blog

Thanks to a successful PR & marketing campaign in our local area in the last quarter of 2008, do1 is looking to steadily expand its ultra-talented team in 2009.

We are actively seeking exceptionally talented and driven individuals for the roles of Account Manager and Junior Web Developer. If you think you’ve got what we’re looking for, why not apply?

If these positions aren’t for you but you think you may know someone that it applies to, why not let them know and give us the heads up - we’ll reward you with £100 cash as a thank you!

Just a quick post to show the contrast of diets here at do1. Since Ed discovered that there’s a drive-thru McDonalds less than a mile down the road from our new office at 1000 Lakeside he’s visited it 4 times in 4 days (over the weekend he visited it 3 times within 24 hours). At this rate it will be a homage to Super Size Me.

Whilst Ed and Kris each tuck into their greasy McNuggets, large fries, large banana milkshake and quarter pounder cheese burgers, myself and Ben whip up a culinary delight in the kitchen consisting of pitta breads, salad and salami.

We are also well on the way to building the Great Wall of Relentless. This is the power station of do1 and has helped us through some long, late sessions in the office.

We’ve gone through some big changes in the past month. Along with launching our new website, we also moved offices to the new 1000 Lakeside building in North Harbour, Portsmouth.

This huge building was originally built in the 1970’s as part of IBM’s European headquarters and boasts over 600,000 square foot of office space, of which we inhabit a small portion of this.

Surrounded by an idyllic green belt filled with wildlife and a large fishing lake to the south, you often feel removed from the city environment which in turn creates a very relaxed working environment.

Upon entering the 1000 Lakeside building you are greeted with an impressive atrium, allegedly the largest of its kind in the South of England, which holds a reception, soon-to-be cafe bar, sitting areas for informal meetings and an array of large conference rooms. You instantly recognise the quality of the £14M refurbishment carried out here by developers Highcross, as each area of this building is finished to a high standard.

do1 is based in the Regus serviced offices area, located in the East wing of 1000 Lakeside. The whole place is quickly becoming a bustling business location with a variety of different businesses from Swedish Bank, Handelsbanken to Portsmouth’s leading digital design & development agency (that’s us!), with great opportunities to network and socialise.

Moving to 1000 Lakeside has really improved the atmosphere further here at do1, and will allows us to continue to grow as a business and a brand. If you fancy popping in and joining us for a tea or coffee, just give us a shout and we’d be happy to have a chat and show you around!

James gets all the attention. Today, he’s as happy as Larry because he has a Disney balloon, a collection of toys from Toys ‘R’ Us, a load of sweeties and a Spongebob cake.

I didn’t get anything cool like this on my birthday!

Earlier this year, Apple announced that it would open up the iPhone platform to third party developers so that other programmers could get in on the action and build their own applications.

This was pretty exciting news for us here at do1, given that we are all iPhone junkies! Our developers now have the tools and knowledge behind them to allow us to build iPhone applications for our clients.

If you’ve got a good idea for an iPhone application, or you’ve got an existing web application that you’d like ported across to the iPhone, why not get in touch and have a chat with us about we could do.

I appreciate it must be really difficult to run a company as massive as BT. But I can’t help feeling, after many bad experiences with them, that there’s a lot of room for improvement with the telecoms giant.

This rant comes as a result of my most recent experience with getting them to install a new BT line into our new offices at 1000 Lakside, North Harbour in Portsmouth. The building is IBM’s previous headquarters which was recently sold to Highcross who spent £13M refurbishing it. The purpose-built building was completed in the late 1970’s, so it’s a well established building, and with a footprint of 72,000 square foot it’s not a small building either.

However, BT, in their infinite wisdom, sent out an engineer on four, yes four separate occasions - the first three attempts of which they either “couldn’t find the building” or ended up going to the wrong building.

The sad thing about this is that I was so desperate that BT got this right the first time round that when I initially ordered the line installation, I said to the guy at BT Local Business that I would actually “pick up the engineer and drive him to the site if there was any doubt about where the line was to be installed”. Maybe I was just asking for it by saying that!

