We're expanding our team: June 2018

We've grown steadily over the past 8 years and now comes the time to add 2 more members to our team. Here's why we are expanding, how it will benefit us and our clients.

We started MadeByShape with 2 members in 2010, myself (Andy) and Jason. After years of working together as 2 separate Freelancers, our workload meant we made the decision to start an agency with the view of employing people in the future. To role it back a bit, myself and Jason were both Freelancing for agencies in the UK whilst students and also had a large clientele of our own while studying. When we graduated from Salford University, at the age of 21, I was approached to lecture Part-Time on the courses alongside the Digital Lecturer, Lawrence Giles. Within 6 months I was asked to take over, I accepted this role to earn extra cash and put this accolade on my CV whilst I was Freelancing and building up my presence within the industry.

I quickly realised during this role at the University, that I was able to spot talent before other companies and teach them my way of thinking. In 2010, when we made the move to create MadeByShape - we were in the perfect position to start employing talent directly from Salford University. We immediately invited 2 fantastic designers to join us on a part-time freelance roles whilst they were students. Not only did this help our workflow, they learnt a lot during this period - learning how to handle client feedback, working to a faster pace within a studio, being in a design environment, and project management - some of which cannot be taught in a classroom.

To press fast forward in this article - we moved studios, and started to employ more team members as the years passed. Our exposure for MadeByShape grew, more clients were noticing who we were, more enquiries, more awards. All by having the same ethos from Day One. Myself and Jason both agree that it's this simple... if we produce great work and a great service - that client will send us more work or recommend us. And whilst working, we enjoy ourselves, we create an atmosphere were everybody enjoys coming to work, clients enjoy visiting our studio and it's like a 'home from home'

Getting to now, 2018, we are looking to expand further. Why? Because we feel we could improve in a couple of areas, not only from a client perspective but also from an in-house production process.

Content

We've now got Abbie involved, she will handle content creation on sites and blog writing. Abbie understand SEO and the importance of great content, fresh content and how tone of voice matters when it comes to a range of target audiences. She joins our team after a successful work experience period. You can read all about her views here at by reading this article. 

A Junior Me

What does that even mean? My role has changed over the years, I now look after clients, pitch for work, I'm a project manager for clients and our in-house team. I create new business, network, find talent, produce proposals and quotations for jobs. I also find ways to improve Shape and keep moving forward as well as looking after the SEO. But all this means I travel a lot, meeting new clients all over the world - not only from the North West of England. I love it, but I cannot be everywhere. I need somebody to take some workload off of myself, meeting some of the smaller clients, managing the team in-house, replying to emails, answering the phone, keeping clients happy, and networking. This person needs to be friendly, can't be shy, provides solutions to problems, understand that all clients are different, and is passionate about growth.

Junior Web Developer

We need another Web Developer to build smaller projects, and handle client amendments. This will ease the pressure on our other Developers and reduce stress levels. This person needs to be motivated, understand coding, work in an efficient way and be able to handle multiple projects at once. We think we're all geeks, cool geeks if that's a thing, we need another 'one of us'.

Conclusion

By adding to our team, it will enable us to handle more projects and reduce pressure and/or stress within the studio. It also means that the studio will run smoothly when I'm out of the studio, travelling to meet clients. We always want to be a small studio, for various reasons, we want to keep the service personable. But who knows what will happen over the next few years, watch this space. We're also in the process of a complete re-brand here at MadeByShape. Some very exciting times ahead so make sure you're following us on Instagram for all the latest updates.