portfolio and blog for Claire Boston, a London-based graphic designer

Posts in professional
wish you were here already

As an in-house designer, I work to a lot of tight briefs with strict deadlines; sometimes it feels like I’m on a hamster wheel, churning out design around the clock. But every now and then, a cheery little project strolls into my inbox that makes my eyes light up.

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professionalClaire Boston
new brand, who dis?

I've been providing freelance services to MarketInvoice for a couple of years. During this time, they have grown from being a disruptive start-up offering invoice finance into a more established business finance company with multiple solutions. With this growth came the need for a new identity to better reflect MarketInvoice's positioning. 

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helping small businesses

Nucleus, a commercial finance company, needed an infographic to help explain one of their products. A business cash advance works by allowing small businesses that sell goods via credit cards and debit cards to get a loan. They then repay that loan as a percentage of their daily credit card takings. This means that whether the business has a good day or a bad day, they only repay what they can afford.

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sail away with me

MarketInvoice always throws a summer bash for the team, and this year it's on a boat on the Thames. Head of People, Anouk, revealed that she's a dab hand at creating origami boats, so I created a design to work with the folds.

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progress: issue 5

In late April, with an upcoming holiday back home on the horizon, CRF got in touch to see if we could squeeze in a new issue of Progress before I left the UK sans laptop. With a 3 week turnaround, 6 articles yet to be commissioned, but full trust in the well-oiled machine that is CRF, we went for it. 

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unlocking stories in every child

Tales Toolkit provides interactive, child-led resources using easy to remember symbols to represent story structure. It's run by Kate, an ex-teacher who had worked in areas of high child poverty. She found that lots of children entered school low in language, confidence, creativity and social skills, so she developed Tales Toolkit to overcome these issues.

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article in the Guardian

Lucy, the delightful content editor at The Economist Educational Foundation, wrote a piece for the Guardian on getting young people discussing and debating the news. This is something that the Foundation is fostering in the Burnet News Club, and is very close to their hearts.

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unpacking beauty

The wonderful Silver Ghost Communications and I go way back - we have known each other since we were toddlers and followed each other through school, ending up in London together. She has recently gone freelance and this was our first project together. 

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what's occurring?

It's a rare Tuesday night without any work to do, so I'm going to write a little update on what I've been up to recently. In all honesty, I'm waiting for a film to download so rather than twiddling my thumbs I thought I'd be productive instead. And so, what have I been up to? Some logo design, some brand guidelines, a new website for the Foundation, a whole lot of wedding invitations, and other bits and bobs.

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progress: issue 4

So far, it's been a busy summer. Not that it's been much of a summer, thank you English weather. One project that is always a delight, is CRF's Progress magazine. This issue looks at the fall out from Brexit, smart simplicity, and what it's like to be a digital worker.

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my thoughts on freelancing

Freelancing can be stressful. There are multiple clients, jobs, invoices, expenses, deadlines, schedule clashes. There's a lot to think about beyond just doing the actual work. To cope with this, I use an app called Cushion to help me maintain my sanity. It allows me to input all my clients, projects, timeframes and revenue, and helps me to forecast when I'm going to be busy and when I can take on extra work.

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ghosts in the machine

Towards the end of last year, Tom from Euromoney Thought Leadership got in touch to tell me about an exciting new project they had coming up. Their client, international law firm Baker & McKenzie, wanted to commission a survey on artificial intelligence and the implications for the financial markets.  Not only that, but they wanted the report design to reflect the subject and not just be another stale white paper; they wanted something fresh and exciting. The game was afoot. 

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xerocon

Xero are the new kids on the block in the accounting world - cool, a little edgy and from New Zealand, they offer cloud-based accountancy services to SMEs around the world. Their product is a bit of a phenomenon now, and as part of that movement they host Xerocon every year.  My client, MarketInvoice, as partners with Xero in the FinTech revolution, were exhibiting as Gold Sponsors. I designed their "Don't Bank On It" guide to Alternative Finance, as well as their stand an other promotional materials, such as promotional inserts and t-shirts.

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