How to be a Graphic Designer without losing your Soul – Chapter 6
How to get work, the one thing they never taught us in design school. Good thing we were liberal arts majors. What’s that? They don’t teach you how to find clients either? Well then we’ll have to rely on your contacts for that won’t we? Eh? You’re a computer nerd whose entire social life went down the drain during college? Do you barely have any real friends? Never attended a drinking party or other social gathering while in school? You halted a promising college career in biology because you thought you could make a better living as a graphic designer?
Oops.
I find myself at the end of my college career mooching off the charisma of the people I know around me. The only reason I got the nice internship I have today is because my brother happened to go to the same private school as the President’s son, where I was an alumnus and never even met this guy’s progeny. Connections are the biggest single source of work in the graphic design field. We employ several people whose sole jobs it is to bring in new business to us through their own connections.
The book says that we all need to be new business people. This scares the ever-loving **** out of me. I am somewhat (read very) afraid to talk with, much less deal with, new people who I perceive to be in a position of power over me. The same with making phone calls of almost any kind. I am the kind of person who desperately needs a personal assistant to take my calls for me. This business with the pitch making, count me out. No way do I want to be in a meeting selling myself. I always think my work is worse than it really is, and my ideas often stretch beyond my own means. Why weren’t we warned about all this earlier in the curriculum? This is potentially life-making or life-breaking stuff that’s being discussed here.
I’m just not cut out to be a graphic designer this book is screaming in my face. My work stinks, therefore no one will hire me, my marketing skills stink, therefore I won’t be able to get work, and my interpersonal skills are lacking, so I won’t even meet the people who are willing to look at my work. It even insulted me about my poor handwriting. Let’s face it. I’m not cut out for this line of work.
Where has all of James’ “I’m amazing” attitude and egotism gone to I wonder now. Back when I first started to get interested in digital design, I was working on horribly amateurish projects all the time. I edited video, drew in illustrator, and photoshoped false parking tickets. I even made my own newsletter at one point which was ordered destroyed by the college I was going to for being defamatory. I used to have a drive for this sort of thing, but now it’s just a job to me, something I’m going to do to earn money and nothing else. I pine for the days when I would go out into the woods to look for deer tracks or draw (even if I wasn’t good at it) for fun. I’m busy doing nothing, playing games, watching TV, and eating my way out of the terrible depression I experience almost constantly, interjected only by the occasional grandiose statement brought on by an amusing bit of work from the comics and TV which I admire and hoped to emulate, but which drew me in and never let go.
But I suppose this lack of feeling adequate is what happens to most designers, as the book states. I don’t believe in my own works, so I’m apologizing for them all the time, saying “well this could have been better” or that or the other thing, and they’re wondering “well if it could have been better why didn’t you fix it before bringing it to me?” Laziness, lack of motivation, perhaps it is that I really don’t care all that much. Maybe I’m just desperate for a job (like I was when I met with Connecticut Magazine) and didn’t think it through closely enough. My mother ended up making the call to get me my current job. How embarrassing. I feel lucky though that I had had the foresight to put together a portfolio in 315 as my final project, because it was that piece which wowed them the most. To this day the boss still thinks I’m an expert in flash.
How to get work, the one thing they never taught us in design school. Good thing we were liberal arts majors. What’s that? They don’t teach you how to find clients either? Well then we’ll have to rely on your contacts for that won’t we? Eh? You’re a computer nerd whose entire social life went down the drain during college? Do you barely have any real friends? Never attended a drinking party or other social gathering while in school? You halted a promising college career in biology because you thought you could make a better living as a graphic designer?
Oops.
I find myself at the end of my college career mooching off the charisma of the people I know around me. The only reason I got the nice internship I have today is because my brother happened to go to the same private school as the President’s son, where I was an alumnus and never even met this guy’s progeny. Connections are the biggest single source of work in the graphic design field. We employ several people whose sole jobs it is to bring in new business to us through their own connections.
The book says that we all need to be new business people. This scares the ever-loving **** out of me. I am somewhat (read very) afraid to talk with, much less deal with, new people who I perceive to be in a position of power over me. The same with making phone calls of almost any kind. I am the kind of person who desperately needs a personal assistant to take my calls for me. This business with the pitch making, count me out. No way do I want to be in a meeting selling myself. I always think my work is worse than it really is, and my ideas often stretch beyond my own means. Why weren’t we warned about all this earlier in the curriculum? This is potentially life-making or life-breaking stuff that’s being discussed here.
I’m just not cut out to be a graphic designer this book is screaming in my face. My work stinks, therefore no one will hire me, my marketing skills stink, therefore I won’t be able to get work, and my interpersonal skills are lacking, so I won’t even meet the people who are willing to look at my work. It even insulted me about my poor handwriting. Let’s face it. I’m not cut out for this line of work.
Where has all of James’ “I’m amazing” attitude and egotism gone to I wonder now. Back when I first started to get interested in digital design, I was working on horribly amateurish projects all the time. I edited video, drew in illustrator, and photoshoped false parking tickets. I even made my own newsletter at one point which was ordered destroyed by the college I was going to for being defamatory. I used to have a drive for this sort of thing, but now it’s just a job to me, something I’m going to do to earn money and nothing else. I pine for the days when I would go out into the woods to look for deer tracks or draw (even if I wasn’t good at it) for fun. I’m busy doing nothing, playing games, watching TV, and eating my way out of the terrible depression I experience almost constantly, interjected only by the occasional grandiose statement brought on by an amusing bit of work from the comics and TV which I admire and hoped to emulate, but which drew me in and never let go.
But I suppose this lack of feeling adequate is what happens to most designers, as the book states. I don’t believe in my own works, so I’m apologizing for them all the time, saying “well this could have been better” or that or the other thing, and they’re wondering “well if it could have been better why didn’t you fix it before bringing it to me?” Laziness, lack of motivation, perhaps it is that I really don’t care all that much. Maybe I’m just desperate for a job (like I was when I met with Connecticut Magazine) and didn’t think it through closely enough. My mother ended up making the call to get me my current job. How embarrassing. I feel lucky though that I had had the foresight to put together a portfolio in 315 as my final project, because it was that piece which wowed them the most. To this day the boss still thinks I’m an expert in flash.
Some of the best work I’ve ever done has been to do with digital portfolios. I’ve built more of them at my current internship than anything else, and built the entire identity section of our online portfolio, from dredging up all the old logos, resizing them, creating thumbnails, and over three hundred links that all had to work and be hand coded, as well as working within the stifling framework of the overall site design, yet making it all work as a separate section. I had them put it up here at the Design Trust Identity Site. Keeping the site looking like its parent site was a difficult challenge to overcome, but in the end it lends an air of continuity to the site as a whole, however lacking the original design may be. Both I and the previous senior designer were chomping at the bit to be allowed to redesign the site from scratch, but the boss is married to it for financial reasons that have to do with external printed materials, and the continuity of our own self branding.Maybe in the long run we need to let good design get out there and be our best advocate. I still don’t really know how to create good design, but I know it when I see it. Maybe I should become a critic…
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