Have you noticed Cam Lates? Have you been to a Cam Lates event? If it’s ‘no!’ to both, then I’m not doing my job very well, and we shall move swiftly on before someone important finds out.
Designing in-house
In all my marketing and comms roles, I’ve had permission to do some graphic design. Partly because the organisations required it for one reason or another, but it’s mainly because I love doing it. There are pros and cons:
Pros
- You have a good understanding of the project/thing you’re designing for
- You have direct contact with the colleague you’re designing for
- You have easy access to design components (logos, images etc)
- Quick turnaround
- Save on external design costs
- You get better at it
Cons
- Time designing could be better spent elsewhere – if I’m brutally honest with myself, it’s not my job
- It’s hard to surprise yourself (you know, when you first open that attachment from a designer, and go ‘ooooh.’ That.)
- It’s hard to be objective
- Colleagues might not want to hurt your feelings when giving feedback
- I don’t design on a daily basis, so what on earth makes me think I can do it?
That last one is really important, so I’m not even going to answer it. Onwards!
Designing Cam Lates
Cam Lates was a new programme of events for the University of Cambridge Museums. We wanted to reach young professionals, students and essentially those who would like something a little different from their museum visit/or night out in Cambridge.
The first Cam Lates programme involved four museums with events spread across four months. We did a general poster campaign (as well as online stuff) where four designs were drawn from the collections involved. Crucially, they promoted the whole programme, rather than each individual event.
And there you have it.
Okay, confession, I started writing this post about two years ago and now I’ve come back to the website thinking I should put my recent stuff on there and oosh! I didn’t even finish this one. But now I have, sort of…
The posters went down well and were probably the first big design job I did for the University where folk sat up and took notice. I do lots of design now, so let’s see if I can get some of that up too.
See you soon x
