OUGD602 - Contacting Designers (In-House Designer)

6C2 / 6D2.

Throughout sessions, talks and workshops, we have continuously been told about the importance of building up a network of people and creative contacts. This became apparent when someone put me in contact with a designer they know personally. Shaun Boyle is an in-house digital content producer & creative for a company called Autoglym. The company itself produces various cleaning products for cars, whilst Shaun and his team of creatives work in-house to produce the branding, packaging and campaigns, etc behind the brand itself.

How did I contact them?

With mutual friends I was lucky enough to receive the phone number of Shaun, allowing me to contact him directly and more personally, rather than through an email which may have to go through another system or person first before it reaches the desired receiver. With Shaun expecting a call from me, he suggested it would be fine if I messaged first, which is what I did allowing him to take a call at a time which was more suitable for him and so ending the message with "let me know when you're free to potentially discuss this further over the phone. Look forward to hearing from you, kind regards".

Response:

Response received from Shaun continued to highlight the importance of building a network of contacts, suggesting that depending on what I am interested in, or if his management did not allow for work experience, then there was an agency and other contacts he could potentially put me in touch with, taking the time to ask me what job I would ideally like to go into in order to help inform what the best experience to arrange would be.

Not knowing exactly what job I would ideally like to go into, I gave some idea of what I enjoy in terms of graphic design, suggesting that I particularly enjoy design for print and publication design, as well as this year getting into a bit of branding through various projects. Due to this, it was suggested that being brand side, working with Shaun and his team would actually be good experience for me in this case, learning that the company runs three different brands from the department, each with a different tone of voice and marketing strategy which I feel will be interesting to learn about in terms of the running of an in-house brand design team.