Two months later, ‘A week in slice’ is making its return to the blog. And this time, Megan, who has spent the week in the office on work experience, shares her thoughts with us…

This week I had the opportunity to do a work experience placement at Slice which gave me an incredible insight into the world of marketing and graphic design. 

Throughout the week, I completed various tasks in different areas of design. 

From the first day alone, I quickly realised that I had greatly underestimated the amount of attention given to even the smallest details in every aspect of design.

Whether they are creating engaging websites or unique branding that makes a business stand apart from its competitors, the designers consider every detail from which colour would work well in a logo to which font combinations will look best together on a website. 

I started my week by creating a poster to be put on the slice instagram account. Before my placement I had very limited experience in using Photoshop and Illustrator but the designers were always keen to help and guide me through the whole process. 

I also wrote a social media plan for each day in April so that social media posts can be scheduled in advance in order for the company to have a consistent social media presence. 

I then completed a web design course and certification, which again I had very little knowledge about but it is definitely a useful skill that I will take away from this week. 

As well as learning how to actually create my own website, the course taught me about lots of elements of web design that I hadn’t even considered before. For example, I learned about how to layout the site in the best ways and how to use the right colours and images for different brands. 

On Wednesday, I spent most of the day designing some Easter themed greetings cards using Photoshop. I researched different Easter related images and created background designs.

Although Easter is next week, this experience has taught me how important it is to plan ahead within the creative industry especially when it comes to designing anything for a specific holiday. 

The most difficult task I did was the negative space challenge where I designed icons using only a black square and white cut-outs. I tried to use the black space within my images to create a new image. 

Overall, my favourite part of the week was creating my own personal branding. I admit that I had never heard of the concept of personal branding before and the importance of designing my own branding to promote myself within the creative industry was completely new to me.

I decided to design some business cards in my own style with colours and fonts that I felt best represented my own personal brand. 

Beyond the creative aspects of personal branding I also made a plan for how I can develop my brand and promote myself on social media. I decided that Instagram and Pinterest would be the best platforms to use as they are more visual than many of the others. 

Reflecting on the week as a whole, I have learnt a number of new skills and developed others as well as learning a lot about the marketing industry and how businesses promote themselves. Lastly, I would like to thank everyone at Slice for their support and advice throughout the week.