Hello there friends, I’m Conor and you may know me as that guy from MPS who you don’t really know what he does and that’s okay cause I’m here to tell you.

I’m the Brand & Design Officer (BDO) for MPS this year which means I have two main jobs. The first is maintaining, improving and ensuring that the MPS brand is held to the highest possible standard. This means working with the entire committee to make sure our brand is on everything from stings to vlogs to posters and this also means I spend a lot of time working with our lovely PRO Kate.

The second job is designing all the graphics, posters and creating logos for all of our events, social media, emails and shows such as Limelight. Designing graphics is the most intense but most rewarding part of the job, I have designed over 150 different graphics for MPS throughout the year which has given me a huge portfolio of work, taught me a lot about working with people when trying to design something for them and developing a design over both short and long periods of time.

I won’t claim BDO has been an easy job however I would argue that it may be the most productive and rewarding role on committee, graphic design is an incredibly good talent to have and a year as BDO will give you a chance to massively expand your skill-set and knowledge of software. Speaking of software, I have used Adobe Illustrator for nearly everything I have made as it a vector based graphics editing software meaning you can easily adapt your graphics, make changes and create graphics for screens, social media or print with relative ease. I would highly recommend you have experience with Illustrator as a starting point and Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects and InDesign are all really helpful to have as a BDO although not entirely necessary.

The other aspect of being a BDO is of course being a member of the committee. This requires commitment to events and meetings on a weekly basis and it gives you a taste of what you can expect going into the industry we’re all interested in but most importantly it gives you the chance to expand your skills while also passing them on to newer members which is an incredibly rewarding feeling. Even MORE important than that though is of course the friends you’ll make along the way, MPS committee is a bit of a dysfunctional family at times but it gave me some of the best friends I could’ve asked for and although it has been stressful and tough going at times I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

My final comments on this role as my year of doing it begins to wind down would be this; BDO is a fantastic committee position that allows you to be creative and have fun with your work, it does require a lot of attention, work hours and good organisational skills but that is exactly what you can expect if you want to be a Graphic Designer at some point in time so it is absolutely some of the greatest experience I could have asked for. BDO can also be a bit of an overlooked role at times but this is also nice because you really have free reign over your job to be creative as you wish.

MPS has given me a lot since I started in DCU and I don’t feel like I’ll ever be able to repay that debt however I sure have tried to with my year on committee by giving it my 110% to the point that I literally fell asleep on the floor of the control room during the broadcast.

To finish this off I would encourage anyone who wants to be committee to talk to the person(s) in the role(s) they’re thinking of running for and then go for it, it really is a unique experience and I’d do this year all over again if I could.

If you’re thinking of running for BDO or want to know more just ask me, shoot me a text on facebook or find me hanging about the U literally any day during the week!

Yours sincerely,

Conor Doyle

(I hope you know why I was on committee now)