Meet the Websmiths!
Julian Smith
Julian started doing design seriously in London, in a corporate environment at Mercer Human Resource Consulting.
Mercer's Communication department deal with the HR and retirement communication issues for many large FTSE 100 firms.
While at Mercer Julian's clients included ANZ, JP Morgan, British American Tobacco, AXA, Prudential, Aventis and many others.
Highlights of his time at Mercer include being lead designer on two projects which received fantastic feedback from the European Communicators in Business Awards — "Europe's biggest and most prestigious corporate communications competition".
The 'JP Morgan Pensions Education CDROM' won an award in its category. Judges comments here. The 'BAT UK Pension Fund "FYI" Magazine' also received very positive feedback amongst very strong competition. Judges comments here.
Other activities included:
- Corporate branding – logo design, brand development, use of corporate guidelines
- Booklets, Magazines, Packaging, Annual Reports, Publicity, Personalised Print Templates, Desk drops
- Educational video for Somerland & Kwik Save supermarkets (Shooting and editing).
- Music composition and development for various projects
- Flash and javascript based pension calculators
- Promotional flash animations
- Powerpoint presentations with a little flair (yes, it is possible!)
During his time at Mercer, Julian learned the basics to a high standard, including:
- Graphic design – using industry standard software (Adobe suite, Macromedia, hand coding etc.)
- Typography and page layout
- Web design and development
- Preparation of artwork for digital and traditional offset printing
- Dealing with large budgets and tight timescales
Julian also enjoys related activities including photography, playing and mixing music, live theatre and a little bit of silliness from time-to-time…
Vanessa Smith
Vanessa has two strong passions: Organisation and Imagination. Organisation stemming from growing up in a home business with efficient skills in Office Management and computer skills. Imagination coming into play with her love of photography, video and art.
At Charles Sturt University Vanessa studied for a BA in Communication, Media Production focusing on video production and digital editing. This ended in administrative roles within television stations and production companies.
In London Vanessa used her skills to create an entire administrative department for the UK Listing Authority. Starting with file management systems and holiday database, she then started a business continuity program and became a Risk and Resource Officer for the department.
Vanessa is a good people manager, preferring to find a creative solution to an otherwise impossible problem
Vanessa's broad experience, ranges from television switching for SBS and World Movies, to administration team management for the FSA in London, to professional cruise photography — and a whole lot of other things in between.
Amongst Vanessa's skill set are:
- Team Management
- Certificate in advanced MYOB
- Cognos database interaction
- MS Office – Word, Excel, Powerpoint
- Photography
- Video
