Welcome to our new blog series ‘Behind The Teams’ where we sit down with a member of staff to discuss their role and department, celebrate their work and look back on memories!  

For the first ‘Behind The Teams’ we spoke to one of our Brand Management Operators, Kerry Hamilton, to learn more about her role, the work she does and how the processes have changed since Kerry joined Springfield as a trainee operator in 2000! 

Tell us about your role and what it entails! 

In my day as a Brand Management Operator at Springfield Solutions, I work on lots of different projects for Reckitt and our Paints clients.  

My role covers all aspects of the job cycle, including Master layout, repro, colour management, language rollouts, amends and final outputs.

How do you work with other departments within the company to ensure brand consistency and alignment? 

I work closely with the Customer Service Representatives (CSR), who fill in all relevant information on my work orders.  

This includes the cutter, as well as where I can find existing files to match and take the layout from when creating new files and rollouts. In addition, they are always helpful if I have any questions regarding my files. 

Walk us through a typical day in your role!

Each day I have work allocated to me by the CSR team, which is allocated digitally using Trello. The work can be any number of things daily.  

Some of the work I do includes: 

• Creating an artwork supplied by the design team 
• Making an image editable 

• Ensuring correct colours are used for print 
• Creating GMGs 
• Text amends 

Firstly, creating an artwork involves taking the design and laying it out in the correct cutter, ready for print. Another important job is to make sure that the design supplied uses the correct colours for the appropriate printer, including any special colours that may be used for specific logos for certain brands. This ensures colour consistency, which is especially important for the Global brands we work with. 

Following this, I would then apply repro to the Printer spec, followed by adding text to show the layout. I also produce GMGs for the customer to approve to ensure that accurate colours are achieved.

Once this step of the Brand Management process is done and approved, the next part of my job would be to use this master to apply different languages.  

Some files are laid out with one language on them, and others can have two or three. To create this, I take the master file and a text file supplied by the CSR containing the text in the languages chosen and apply the required text. This is then sent off to the client for Country approval.

My next job would be to then make any amends to this file if it comes back with changes to layout or text.

After this, the file would be approved, and I would then have to check the file to the printer spec to make sure all repro is done correctly and get the specified file type ready to go to the printers. This would include the collection of all images, pathing fonts and checking the file to the approved PDF.

Can you share any challenges you come across in your role? 

Some of the brands that we work on have several different products, which are in aerosols, sleeves, blisters, and cartons and are printed at different printers that use the same visual design. As an operator, we print proofs of these to send to the printers to ensure that they are a close match to each other and ultimately, look the same when they go to market and are on the shelf.

This can be a challenge, as different printers have different ink types and substrates which are different in colour. To combat this, we produce a number of GMGs and set them up to mimic the substrate colour so that we can amend our colours to print the same on the different substrates. 

How has your job role changed over the years?

My role hasn’t changed a great deal since I started working at Springfield, but the process of the job has changed a bit.  

All the checking of files is much easier, as we can now check files mostly on screen. Whereas, when I first came to Springfield, we would have to print out our final files and flick between this and the approved PDF file on a Lightbox to make sure all the content matched!  

Are you looking for a brand management solution to help bring your packaging concepts to reality and ensure consistent branding across products? Get in touch!