My week at Mzuri Design

My name is Ellie Richards and I have just finished doing my GCSEs at Guildford High School. For my week’s work experience, I chose to come to Mzuri and spend a week in their office and get involved with the things they do. I had heard tons of positive comments about the company, so I felt lucky to be accepted for the week, and excited for what lay ahead.

I turned up at Mzuri’s office on Monday morning with little knowledge of what I was letting myself into, but when I arrived, I was immediately overwhelmed by the welcoming and buzzing atmosphere I had just encountered. I was introduced to the smiling, enthusiastic team, shown my way around the building and after a refreshing cup of tea, got straight to work on my first task involving a mailshot database. After a few hours, I had become very competent at using the software and the data was well on its way to being completed. After a well-earned lunch break, I began my next task with Victoria, who outlined the requirements for a promotional postcard for a company based in London. Having been given some useful information, I began writing the blurb part on the back, doing my best to advertise the company and hone in on the requirements for its specific audience. I was pleased I could help out and when I was happy with my final result, I emailed it over for some final tweaking. Finally, I discussed with Clare some possibilities for a mail chimp and did some research for that, which was a great task and added variety to my day. After a long, fun and informative first day, I reluctantly left for home, reflecting on my first day with Mzuri. So far, so good!

By Tuesday, I had learnt the ropes and felt at ease in the friendly work-place at Mzuri Design. I continued with the mailshot, and just before lunch, had ended up with a complete set of data for Clare to use- a job well done! I was then given a challenging task, to fill in a 6 page, DL leaflet for a company, by condensing information from their website etc. and adding a few ideas of my own. Whilst doing that, I learnt how to summarise and advertise information and understand the basic layout for a small hand-out leaflet. Just before I finished for the day, I was given a task Katherine had come up with the night before; a blog, about Kit Kats! It was time to test my writing skills. Slightly apprehensive about writing my first ever blog, I gathered together some information and researched facts and figures to help me decide where to begin the next day… .

Day 3 and the team continued to be extremely encouraging and after we discussed some ideas, I got stuck in to writing my Kit Kat blog. Once I got in to the ‘blog writing zone’ I managed to get into the flow of it, and soon enough I had my first draft completed. Clare kindly read through and gave me some useful tips on how I could improve it. With my final draft ready, I was shown how to log on and input my first blog onto their site. I even designed a small photo time-line to go alongside the text to add interest, and when at last it was published I was very pleased with my end result and got some really positive feedback from all the Mzuri team, so thank you to them for that opportunity!

In the afternoon, I was shown a programme called ‘Cision Point’ where by you can search under different categories to get together a list of places appropriate for your client to advertise in. Once I had got to grips with the software, I ended up with 2 full lists of possible magazines ready for the client, so another useful software I’d learnt about.

Thursday began with sorting through a selection of returned postcards and eliminating any duplicates, so Mzuri could identify certain clients that had moved or were no longer in business. Then came a long, yet essential task involving MailChimp designed for sending out email marketing campaigns to subscribers and members. This continued to Friday, but I was done by lunch. On my last day, I was assigned the task of filling 40 Press Packs for a company doing a garden at Hampton Court Flower Show. Whilst doing this, I saw that variety of things Mzuri do, and how good the quality was. In each pack were two, beautifully designed and well written A4 information sheets, along with the sleek company postcard. They had even designed small CD roms in each pack containing a selection of photos, which I think was a brilliant way of advertising.

All in all, my week at Mzuri has been a brilliant experience, and I would like to thank everyone there for being such great people to be with and really adding all they could to give me the best week of experience.

By Ellie