In this month’s ‘Meet the Team blog’, we shine the spotlight on Senior Designer, John Mares. We explore John’s design background, his career journey at IGNIFI, and the valuable impact he has made on our design and digital services.
An Early Talent
John’s design journey began long before embarking on a full-time career. Starting out in his teens creating prom invites and PowerPoint presentations and building his MySpace/Picxo pages in his own time, John demonstrated tech savviness and an eye for design from a young age.
At the age of 19 John embarked on a career in design and spent over 13 years working for a print company in Durham. During this time, he developed his skills in website design, logo creation, and branding. John’s creative talents were used in crafting various marketing materials, both in print and digital formats. John progressed to the position of lead designer before joining the IGNIFI team in April 2022. John has honed his skills through self-learning and has accumulated years of design experience across a number of industries including healthcare.
Before joining IGNIFI, John previously worked with our Digital Director, Craig Lambert in 2009, before reuniting at IGNIFI later in their careers. Craig played a crucial role in mentoring John in Adobe Photoshop and InDesign, and John still applies those skills today to support both the wider IGNIFI team and our valued clients.
Digital Design and Development
In April 2022, John joined IGNIFI as a Designer and immediately made a significant impact on our studio team with his impressive skills and valuable contributions. His exceptional performance over a short space of time with us led to his well-deserved promotion to the role of Senior Designer last year.
John plays an important role in delivering brand compliant, modular content that our clients need for forward-facing omnichannel marketing campaigns. John’s knowledge of digital and design techniques is highly valued across a range of client accounts and campaigns. Working closely with our in-house UI/UX and digital execution experts, John’s experience allows him to bridge the gap between these services and ensure that assets are intuitive for the end user, without compromising on design.
John’s work includes the design and development of Digital Sales Aids (DSAs), eDetailers, emails, websites, videos and the design of a wide variety of printed marketing materials for our clients. In recent years John has dedicated particular time and effort to upskilling in Adobe After Effects and XD, achieving this through self-guided learning on Udemy and hands-on experience in client projects.
As a Senior Designer, John also plays an active role in supporting the development of other members of our studio team. By offering mentorship, we are able to expand our internal skillset, keeping up with the latest healthcare and industry trends. This enables us to provide our clients with exceptional digital and design support throughout their campaign development process.
Fun Fact
“I’m an avid Newcastle United supporter and enjoying playing football with my friends and in a local 5 a-side league.”
Posted by Jake Watson
Account Executive
