for both the packaging and activation side of the account. Mondelez is a multinational confectionery, food, beverage and snack company. Some brands included within are: Belvita, Cadburys, Milka, Oreo, Toblerone. During Legos downtime, I worked within the Activation team where I visualised a shoppers journey through in-store, digital and out-of-home assets. Items were often for well known supermarkets such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda.

Item examples across different platforms were =

Print: Free standing display units, headers, aisle fins, barkers, wobblers, shelf strips, floor vinyls etc

Digital: Consumer and trade adverts, social media assets, emailers, web banner rollout etc

Local Air Ambulance service delivers lifesaving care at the scene of an incident, serving five counties. Working with all departments: Operations, Retail, Fundraising, Re-use and Volunteering design requests are print and digital, these develop the brands corporate identity.

Ranked among the elite schools, working in the educational sector daily tasks involved directing photo shoots, creating exhibition materials, designing email visuals to mail merging student data etc.

There are 5 types of programmes:
Undergraduate
Postgraduate
MBA
PHD
Executive Education.

Topics within these include business, finance and/or management either studying at the Warwick or London (Shard) campus.

The forefront of the university are the students. My purpose was to motivate every student to unlock their full potential, and achieve their ambitions through advertising materials.

The visual identity includes a logo, colour schemes, photographic style, a graphic device called ‘the cube’, and supporting typefaces. Together they make up the single identity that is WBS.

Photography plays a vital role in communication to all WBS audiences. WBS imagery conveys a sense of inspiration, energy and professionalism.

Children’s Air Ambulance has a kids club for ages 6-10 year old. Members pay a one off fee of £25 to join which help funds their services.

Membership includes collateral from quarterly newsletters, activities to ideas of ways to fundraise. There are incentives to intrigue them to enhance their fundraising target. The aim is to capture their interest while they are young to then keep them dedicated to the charity throughout their life.

I have re-branded the assets as market research informed us the materials were outdated and to male focused.

The Myton Hospices is a charity who believe that everyone matters for every single moment of their life; focusing on enhancing life when cure is no longer an option. Leaders in compassionate end of life care; their work centres on patient wellbeing and involving them in decisions about their care.

To enable to provide their services free of charge we needed to raise £7.8 million each year. A large proportion of the income is generated from the events held through-out the year and visuals of just some of the events are displayed. Their events calendar is non stop, which means I had to be highly responsive.

Each event required slightly different marketing materials from myself: All digital sizes for advertising, Instagram social squares, posters, roadside banners, lamppost signs, mailings, leaflets, medals, certificates and event specific welcome packs for participants etc

The majority of the artwork displays Myton’s brand colours – red, aqua and teal. The reason for this is my materials provide consistent identity and audience recognition.

They have excellent relationships with local businesses that tend to sponsor their events in return for sponsorship. This covers the marketing materials and advertising we include their logo on the designs.

During 2020 and 2021 Coronavirus affected many business including Myton. Unfortunately all the planned events had to be cancelled because of mass participation. For the very few of us that were not furloughed we had to adapt and came up with engaging virtual events – some are displayed here.

Giant:

Giant is the largest bicycle manufacturer in the world, a leading investor in cycling technologies and innovation. When I worked at Whiteroom I designed the graphics for 11 new stores. At the time Giant had 31 stores around the country, they have since developed further. The store program is now being replicated across the globe in all of Giant’s key markets.

Working with the team of 3D designers, printers and shop fitters I designed the interior and exterior graphics including wallpapers, window vinyls and store signs etc.

In recent years Giant has developed into Giant (mens cycling) and Liv (womens cycling) meaning each store is dual branded. These include different bike categories within each store. We devised a style where a guide to image choice is both dynamic but approachable.

Rutland Cycling:

Alongside Giant I have designed wallpaper graphics for Rutland Cycling. At the time Rutland Cycling had 6 stores in the East Midlands.

As a Graphic Designer I have constructed several catalogues/brochures.

Working for Warwick Business School, throughout the year roughly 15 catalogues are designed for the array of qualifications.

Each brochure includes information on course options, programme structure, facts and figures, faculty, testimonials of students, community, careers, accommodation, scholarships, application fees and funding etc.

Depending on the qualification, depends how many pages they consist of. The Undergraduate brochure contains the most content due to the amount of course spreads. Followed by Masters. Then the MBA is split into three brochures: Distance Learning, Executive and Full time.

The brochures have a slightly different look and feel due to the audience. Undergraduate target audience are younger than those viewing the MBA brochures. Therefore the pre-experience programmes are more vibrant compared to the post-experience programmes that are more sophisticated.

