Scarlett Aubrey

I was hired at Kaizen Brand Evolution in January, starting the year off on the right foot. New country, new year, and a new job.

At the end of last September, I decided to move away from my home in Vancouver, Canada and change my life entirely. I have dual citizenship and a bunch of family in Northern Ireland, so I thought the transition would be a little more possible. I concluded that I had to challenge my career and creative environment. To do that, I had to live somewhere other than Vancouver.

Fast forward through the trials and tribulations of moving to the other side of the world and bam, I landed a job with Kaizen Brand Evolution!  I was so happy to get my foot in the door of Belfast’s design industry.

In the last month, I have been thrown right into the thick of it. I had started at one of KBE’s busiest times. It seems ‘New year, new me’ definitely had an effect on the creative industry, and to its benefit!  I hit the ground running tackling a variety of jobs; from print/digital marketing material, branding concepts, brand asset development, some motion graphics and anything in-between. 

One of the highlights is that I had the opportunity to work on motion graphic jobs right away. Motion graphic is my newest skillset, so as you can imagine, I would naturally have the urge to develop it. At Kaizen Brand Evolution everyone’s unique skills are recognised and put to use. You are also given the opportunity to grow your skills or learn new ones through training sessions online once a week; for me, that was a great thing to see a company do. 

What I have enjoyed so far is the detailed process of developing brands from scratch. I have especially enjoyed the first research stages and development. However, these stages can be creatively ‘painful’ because as a creative, you end up taking each project like these personally. It makes the final result ever so sweet when you see it coming alive before your eyes in the concept presentation. 

I haven’t been here long, so the challenges I have faced have been subtle and not what I would have expected. I would say most of them have to do with cultural barriers. The other day I had the receptionist of one company on the phone thinking I had the wrong number and that I was calling from America, I had to confirm that I was calling from Northern Ireland.

On a more serious note, the differences I have been the production processes between Canada and here;  it has been a little bit of a learning curve, but that is what I wanted right?  ‘A’ paper sizes are more strictly referenced here while in Canada I was just given the dimensions in inches for each job (though we do know about ‘A’ paper sizes). I really like the universal use of these ‘A’ paper sizes and that the clients usually understand them too. I wish that would be something that was better adopted in North America; it would make life so much easier.

I hope to grow further with Kaizen Brand Evolution and work more on jobs that challenge my creative thinking. I would love to develop my copy-writing as I am not a copy-writer and could benefit from building that ability. I feel that through challenging branding projects, I will get that opportunity to do so. I am eager to see how my future unfolds here at KBE and to see what kind of designer I will become as a result.