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Becoming the Graphic Designer at Judy’s began almost by accident. I emailed Judy Berger about work experience opportunities they had within the company in the aim to gather some experience that I could use within my working practice during my third year of study. At the time of my email Judy had started looking for a student Graphic Designer to take over her design duties. I began working as the sole designer for Judy’s fair in September 2012. This role was office based at first - 2 mornings a week - but I now work freelance. This has given me valuable professional practice skills such as invoicing, working to deadlines and successfully liaising with the client on all design projects. Creating graphics for mass printing was a truly intimidating task when I first started at Judy’s, the flyers went to print at 5,000 at a time so there was no room for error.

I also had the responsibility of design online graphics that are used widely on their facebook page, website and blog. I have learnt to work to tight deadlines and create graphics quickly and accuratley. I have been involved in the social media promotion of the fairs and have taken a keen interest in the marketing of the company. I have also had the opportunity to work co-ordinating vintage fairs across the country which has given me an indepth insight into the way the company runs and the scale of success the fairs have.

This publication features a selection of the work I have produced for Judy’s Affordable Vintage Fair throughout my time as their graphic designer. All work is in cronological order to show the progress I have made graphically during my time with Judy.

Disclaimer: I am not the designer of the Judy’s Affordable Vintage Fair Logo.Any design work that is not my original design has been noted in the text of this publication.

www.judysvintagefair.co.ukwww.facebook.com/TheAffordableVintageFair@JudyVintageFair

This version of the logo is less distressed than the final logo. Although the logo is strong it lacked the vintage look that Judy wanted to portray.

I had to ensure that any logo that was designed for Junior looked good on a yellow background. Yellow is a key colour in the Judy’s Affordable Vintage Fair logo, to ensure brand consistancy all banners are printed on the yellow background.

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Fonts used:Creating the logo and promotion material for Junior was my first brief when I started working for Judy. She wanted the logo to be childlike but still appeal to the parents that would be coming to buy for their children at the fairs. She wanted vintage style building blocks to be an integral part of the logo design whilst keeping the colourway similar to correspond with the Judy’s Affordable Vintage Fair logo. The images used on the flyers were taken from childrens sewing patterns manfactured in the 50’s and 60’s to give the flyers an extra vintage touch.

The images I have used for the design of this flyer came from a selection of vintage childrens sewing patterns provided to me by traders that sold their wares at the fair. I selected these two particular images as they corresponded and complimented the colourway that I used within the logo. These simple colours are reminiscent of childrens toys and are bright and uncomplicated.The shapes in the flyers are also inspired by a selection of childrens toys. The overall feel of the flyer is overwhelming childlike, in reflection it would have been better to create flyers that had a more ‘mature’ look to them to appeal to the parents of the children (who are the ones we wanted to sell the fair too).

The back of the flyer is very similar to the front to ensure a fluid design. There were lots of words that needed to be included on the flyer, the coloured shapes featuring key words and information. The map on the flyer is one that has been previously used for Judy’s flyer designs and is not my work.

These flyers are some of the first generic promotion flyers I designed for Judy. She wanted to try a new style of flyer using bold eye catching images as the base for the flyers. The Barbara Cartland flyer was used as a generic flyer to promote events for a few months and the Elizabeth Taylor flyers were used to promote Judy’s events in London. The red writing an arrows used on the London listing flyers were used to highlight the audience that might enjoy certain events.

These designs were simple too execute and could be designed quickly to ensure they went to print as soon as possible. The strength of the design surronding the flyers is poor and they only went too one print run before we re-thought the design of the flyers and posters used for promotion.

The pick and mix nature of the kilo events means people can grab some fantastic vintage bargains. The Judy’s team document the best bargains of the day to tempt other customers to try their hand at bargain hunting at a kilo sale. I have been responsible for online promotion of these events on all social media platforms.

When at the fairs we always try and take a number of images to use to promote future fairs. These images are often used on the blog, facebook and instagram.

The promotion for the Kilo Sale had to be consitent with the current brand that existed. I was given the logo and colourway to work with in order to create a new range of flyers for these events. As the events consist of cheap vintage clothing they had to be totally different from the main vintage fair flyers to avoid any brand confusion. I decided to use a bright and simple design to attract attention and be easily edited for other events. The downwards arrow is a signifer of the cheap price (something that is linked with sales) and the starburst used to attract more attention.

