How our Senior Creative Designer got his job
Welcome back to How We Got Our Jobs. This month's post focuses on our one-man design department, Jon Daulby, and his journey from underpaid paper boy to senior creative designer.
“I think I always wanted to be something creative. Maybe there was a time when I wanted to be a Formula One driver, or something with cars, but it was always creative, as in designing something, or building something.
“My first job was delivering the yellow advertiser, a paper round. It was horrible, I don’t understand why anyone would do it, or make their children deliver papers. Even the money was shockingly bad – the amount of hours you would have to do, you’d have to put all the leaflets in the newspapers, which took an hour, then a couple of hours to deliver them, and you’d get maybe £5 out of it.
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“I went through a stage of wanting to be a marine biologist, but I didn’t get very good grades grades for science! I’ve always taken art subjects and the main focus has always been on those. Other than Graphics and Photography, my A Level results were shocking. But I didn’t have to “I did a Graphic Design degree at the University of the Arts London, but it was Central Saint Martins when I was there, all those years ago. I probably drank too much; I enjoyed the sort of lifestyle of university. I probably should have taken it more seriously. I should have worked harder.
“There was quite a lot of freedom in what I could have done. In my second and third years, I didn’t really do a lot of strict graphic design – it was more toy design, a bit of animation… I just made stuff up as I was going along. I think uni was beneficial though. I think people who say it wasn’t don’t appreciate the other aspects of it: the ideas, the general experience of being around everyone creative.
“When I graduated, I didn’t really have a strict graphic design portfolio, which hindered things somewhat. I did a three-month internship after, but I should have done more. The university was more about ideas than the practicalities of getting a job, so you were thrown in the deep end. There wasn’t a module on getting work experience, or pushing to do such and such. It was very much about creativity – and then you’re done.
“I’ve had loads of jobs though. I worked on a library bus, I worked for the council, I worked for the NHS. My first graphic design job was for a branding agency – they worked with children’s brands, creating lookbooks and stuff.
“The interview process for Reddico was quite in-depth. I got to meet some of the team, I did a task, all that sort of stuff. You knew a lot about Reddico before you started. It wasn’t just a half-an-hour meeting with the directors and then they said yes or no, it was more than that.
“I’ve just been promoted to Senior Creative Designer, so I’ve got more responsibility and more work to do – which is good!”
Look out for part six, featuring our finance team, next month.
Part 1: The content team
Part 2: The SEO team
Part 3: The PPC team
Part 4: The development team
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