Professional Reflections
DANIEL MARTINEZ DA CRUZ Production Coordinator at Tearfund In-House Design Consultancy
My name is Daniel Martinez da Cruz and I work as the Production Coordinator at an international charity called Tearfund. I have also been working with young people on a voluntary basis for over 11 years and have taken over the running/management of the youth group for the past 3 years. I am 27 years old, married to beautiful Aelysh and have a daughter, Ivy, who is just over 1 years old.
I work in the in-house design consultancy called Brand and Communications, consisting of 6 Designers, 6 Copywriters, 7 people in the Digital Team and 4 of us in Creative Services. I started mainly with studio management, which mainly included scoping out projects with other team leaders and managing the ‘Creatives’. Knowledge of the creative process really helped me in this role so I could get involved in conversations around projects and accurately book in time for the team.
My role was later split into two positions. I applied for the Production Coordinator role so that I could concentrate 100% on that side of the job, which I had previously been working on for around 40% of my time. Production at Tearfund can often be very busy as it requires managing the majority of print and mailing jobs globally for the I initially applied for a Production organisation, including Assistant/Studio Manager role, overseeing the printed elements as my dad worked for Tearfund of projects from leaflets, posters and some more complex packs for a long time, also part of the to large crowd banners, t-shirts reason why I lived in Brazil for 2 and branded items for events. years when I was younger. This also involves sourcing goods Tearfund deals in international from the Far-East, constantly aid and relief, but tries to focus learning about new printing and more on education and manufacturing techniques that empowerment so that people solves a ‘we can’t do that’ can be helped out of poverty. problem, keeping up to date in Tearfund wants people to be skilled and to have a functioning the paper-printing world as paper mills and industrial printers infrastructure for them to carry are opening/closing all the time on improving and thriving in life. We like it when people don't say and making sure everything is delivered to the right place at ‘thank you’, as this means they have come out empowered, full the right time with the correct splits per address. of self-belief and with new skills and methodologies for living and Getting to grips with the different earning long term. This is why I types of printing (Litho, Digital, HP chose to apply for Tearfund.
51
PRODUCT DESIGN Middlesex University Faculty of Science and Technology
Indigo, Webpress) and all that comes with it; like bindings, paper types, finishing, collation orders etc. is one thing, but mailings was a whole new world to me. Tearfund doesn’t produce as many physical items anymore as we try our best to reduce our carbon footprint (as the environment is one of the biggest contributors for people living in poverty); so we mainly produce things digitally or printed goods. As we have a major focus on education we often have to put together mailings to be sent globally to partners, supporters and people working in the field. Posting things in my opinion has a nice constraint to projects, as you're constantly trying to balance budget, dimensions and weight whilst trying to create a mail-pack that sometimes needs to be eye-catching depending on the goals of that mail-pack. So, MDX Product Design... The biggest things I took away from uni was work ethic, collaboration and professionalism. The reality is that collaboration is key. Organisations don’t always look for, or hire people that can do everything, so collaboration is very important. You need to work hard, fast and get things done in a professional way, as this is the real world and ‘leaving that because it is not that important’ could mean (for Tearfund) the difference between millions of pounds of donations or being fined for not following GDPR and Environmental procedures. I still hear this in my dreams, from Wyn (Griffiths), ‘Make sure the project is at a finished stage by