All the images included in these are art directed by myself, we stage students to get a variety of different nationalities and locations around campus.

Each programme has a different brand colour to distinguish each one. Show here are the following:

Turquoise = Masters
Purple = MBA (Masters of business administration)
Blue = Doctoral
Green = Executive Education 

Giant Bicycle stores are worldwide. On a day to day basis working for Whiteroom I was responsible for managing and designing all the in store point of sale for the 31 stores in the UK. Along with the store fit outs (showcased under ‘RETAIL - Store fit outs’ page).

Requests were print and digital from general print advertising (Posters, flyers, totems, roller banners etc), social media advertising and digital marketing. These were often for upcoming events, sales and promoting products.

When a store had been designed and completed the store requires product tags, stationery and product headers.

Throughout the year the brand participates in several events from the London Bike show to the Tour De France.

Giant aim to encourage riding, therefore designs are for all abilities from performance riders to commuter cyclists.

Giant = Mens Cycling = brand colour blue
Liv = Womens Cycling = brand colour purple.

During my time as a Graphic Designer I have perfected many companies brand identities.

It is key for the customer to be content with their style of logo, colours, photography, templates and typography, usually before launching their business and mass producing marketing materials. This enables them to differentiate from the competition, having a character and aesthetic enabling the business to stand up on its own with a unique voice.

I have been point of call for start-up business regarding branding however with design trends changing frequently companies with a brand can often want to be modernized.

It is important to continue using their brand identity to keep the consumers engaged.

A few examples are shown here.

Here are a selection of the many kit designs I have created.

During my time at Akuma the 3 main activities I was involved with were:

Brief = Customers emailed in to Akuma asking for kit designed to their specification, stipulating preferred colours, supplying their crest and sponsor logos. Briefs ranged from one piece of kit up to 20 pieces. I then created these on Adobe Illustrator. 

Alteration = When the brief is sent, we were asked in the email if they wanted any changes to the kit before they are printed for example positioning/size of logos. 

Sign off = Once the customer was satisfied with the kit design(s) and paid for. We put the kit on a sheet which showed the exact width and height of everything from the size of the garmet to the typography. This would ensure the designs were printed accurately and to scale.

Bose is best known for its home audio systems and speakers, noise cancelling headphones, professional audio systems and automobile sound systems.

Working with Bose and the 3D designers at Whiteroom we created a stand for the BPM show at the Genting Arena in Birmingham. This show is a DJ and studio event used to interact with the music, sound and lighting industry.

Vehicle designs provide advertising for a long period of time and can be seen all over, depending where the car travels.

Shown here is a vehicle wrap for home visiting opticians. They felt their logo was out of date so I was asked to create an icon using their brand colours to support the logo and use on the vehicle, as shown.

Giant stores also required van wraps for their vans when transporting the bikes from one location to another.

Each year Giant require a new style of POS for their Christmas campaign. I designed the POS for years 2016 and 2017.

Due to the amount of stores and low budget the POS has to be created from card to fulfill their budget. Items produced we’re 2D and 3D.

Shown here is the 2017 POS. A typography approach, focusing on the outdoors where bike ride adventures take place. 

I used photography, typography and illustration to create a collection of card POS that links them together.

The usual brand colours for Liv and Giant were changed to Cranberry for Liv and teal for Giant, giving a more Christmas vibe.

The Giant stores have different floor space and window displays and some stores ordered more quantities than others.

Along with the in store Christmas items I produced social media campaign assets, called “12 days to Christmas” where Giant and Liv gave away products each day if the customer liked and shared the post I had designed. This aspect of the campaign was constructed for social media awareness.

The Brief:

Create a persuasive campaign to keep BBC World Service Radio on air.

Emphasize international understanding, respect and co-operation.

I chose a billboard with online interactive banners. To have the banners on the NUS website where a donation gets added on to the total fee and you have to opt out of paying, more money is likely to be donated than opting in.

1980s = ROCK = Tartan = Electric guitar

1960s = HIPPIE MOVEMENT = Tie dye = Guitar

1950s = JAZZ = Polka dot = Cello

The Brief:

To help identify and promote a major exhibition held at The Victoria and Albert Museum.

This exhibition covered many genres spanning 60 years of music. The design work had to be of a broad appeal.

The posters had to work sequentially, not show the work of exhibitors or speakers and concepts should test the boundaries and capabilities of the media.

Audience: Was primarily music and fashion lovers but also designers and those interested in art and design in general.