Archived

Polarsteps

Posted on by artwigg

Social media is great, but when your away, you want something that just works. Effortlessly tracking the memories and giving something worthwhile at the end of it all. No distractions. Unfortunately, other than a few filters and underwhelming number of likes, Instagram doesn’t tend to cut it. An app I found a couple of years ago perfectly fills this gap. Polarsteps has won a converted spot on the front page of my home screen and constant recommendations to anyone I hear is traveling abroad. This is a little personal plug for it. Totally my opinions, no bribery going on!

The best part of the app has to be it’s effortless journey tracking. It takes hardly any battery, no data and gives the best track of the journey taken. It’s probably not too helpful on a beach holiday to Mallorca but on a trip traveling hundreds of miles around a country there results are great. Even on a recent trips to Singapore and Scotland I can see my entire journey plotted out.

The minimum the app needs, is the dates you’re going away, and access to your location. Then, that morning, from the moment you leave the home, the adventure is being drawn on the map. For me, normally along the motorway to Heathrow. From that point on, you can start placing the pins to form the steps. This can be even easier with the app looking at the photos taken and the cities you’ve been visiting suggesting appropriate locations along the way. This is a lifesaver if you’re slightly rubbish at keeping on top of entries or sitting doing them in bulk over coffee shop wifi!

The point this becomes more than just a trip-tracking app, however, is when you’re home. Back at work, feeling slightly depressed, one of the newest features kicks in. The website automatically generates a travel book showing stats about the journey, and prints of steps along the way. They come in a nice hard back book, on glossy paper and great for showing off to friends and family while they sit and flick through. The books aren’t cheap though. I’ve struggled to make one for under £50 but that’s massively outweighed by the quality of what falls on the doorstep. At the moment there’s also limited control over the placement of the images on the pages. It takes a little playing around and a few re-generations to get it just right. There is now three in our house (I’ve made two, my parents have one) and there will probably be another two soon! This is what the front page of my recent trip would look like…

It’s not often an app gets nearly total praise from me, especially within the social media world. They normally want way too much information, carry too many adverts and always feel slightly…dodgy. Polarsteps is the total opposite and will be sitting steady on my home screen. Even Apple seems to agree:

Polarsteps is available free on the app store. More info is available on their website https://www.polarsteps.com

National Trust

Posted on by artwigg

The last 6 months has varied massively. Every Tuesday, the hectic full-time job gets paused for a peaceful day out in the Buckinghamshire countryside. In March 2016, I started a volunteering role with the National Trust in their Stowe property. Here’re a couple of time lapses of my normal lunchtime view…

View across to the Temple of Venus
View across to the Temple of Venus
View up to Stowe House from the West Lake Pavilion
View up to Stowe House from the West Lake Pavilion

As a family, we’ve visited Stowe for as long as we’ve lived in the area and been National Trust members FOREVER so the chance to see the other side of the organisation has been interesting. Even the family photo archive shows how long we’ve been visiting…

Walking across the Shell Bridge with my brother in the late 90's
Walking across the Shell Bridge with my brother in the late 90’s

As Marketing Assistant, I support the marketing officer with pretty much anything she needs help with. All this whilst learning what it takes to plan and maintain the website, social media and print advertising.

  • Coldest job: Helping to serve tea in a 250-year-old temple without heating in the middle of April. It was cold but great to meet some of the visitors to the gardens
  • Laziest job: Laminating 120 Halloween posters to be distributed around the area
  • Most unexpected job: Putting up 2 gazebos

Website work

screen-shot-2016-09-09-at-19-32-42
Links to the two articles on the Stowe homepage

Work on an extensive history section of the property’s website has been the bulk of my time so far. Something that seems to be a simple task becomes quite time-consuming when you bring in research on 75 different monuments, countless landscape gardeners, various audiences for the content and sometimes complex National Trust tone of voice guidelines. Who’d have thought that an ampersand would be such a difficult subject!

screen-shot-2016-09-09-at-19-32-31

So far two main feature articles have been created. One of these details the history of the Stowe estate and its owners. The second profiles the main gardeners that created the world-famous gardens. The main audience for the pages is an older National Trust member with an interest in the history of the property. The theme is still broad enough to attract others who may be interested in a particular gardener, style or just reading up after a visit. The gardens early links to ‘Capability’ Brown also help with its significance!

The two pages so far are…

The History of Stowe  and The Gardeners That Made Stowe. Each of the gardener’s profile pages follow on from this.

UPDATE: Here’s two video’s I’ve edited for the property (footage was taken by someone else). As ever, brand guidelines needed following, correct fonts used and a consistent tone of voice

FINAL UPDATE:

A new position in Ralph Lauren has meant I’ve had to stop volunteering at Stowe. It’s been a great year, developing and learning skills in a ‘real’ environment. Learning how a large organisation manages their websites and create and distributes their content has revealed some of the constraints but also the opportunities that arise. My final few pieces of work included a continuation of the ‘wildlife’ sections on the website and another short video showing the night wildlife in the gardens:

(Alot of well spent time went into getting the video to match the music!)

The National Trust do great work across the country and volunteering with them reveals that from the inside. Everyone involved has the success of the Trust and the properties as the ultimate aim. The last year has kept my membership direct debit solidly intact!!

*Updated* And that’s a wrap…

Posted on by artwigg

d971e-original

*UPDATE* I figured that this photo needs some sort of final explanation and the Exposure week needs a roundup. Exposure ended on 9th May 2014. Despite being fewer shows this year (12 hours instead of 20 hours) we didn’t want to be any less ambitious. Building on the success of last year’s groundbreaking debut shows, we needed to create the 12 hours (plus some additional online ‘stuff’) to a professional level that anyone watching would expect to find on the BBC or ITV.

Read More