Employee Spotlight: Meet Dan | Digital Designer

We are excited to share another employee spotlight with you. We feature our team and their remarkable contributions to life here at WorkCast in our Employee Spotlight series. Be sure to keep checking back to learn more about our next interviewee! 

In this month's edition, we will be talking to our Digital Designer, Dan. He's a core part of our team, responsible for creating all things fun, including our customer templates, making their digital event experiences more enjoyable. 

Find out more about him and his role below.

What is your role at WorkCast?

I am a Digital Designer for WorkCast, which means I am responsible for creating a customer's branded template experience which can be used for their events. I take a customer's brand assets and apply them to one of the many templates we offer, depending on the type of event. These templates can be anything from Webinar Master Templates to Channel Templates or larger scale Virtual Events.

I am also responsible for the designing and creation of new template designs which our clients can use.

What's your creative process?

This varies depending on if I am branding a template or designing a new template from scratch. A branded template always starts with asset preparation, where I will go through and optimise any imagery for the web and determine how and where to use the customers' primary, secondary and accent colours on our templates. I then apply the branding to their template of choice for their event and check that it looks good and that it works as expected. This includes everything from hover states to focus states and to go through the entire event workflow to ensure everything is as expected. If all is well, I will hand this back to either the onboarding team to complete the onboarding process or the project team building the event out.

When it comes to new designs, I normally see something that sparks my creative juices, whether it be a colour palette I want to use, a nice piece of imagery, or something that looks great. I want to do my own take on it. I will often start by doing basic wireframes, usually in box format, and several variations. I then develop these into designed and branded mockups and will feed these back to my team to see if they have any feedback. If all is good with my team, I will feed this back to other teams in the business, usually in the form of user groups and if people like it, we go ahead and make it.

I always like to keep an eye on the latest design trends to see what is considered trendy to apply to our templates. Still, I will always be sure to consider all feedback received, whether internally or from our customers. 

Describe a typical day for you at WorkCast

The great thing about being a designer at WorkCast is that no day is ever the same! That, coupled with our flexible working policy, allows me to work from home or our new snazzy Gateshead office in the Northern Design Centre should I want to.

My days always start with a coffee whilst I go through my tasks and emails, which have come overnight either from our UK team or colleagues in Seattle. By 9 am, it usually's time for another coffee. If I am in the office, usually I suggest we order in a Starbucks, and whoever is in the office often gets involved in a massive group order. 

Then I am into the daily meeting I have with the onboarding team. We usually go over any queries from either side about any new customers being onboarded or existing customers having their templates refreshed in these meetings. It's also an excellent opportunity for us all to have a good old catch-up since we are rarely in the office at the same time as one another.

The rest of my day varies depending on the workload. I will always be active on some form of template each day, whether that be making a new master template for a client, doing some design amends requested by the client, or mocking up new designs for customers to use in the future.

I also make sure to try to get a walk along the River Tyne at lunch, one of the perks of moving to our new Gateshead office…plus the unlimited choices of food!

What is your proudest moment at WorkCast?

Honestly, I am proud of loads of things from my time here so far. For instance, I always gain great satisfaction seeing an event run well, which I played a part in designing. I think my proudest moments have to be when I get sent customer feedback about designs of events I have played a role in creating. It is such an awesome feeling. Here's to more!

What is something you learned in the last week?

Apparently, it's very easy to get work events and parties mixed up? Who'd have thought…

Now for a little bit about 'out-of-office' Dan...

What are your top three favourite songs?

That's a tough one; my Spotify Unwrapped for 2021 says otherwise, but for me, it'd be:

1. Nothing Else Matters by Metallica
2. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
3. The Chain by Fleetwood Mac

What are you currently watching on Netflix?

I'm actually watching a few things at the moment:

1. The new series of Afterlife by Ricky Gervais
2. Peaky Blinders, as I never originally watched the series, but now I am hooked (I also have a tendency to get into series way after they launched)
3. And finally, Formula 1 Drive to Survive - as a mad F1 fan, I am binge-watching all three series again in preparation for the new series to drop in the next couple of months. Would highly recommend it even if you're not an F1 fan. I guarantee you will be after it though!

What would you name the autobiography of your life?

The Life of Dan - an original name I know. I'm a designer; I make things look nice, not make titles for things.

If you could meet anyone, living or dead, who would you meet?

I will go with James Hetfield from Metallica.