AJM Packaging Corp. Production Artist
AJM is a manufacturer of paper products, including plates, cups, and takeout bags. AJM serves a wide range of clients, from nation-wide restaurants, to major regional supermarket chains, to individual small businesses.
The creative side of my position involved keeping up on trends to create modern designs and trying to foresee seasonal style directions.
The other side of the job was production-oriented, recreating logos for clients who didn't have vector copies, ensuring copy on packaging met regulations, doing color separations to artwork for print, and overseeing initial print runs & signing off on color matching pantone swatches.
Asset Creation
One method I employed for seasonal designs was to batch-produce assets and iterate on arrangements, colors, and visual styles.
Print Run Management
This is a winter plate I designed, which was picked up by Roundy's Supermarkets. At the factory, 4 rollers were fitted with plates onto the enormous press.
For about half the time I was with AJM, our small graphics team functioned without a manager. I took on the risk and responsibility of authorizing a print run once I was satisfied with the pantone color matching and registration.
Seasonal DesignsWinter
Seasonal DesignsFall
Seasonal DesignsSummer
In one way or another, every position I've occupied required me to evoke the energies and moods of each of the seasons. But never during the current season.
I've sat in a button-up shirt and tie in the heat of summer, conjuring images of winter, and looked ahead to halloween while the flowers are starting to bloom.
Creative thinking can't always wait for inspiration; sometimes we have to make it happen. Even if it's just producing a lot of garbage to stumble upon something worthwhile.
Palette Swapping
Oftentimes a design would be successful, but wouldn't mesh well with the branding on the client's label. I'd start with several colorways to present, and there was always the option to match the packaging color perfectly.
Floral Designs
Floral patterns are a staple of design, and there are limitless ways of executing them. The allowance for experimenting with ideas was one of the freedoms I tried to use to it's fullest extent.
Geometric Designs
Even though it's just paper plates, it was fun sometimes to push boundaries of what's conventional in the market and see what connects with people.
Abstract Designs
The two types of plates were regular, with a smooth cross-section, and Ultra, with folds that gave it a more ridgid structure. Ultra was more suited to thinner rings. Most rare, though, was to get a design approved that wasn't circular.
Information Architecture
The sales team were constantly in need of examples of available patterns, and how patterns looked with their corresponding labels.
As a side project, I devised an intranet site that could be sortable by account, label, and copyright holder to help those in sales quickly reference information and present options to clients.
Other notable tech contributions was thorough documentation for how to update this site, and guiding the head of IT on how to access the command prompt in OS X.