We host a regular stream of pupils from local schools in Burntwood at Mercian Labels, and last week we were joined by Mitchell who wished to experience a week in the life of a graphic designer and some computer programming.  This is his week-end report – sounds like it was well worthwhile!

“At first I was a little bit worried and anxious like most people would be on their first time doing something different to what they normally do which in my case is going on my work experience for a week instead of going back to school.

I came here because I was thinking about doing graphics when I’m older but now programming is also in that list of what I could do when I’m grown up. On this experience I’ve learned a lot about how labels are made, programming, vector graphics, raster graphics, the effort needed in the making of a few labels for a customer, how stressful work can be and working hours which this was probably the most annoying thing that affected me this week as I was here from 9am to 5pm then on Friday, 9am to 4:30pm though the days did go very quick.

I’ve learned that raster graphics is a pain for artwork for handle which they would much appreciate having sent vector graphics to them instead which would give higher quality labels and made for orders a lot faster. This is because raster graphics pixelate however vector graphics are perfect as they doesn’t pixelate like raster graphics.

I’ve learned how to program a car gallery which was very difficult to understand by writing a program in something similar to notepad called gedit, then I opened it on a web browser to check that it worked. I have edited an image using an editing program called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) which uses raster graphics to edit or create images. I’ve designed a label using an editing program called Inkscape which can be used to create or edit vector graphics such as logos or diagrams. I learned programming off two employees here which helped me, gave me various tasks and taught me a few things. The tasks were to create a car gallery (see it here), get to know it, look at a few tutorials and learned the basics in two days. I learnt some Java script which is a high-level interpreted programming language which is common to programmers, and I have also learned HTML(Hyper text markup language) which is a set of markup symbols or codes inserted in a file to display on a World Wide Web browser page. The markup tells the Web browser how to display a Web page’s words, images, layout, colors etc for the user. I have learned more than I expected as I didn’t know the basics of programming however now I know more. I was treated with manners and everyone at Mercian Labels is kind towards each other. Overall, I have enjoyed my week here and I would rather come here than school!”

Thanks Mitchell – we were pleased to help!