August 16, 2010 10:00am
Time to get cracking on this blog thing… once again I have to apologize for my lack of posts. Apparently blogs and I are like oil and water. There haven’t been a lot of updates but not for a lack of goings on. When last we parted I was preparing for my graduate portfolio show at The Art Institute of Charleston. The night went swimmingly. My table was visited by a handful of employers, but I felt that most of the crowd was just a bunch of lookie loos and parents of other graduates. Or maybe most of the employers tended to stay on the first floor. Either way, there wasn’t much promise of landing myself an employment opportunity right out of the gate…
After the show, some of my Orangeburg friends, Art Institute peers and I went to Wasabi downtown for some sushi and drinks. Always a good decision. From there, the next few months was spent simply relaxing and enjoying a bit of time off. 5 years of non-stop full time college, multiple jobs + internships deserves some rest.
In May I was just finishing up my A&E Digital Printing internship, which won me a few new acquaintances and a better understanding of my skills and proficiencies, and I began seeking a job. I’d gotten some great leads through Erin O’dea, the Career Services Director at the Art Institute of Charleston, but in the end I got an interview with a company looking for a Graphic Designer that I’d found on my own through Craigslist. Their offices were in North Charleston. I came in for the interview, after having some difficulty finding the location which was in a very inconspicuous spot. You had to take a dirt road, behind a career center and look for a small sign attached to a shipping warehouse (see what I mean?). The marketing manager asked me a few questions and explained a little about the company which produces huge hydraulic hammers used in heavy duty construction. I told her that it sounded like a good opportunity. And she said she would call or email me back once they’d made a decision.
Two days later I got an email with a job offer. The salary was a bit meager compared to what I was expecting, but it was my first offer so I was happy to take it. I’ve been working for them since mid June now, and let me tell you it’s been no picnic.. My instructors at Ai were right when they said ‘be creative now, because once you get a real job you’ll be playing by their rules’. On my first day I was given a 10 page German brochure to redesign and it was expected by end of day! I worked as diligently as I could but when the day was over I ended up taking my work home with me. I was up fairly late finishing things and the next day my design was taken through the first set of revisions. It took 3 days to finalize things, and once it was done it had deviated so far from it’s original design that I hardly wanted to put my name on it. Since then I’ve worked on business cards, flyers, posters, inserts, binders, stationary ads and a whole slew of other materials. And with each project the number of limits, revisions and restrictions increases. Sometimes I feel like I’m getting personal taste decisions from my boss and the Company President and not really marketing or business decisions.. everyone thinks their a designer. For instance, when it came to that first brochure I tried explaining that we should use a 10 point 80% black font for body copy, however, my manager insisted it be 12 point 100% black text on white background (and it was a sans serif). And when we got the brochures in the mail she exclaimed “this font looks like it’s for blind people!”. “Well duh..” I thought.
And now after I’ve been working on all of these items for two months, she’s had a meeting with the President who has decided that all of our materials should mimic their biggest competitor. Right down to the fonts, color choices and logo iconography! I don’t think that I can respect a company that takes all of its marketing and design ideas from their competitor.. it makes them look like a joke in my opinion. But seeing as how this is my bread and butter for the time being I have no room financially to spout about ethics. So I have to go in, piece by piece and change everything, I joked that I might as well be working for the competitor (but I was totally serious).
So, not on the job/design side I bought a car (my first one). It’s a Chevy Cavalier and I love it. Had a bit of a snafu recently though when a girl opened her car door into my passenger side headlight when I was driving home on a narrow one way street. So I’ve got to get a damage estimate and find out how much this is going to set me back or I could grow and backbone and call the insurance company and try to argue against her. The first words out of her mouth after I asked her if she was okay were “Am I going to get a new car!? I’m going to get a new car!!” She didn’t get a new car, but the damages to her door were paid for courtesy of my insurance company.
I visited Orangeburg last weekend (broken headlight and all) and got to visit my family and friends. Oh and I had my official graduation ceremony from the Art Institute last month. It was nice to see all of my college friends and instructors again in one place. They had the mayor come speak, who apparently just received his Bachelor’s Degree in Graphic Arts through the Art Institutes online program (the guy is like 80 years old! It makes me worry for the future of Graphic Design… I think he just got a free degree since he was so influential in helping the school become established here in Charleston. But why couldn’t he have chosen another major to embarrass? Like Fashion Design or something, lol). Anyway, my friend Mez who graduated with me has gone the route of Freelancing his design work. He does some good stuff, check out his website here. He’s gotten a lot of good leads including a contract he just signed for $10k with a candy company! It’s crazy, I don’t know how he’s doing it. Whenever I look to freelance I get unprofessional quacks who can offer me 100 dollars to do “a quick website, business card and logo.” (Note to self, confer with Mez to find out how he gets these ridic leads).
And I believe I’ve caught you all up on the past 4 or 5 moths of my life. Only thing left now is to post some pics of what went down. I’m going to try to post a new piece of work on the home page every month. Or if I get lazy I will just post something I’ve already done (but it will be new to you :p)
Oh one more thing. In my downtime here at the office, when I’m annoyed at everything because my design initiatives are undermined at every turn I have a tendency to use my internet privileges rather less than responsibly and seek websites that will put me in brighter spirits and these two that I’ve found have never failed to disappoint. If you’ve got some free time you should check them out:
Hyperbole And A Half by Allie brosh
Cheers to the two of you for quite possibly being the funniest sites I’ve ever found on the internet :3
Oh yeah, picture time.
