Graphic Goose
Design and Web Portfolio
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Cassie Groos
Date of birth: November 1986
Location: manchester
Education: graphic design ba hons
T: 07811052923
E: cass@graphicgoose.co.uk
Personal Bio
I am a passionate designer with a love for web and graphic design alike. I have had a years invaluable experience at a brilliant agency, focussing mainly on music industry clients. I have also been working freelance for the past 4 years on a variety of projects.
I have a great work ethic and am used to working to tight deadlines either by myself or as part of a team. I have worked with clients such as Sony BMG, Eastpak, Warner Records, UMG, MTV, Polydor and more.
Skill Details
Mac Literate
Windows Literate
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Indesign
Adobe Bridge
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Flash
Adobe Dreamweaver
HTML
CSS
Cinema 4D (Basic)
Digital Photography
Film Photography
B&W Film processing
Darkroom techniques
Education History
BA (Hons) Graphic design
University of Salford [June 2007 - May 2010 Result Pending]
Modules included technological media, typography, branding, visual practice and team development projects.
Multimedia B-TEC (Triple Distinction)
South Trafford College [June 2005 - Sept 2007]
Achieved the highest grade in the year group over a two year period. Modules including web development, flash animation, 3D development, graphic design, photography and print making. This course gave me invaluable insight into a variety of disciplines, eventually leading me to pursue graphic and web design.
GCSES
Fyling Hall School
Art (A), English Language (A*), English Literature (A), Maths (A), ICT (B), Biology (B), Chemistry (B), Physics (C)
Work History
Front end designer & developer (Freelance)
Modlia Ltd [January 2009 - June 2009]
While working with Modlia, I was responsible for the design and development of front end templates and bespoke designs to be applied to the Pageplay content management system for their clients. This involved working to a variety of specifications and limitations imposed by the CMS. I found this to be an interesting challenge.
I also worked on various print projects to accompany the supplied websites and branding.
Work History Continued
Freelance graphic & web designer
[2006 - Present]
Since a very young age I was interested in web-design and development. I started working freelance as soon as I could and have worked for a variety of clients over the years.
Clients include: Carrington Riding Centre, The Dog Tub, No More Hiding, Senjo Gun Dogs, Chorlton What’s On, Konstant Group, Fenech Soler & The Fur.
Front end designer and developer
Retrofuzz [May 2009 - May 2010]
I spent an invaluable year with the Retrofuzz team. The experience was integral to my personal development as a designer. While with them I was given full, client-facing responsibilities, dealing daily with clients to see smaller projects from start to finish as well as working as part of the tightly-knit team on larger projects.
Working very closely with the music industry and fashion industry, I was given the great opportunity to design with a lot of creative freedom. The clients were often looking for ideas that pushed the boundaries and went against more corporate conventions of modern web design.
While with them I designed a number of websites (also winning pitches) for music clients, as well as designing smaller pages, mailers, banners, widgets & social networking skins which I then developed.
I also undertook print and branding jobs for Eastpak and was responsible for all of the print work for Moho Manchester for the duration of my employment there.
Junior Interactive Designer
TBWA Manchester [July 2010 - Present]
At TBWA I work as part of a strong, creative, digital team on a variety of projects and clients. My role gives me valueable experience and insight into the operations of a big agency and the expectations of blue chip clients.
I have had the opportunity to work with some inspiration clients on projects ranging from eCRM to re-launches of brand websites.
I currently work with clients such as EA Games, Co-Operative, ghd, Charles Worthington, Royal Bank of Scotland, Natwest, Original Source & Imperial Leather.
The Courteeners
While at Retrofuzz I was asked to design a pitch for the new Courteeners website. They already had the concept in place that the website content should come from a variety of sources, with their own content, user content and found content all feeding in. The challenge was to construct a format that could handle and navigate the content in a simple, user friendly way. This was the design that won the pitch.
The Veronicas
Redesign of the offical UK site for The Veronicas. The site needed to fresh, bright and simple. This was done while working at Retrofuzz.
Volcom
While at Retrofuzz, I worked on a couple of projects for Volcom. One was a spring catelog layout and the other a layout for a project blog called Seeds. Volcom are a skate, surf and snowboarding clothing manufacturer and have a fun, grungy style that needed to be kept in mind throughout the designs.
Empire
Design and full implementation of all social network skins for the band Empire. This included Myspace, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.
Delphic
I worked on a variety of accompanying media for Delphic during my time at Retrofuzz. This included a redesign of their Myspace, Twitter and mailer in order to suit the overhaul of the website that was being done. I also worked on a widget design for the release of Doubt, which was then transferred to an iPhone app design.
