As a graphic designer, my role at Slumbersac can be quite varied.
My day-to-day tasks are mainly online and involve creating banners and other graphics for our websites; ranging from homepage banners to e-gift card designs - as well as our social media posts, which are designed to showcase our exciting ranges. Along with designing newsletters, emails and adverts for digital magazines, this keeps me quite busy!
Occasionally I have to do some illustrative work, mainly as visual instructions for leaflets, showing how certain products work, or to highlight some of our products unique features, which is fun to do.
Alongside that, I do all the offline graphics for Slumbersac – so anything that’s printed, including all packaging, gift bags, brochures, leaflets, flyers and posters.
One of the most unusual jobs I’ve had to do, was design the graphics for a bus. In 2019 we opened a showroom in Plauen, Germany and decided that advertising on a town bus was a great way to promote it! The hardest part was working out where to place the images so that people on the bus could still see out of the windows. It was quite nerve-wracking just working from a line drawing and measurements without seeing the actual bus, but it all worked out in the end!
However, my favourite but most challenging role by far, was writing and designing story books to go with our Safari and Woodland sleeping bag ranges.
This amazing opportunity came about when our CEO Karina first suggested the idea of producing a book featuring the characters from our Safari range – elephants, lions, giraffes etc – so children could point them out on their sleeping bags and in the book, whilst being read to. Vicky, our product designer had already created the characters, so we just needed somebody to write the story.
Writing a book was something I’d always wanted to do but never had the time for. When I suggested I would like to try, Karina said ‘why not’, so I sat down to write something aimed at babies and toddlers, with a view to helping them nod off to sleep.
I’ve always loved reading and have read hundreds of children’s books to my son over the years and loved seeing how engaged he became with the characters. I particularly like rhyming books and remember the effect the rhythm and repetition of certain verses would have on him as a baby, calming his mind and preparing him for sleep. And so ‘A Magical Bedtime Safari’ was written, based on this idea!
A short while after, I was very excited to be asked to write another rhyming book based on our organic cotton Woodland range, featuring cute woodland animals
To make the second book a little different, I wanted to add an educational element, so in “A Wonderful Woodland Wander” children are asked to identify each character by their footprints and clues found on each page. There’s also a cheeky owl ‘hidden’ throughout the book for children to spot, just to add another element of fun!
I can’t wait to see if a 3rd book is on the cards, but in the meantime, I’m enjoying creating all the graphics for Slumbersac and look forward to seeing what the future will hold!