These banners are used on facebook profiles designed to promote different events. The furniture flea banner is a mix of designs artworked by other designers. The images used in these designs have been provided by Judy for my use. The information in these banners had to be simple and eye-catching to attract attention to the pages. These banners are changed for each event and have been used widely over various facebook pages that Judy has for her events.

Above: Some of Judy’s lovely customers with the graphics on the left!Social media promotion is an integral part of Judy’s business success. The buttons to the left are used at events as blogger based challenges. Popular bloggers from the UK come to the events and complete the challenges set by the Judy’s team. They then post about the challenges on their personal blogs and this promotes Judy’s fairs to all their followers. I needed to create some eye-catching badge type graphics that can be used online and printed.

This flyer design was a really fun brief to do as Christmas is one of the most colourful and over the top times of year. The image behind the flyer was provided by Judy as inspiration and eventually featured within the design. The flyers for Judy’s

events have to be as eye-catching as possible and feature things that will grab the attention of

vintage lovers. These vintage style baubles were the perfect addition to the image and enabled me to feature all the text. required within the flyer.

Taking photographs of the stock that comes to Judy’s fairs give me lots of images to work with when I am designing the flyers. All of the events that Judy runs are photographed to showcase the stock available and the images are used widely for social media promotion.

The graphic at the top of the page is one of the latest promotion banners that I have created for use on facebook and the website.

Examples of recent flyer work to promote all of Judy’s business ventures

Find out more:

www.judysvintagefair.co.uk

Call Lane, Leeds, LS1 7RB

Vintage treasures galore!

Examples of a special Leeds flyer I did to promote Judy’s ‘hometown’

Kenyan CoffeeCoffee ServiceBudmo JigglerRiver Avenue

The newest posters and flyers that I have designed for Judy take inspiration from flyers from previous

years. The bold use of shapes that I have used within the design highlights the key information on each flyer. The images used for these flyers give

them the desired summer feel (the events advertised on these flyers are spring/summer listings). The bright blue backdrop allows the company colours

(red, yellow & black) to stand out well and assures the flyers are not too busy on the eye.

Fonts used:

Throughout my time at Judy’s I have grown to recognise particular elements that Judy enjoys in the design aspect of her flyers. This creates a strong working relationship between us that means I have the luxury of working freelance. She will always give me positive feedback on my designs and we always discusss the graphics once I have designed them to ensure any improvements can be made before they go to print. I have learnt to importance and brand consistency and this is always considered when I design a new flyer of web graphic.

I found it a struggle at first as I was working with another designers work (the previous designer being very experienced and producing excellent graphics). However I am now completely confident when coming to design a new flyer or poster and has hugely improved my layout skills and use of relevant software. She has taught me about to liase with printers regarding the ordering of flyers, posters and banners as well as teaching me how to work to deadlines efficiently and upkeeping excellent time management on projects.

These graphics acted as vouchers to promote bringing friends aslong too the fairs. The different colourways correspond to the different events and colourways used within there promotion materials.

The vouchers were used for and colours within the corresponding logos. These vouchers were inspired by (and use) some of the previous designers logos.

Emily had a tough job coming into my company and taking over all our design work. Our logo and literature had been created by a designer with over 15 years’ experience and the brand was already established. Her brief was to gradually move the brand forward, easing it into a slightly different direction but ensuring it was always recognisable. Emily was given free reign over the direction of our promotional material and worked through numerous changes, some slight and some major. Emily’s passion for the vintage industry and my brand was apparent from the outset and she set about making small and subtle changes to ensure our customers could easily read the promotions whilst keeping them stylish and fitting. What really stood out was Emily’s ability to work quickly to last minute brief’s, she worked so closely to these set briefs that she rarely needed to make changes, and if changes were needed she always got it second time round which saved me time as no third explanations were needed. Her bold use of colour, her attention to wording and spelling meant proof reading often resulted in no changes. Her research brought us some wonderful stock images that added pizazz to our campaigns and her layouts were thoughtful and precise. Above all Emily has been a dream to work with, she has used her initiative, researched and executed each project with the skill and maturity of a designer beyond her years.

A note from Judy: