For the last 12 months, I have been on an industry placement as part of my animation course. This post will be a complete portfolio of the work I have completed within the past year.
On the 1st of July 2024, I officially started my Placement year working as a Graphic designer for the Fermanagh and Omagh District Council.
Prior to this, I have never worked on creative outlets in a professional setting before.
So, I was quite nervous on day one. However, the office team I was assigned to were very friendly and helpful and I quickly got into a stride with projects that the Council were working on at the time.
Over the course of my 12 months, I have produced a vast number of graphics and prints for use by the Council. Although my placement was technically Graphic Design, I did get some tasks assigned to me that revolved around animation. The following is a complete portfolio of my work done while working for Fermanagh Omagh District Council.
Corporate Plan on a Page (July 2024)
Upon starting work with the Council, I was let in on their most important project at the time, which was the official announcement and release of their Corporate plan known as “Our Council, Our Plan”.
My Departmental Director requested me to develop a simple one-page summary of the corporate plan regarding its purpose, objectives and priorities. I had never completed a task like this before, but I was keen to show initiative and develop a satisfactory solution to my director’s request.
My Director provided me with an example of a strategic plan which she felt best met our proposed requirements while also looking visually pleasing. In this case, my main reference was the “Looking Ahead” Strategic plan sheet developed for the University of Newcastle, Australia (Laney, A.-J., Aff, T. and Johnston, B. (2020)).
Once I had a clear idea of what kind of composition and layout my director was envisioning, I then began to construct the Council’s one-page corporate plan. Since my Adobe packages had not been sorted out yet, I had to use Canva for a few of my earlier projects.
However, after this grey area I would start using primarily Adobe packages for the development of graphics and animation. I ended up developing several prototype designs before finally settling on a layout which me and my director agreed would suit our requirements. Overall, I was very pleased with the end result of the corporate plan on a page and my Director gave a lot of praise for it too.
Laney, A.-J., Aff, T. and Johnston, B. (2020). “Looking ahead” Strategic Plan University of Newcastle Australia
Health and Safety Policy presentation (July 2024)
While I was developing the one-page Corporate Plan, I was simultaneously tasked by the Corporate Health and Safety Manager with designing the visual layout of a presentation developed to inform all Council staff on their Health and Safety Policies.
Like the previous project, I didn’t have my Adobe packages at the time and so, I used Canva to develop the final presentation as seen below. I was initially given some examples of previous presentations the Council has created for staff, and I took elements from them which I felt worked well and then added my own elements to make the layout of the presentation as interesting as possible.
The Corporate Health and Safety manager was impressed with the final outcome and felt that it was far more interesting compared to simply presenting the details of the H&S policy on a blank presentation which was their regular practice prior to my arrival.
Corporate Plan “Streetscape” (July 2024)
After finishing the Corporate Plan on a Page, I was assigned my first animation project. Along with releasing the corporate plan to the public, the Council planned to release an infomercial video and wanted to tie each of the different priorities of the plan together with animated visual cutaways which represented each objective.
Prior to my arrival, the Council had externally commissioned a poster, they called the “Streetscape”, to display the objectives of the Corporate plan, and the districts current facts and figures.
They ultimately wanted to create an animated version of said poster to keep the infomercial consistent with the existing promotional material.
I was entrusted with creating the animated version of the Streetscape, but it would prove to be a challenge as the Council needed to contact the company which was originally commissioned with the poster to get the original Adobe files.
Along with obtaining the files, I had to reverse-engineer the entire poster to make it appropriate to use on Animate as the original Illustrator file was far too content-heavy due to the quantity of separate vectors, to animate right away.
This coupled with having to work to a deadline of around 1 week meant that the animations were rather basic and I feel if I was given more time, the end result would have been better. But in any case, My departmental director and the Council’s Chief Executive were very pleased with the end results when incorporated in the final infomercial.
Original “Streetscape” graphic (FODC)
Animated sequence developed from the graphic
Directorate Plan Cover design (August 2024)
When releasing the Corporate plan, the Council were also preparing to release their Directorate plan. My director’s assistant assigned me to develop a set of front covers for each department directorate for use in the final print of the plan.
Aside from developing the front covers, I also had to develop further graphics to demonstrate and outline different factors about the plan which can be seen below the two sets of front covers I developed.
Overall, these graphics and covers were extremely simple and not too hard to develop and my director as well as the other directors were satisfied with the final outcome.
Community Newsletter cover design (August 2024)
Every month, The council will upload a community newsletter on their social media platforms to notify the community of any news, updates or upcoming events within the district.
Prior to my arrival, the Council had been relying on Canva’s resources for the design of the Newsletter’s front cover.
My manager proposed that I develop a new original cover for repetitive use. I was also requested to develop seasonal variants of the cover for Halloween and Christmas.
Before developing the covers, I knew I wanted to make them versatile and capable of being used repetitively.
With this in mind, I kept the text to a minimum and gave plenty of space for adding article headlines to the cover. Because I wanted to establish a convention regarding how information would be displayed, I started developing the standard cover first.
This project was a slight milestone as this would be the first time I would completely develop graphics using Adobe Photoshop’s shape tool as normally I would have been using a drawing tablet. But even without a tablet, I was able to develop the graphics of these covers with little issue. For many projects following this one, I have been regularly using the shape tool for developing graphics and assets in projects.
I then built upon the standard design by creating both a Halloween and Christmas variant of the cover. I made sure to develop the covers to be suitable for other employees to easily use in the likes of Canva for when my placement ends.
The team may not have access to Adobe packages and so I had to keep that in mind when coming up with the final designs.
Original Community Newsletter cover
(Fermanagh and Omagh District Council)
New Community Newsletter covers
District Rates: Initial test animations (August 2024)
The next task I was given was developing some test animations.
Every year, the Council informs the community on how and where their tax rates will be used to improve the District.
Before it was a simple written piece but with my animation background, the communications department wanted to try something new.
They wanted to get an idea of what an animated infomercial for the District Rates could look like. I ended up developing several different tests based on Mid Ulster District Council’s “Rates 2020-2021″(2020) social media infomercial.
Unlike my previous project with the StreetScape, all graphics and assets were designed by me and were created to the exact specifications I required.
As a result, These animations where of a much higher quality and I was able to give my team a much better idea of what was possible. Most importantly, I have made all the original graphics suitable for both animation and still images or posters, so that they could still be used quite easily by other staff for creating marketing/promotional material following the end of my placement.
Initial Set of Assets
Initial Test
Banner Design (August 2024)
During the early half of August, my manager told me that the communications department were planning to invest in a large banner for use at the entrance of the Enniskillen Town hall.
I requested the dimensions of the banner and once I got them, I set about developing a suitable design. I ended up creating 3 different sets of designs for both the front and back of the banner.
In the end, This was a very quick and easy task, and my manager was satisfied to use any of the 3, as of now the final decision of implementing the banner at the entrance is still pending.
Redesign of existing social media post graphics (August 2024)
Another extremely simple project followed. This time, it was a set of simple social media update covers to inform the community of updates within the council and or District.
Marriage Registration social media post (September 2024)
The following project was a bit more exciting. The Council is responsible for the registration of marriages in the District.
However, members of the community did not have a clear idea of what steps needed to be taken when registering a marriage. The registration team held a meeting with me and my manager, and we established that I would create a simple social media infomercial on how the marriage registration system works.
I was provided with a brochure that had been previously developed for the same purpose, but the problem was that copies were only available within one of the Council buildings and as a result most of the general public were not aware of the brochure. The registration team wanted the animated social media post to compliment the brochure and share its design.
I ended up developing a simple Video infomercial through Canva which shared its general design ques from the brochure. In the end the registration team were very impressed and immediately upon receiving it would post it on the Council’s social media pages.
Marriage Registration Pamphlet
(Fermanagh and Omagh District Council)
Marriage Registration infomercial
“Recycle week” mascot character design (September 2024)
The following project was easily one of my favourites from the entirety of my placement. The Communications team had a recycling campaign coming up, known as “Recycle Week”.
To promote the campaign, they asked me if I could create a superhero character to act as a mascot for the campaign. I was extremely excited with this task so I immediately started writing down notes to give me a better idea of what the character design would need.
I ended up also developing a pitch for a premise surrounding the character as well as some potential names for both the hero and also a villain and his organisation, as can be seen in the page of simple notes below.
I first developed a character design that was more evocative of designs from Marvel or DC. But I primarily wanted to base parts of the costume design on recycled materials and also on the Council’s waste collection staff uniforms to give the design some familiarity to the Council itself.
I wanted to have different colour variants of the character too, this would allow for this character to be used for any marketing material involving waste collection and management, whether this will be fully established however, is yet to be seen.
I was then notified by the communications team that they wanted a younger more child-like character design instead as it would appeal more to the campaign’s target demographic.
With this feedback I developed the final design, and it hit the mark perfectly and was implemented into several posts as part of the Recycle Week campaign. Overall, I felt that this task was above and beyond the most fun project I have had to complete while working for the Council.
The only aspect I may tackle differently if doing a project like this again, would probably be to ask for more specific requirements and be sure I have full approval of a design before committing to a final version.
I’m aware that implementing this would not only allow me to be quicker with developing multiple designs, but it will also reduce the potential of having to scrap a design midway through development and then start again from scratch.
Initial Synopsis and Sketches
First Completed Character Renders
Character Redesign Sketches
Final Design.
Unreasonable Behaviour business card (September 2024)
Another relatively simple project followed. This one being a basic “Unreasonable Behaviour” card for use of the Council staff when dealing with unreasonable members of the community.
I was told to create a design that was similar to another card from Mid-East Antrim District Council, just coupled with our branding.
So, looking at some of the Council’s published material from the past, I found a pattern which I felt worked nicely and quickly developed the Fermanagh and Omagh District Council’s own Unreasonable behaviour card which can be seen along with my primary reference below.
(Mid East Antrim District Council’s card design)
Domestic Violence Poster design (September 2024)
I was then approached by Community Services who needed a poster for promoting awareness of Domestic Violence and providing a list of helplines, for use by Council staff on the staff bulletin board.
Although the design itself was a rather simple one. It ended up being challenging as a result of the hand. I wanted to have an image that was an abstract representation of control, and I immediately was reminded of marionette puppets.
So, I wanted a simple hand controlling a person but creating the hand was the biggest obstacle. I eventually came up with the simple solution of photographing my own hand and then redrawing the hand in the same pose and angle.
In the end this came out looking rather impressive and reminded me of how important it is to gather my own references instead of completely relying on external sources at all times.
Concept Sketches and Photographic Reference
Final Poster Design
Further Rates Animation Tests and Art Style Development (September 2024)
During this time, I also continued to develop the art style and assets which I hoped to use in the District Rates Infomercial.
I looked at what I had developed previously and felt that more detail would be necessary, so along with make in new assets all the previous pieces that had been made for the earlier tests were completely reworked to have more detail and be more accurate to the buildings they were trying to represent.
I was also using this reworking to get an idea of how simple animation character rigs would behave within the environments and assets I had been developing.
Beforehand, I had been doing some experiments with a simple 2D character rig I had developed in Photoshop and rigged in Animate simply using the object parenting tools. The results looked very convincing, so I decided to create a complete character rig based on a Council worker which I then tested within the new assets and environments I had developed for the Infomercial.
At this point, Management was still not entirely sure or clear on what they would need or want with the infomercial. So, I would just have to continue experimenting and thinking of useful graphics and assets to develop which would be useful for the final animation.
At least until management would receive the actual information regarding the district rates in terms of facts and figures, I could then use them to accurately determine what I would need to animate for the final Infomercial.
Overall art style progression
New Assets
Initial character rig tests
First Finalised Character Rig
Environment Design Progression and Compiled First Test
Later Vehicle Rig Animation Test
Further Corporate plan infomercial animations (October 2024)
Once again, I was called upon to create some more material regarding the Corporate Plan.
This time, it was a quick and easy set of simple intros for each of the Plans key priorities for a second infomercial regarding the purpose and actions that will be taken as a result of the corporate plan.
Due to the original graphic being developed externally from the Council prior to my arrival, prepping this graphic for animating was not just straight forward.
In fact, I ended up having to completely rebuild the graphic in photoshop, I kept each of the 4 segments separated and I also created all the individual frames which I would then bring into adobe animate and compile together.
After that however, the rest of the editing and camera composition was extremely straight forward to complete and all 4 sequences were provided to my director in ample time.
Townhall Reception sign redesign (September 2024)
Every morning when clocking into work at reception, I would be greeted with a simple sign which stated that all visitors must sign in to keep a track of who’s in the building at all times. The only problem was that the sign itself was hand drawn with a white-board marker and felt very unprofessional.
I proposed the idea of creating a more “on-brand” sign which could replace the old hand-drawn one.
The new design ended up looking much more on-brand with the Council and more importantly, looked far more professional. However, this design is yet to be implemented.
Current Reception Notice Sign
The Redesigned Sign
Staff Hub “What’s New” monthly newsletter (October 2024)
Every week, a compilation of news articles and events are advertised on the Council Staff hub for Council staff every Wednesday. This compilation has been named “What’s New Wednesday”, However some staff do not have easy access to the Council Staff hub and therefore are not alerted to any of the news listed in the weekly post.
To resolve this issue, I was tasked with coming up with a simple design to display all of the information from the What’s New Wednesday posts over the course of the month. This way, all of the What’s new Wednesday posts from the previous month can be viewed in a physical or pdf format which can be passed around every department within the Council, increasing exposure. Designing the format for displaying the information seemed like it would be pretty simple.
However, I quickly ran into difficulty when trying to add the information into the text boxes as some of the posts had a large volume of information within them and it was impossible to cram all of it into one text box and then have it at a font size which was readable. Equally, there would occasionally be posts with near next to no text within them, which would create another problem of having a suitable space for smaller posts.
In the end, I came up with over 8 different page layout designs which could be used to display articles that had both light and heavy word counts. Like with the graphics I had been developing for the District Rates infomercial, I ensured that all the page formats were uploaded onto Canva and could easily be implemented into posts so that the What’s New monthly entry can continue to be published even after my placement ends.
Posters for Disabled Car Park misuse awareness campaign (November 2024)
I was approached by one of my colleagues within Corporate Services and Governance who wanted some help with an upcoming campaign.
My Colleague had seen a lot of my previous work and wanted me to develop some posters for a campaign regarding a disabled parking misuse awareness campaign, known as “Be Kind! Park with Disability in mind!”.
I was provided with a written plan of what material will need to be developed and published for the campaign and what graphics would be required.
With this information I Developed a poster for each proposed piece of advertisement material, I wanted to go for the same art style I used in the District rates as I felt it represented the Council very well and allowed me to incorporate more detail into the assets of the graphics too. In the end 3 different poster designs were developed, each conveying a different message as seen below.
I made 2 variants of each, one for use as a physical A3 poster to possibly be used around Council facilities and then a 1080×1080 version for use on social media. Some posters would invite readers to partake in a survey or to read some policies too, so I made sure to leave a large square space on the posters which held invitations for the installation of a QR code later.
Overall, my colleague was extremely satisfied with the end result, and I dare say these are some of the nicest looking pieces I have developed for the Council in my opinion.
However, Following some feedback I decided to revisit these poster designs sometime later. I was told the lack of facial features was strange and so I went back and modified the character assets in the posters to have facial expressions and then saved both the original and modified posters to let my Colleagues choose which one they felt suited our requirements better.
Original Versions of the posters
Revisited Poster Designs
in-FO Winter 2024 Residents Magazine design (December 2024)
This is easily one of, if not the most extensive project I have had to work on with the Council. As far back as August, I was informed about the Councils upcoming Resident’s Magazine known simply as “in-FO”. Like with a lot of their public prints, the previous issue of the magazine had been designed externally by a separate company.
We had full access to the previous version so this would act as my basis.
I found that trying to edit the original file was slightly challenging on Adobe Illustrator but quickly found that Adobe Acrobat was slightly easier. But it was not without its own difficulties, the biggest being that there were plenty of times where Acrobat wasn’t able to work around the size of the file closer to its completion and the software had to be closed and reopened constantly which was rather frustrating.
One of the key reasons why it took so long for the magazine to be completed was waiting for the appropriate images and information which would be provided by other respective departments particularly surrounding the Christmas events and plans throughout the District.
This section alone when through 3 different changes during development with each one looking completely different. This was due to the constant waiting for information from other departments or external sources which a lot of the time, would only provide their information last minute. Ultimately, this led to a lot of the information regarding upcoming events to become invalid, as the said events would’ve already passed by the time we received the information.
With the deadline for completion fast approaching, me and my manager came to a compromise of making all Christmas material in the magazine span over 2 pages and only include schedules for events that were yet to happen at the time of the magazine’s publication. The other major difficulty I had was with some of the photographs.
Adding new photos was extremely simple and I was even able to edit them in real time through Photoshop to match with the formatting of the existing images present in the original magazine.
As for the previous photos themselves, some had to be repurposed for the new magazine. some examples being the front cover and the photos used in the cost-of-living section.
However, the resolution on all existing images was extremely poor. I tried exporting the file in the highest resolution I Could to try and resolve the issue, but nothing helped.
I have since learned that when bringing a PDF into Acrobat, it automatically breaks down a file so that it can be “easier” to edit, but this also compromises the resolution of any images present within the original file. I eventually found a simple solution back in Illustrator.
I would save the images within Illustrator as individual PNGs, and then simply bring them over into acrobat to replace the low-resolution versions.
It was rather tedious going around the entire magazine and pinpointing which photos needed replacing and some also needed editing to fit in with the design of the magazine, but in the end the final result was much clearer and more presentable.
Luckily all our hard work paid off, as the magazine was finalised and released to all council facilities just in time for the Christmas holidays.
In the end me and the entire team were extremely happy with the end result especially after how long it took to get the entire piece all together. I gained invaluable experience about managing time as well as being patient with a project at the same time.
Primarily by setting one small easily attainable goal at a time, instead of going all in at once and overwhelming myself with the project and possibly compromising my full working potential within a project.
Council virtual Christmas card (December 2024)
Along with releasing the Residents magazine, the Chief Executive also wanted us to publish the annual virtual Christmas Card. This was an extremely easy task as the Chief Executive wanted to use the exact same format from the previous year’s card.
I managed to get my hands on the Canva file for the previous card, and I was quickly able to alter the text and the image to something more recent and appealing, and it was able to be released within an efficient timeframe.
Animated Christmas social media message (December 2024)
Around this time, I was also requested to create an animated Christmas and New Year Message which was intended to be published on the Council’s Facebook Page.
I first came up with a simple animated sequence for the Christmas message, using assets I had created for the Newsletter covers a few months prior. I was proud of the animation and audio editing used in the complete sequence and felt it would work perfectly; I then developed a simple scene for the New Years message as I thought they would be 2 individual posts released separately on their corresponding days.
Despite how proud I was of both of my sequences, They were not used and instead a whole new sequence needed to be created.
This was due to two reasons, particularly that they wanted to have both messages in the one animation so they could release it on the same day, and no one would have to upload the separate messages during the holidays.
On top of this, they felt that the Christmas animation did not really mean anything and didn’t convey what the council wanted initially.
Not all of it was lost however, as they preferred the format of the New Years animation and felt it would be better to have both the Christmas and New Year’s message said in the same format as my initial New Year message video.
The higher ups were much more impressed with the final version, and it was published on the Council’s Facebook page in time for the holidays. Although the setback of my initial sequences was slightly disheartening, I am proud of how the final message came out and it has taught me not to be too sentimental about a workpiece because there is a chance it may need to be reworked to achieve what the client wants.
Initial Sketches/ Thumbnails
Initial Christmas and New Year’s Virtual Messages
Final Christmas and New Year’s Virtual Message
Final Production on the District Rates Infomercial (January/February 2025)
Upon returning to work following the Christmas Holidays, the District Rates for 2025 were scheduled to be made public in early February.
The Council wanted the infomercial completed in time for the public release of the rates; thus, it became my top priority for the majority of January and early February.
Luckily, the Comms Department finally gained early access to the new rates and with this information, I could finally begin developing the final version of the rates infomercial based on our exact requirements.
Before receiving the official rates, I had been trying some more tests based on the priorities list from the previous rates and started developing more sequences as a way to show how all my graphics would look when combined, and if they worked well together.
During this set of tests, I learned that some of my previous graphics looked a bit too simple and so, I went back and made some updates to the previous graphics which I felt needed a bit more definition. My final briefing was to develop a linear sequence showing off 6 of the Rates contributions, I needed to create some more assets to meet these requirements and also create further animations which would be added to the final piece separately.
This is easily the most content-heavy project I have worked on with the Council and as a result my PC would crash constantly so I needed to find ways to overcome the large amounts of data which my PC would need to process all at once. The best solution I could find was to animate all of the moving sequences in the background separately from the actual stage and then splice in the frames from the separate animations into their appropriate spots on the stage.
All of this was completed on Adobe Animate, which in retrospect could have been the source of the difficulties regarding my PC crashing. I intend to improve upon this by learning how to use Aftereffects in future as I believe it will reduce the risk of crashes and also result in a much cleaner looking outcome.
As for compiling the entire infomercial together, I used Canva as it was not only quick and simple, but also any member of the Comms department would be able to access it via Canva’s Cloud system if any changes were required regarding the text and information being displayed.
Overall, this was the most labour-intensive and complex project I have developed while working with the council. It went through multiple re-designs and re-directions but overall, I am more than satisfied with the end result considering the amount of time I had to compile the final sequence which all being told, was only around 3 weeks. My director and upper management were extremely pleased with the final outcome too and due to all the text and editing being done in Canva, The whole video can be easily repurposed by the team for any future rates infomercials if they choose to use it.
New/Updated Graphics
Separate animation sequences
Final Test Sequences/ unused graphics and environment designs
Final District Rates Infomercial
Tourism Conference Screensaver (February 2025)
My next project was a quick and simple one. There was a Tourism conference coming up and the team required a simple screensaver for their presentation. A screensaver had been previously created for a Business Conference and the Tourism Department wanted the exact same format just with their relevant information.
I was provided with all the necessary signage for the partnering organisations as well as the original Business Conference screensaver.
The conversion itself was extremely simple to complete. I just covered the original text and then retyped the new text on top. The only slight obstacle I had to overcome was trying to ensure all of my coverings followed the same colour gradients so that they would not stand out from the background easily and look tacky.
I was able to complete this project within ample time and the Tourism Department were extremely pleased with the quick and effective outcome.
Initial Business Conference Screensaver
(Fermanagh and Omagh District Council)
Updated Tourism Conference Screensaver
Marketing Conference Negative Social Media Comments Graphic (February 2025)
In the early days of March, the Council was going to hold a Marketing Conference.
The purpose of the conference was to converse with all internal and external staff involved with marketing via the Council and evaluate our current marketing practices and see if anything could be improved or added to improve our marketing and public communications.
