November was a busy month for all of us here at Kaizen Brand Evolution as we had not 1 but 2 events on. These were during Belfast Design week at the beginning of the month, with one of them even kicking it all off! How lucky are we?
To start we will begin by talking about our Jr. Sr event, which we held in our very own studio on Tuesday 6th November. This was a breakfast event as part of Womenfolk, which holds events specifically for women within the design and business community. A few of our staff members have been to a couple of these over the past few months, so we were more than happy when they asked us to host one and select a few of our own creatives to be the speakers at it, as part of the beginning of Belfast Design Week 2018. As the theme was Jr.Sr, we chose our very own Lizi Daley and Ciara Topping to be the speakers. Lizi has been with us at Kaizen Brand Evolution for 4 years and Ciara just recently celebrated her 1 year, so they were the perfect candidates.
The aim of their talk was just to let people know firstly about Kaizen Brand Evolution, who we are and what we do. After the introduction to the company, it was time for them to start talking a bit more about themselves and their roles within Kaizen. Lizi was up first and is our resident Web Designer. She is the one that looks after all of the website jobs that come through, designing and coding them to how the client wants. Throughout her part of the talk, Lizi also talked about how her time at Kaizen has progressed, from being a Jr. part of the team herself to more recently becoming a Team Leader. This position obviously comes with more responsibilities and it is now part of her job to look after the team and make sure everyone is motoring along how they should be.
Next up was the Jr. member of our Womenfolk team, Ciara. Ciara is a Graphic Designer here at Kaizen Brand Evolution and has worked on many different projects and with many different brands already in her short time. Throughout her talk, Ciara discussed her day to day and how she is constantly focused on creating the best possible designs that she can for clients, making sure that their products are constantly one up on the competition. As well as this, however, Ciara talked a bit about how she helps design wedding stationery for our sister company, Kaizen Weddings. Similar to her normal clients, Ciara has worked with many brides from across the country, helping them to get the stationery that they have always dreamed of.
Our second event of November and our second event of Belfast Design Week was certainly an exciting one. It was called “Bit on the Side” and was an opportunity for some of our creatives in the studio to talk about their hobbies and why they make them better designers in the studio. Our speakers for the event were made up of our design Director Ryan Stanfield and two of our Designers, Dean Machala and Esther Blair. What made this event even more special, was the fact it was being backed by IDI (Institute of Designers Ireland) as part of their Bread and Butter series of events. This was great for us, as IDI is an exceptional organization, so to have them back our event during Design Week was a fantastic opportunity to show what we can do and that we are a force to be reckoned with in the Branding/Design industry. As for the night itself, it was great as each designer was able to talk about something they are passionate about – Ryan spoke about his Blacksmithing, Dean about his Beer Making and Esther about her Pottery – and share it with everyone that turned up. With the success of this event, we hope to make it more of a regular occurrence, where designers from all across Belfast and Northern Ireland, whether freelance or working within an agency can come and share what their Bit on the Side is and how it makes them the designer they are.
November really was a busy, but great month for us as we got to promote ourselves as a design and branding agency, but also some of our designers got to promote themselves, take a load off and feel proud of the work they do, in front of other people rather than just their day to day work colleagues.
We hope that you have enjoyed reading about the most recent events we have hosted here at Kaizen Brand Evolution, but make sure to keep an eye out on our Facebook page and other social media channels over the coming month or two, as we are planning another few events which we think will be just as good as the last.