Years.com
Role
Year
Website
Discipline
Team
OVERVIEW
Brand, packaging, retail and events for Years.com, plus the systems that let a small team keep pace.
The Brief
Years.com meets its customers in three very different places: online, on the shelf in retail, and face to face at events. My role is to shape how the brand looks and feels across all of them, from a first visit through to a long-term relationship, while the range, the retail footprint and the team all keep growing.
The Approach
Two tracks, running at once. The visible one is the work itself: every meal that ships, the extras range, the retail rollouts into Just for Pets and then nationally into Pets at Home, two Crufts stands, the onboarding flow on the website. The other is the machinery underneath, which is what lets the first keep pace: design systems, a tone of voice guide, a Creative AI policy, internal tools the wider team can self-serve from, and an automated build for the core meal sleeves.
The Result
A brand that stays consistent across packaging, retail, events and digital, and a design function that no longer depends on one person being free. Updating all 36 meal sleeves used to cost someone a full day. It now takes an hour or two, and the team can handle routine design work without waiting on me.
25,000+
Subscribers receive meal packaging I design, as of mid-2026
Every store
Pets at Home rollout across the UK and Northern Ireland
1 day → 2 hrs
To update all 36 meal sleeves, after I automated production
THE JOURNEY
Designing the work, then designing the way the work gets made
Most of what I do here is visible: the meals that land on 25,000 doorsteps, the Pets at Home rollout, the stand at Crufts, the extras range. The part that lasts sits underneath it. Design systems, so the brand stays consistent when someone else picks it up. A tone of voice guide and a Creative AI policy, both written before anyone asked for them. Internal tools so the wider team can handle routine requests themselves, rather than those requests eating design capacity. And an automated build for the meal sleeves, which turned a full day of one person's time into an hour or two. The through-line is the same each time: find the thing that only works while I'm in the room, and make it work without me.
THE RANGE
Treats, Chef's Collection meals and gifting lines, all drawn from the same pack system as the core meal trays.
SEASONAL
Christmas, Easter and advent lines, each released into the same shelf layout as the rest of the range.
RETAIL AND EVENTS
Stand shelving, banners and tray costumes from the trade shows, plus the merchandise for Years Fest 2026.
BRAND AND THE BOX
Bandanas, the YAP! magazine covers and the subscription box as it arrives at the door.
WHAT I DELIVERED
Pets at Home, every store
The brand rolled out across the UK and Northern Ireland: a retail range of sleeves, POS, shelf graphics, FSDUs and promotional material, delivered to schedule by working directly with the printers.
36 meal sleeves, automated
Production of the full core range, cutting a day of one person's work down to an hour or two.
Two Crufts stands
Including the company's debut, alongside event stands, shell schemes and merchandise.
First tone of voice guide, first Creative AI policy
Both written in-house, with internal AI tools that automate repetitive design tasks and let the wider team self-serve instead of spending design capacity on routine requests.
Design systems the team works from
Led the implementation across the team, alongside line managing a midweight designer.
REFLECTION
The work I'm proudest of isn't a campaign. It's that updating all 36 meal sleeves no longer costs someone a day, and that the wider team can make something on-brand without waiting on me. Writing the tone of voice guide and the Creative AI policy taught me that a lot of senior design work is just writing down what everyone assumed was obvious, before the gap turns into a problem. Managing someone has made that sharper. The systems have to be good enough for another person to rely on, not just good enough for me to remember.
NEXT PROJECT
Medichecks →Open to senior and lead design roles.
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