Jess Lace is the passionate one-woman band behind the screen at Beachdays. She’s a graphic + web designer with years of experience backing her from advertising agencies to small businesses and start-ups.
She’s a traveller and beach junkie, with interest in the wellness industry, having completed her training as a yoga instructor & masseuse, so it’s no surprise that the style she brings to the design studio is inspired by all these things. Picture natural tones and interesting typography, offset with pops of colour and quirky pieces that work in with an overall minimalistic design.
When she’s not working you’ll find her enjoying a slow morning sipping on a coffee, soaking up the sun with a book, surfing or heading off for a beach-day at one of the idyllic spots she now calls home.
The early years of Jess’ career were shaped by permanent roles on varying sized teams within the advertising industry. In more recent years, this has shifted into freelance roles with expansion into other industries, focusing more on independent businesses.
These brands and clients have all contributed to the foundations, knowledge, and growing skillset that can be seen put to work at Beachdays.
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Height PM is Australasia’s leading technical tendering and procurement consultancy and I was first placed with them on assignment through Portfolio Recruitment. I now work with them consistently as their permanent freelance designer, so I get the flexibility to still pick up freelance work while also being considered a part of their whanau.
Height is a values-led organisation which helps create sustainable communities alongside their clients, and this is reflected in a lot of the work that I do for them. They are a fast growing, tight-knit team who work really mindfully on their projects. General work that I do for them includes designing reports and documents in InDesign, making them more visually pleasing and presentable, along with graphic diagrams, web design and other collateral. Majority of the clients are in the infrastructure sector with a large number falling under government agencies so it requires a high level of confidentiality, consistency and attention to detail.
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I’ve worked with Brooke from Brandspired for a couple of years, usually picking up things when he gets extra busy. It’s always a range of things and can often be last minute which keeps me on my toes, pulling together reports, small branding projects and other print collatoral for a range of his clients. We work really well together and more recently he has unofficially become somewhat of my senior art director - I’m able to go to him for advice and to problem solve in the design realm but also in the realm of being a solo design business owner.
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I still work with MetroEXP on a freelance basis, picking up work mainly for Waste Management, Chorus, Rodney Wayne and New Zealand Olympics Committee. However, this small agency was my debut into the agency world when I was green out of Uni. I worked with some great brands, those of who included Ford Motor Company, Pioneer Brand Products, Colab Projects and McGreals. The projects varied from catalogues, collateral, corporate stationary, eDM, signage and event branding to website design and management. A particularly awesome job that I was fortunate to work on was the Rio Olympics 2016 Village Dress for the New Zealand Olympic Committee which involved designing the Wall Murals for Athlete's lounge and apartment rooms, Building/Level Signage, Exterior dress design.
I was involved in many projects at different stages throughout the creative and execution process. I had the opportunity to work solely on some, while others I was part of the execution design, bringing pieces to completion once the main creative was specified.
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I had the opportunity to work alongside some large FCMG brands while still I working within a small creative team - Creative Director and Senior Graphic Designer, to roll out large campaigns across print (point of sale for supermarkets, magazine ads, adshells, busbacks) and digital (large scale digi banners, web banners, digital adshells) for large brands such as Kraft/Heinz & Wattie’s and Gregg’s. I also worked on smaller scale projects for Hancocks specifically Jack Daniels, Constellation Brands and Smales Farm.
A large portion of my day to day consisted of rolling out creatives for 14 different social media pages (instagram and facebook) those of which included Fujitsu General NZ, The Good Taste Company and Food in a Minute. I worked with the Senior Graphic Designer and the Social Media team on these and often had creative freedom based on the content written.
I grew a lot as a designer while working here and this ultimately led to me being brave enough to go full-time freelance after leaving this job.