Placement Essay
I went on Placement which lasted for the duration of 3 weeks, which started on the 15th March 2010. This was working for a company called Felicity Brown which is a fashion design company. I was working with a man called Henry Brown, he was the person in charge of advertising and selling the clothes. His sister is Felicity Brown was the fashion designer herself. I was working with a close friend of mine that I go to Uni with, this was good as we worked very well in a team. The task was to update his current website by putting on their latest London Fashion Week photos which were done professionally. They also wanted us to give them advice and give their website a new overall look and was asking how the market has changed and what we find interesting and what makes a website a good website. I had a lot of knowledge of this as we studied and answered these questions in college, it also helped as we had done a viral video project so did a lot of research on internet marketing.
We worked in a house that he lived with his family it was very clean and worked at a big table where we sat and had discussions and meetings. They were very welcoming and offered us food and drink often which was provided by themselves. There was a lot of space and was suitable workplace. Henry made sure that we knew where all the facilities were located at that they were at a clean standard, which they were. I was told i was covered by insurance through university, Henry Brown was also covered by insurance which my course leader looked into before we was able to go along with the placement. He also had car insurance. He picked us up and dropped us off back to Woodford Station at the end of our working day.
The first day of meeting Henry we sat around the table and had a discussion of what he would like to be done with the website and what kind of style he liked. We looked at other fashion designer websites for inspiration and he told us what he liked and what he didn’t. From this I managed to work out that he had a simple, clean, sleek style. He showed us what pictures he had taken that he wanted to create into a catalog and put up on the site. I suggested to him that I would do some mock ups of different pictures and text styles and he could then choose which ones he liked the best. For me this was a great starting point for the project as I got to put my own designing techniques to work in a way that would please Henry as well. We didn’t have to travel up to London everyday as we worked from home 2 days a week and travelled to London for the other 3 days. This was due to the fact that Henry had to attend lot’s of meeting with places like Liberties and Harrods and top London shops. It was also good for me as I was able to just get on with the work at home on my laptop. I was always in contact with Henry through e-mail and phone calls when I wasn’t there also sent him files so he could see what I had done and how much progress I was making. Henry was a big part of the process as he was the one who was making decisions, but he did let us get on with things and take our advice on a lot of things. For example if we said to him that it was not a good idea and suggest another way to get around it he would be happy to take your word for it. This is what made it a brilliant placement for me.
I was mainly doing the design side of things whereas my partner was doing the more technical side. For me this meant that I was designing and creating all the different pages and the changes that he wanted on each page. The technical side of things was putting these pages into the Flash cs3 file that was created by the person who made the website previously, this was a task in itself trying to work out what was what. I created the catalog for all the new photos that he had taken and wanted to put up. There was two photos of each dress one was a movement shot and the other was a still shot. I put these two photos next to each other so there was two pictures on each page. Also on the catalogue pages I had to create button that would navigate the pages. To do this I had to do HTML coding which was difficult sussed it in the end, this took me about a week to sort all the coding out and a lot of research on the internet.
Henry also asked if I was able to make the pages fluid, this is so that if you resize the box you won’t lose part of the page. I was able to do this and showed him how it worked on other web pages then I did it to his catalogue. He said he liked it and that it worked well but changed his mind at last minute so I didn’t put these files up but I still have them for my own record. He also asked me to create a e-mail form so that if they e-mail they would receive a brochure of their designs or ask any questions. I made this for him but he then decided that it was good enough just having their e-mail address on the website so they could email or call if they wanted, I thought this was a good choice of his because it would of made the website look like there is too much going on.
The actual catalogue took me a while to do as Henry kept changing his mind quite a lot, which was sometimes really frustrating as when it has taken you a while to do something and then he didn’t want it to look that way anymore. But I understood why he made the points he did. He was not happy with the size at first and then he wanted to have it as a full screen page that you just clicked on each side to go to the next page. Another thing was the button he didn’t want to see the button until you rolled over them, he also wanted the text really small so you could hardly see it. I then also added a home button as there was no way to get back to the main screen. We changed the Home page, Landing page, Menu page and Contact page. We only had to make minor changes to these pages like changing the images and adding text and changing basic information, all the button were already linked up which meant it would take less time, I managed to make these changes towards the end of the placement as it was the least important thing to put up.
Working for Felicity Brown has been such a brilliant experience for me, it was what I want to do in the future and after this it has made me realise that I do really want to become a web designer and maybe even work for myself. It also made me realise that I still need to do a lot more research and education in this area. I do know the basics of building a website but when it comes to the technical side like HMTL coding and action scripting I need a bit more experience. The internet is so useful these days and everything I needed to know or learn is on there, this helped me get through the problems that I came across during the placement. I was doing two projects whilst I was on placement, which meant that I had a lot of catching up to do, this was difficult as the placement took up most of my time as it had to be done by 2 weeks, but it went a week over that due to complications. My course leader gave me a 2 week extension on my project which was helpful. But doing this placement in London made me realise how much I miss being at home and pushed me to go ahead and decide what i want to do for myself. I have realised that all the other projects I have done has not helped me at all with web design. I have gained a lot of skill in the previous projects which is really helpful, also using flash has been useful as nowadays websites are created using flash and adding flash effects to them. I want to be able to better myself and make sure I know what I am doing when it comes to web design, as I don’t want to disappoint any customers that I help out. I am very grateful to Phil Beards to arranging this for me and asking me to take part in this placement, it means a lot to me and I’m very happy that I made it clear to him of what it was I exactly wanted to do in the future.
I am extremely pleased with myself that I managed to complete this placement as I did have moments when I thought that I had jumped into the deep end and wasn’t going to be able to swim. I got through it and learnt a lot of skills off my own back which I am really proud of. If I was to do this kind of placement again I would make sure exactly what they want from me before I sign up to it so that I don’t disappoint. Henry was very pleased the final outcome. I have to thank Toria Trinity as well for helping out also, we managed to work really well as a team and got through each other’s problems together. Henry wrote me a reference:
Hi Lisa,
Thank you so much for participating in work experience with us at Felicity Brown. We thank you for your hard work and you were an absolute pleasure to work with.
We advertised a work experience opportunity to find a web designer to assist us on revamping and implementing improvements to our existing company website. Lisa was recommended to us by her course leader at Bournemouth University.
Lisa was issued a brief outlining exactly what we were wanting to achieve. We were looking for a high-end finish, simple to use website that showed off our product (clothing) to its full potential. We ran through current sites that we as a company really admired and wanted to take inspiration from. We all worked very closely together day to day making adjustments as we went to reach the finished version.
Lisa showed a good understanding and stuck to the brief throughout. Lisa also showed a great work effort and was very accommodating to our needs and requests. We are particularly thankful to Lisa who clearly worked outside the office hours on the project in her own time to help us meet our deadline.
Lisa proved to be a reliable, hardworking addition to our team and we hope to see her soon and wish her best in her career.
Kind regards
Henry Brown
Director
I was very pleased when I got this message. I don’t think he will be asking us to do anymore work for him as it was just a one off. But he let us put our names onto the website so if anyone looks at the website and they like what they see they are able to get in contact with us through Henry which may help us get some more work. Even though this was voluntary work Henry still paid for all our travel up to London and brought us lunch every day, which I was very grateful for.
Finally I just would like to say that this has been an amazing experience and definitely do it again for another company paid or unpaid. It has made me realise that I should carry on with my choice of being a web designer and to work extra hard to make myself become successful in that area.
