Over 18 years of professional graphic design communications experience including: Logo & Branding Design, Advertising, Web & Email Design, Direct Mail, Corporate literature, Healthcare Collateral, Annual Reports, Book Design, and the list goes on...
I am currently employed full-time at a Direct & Digital communications agency in Sydney, but I am always open to new freelance opportunities. Based in the Inner West of Sydney I am available for local or national work. So if you are a local business who needs a flyer or a bigger national company who needs a new look for your brand, lets talk.

Feel free to contact me about any project big or small. We can set up a time to talk things through.

I am a dedicated, flexible, graphic designer/finished artist. I can help you to manage your print. I can take a job from initial idea all the way through to the final product. Feel free to contact me for any graphic design projects you may have.

About Samtgarner.com

Samtgarner.com is the second coming of my web life. I created samtgarner.co.uk as a digital portfolio when I was living in the UK. I needed an online portfolio as I was about to make the move to live in Australia with my family. Rather than dragging my old printed A3 book half way around the world, I needed something that I could show any prospective employers. I also wanted/needed to get myself into the digital realm, learn some web design, and start to understand how the web worked so that I could start expanding my design outlook. Designing and coding a portfolio site from scratch was a huge learning curve. With the help of Dreamweaver – The Missing Manual, some of the For Dummies books, google, and a lot of reading the site was up and running.
Samtgarner.com is the reinventing of my digital portfolio. This time I have opted to go down the CMS route, using WordPress for the back-end. This option gives me an easier site to update, add to, and generally manage. With a few tweaks to the code, to get it to do exactly what I want it to do, I can now easily control my content, pull feeds from other services and have a responsive portfolio that I can update at will wherever I am.

About me

I have been working in the creative industry since 1998. I spent my first 10 years working for Sudler & Hennessey, a global healthcare advertising agency in London, before moving to Sydney in 2009.

Samtgarner.com is a place for me to express myself. I will add photos of my life, that I take on my phone when I’m out and about (via Flickr). I will “blog” in my journal about things that interest me or that I find useful. And post in my “Portfolio” examples of my graphic design, photography, illustration and art that I have done over the years.

History

Totem Communications (Sydney, Australia) ~ May 2010 – Present

Creative Artworker – I joined Totem in May 2010, after working for them for 1 month previously, as a freelance Creative Artworker. My role in the agency was to work closely with the creative director to take projects all the way from conception to the final product. My time at Totem has been a great learning curve. I’ve developed myself creatively more in these years than I had in the years previous. Having to take a real hands on role, where you were solely responsible for producing the work, gave me greater confidence in myself as a creative. My previous experience as a Studio Manager gave me the experience I needed to run solo with projects.

Working closely with the digital producers, back- and front-end developers, I have grown my knowledge of web design greatly. I now have good understanding and working practices in digital design as well as print design. During my time at Totem I have worked on a varied collection of work including: Web design, edm’s, storyboards, Advertising, direct marketing, annual reports, POS materials, pharmaceutical collateral, Financial reports.

Freelance Creative Artworker (Sydney, Australia) ~ February 2010 – May 2010

Creative Artworker – After moving to Sydney I took some time out to settle down with my family and regroup. Whilst looking for full-time employment in Sydney I took on a number of freelance positions. This gave me a good foothold up into the Australian market, getting used to the city and introducing me to the Australian way of working. Freelancing was a nice way to get up to speed. I Worked for a couple of the bigger agencies in Sydney and also one of the smallest, with only 2 people, where I wrote and designed a brand guidelines document in less than a week for one of the major banks. During my brief freelance time I worked on advertising, marketing collateral, and even vehicle decals.

I worked my way up through the ranks and within 7 years I was the Studio Manager.

Sudler & Hennessy (London, UK) ~ Jan 1998 – December 2009

Studio Manager – Straight out of Uni, I started off as a Junior Artworker, working in a studio of 4, with a production team of 4, and 3 creative teams. This gave me a really good introduction into the design/advertising industry. I worked with some really great people over the years, and in the first few years I absorbed everything that I could from the people around me. The people I worked with ranged from the super anal-retentive – who taught me to be organised, the laid back creatives – Who taught me to think more and less at the same time, and the production team – who taught me the ins and outs of print and workflow management.
I worked my way up through the ranks and within 7 years I was the Studio Manager. Managing the studio team, offering senior support, liaising with printers, trafficking work, managing deadlines, structuring the studio, hardware and software maintenance, and managing everyone’s expectations on a day-to-day basis. I was also a very hands on Studio Manager, with Design and Finished Art Still a high priority. During my time at Sudler & Hennessey I worked on a varied collection of work including: direct marketing, conference and exhibition material, brand development, logos and brand guidelines, advertising, brochures, sales collateral, large format print, technical documents, interactive presentations.
Contact me if you would like to talk about any graphic design requirements you may have.