There's a school of thought that says you should never work on free projects because your time is so valuable that to give it away is an insult to your experience and creativity. There's another that says do whatever you can to get where you want to be and if that means taking jobs for "exposure" crack on and see what happens. Either of these can work, it just depends how good you are at spotting networking opportunities, whether you can use a freebie to catapult yourself into a paid job, whether you're so good at self-publicity that everyone will see it and the world will come to you. My approach is somewhere in the middle of these two: I try to keep my week full of paid work, but occasionally I'll say yes to something without a budget if I think it's interesting or worthwhile.

Which brings us to this job, a subtle brand refresh for Mount Primary School in New Brighton, where my partner is the headteacher (and yes, that is why there wasn't a £ sign attached).

The job didn't have a budget (schools need to prioritise pens, paper, heating, teachers and cleaners over logos and colour palettes) but an update was urgently needed in order to present the school's best face to the world. I began by looking at how the old logo was used across signage, uniforms and digital media, to see if there was anything I could keep. I was keen to do something transformative, but I knew it was important that it felt familiar. I wanted to make sure that if you had a school jumper with the old logo on, it wasn't obvious alongside kids with the new ones, so I kept the same overall shape and a similar design for the round version of the logo.

I kept things very simple. Taking inspiration from the local area, nature, coastal themes and the amazing Sea Ranch work of Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, I gently updated the lighthouse to include a group of seagulls spreading their wings and heading off into the great unknown (or maybe just the nearest secondary school).

Anyway, I guess I'm saying sometimes it's OK to offer a freebie to someone if you have capacity and you think they're worth your time and, in my eyes, this one was definitely worth it.