One point that Comms wanted to bring up during the conference was our social media practices and how we handle negative comments that were purely malicious and had no constructive points whatsoever.
I was given the task of taking a look at the Council’s official Facebook page and recording all negative comments over the duration of December 2024 to February 2025, then I would use the data I collected to develop a graphic to better present our findings during the conference.
This was the first project I undertook where I had to work with Confidential information, and I will say that it taught me the importance of keeping anonymity when addressing certain subjects and just how delicate this type of information can be and how it should be professionally handled.
International Women’s Day 2025 “Save the Date” Social media poster design (February 2025)
During the second half of February, The council was preparing for a special event being held for International Women’s Day 2025.
The event the Council was going to host, was a business showcase and Q&A. I was tasked with creating a “save the Date” poster and other marketing material.
I was given an extremely simple brief and once I had a clear idea of what the Council wanted, I developed a simple design at first and planned to make my own Council logo to commemorate the day. However, the new logo design was quickly scrapped as I was made aware of the event’s currently official logo. As a result, I simply reworked a lot of my previous plans and reused some elements from the initial design to be used in the final “save the Date” posts the Council released.
Along with developing the Save the Date poster, I also was tasked with developing several pieces for use in more posters and graphics promoting International Women’s Day.
These included the guest speakers list, an agenda for the day, a power point presentation template etc. All of these extra pieces were also developed following the same design conventions used for the save the date post.
Overall, this project went from initial ideas to published articles in less than two months. Me and the staff I was working with, were incredibly satisfied with the final outcome.
Initial logo/ graphic progression
Final designs
Website Icons (March 2025)
Following a Marketing Forum, I was approached by Digital Services to develop some unique icons for a page on the Council Website. I was given an image of the current page and asked to experiment with new designs for each of the options.
Below are both the original icons and what I managed to come up with.
Although this project was never fully signed off by Digital Services, I am extremely satisfied with how these came out and I think they would’ve been a massive improvement over the previous icon designs.
Original Icons
Updated Icons
Info Graphics (March 2025)
In 2016, the Council applied for an award using a series of info graphics.
This year, they wanted to apply again. I was forwarded an email from Regeneration and Planning by my manager, asking if I could develop a new series of Info graphics to be submitted for the possible award.
I was given a list of what facts and figures would be displayed and thus what graphics would be required; I then got to work.
Since this was all requested on extremely short notice, I was told to use Canva for ease of editing any changes quickly. However, I did need to develop an original template for the first graphic presenting a “before and after” of the District’s characteristics between 2016 and now.
As a result, this was an extremely quick and easy project which was cranked out in very little time, the department were really happy with the final graphics and felt they would be a much better way to present our information in the submission for the award.
Council 10 Year Anniversary E-Card (March 2025)
As of April 2025, Fermanagh Omagh District Council will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of its formation. Marketing had a new exclusive logo developed externally to commemorate the occasion.
One of the first projects I was given regarding the anniversary marketing material was a simple E-Card greeting with a message from the chief executive.
As this was only assigned to me within the last week of March, I didn’t have much time to create any unique animations for this project, thus I needed to rely on Canva to quickly get this piece prepared in time for the proposed publication.
Of course, if I had more time I would’ve tried to create an animation for the reveal of the new logo, but I was still satisfied with the end result. However, This would not be published until quite some time later.
When the new logo was chosen by my director, they believed that this was the perfect opportunity to reconfigure the entire guidelines for the Council’s Corporate Branding. Thus, we needed to wait for the original designer of the new logo to develop a whole new list of guidelines before we could officially publish this piece.
“DFI, NI” Planning Social media post cover reworks (April 2025)
After completing the previous project, I was let in on another project.
A week before, the council released a post detailing how we reached our planning statutory targets with regards to major and local applications, showing off the exact statistics. The team had rushed out the post to be on time and felt that it was a bit too basic looking.
So, for their LinkedIn post the wanted a more detailed graphic and they brought me on to develop it. At the time, I was developing some graphics in perspective as a test, I felt that this social media graphic was the perfect opportunity to try something new.
I developed the entire graphic using 1-point perspective and the end result is below. I would say this was a fun experimental design to develop and the team were pleased with the final result.
Updated Version (final)
Cover reworks for documentations of Supplementary Planning Guidance
(April 2025)
Around the same time that the DFI NI piece was requested, I was tasked with another project.
This time, it was regarding covers for the Council’s Supplementary Planning Guidance Documents. This was an extremely quick procedure, as the team were happy enough with the current format of the covers.
They just required the information presented on the covers to be brought up to the current date as the previous versions of the files were developed the year before. The end result can be seen below.
