“14th September 2006 - It was my first day at Liquid Digital, I woke up stupidly early (early for a student anyway) to commute into London. When I eventually found the office, it suddenly dawned on me; I was about to start my first real job in the industry! I almost ran out of the door and went home. But I stuck it out, as it actually wasn’t that scary, and it has turned out to be a really good year so far.

It was brilliant because I was pretty much thrown in at the deep end, and got stuck in with the work straight away, which although slightly daunting was also quite challenging, in a good way.

Let me just tell you a little bit about why I am here. I am currently a student at Plymouth University studying Digital Art and Technology. My degree offers the option to take a placement year in the industry and after looking for months for the perfect company I came across Liquid Digital.
I met up with Simon and Andrew the directors of Liquid, to discuss if there was an opportunity for me to join the company. Luckily I was offered the placement.
I will be going back to University this September to complete my final year and I am sure I will be missed (probably only because tea and coffee wont be made quite so often!)
But at the moment I am not too keen to go back, considering I am very happy working here. I never thought I would say that, as I was dreading working for a whole year after getting used to being a lazy student. Once I got used to the early mornings and the commute into London, I started to really enjoy my time here.

It has definitely been worth while and I have picked up many skills that I will be able to use next year and in the future, I feel much more prepared than I would if I hadn’t done a year in the industry. I have been involved with most of the clients and have created work using Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Director and Avid video editing software.

One big skill I have picked up is After Effects. I have contributed by helping do the monthly updates, known as the hotspots, which is the offers for each month in WHSmith. Below shows some content I have been involved with.

I have also been invovled with work for clients such as foo.go, WHSmith’s food partner.

Although I had done a bit of editing before, I had never used Avid. Now I am confident using it and help do quite a lot of work for Cabvision where I was very involved in the content updates. When I first joined, the WHSmith conference was coming up and I was involved with some work for that, and also went to the actual event to help out.

Another thing that has been really good is that I have had some responsibilities. This proved that I had become a trusted and valuable member of the design team. The company has been great to work for and it’s definitely been an incredibly beneficial experience to my studies and future career path. I will miss it when I leave.”