Pencil Rebel - Mixed Media Design & HCIA

Because I don’t have anything to write about Pencil Rebel I give you the original version of article to Computer Arts, enjoy !

“Don’t Panic and Love It” - Polish designers in UK

All-in-all from a creative and evolutionary point of view the UK is definitely a great place to work and gain experience.

The United Kingdom has now been my home for almost 2 years. During this time I have worked for 3 companies. I find myself feeling comfortable and very happy, working in a business with a relaxed, friendly atmosphere and unique culture. I feel my work is appreciated and praised here, with myself, my peers and my manager having confidence and belief in the skills I have.

Summarizing all this I can distinguish two main groups - “Don’t Panic” and “Love It”.

“Don’t Panic” - even if the atmosphere at work is hectic everyone is kind and calm, allowing you to work at your own pace and eat your lunch in peace! In the same situation in Poland people would just exaggerate the problem - with the situation usually becoming stressed, nervous and unpleasing, specially with a relationship between a designer and his/her manager.

“Love It” - this relates to positive comments and verbal awards for the work I’ve done. Things like “I love it!”, “you made my day!”, or even a simple word of thanks from a director/boss/manager at the end of the working day gives me a great feeling.

I personally love the local approach here to time. In my eyes this feels like time is broken down into blocks, not specific hours. (For example, early AM, late AM, after lunch, teatime, late PM). Well, this is only a way of saying things but psychologically for my creativity a deadline

described as “late morning” works better than: “I want to have it on my desk at 10:45″.

The small plus for Polish way of management and organization of projects.

Generally, I think it is harder to find the right company to work for in the UK than find the right job itself. There is a lot of low and middle range companies which quantity in Poland is kept in low by fees and taxes.

So it is relatively easy to get the job in one of these companies, but finding a contract in one of the well known agencies can be really hard. Speaking from experience, the best way to get noticed is to have a solid portfolio - including examples of work for companies with logos recognizable to the UK market, or be unique in style and approach to the web.

Clients are more or less the same around the world, one wants lot and pay lots, the others want more for less. You can find a lot of clients in Poland which want to be involved in a project far too much, also you will meet few who are more than sure that because they pay for the service, the website must be in the favorite color of his wife. UK clients seems to be more calm and rely on the skills and experience of the contractor.

The issue nowadays is that too many computer and software owners think they have magically become web or graphic designers after 2 days! The sequence is probably random but the end result is usually something like: “bespoke web design only £19.99″.

One absolutely fantastic thing about the UK is the access to books about design. For example in Magma you can touch, see, smell things in the shop and after a hour leave with the most inspiring piece of wood for your new project.
There’s also a lot of great local conferences like Flash on the beach, Future of web design etc.

I see UK designers as individuals who experiment a lot, not bothering about critics and are less conservative. Designers in Poland prefer to
stay in their safe zone and use sure-sale forms. I agree that in few cases it is related with higher budget and quantity of UK clients, but the rest is just passive behavior which kills creativity.

As far as I concerned there are about 40 Polish designers in UK of varying caliber, including 10 top ones.

Why are they coming to the UK?
I think there are a lot of benefits - each one of these designers chose his own reason.

Will they stay here?
A few probably, yes. The rest like wild horses - one day they will move away to look for new inspiration.

keywords: job in UK, working in UK, computer arts, web design UK