PARTNERS AND SPOUSES IN BUSINESS
Design Jessica G
by Jessica Sands and Kate Graham
raphic design is Jessica Sands' passion. It was nurtured while completing her degree in the subject
at Bath Spa University, and was cultivated by the six years she subsequently spent in Bath designing children’s books and stationery.
It was while excelling in her career in Bath that Jess met her future husband, a Hercules pilot at RAF Lyneham, and life took a rather exciting turn. After RAF Lyneham closed, the pair moved to RAF Brize Norton, and it was this change of location that provided Jess with the necessity – and inspiration – to begin working freelance. Her business, designJessica, was born. “I had always longed to go freelance, however it was the closure of RAF Lyneham that gave me the final push,” she recalls. “I needed a job that I could take anywhere the RAF would post us and it seemed like the natural progression.”
Having tied the knot and moved into married quarters last August, Jess can now be found working from two locations: home at Brize, and a hot desk at a local agency where she is the lead designer. This combination of workspaces allows Jess to make the best of both worlds; she enjoys working with like-minded people, but loves the freedom of running her own business. It is an arrangement that has afforded her considerable success in the field of corporate design, and her role has seen her create everything from marketing materials and stationery to a bright pink motorcycle helmet.
There were, of course, a number of resources and factors that assisted Jess in gaining the independence and job satisfaction she enjoys today. She was, she admits, initially a little confused by the technicalities of running a business – a situation that was remedied upon being offered a place on the Unsung Hero Start-Up Course. “It was the best thing I have ever done for my business,” she admits. “It was on this course where I found
www.raf-ff.org.uk
out about all the fiddly bits of running your own business, such as tax.” Her experience of the course was so positive that she is thrilled to have recently been invited to become
an ambassador for the course.
Between this and her other experiences, Jess is finding owning a business to be an incredibly rewarding experience. She continues to achieve exciting new goals; she recently became lead designer for the Forces Enterprise Network (FEN), a team of military spouses who are also businesspeople who use their experience of military life to contribute to the work of military businesses and enterprises. Designing the FEN's company logo and applying it to business cards, flyers and their website has been one of her favourite projects to date, and she loves the way her design work allows the whole feel of a company to develop from the smallest idea or colour.
It hasn't, of course, always been plain sailing, and achieving her success has meant facing
a number of challenges. Jess admits that working from home requires considerable self-discipline. Additionally, many of her business contacts, also military spouses, are based in different parts of the country – luckily there's Skype. However, she looks forward to seeing the military continue to increase the information and support made available to dependants looking to develop their own businesses. Thanks to the Unsung Hero Course, for example, Jess hopes to continue working towards her goal – to open her own design studio one day – and would encourage dependants seeking to start their own business to waste no time in investigating this valuable resource.
More information about Jess's work can be found online at
www.designjessica.co.uk
Envoy Autumn 2015 27
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