Industry Placement assessment (April 2025)
On the 9th of April, I did a presentation to my lecturers regarding my placement progress and later had a Q&A with some of the second-year students who were interested in going into placement next year. I was quite nervous about this assessment due to the fact that the majority of my work were graphics and I only had 2 animation projects which I felt were suitable to talk about.
However, I think my presentation went on extremely well. The lecturers were impressed with what I had accomplished considering the fact that I had no animation mentor and all I had developed was from my own trial and error.
Their feedback was also extremely helpful, primarily talking about what software I could use to streamline my process, as well as pointing out some areas where my presentation’s composition could be slightly confusing.
Both are extremely important as I would not only benefit from using more suitable packages for certain jobs. But also, since this job especially in earlier parts of projects heavily relies on presentations to communicate with teams effectively, it’s essential that I can create presentations which can be easily followed, and it outlined to me how I could go wrong when composing presentations. Which was something I wouldn’t have ever considered before.
I will make sure to take these notes and use them within my practices for the last 2 months of my placement.
Strategic Capital Grants Social Media posts (April 2025)
Another small, quick and simple project. I was tasked with redesigning some simple social media post graphics, detailing the Council’s Strategic Capital Grants programme.
Easter Social Media posts (April 2025)
One responsibility I had in April, was to develop some graphics for social media to show the upcoming easter events within the District.
Of course, I wanted to make these graphics as backwards compatible as possible with the staff’s standard resources.
To achieve this, I developed the graphic in Pieces and then uploaded all of them to Canva so that not only could staff members still have access to my graphics following the end of my placement, but the elements could also be easily repurposed for other events.
So, I developed a set of 3 graphics, 2 being backgrounds to suit different social media formats, and a calendar page. I then proceeded to create duplicates of these graphics in all 6 corporate colours used by the Council for marketing material.
This allows these graphics to be flexible and easy to use for communications staff following the end of my placement and will also allow for easy repurposing of pages for all seasonal or non-seasonal events.
Sets of Graphics
Fully assembled posters
10 Year anniversary notebook cover fix (April 2025)
April 2025 officially marked the 10-year anniversary of the formation of Fermanagh and Omagh District Council. One of the celebratory mediums they wanted was to produce a series of exclusive merchandise to hand out for free to guests of certain events surrounding the occasion.
In this case, one of the pieces of merchandise they had commissioned was a simple A5 Notepad, printed with the new graphics that had been externally developed for all marketing material regarding the anniversary.
However, when sending the graphics to the print company, the team ran into a problem. The external company eventually reached out some time later and told us that the graphic we had sent was “split apart” as they put it. The requested a resend of the file in a PDF format.
This requirement struck me as odd, as I remembered that while working with PDFs in Adobe Acrobat, the software had a built-in feature where it breaks down graphics based on its own judgment for ease of editing despite the fact that the graphic doesn’t need editing at all. I ran into this exact issue previously while working on the Resident’s Magazine back last winter.
I immediately brought this up with the team and ended up sending both a PNG and PDF of the merged graphic along with a request for some more insight as to why it specifically needed to be a PDF.
Although the company never gave me an answer, the 2 files I had sent seemed to have done the trick. Around a week later, we received the first set of test prints for review and the graphic on the front of the book which I fixed came out perfectly. Overall, the team were extremely satisfied with the end result too and it was quickly greenlit by our Director.
“Split apart” graphic
Fixed (Final Graphic)
“About FODC” Information animation (May 2025)
One of my biggest projects from May was to repurpose some animation I had done in the past. I was told by my supervisor that she was currently working on an upcoming presentation and asked if it would be possible to have an animation developed for it, demonstrating some of the Councils responsibilities and statistics using our streetscape graphic from before as a basis.
This was extremely similar to what I had done with the streetscape graphic before. Although it would be easy to rework what I had already completed and use it to quickly get the job done, I felt this was the perfect opportunity to push myself by testing my current abilities and compare it to my past attempt.
During company down time, I had been trying to teach myself the basics of working with Adobe AfterEffects. This was primarily a result of the feedback I had received during my presentation in April. I decided to see if I would be able to achieve a similar, or an even better result to what I completed back at the start of my placement and see if my practices had improved at all since starting.
One of the weakest points about my previous attempt in my opinion was the lack of movement in the animated assets. All assets simply moved along a path with no actual movement of any of their features. This was primarily caused by a combination of me still not being accustomed to working with animate, while simultaneously working to an extremely tight deadline. With more experience following the first attempt, I felt I could deliver a much better output this time around.
I took each asset into photoshop and reconstructed them in pieces to make them more suitable to animate in Adobe animate, using similar techniques that were used for animating people in the District Rates infomercial.
Once I was happy with the individually animated assets, I imported them along with a reconstructed version of the background into Aftereffects and I was easily able to animate all my moving assets to follow a path as well as add in camera movement and get the animation part completed quite quickly and efficiently.
