Jkarjic

Julian Karajic - s3508388

WEEK 1

My first week in the role I learnt about what tasks I would be responsible for which included creating/maintaining company website, designing/creating product packaging, amending designs, conceptualising new marketing materials, creating content and managing social media platforms, managing print related tasks and producing promotional material. I met the other employees and got to work learning about the company and their practices. The first day mostly consisted of locating and organising the previous work on the computer I was using.

Once I had got a grasp of the requirements I started working. My first task was to take some lifestyle photos of the products for social media, something I hadn’t done before. I did a lot of research online about taking good shots and promoting social media platforms and got to work. There were some quality shots and others that had to be retaken, but overall the task was a lot of fun. I then had to import the photos into Photoshop and edit them for online.

WEEK 2

In week two I was given the tasks to work on some price lists for the products. The company owns several different products including gelato, vegan gelato, sorbet, jam’s, chutney’s pickles, sauces and some others. So this week was spent collecting the prices of all the products and creating clear price lists that would be handed out to clients. The first day of this week I focused on retail prices. There were also some other small tasks I worked on, such as the maintenance of the social media platforms.

Day two of week two was spent working on the wholesale price lists. Again I had to collect the information in regards to the products and format them in Illustrator according to the brands style. This had to be nice to look at and easy to read for the clients. Both of these tasks were also ongoing and were not completed in this week alone.

WEEK 3

Week three saw me work on a similar task to week two, I had to work on brochures for all the products and brands. The formatting was very similar and I had to make sure I followed the brand identity and style, but I had to replace the prices with images of the products, their barcodes, and products specifications. Some of the photos of the products were already taken so I could easily copy them into the brochures, other products I would have to locate in the warehouse and set up an extremely amateur photoshoot. This task was a lot more time consuming and has been ongoing.

In week 3 I also had to start working on a new flavour to be released under the Bottega Del Gelato brand. The new flavour was going to be rainbow, so I took the previous template for the flavours in that range and started experimenting on a new rainbow label. I also worked on the social media posts with more product lifestyle shots and some simple quote posts. I also worked on some product posters for shops stocking the products.

WEEK 4

In week 4 we had to ramp up a lot of the social media work and more of the brochure and price lists as we were launching two new products. The products was called ‘It’s Vegan’ and ‘it’s 98% Fat Free’. Some of the work I did was creating posts for social media promoting some free tastings of the products in supermarkets.

I continued to promote the products as much as possible through social media and even had people messaging through Instagram asking about the products. I also continued to work on the rainbow packaging.

WEEK 5

Week 5 started with me making some warehouse labels. When I was looking for the products the week prior it was difficult to locate some things so I thought it would be a good idea to create some labels to help the warehouse employees locate the stock. The labels were simple and easy to read so the employees could work as quickly as possible with no issues finding the stock. They featured an image of the product, the size and the name, and were designed to match the brand identity and style.

The later part of the week was me just working on more brochures and price lists. Another client brochure/price list was introduced to me in the form of an excel spread sheet, this was used for a specific client called MetCash. This spreadsheet needed images, barcodes and prices included. So a lot of my time was spent slowly filling this out. More work on the rainbow packaging.

WEEK 6

In week 6 it was time for the rainbow packaging to start getting printed. So I had to email and communicate with the printing company located in China. This was found to be quite difficult as the language barrier found a few things lost in translation. The issue we were experiencing was the font I was using was not translating to their computer when sent through. We had many emails back and forth and spoke on WeChat. I sent through the individual fonts AI files, PDF files and labelled PDF files and we still had confusion.

During this week I also started working on designing a teardrop flag for some shops that wanted to advertise the products outside their stores. This was a fun change away from the more monotonous tasks of creating basic price lists and brochures.

WEEK 7

In week 7 the printing team and I came to an understanding of the issues and resolved it together through continued communication, so the rainbow packaging was eventually printed. I was also tasked to start organising the shared network drive. Most of the company employees are not too computer literate, so the shared drive was incredibly disorganised and hard to navigate. So I started organising it in a more simple way and began to compress some of the giant files they were previously using.

This week I also decided to try and create at least two weeks of content for the social media accounts as to relieve some of the pressure. I took several lifestyle photos for the brands, made some posters and made some animations. This was a very useful day as it allowed me to use my time elsewhere in the future.

WEEK 8

Week 8 I had to make some adjustments to some of the Dairy Bell Organic ice-cream products packaging and get them reprinted. The issue was the packaging was there was a change in Australian law with the ‘Made in Australia’ label and the product had to have the percentage of Australian ingredients. This process was a lot more straight forward the second time around as the printing team and I had figured out the issue we were having.

I was also tasked to keep working on the brochures and price lists and for MetCash, there were times this was frustrating as I would be told one thing by one senior employee and another thing by another person, so there were many changes made to these over the weeks. This was a important lesson throughout the internship as you need to be able to work through any frustrations that may arise. I also started working on a AI/PDF version of the MetCash spreadsheet as opposed to the Excel version. This was done as it was easier to read a more aesthetically pleasing.

WEEK 9

I researched different printing companies for the teardrop flag and also a coffin fridge sticker. After researching I called and emailed several people for quotes and presented the prices to the boss for finalisation. Once decided on a place we confirmed and are now waiting on the final product. This other boss also asked if I was interested in doing some more work for her personally for Dairy Bell Maribyrnong. I also had to make a poster for a promotion we were running for the bulk sales of products.

After the success of the warehouse labels I was asked to make more for remaining products I wasn’t aware of. So I started taking photographs of the products and making more labels, they were again in the design style of the products and were easy to read and listed the required information. I also was asked to replicate the MetCash PDF for Foodworks. This was a fairly simple task and was completed quickly.

WEEK 10

In week 10 I was told my hours would be temporarily cut down to one day a week as there wasn't much work. This has been a bit of a frustrating experience as it also means I am down on my pay and will have to save my money a little more. This is a valuable lesson on casual work though and will encourage me to find something more secure.

During this week I have been very busy when I've come into work though as everything has built up to the one day I am in. So I have had to work on the MetCash spreadsheets, the brochures and price lists and social media. This one day I felt I didn't have enough time to complete all my tasks, so some were left until the next week.

WEEK 11

Week 11 was again a one day week, so I was again very busy trying to fit two days of work into one. I felt I managed the time a lot better this week however, as I knew the tasks I had to do and how long they would roughly take. I spent some more time on the social media work, as to build up more content to relieve myself for the future tasks to be undertaken.

I was also asked by the factory workers to recreate a hazardous sign and laminate it because the previous one was getting old and damaged. Even though there was this task that came out of no where, because I was more organised I was able to work on and finish it in time for them.

WEEK 12

Week 12 I was told I would not be needed to come in to do work as it's been a very slow week, I did however come in to grab some of my work to share for my presentation. While I was there I was asked to do a few tasks, including adjusting the Bottega Del Gelato brochure and locating some missing files. I worked on these tasks and then left.

I will continue with my work/internship next week and hope to finish some of the projects/tasks still yet to be completed.