Paul Robinson

About Me

Personal Profile

  • Suited to both creative and technical environments.
  • Talented in both freehand and computer-generated artwork creation.
  • Good problem-solving abilities.
  • Easily adaptable and will give 100% to any task undertaken.
  • Readily willing to learn and share knowledge.
  • Dedicated to keeping my skills, techniques and knowledge current and on-trend.

Experience/Skills

I am experienced in graphic design and illustration. Logo design, corporate identification and branding design. Traditional print, large-scale digital print and vinyl cut artwork. Liaising with printing firms to ensure quality print production of flyers, business cards, brochures, catalogues, stationery and promotional materials etc. Website design, architectural and engineering technical drawings.

I have art department experience including old-school light table and darkroom techniques as well as artwork origination, both freehand and generated using a variety of industry-standard software. Advanced knowledge of Adobe Creative Cloud and Affinity applications.

I’ve been responsible for developing and maintaining, both online and offline, the corporate identity and branding of multiple companies as a freelancer and also as an employee. Continually updating skills and knowledge, remaining aware of current design trends.

Education

iTec
2002 – 2002 
City & Guilds Level 3
AutoCAD (2D) 4351-01 
City & Guilds Level 3
AutoCAD (3D) 4351-09

Gordon Flack-Davison Academy of Design
1986 – 1987
Design and Illustration

Highveld Park High School
1981 – 1985

Current CPD

February 2022
HM Government
Prevent
Introductory training providing a foundation on which to develop further knowledge around the risks of radicalisation and the kinds of support available to those at risk

February 2022
Education & Training Foundation
Safeguarding in the FE and Training Sector
Explored safeguarding policies and how they can be effectively implemented, how to provide staff and learners with a safer working and learning environment and promoting early intervention

Download a copy of my CV

Available in Adobe Acrobat PDF and Microsoft Word DOCX

Paul Robinson CV – Acrobat PDF download link
Paul Robinson CV – Word DOCX download links
January 2015 – September 2022

TRN (Train)

trn-logo-lockup-01-blue

Position: Graphic and Web Designer

Location: Gateshead

Responsibilities:

Designing and producing artwork for print and electronic media for both external use and for internal learner engagement. Web design and development. Marketing and branding, social media engagement and web analytics. Project planning/costing, coordination and review.

Principal Accomplishments:

During my time with TRN, my role and responsibilities were continually in a state of flux. On first joining the organisation I set about auditing their existing marketing and training materials and put in place a schedule to align these with their current branding. I next brought the control of their web hosting and domains in-house and redesigned and developed the new TRN website using Joomla.

I designed and created a Moodle LMS (Learning Management System), originally to alleviate some workload from our BDM’s who were being overwhelmed with manually grading learner initial assessments. Time-limited initial assessments were created within the LMS which logged the grades of each test on learner submission. The LMS became a fundamental part of the TRN training programmes during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Course learning materials were added to the system and the progress of each learner could be monitored and audited.

When the first countrywide lockdown happened I was tasked to make sure that each staff member had all the software and hardware resources they needed to carry on working from their homes both effectively and securely. This involved allocating laptops, cabling, software, VPN’s and VOiP phones.

My most recent large project involved creating short bite size learning video resources ‘TRN Tasters’ which is a video tutorial repository that trainers/assessors can use with their learners as a training resource.

October 2012 – January 2015

GHGroup/Ghost Keys

GhostKeys Logo

Position: Graphic and Web Designer

Location: Gateshead

Responsibilities:

Designing and producing artwork for print and electronic media, Web design and development. Marketing and branding. Social media engagement and web analytics. Project planning/costing, coordination and review.

Principal Accomplishments:

Ghost Keys was originally formed as a subsidiary of the GHGroup Ltd which at the time was beginning to expand rapidly. The group had many subsidiaries and was beginning to invest actively in start-ups. Each company that fell under the GHGroup umbrella had its own requirements for design, branding and marketing which were often outsourced to multiple companies who were rarely given effective guidelines or briefs, due to this the consistency of branding suffered.

I had a meeting with George Houghton, the Chairman of GHGroup and proposed we set up a subsidiary company to take control of the creative and marketing needs of all the companies within the group. In doing so we ensured the quality of brand and gained economies of scale, buying as a group rather than as separate companies. Due to the changes made, we were able to create and protect the branding within the group as well as save money on the likes of online and traditional promotional media.

A web hosting reseller account was purchased and I transferred all intercompany domains and websites into our control saving the group money, giving us full access to analytics and enabling rapid changes to sites and landing pages without the need of reliance on any third parties.

March 2009 – September 2012

Pattinson

Position: Graphic and Web Designer

Location: Newcastle-Upon-Tyne

Responsibilities:

Designing and producing artwork for flyers, auction catalogues, business cards, training and promotional brochures, newspaper and magazine advertising, electronic marketing materials, banners, signage, website design and website graphics. The administration side of this position included amending contracts, gathering quotes and purchasing.

Principal Accomplishments:

One of the achievements that I am most proud of is that I managed to bring the Pattinson Auction Catalogue time to compile down from 2 or 3 days to a matter of hours.

The Pattinson Auction Catalogue is compiled and put to press at least once a month and more often than not twice a month. The catalogue contains images and descriptions of properties listed for sale within the property auctions. Details were originally pulled from the database as flattened PDF’s but no styling was given and it was very difficult to make changes once outputted. This was not acceptable as it did not look professional and we were reliant on the data entry being of top quality, which, in a lot of instances, it was not.

I began to copy and paste the details of each property lot from the website into InDesign. This was successful in the fact that I could now edit details and change layout generating the print-ready PDF’s but this process was far too labour intensive to be a viable long term solution.

Working with the coder who developed the in-house listing software, we created an XML feed that could be imported into predefined fields within the pages of an InDesign file. We were able to auto-populate the pages of the auction catalogue within a templated InDesign file at the press of a button. Using this process we were able to spend more time on proofing, editing and styling the catalogues. It was also beneficial to the auction department as they could now close off their catalogue a day or two later than prior to the changes, allowing more time to secure property entries.

November 2002 – March 2009

iJax

Position: Self Employed Freelance Graphic and Web Designer

Location: Newcastle-Upon-Tyne

August 1998 – July 2002

Interplan Sign Systems

Position: Graphic Designer

Location: Durham

April 1997 – August 1998

Signs Express

Position: Graphic Designer

Location: Newcastle North

1989 – 1996

Screen-O-Graphics

Position: Graphic Designer

Location: Empangeni, KwaZulu Natal

1987 – 1989

Maura Manufacturers

Position: Fashion Illustrator

Location: Empangeni, KwaZulu Natal