Just to add insult to injury, throughout the course of us waiting for BT to install the line (and fail) we saw no less than about half a dozen different BT engineers attend our office building in the meantime that were servicing other companies needs. Having talked to the engineers that were in, it was evident that there was simply no communication or organisation between the people at BT arranging and instructing the engineers, and the actual engineers themselves. I found it mad, not to mention totally inefficient… And I’m not exactly an eco-warrior either but there could’ve been some serious savings on van emissions.

Nonetheless, we did eventually get BT in after about three weeks of faffing and a lot of my time wasted on the phone asking them where their engineers are. I look forward to giving them a fight over the invoice =)

Having graduated this year with a degree in Communication Design from the University of Portsmouth I experienced a big transition from being a design student to a design professional. I felt that I should pass my experiences onto anyone else who is in or going to be in the same situation.

Firstly, I would suggest that having a degree in the field of design is definitely not an essential when it come to finding a job in the design profession. When I started applying for jobs I quickly learnt that a degree doesn’t count for much, an employer will usually assess you by the quality of your portfolio. A good example here is Ben, another Web Designer here at do1. He didn’t go to university but he is still a highly talented designer and an asset to the team.

Having said this, I still don’t regret going to university one bit. My course helped me to develop a strong appreciation and understanding about true graphic design. Any final outcome which I produced came after months of research into my chosen subject area. It made me realise that good design isn’t about simply making something ‘look nice’, but that it has to have a strong concept as its underlying foundation. I spent a lot of time experimenting with different typography and printing techniques such as the letterpress and screen-printing. This helped me to understand the history of graphic design and the expressive, powerful nature of presenting information through graphics.

Once I was approaching the end of my degree, I knew it was important to get some experience before applying for full time jobs. This in itself can be very difficult. Design agencies receive a huge number of applicants for internships. Employers know that having an intern within the company can be very time consuming, as initially, you may require a lot of their time when it comes to making sure that they are doing things correctly. This can be a big strain for small companies as often their time is very limited. I recommend being selective about who you approach. Make a list of the companies that you really like and who you think would suit your design style. When you come to apply, make yourself stand out from everyone else; include clever ways of showing your portfolio and develop self branded business cards, letterheads and a CV, which are presented in such a way that separates you from the norm. This will help to make any potential employer remember you when they have a vacancy.

If you are accepted for work experience then make yourself indispensable. This will make it very hard for the company to get rid of you when your placement comes to an end. Hit the ground running and try to sort things out for yourself so that you don’t become a burden. Make lots of tea, everyone loves a person who is happy to make the tea.

Employing a graduate can also be a big risk for employers. They usually have little or no industry experience and it can sometimes take a long time for graduates to make the transition from student to professional. Personally I believe that taking a year out of my degree between level 2 & 3 would have been a big benefit. Not only would this have increased my overall knowledge of the industry, it would have also made me a far more attractive proposition for potential employers.

However, I was lucky enough to be offered a job at do1 before I had actually completed my degree. As brilliant as this was, I must admit it did make the final stage of my degree challenging. You are left with the thought “do I really need to do this, after all I do already have a job”. Luckily I managed to ignore this thought and continue to complete my degree and achieve the result which I had been chasing for the last 3 years.

When I started at do1, the hardest thing for me was applying my design skills in a way that would meet client briefs. Creating design which adheres to corporate guidelines is a challenge, and sometimes a bitter pill to swallow. However, the beauty of do1 is that there is quite a lot of freedom to produce creative designs, where appropriate. An example of this is the initial concept that Ben produced for R J Winnicott. Although sometimes it can be difficult to judge how open minded the client will be to these experimental and creative designs.

For me, the best part of this industry is that no two days are the same. Every day I have a new task to complete. Having not worked at any other design firms i do not know what the normal working environment is. However, I can tell that here at do1 the atmosphere is brilliant. Working alongside talented co-workers really pushes you to continually improve in everything you do. Overall, I am pleased with the path I followed and would thoroughly recommend it to anyone else considering a future in design.

If you’re a skilled designer or developer, with or without a degree, why not apply to us on our jobs page.