Our staff profile this month features Swanline Print’s Design Manager, Cliff Wiggett, who recently celebrated his 14th year anniversary at Swanline, and was the first designer to join the Swanline team back in 2006, the design team steadily started to grow soon after.
After leaving Sutton Coldfield Design College in 2001, Cliff joined the packaging industry as a sample maker, working his way up into a designer role before attracting interest from Swanline Print.
Cliff now manages a busy workload as the Design Department is very rarely quiet, and though he spends a lot of his time allocating jobs to the design team, he is still very much a designer and enjoys tackling all manner of enquiries. Cliff tells us: “After all these years I still love designing. Designing and building something from scratch is a unique feeling.
“I love seeing our designs out in the marketplace,” Cliff continues, telling us his favourite part about working for Swanline. “We are lucky to work on some really exclusive jobs at Swanline and there’s nothing better than seeing your finished designs in store when you are out and about shopping.”
Cliff also tells us about his fondest memories from working at Swanline, and after 14 years there have been quite a few! “The staff parties have always been great. You spend so much time together in the office but it’s always great to let your hair down and have a good drink and a laugh together once in a while. The on-site casino night and the party we had in the SPB building when we first purchased it were brilliant!”
Cliff’s main hobbies outside of work mainly evolve around music, which has always been his biggest passion. He has a broad taste in music and enjoys listening to anything from folk, to rock, to techno and drum and bass. He enjoys watching live gigs and has been a keen guitarist since he was 8 years old and is currently teaching himself piano. Besides that, Cliff would describe his next passion as red wine!
Cliff leaves us with two pieces of advice: “Never assume anything… always check and find out for sure. Also, failure to prepare is preparing to fail!”