A decade of learning at an awesome agency

I celebrated ten years at the North’s leading PR agency, Citypress, finishing as Head of Digital. Having come from a print and branding design background originally, I was asked some questions about how my role evolved over the years. Here’s what I said:

CP: When you started at Citypress back in 2006, what was the agency like?

CJF: We were a relatively modest-sized agency back then (nothing like the scale we are now) and I was the first designer we’d employed. I joined an incredibly talented and professional PR team in Manchester that was already working on a number of widely recognised brands. Some of the clients we won around that time are actually still with us, which is a huge credit to everyone involved.

CP: What kind of work were you doing back then?

CJF: What was great for me, being the only designer, was that I got to work on a broad range of projects right from the start. I actually did my first branding and brochure design job for the agency over the Christmas break before my first day in the office. Which meant I hit the ground at full pace! It wasn’t long before I was producing designs for various brands, campaigns and print materials for most of the agency’s clients. I was also given the job of improving our own brand and spent time developing logos, stationery and signage. The logo hasn’t changed much since, but the team has – we’re a much bigger group now with a great mix of designers and copywriters supporting the wider agency.

CP: You’re Head of Digital now. Why did you switch from print design to digital?

CJF: It was still early days for the Internet in 2006 (Internet Explorer 6 was used on 95% of computers back then), WAP was the best mobile tech we had and YouTube wasn’t even in beta. But I could see how things were likely to develop. It seemed inevitable to me that design for print (brochures, leaflets, magazines etc) in particular would suffer a decline, so turning my sights to web design seemed like a logical step.

CP: Web design is just a part of what you do now, though, isn’t it?

CJF: Yeah. We’ve done quote a few websites over the years for clients, but it’s about more than just how good they look. There’s science behind creating a site that people actually want to use, and that they find easy to use. Lots of thought and planning go into creating a great user experience. And, of course, they have to work technically, so I learned how to do all the coding as well. Add in Google Analytics, SEO, Adwords and social media and there’s a lot to be getting on with.

With video, I remember the first one we did (a long time ago, before even YouTube came along) where we improvised using borrowed equipment. We realised very quickly that doing video well isn’t easy, so I put a lot of time and effort into getting good at it. We’re now doing some really cool stuff in-house with both live action and animation, which is particularly useful when we need to turn ideas around quickly.

CP: How easy was it to acquire all those new skills?

CJF: There aren’t any short cuts to learning new skills, but it needn’t be hard. Having confidence in yourself that you can learn something helps massively. Some people convince themselves that they’ll find it too difficult, or they worry about not passing an exam. That’s not for me. Of course, learning something that you’re interested in helps. As does applying that new knowledge quickly and repeatedly so you gain experience and develop the extra fine knowledge that makes you really good at it.

CP: What advice would you give to someone considering a change in direction?

CJF: Be proactive and independent in your learning and use the internet as much as you can. Online you’ll find advice, resources, tutorials and forums for pretty much every profession you can think of – even if all you’re aiming to do is make a step up in your current career. Which means you can pick up a lot of knowledge before you’re at the stage where you need to have conversations with people, or sign up for formal training.

Whatever you do, though, don’t pile a huge amount of pressure on yourself. Choose something you’re interested in learning and go ahead and make a start. The most important thing is that you learn because you want to. Just enjoy it.