Mailers
Part of my day to day work at Retrofuzz was designing mailers for a huge variety of clients. Regularly these were mailer templates that the clients wished to use repeatedly, and had to be designed and built so that they would render well and degrade gracefully on a variety of mail clients and also so they could be easily editted by clients.
Mailers I have designed and built include: Janet Jackson, Madonna, MTV, Co Op, Miley Cyrus, Delphic, Noah and The Whale, Michael Buble, Bella Union, Morrissey, Nonesuch Records, Plan B, Warner Records, St Trinians, Two Door Cinema Club, Paulo Nutini, The Cheek, Midlake, Vertigo Records, Universal Music Group and more.
Kate Nash
While at Retrofuzz, I pitched for the new Kate Nash website. Originally the design was well received until it was decided that one of her friends would be drawing a website design for her instead.
I did, however, go on to redesign her Youtube and Twitter using a variety of the drawings provided to create new collages, as well as working on a number of advertising banners for the release of the new album and single.
Eastpak
During my time at Retrofuzz, I worked on a number of projects for Eastpak. Most of these were print projects, designing posters for events and such.
My favourite project for Eastpak was for the Girls Heart Eastpak event at their Carnaby Street store in London. I designed posters and flyers for the event as well as a logo which was used on hang tags and t-shirts at the event.
I also designed a mini-site for Christopher Shannon, that used a fun navigation technique to browse over a digital version of the lookbook as well as providing further information.
The Killers
While at Retrofuzz, I designed and built a mini-site to serve as the official UK online portal for The Killers. The site was intended to be a simple, one page website that linked to the rest of their online presence. The design focussed mainly on their album artwork.
Marina And the Diamonds
While at Retrofuzz, I designed a pitch for the redesign of Marina's blog. While my design was well liked and adopted, it was handed over to another company to be built and a number of changes were made to my original intended design. The image featured here is my final layout. The link will take you to the final site.
The Fur
This project mainly involved coming up with a bold and simple identity for remixing duo The Fur. The idea behind the layouts were that they were as clean and minimal as possible with the background and logo being high impact. I had it in mind that the fur texture used could be changed every so often to provide some development and variety. The design was applied to their (super simple) website and Myspace.
Glory Glory
Glory Glory was a one off magazine based around the idea of sex in Manchester. It's approach was bold, playful and tongue-in-cheek rather than seedy. I worked on this as part of a team but was responsible for project management, branding, some of the layout and some of the photography for the fashion shoots.
Mike Smith
The Mike Smith Gallery was another project undertaken while at Retrofuzz. It was designed to be simple and clean with Smith's work being the main focus. The background is randomly generated from a collection of his work and makes it the focal point of the site.
The red content background extends horizontally with the content on each page, therefore making sure that the background works receive as much exposure as possible.
Myspaces
While at Retrofuzz, I designed and implemented a number of official artist Myspaces.
These included: Athlete, Cheryl Cole, Ian Brown, Aggro Santos, Lissie, Stevie Hoang, The Saturdays and more.
Moho
For a long time during my time at Retrofuzz, I was responsible for the design and delivery of all the print media for Moho Live. I designed and laid out all the posters and flyers for various events. However, they already had a fairly prescriptive style in place and I had to work within those constraints.
I found it to be a good learning experience, and enjoyed building up a good working relationship with the client.
If You
This project was to design a method of raising awareness about Co2 emissions and personal carbon footprints. The idea was that themed seed packets would be placed in various places where small Co2 crimes were committed that people were not really aware of (like buying organic foods that were flown in).
The goal was to encourage people to take at least small steps to counteract their actions by planting the seeds and encouraging a positive attitude.
Annie Mac
This was designed for a pitch for Annie Macs new website. Unfortunately, it wasn't selected for the final redesign, however, the white space and clean lines is representative of a style I particularly enjoy.
Johnny Flynn
One of my first jobs when I joined Retrofuzz was a complete design of a website for the musician Johnny Flynn. He had provided us with diaries full of his own drawings and notes and folders full of scraps and photographs. The brief was to create a website layout from his artwork and collections that had a messy, collage feel to it. Each and every page was individually designed with a new collage for each.
Charles Worthington
While at TBWA, I worked as part of a team on the redesign of the Charles Worthington website and launch. This entailed working on designing or amending a number of the pages as well as a variety of ad containers and mailers.
Thank you for looking
cass@graphicgoose.co.uk