I then brought the completed animation into Canva and started editing in the text, this was so that all comms staff members could easily access the text and make any changes if needed.
However, this project was then shelved as the team had postponed the release of the presentation to an unknown date. Although this was definitely disappointing, I still feel that this was a great exercise in my practices and showed me how I have improved since starting my placement year.
Individual animated assets
Finished “About FODC” informative video
Placement feedback (June 2025)
Right at the start of this month, a member of HR requested me to work on a project for them. Due to a neurodiversity staff talk we had a few weeks before, where I spoke about my experiences briefly, they wanted me to write up my own feedback on how I felt my placement went regarding my treatment within the workplace.
I ended up writing about my experience and overall, I have to say that all the staff were extremely understanding and accommodating. I never felt I was looked down upon and I always felt like I was included which was extremely meaningful to me as I was afraid of how they might perceive me prior to my start date. Happily, my concerns were not necessary.
The only real criticism I had was that sometimes some staff could be slightly vague with their requirements. This was more of a problem during the start however, mostly because I was only starting and still learning the ropes of my new job as well as it being the first time I had done any design work in a professional setting.
Regardless of this, I mostly had good feedback regarding my placement.
FODC recruitment process informative animation (June 2025)
Along with being asked to write about my experience on placement, I also was asked to create a small informative animation showing off the Council’s recruitment process to allow for applicants to fully understand how it works in a more fun way. This would be my final project with the Council.
I was given a written run-through of the recruitment process, and with some help from HR we were able to condense it down into a tangible storyboard. During the development of the storyboard, I thought it might be a good idea to add voice over clips to narrate the process and compliment the animation.
I asked one of the members of HR if they would be interested and they thought it was a great idea. I quickly wrote a simple script which was updated a few times until we had dialogue the whole team was happy with. The voice-overs where all done individually and were added in post.
I’m incredibly happy with this piece especially due to the small amount of time I had to turn this out. I was technically running on borrowed time via HR and ultimately had 2 weeks to produce the animation.
Unfortunately, The member of HR who was asked to provide the narration for the animation could not provide the voice samples in time for my submission however the overall animation has been finalised, this project is currently ongoing.
Initial Script and Storyboarding
Finalised Set Designs
Character Models
Finished Scenes
Final animated sequence (missing narration)
Personal Projects and Final Year preparations
While I was on Placement, I did do a few simple practices mostly on animation principles just to keep it fresh in my memory and also to check for any improvement compared to past attempts. Some of the best practices I completed where regarding weight and mass as well as squash and stretch. I feel that these practices I completed have shown me that I have greatly improved in my overall understanding of how weight and mass determine how an object interacts with the world around them and how changing up different amounts of squash and stretch, and speed can convey a completely different weight or form of an object. I also took some more experiments using Adobe Animate regarding making assets, then rigging and animating them using the parenting tool. Although I wish I could have done quite a few more notable practices during my time outside of work, I do feel that the selection of practices I have developed are of a decent quality and do show some growth in my ability to animate.
Animation fundamental tests and practices
Rigged GNR(I) S class, 171 “Slieve Gullion” animation test
Rigged Hackworth’s “Sans Pareil” animation test
Final Year preparatory work
As seen from the examples above, my placement year allowed me to rekindle my passion for old railways and that struck me as a possible idea for my final year film. I’ve decided that I want my final project to be railway-oriented in some way, so far I’ve thought of a possible idea and developed an initial story brief, an early draft of the script and some concept sketches. These of course are probably going to differ from my final decision in some aspects, but for the time being, its all still in the very early stages of development.
Initial brief
First script draft
Concept sketches
Other miscellaneous artwork
These are a small compilation of artwork pieces I developed outside of academic studies. 2 of which were done in collaboration with the Erne Model Railway club which I started re-joined during the year.
Reference links
Facebook.com. (2023). Video. [online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/MidUlsterDC/videos/rates-2020-2021/541467833137185/ [Accessed 6 Jan. 2025].
Fermanagh Omagh District Council (2023). Fermanagh Omagh District Council Community Newsletter: October 2024 Front cover. [Graphic]. [Accessed August 2024].
Fermanagh Omagh District Council (2024). About Fermanagh Omagh District Council Corporate plan Streetscape. [Graphic]. [Accessed July 2024].
Laney, A.-J., Aff, T. and Johnston, B. (2020). “Looking ahead” Strategic Plan University of Newcastle Australia [online] Available at: https://www.newcastle.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/607423/Strategic-Plan-on-a-Page.pdf. [Accessed July 2024].
Mid-East Antrim District Council “Unreasonable behaviour information card”. [Graphic]. [Accessed September 2024].