The Art and Design of James M-C

Remembering Week 4

Chapters 7 and 8 in HtbaGDw/oLyS

Chapter 4 in DDP

Chapter 7 is covered in my February 21^st 2007 post.

So it turns out my stunning personality and lackluster work will only get me so far in this business. I need X. “What is X?” you say, its self promotion. Going to conventions and conferences, doing pro-bono work for organizations you belong to. I work for ConnectiCon and have signed on to do some free graphic design work for them, like the commercial I made for them in 2005, which never saw the air because of budgetary constraints, and I also redesigned the website for my high school, which helped put me in touch with all sorts of people from that network.

That’s the kind of attention I want, I want people to recognize I’ve done good work for them and to be appreciated for it. The website I just pointed you to has had some of its content updated, but they were kind enough to leave my name in the footer at the bottom and I even received an email from an old professor recently praising my work. That’s what makes this job worth it. Having people I care about notice me. Not some article in a fancy design magazine about how great my work is. I’d rather be the one who designs the typography for some other poor schmucks article on how they rose to fame (and perhaps the one about their fall too).

On to the DDP

How do I want to format my portfolio?

Personally I want to do a cool planetary thing in flash, so the vectorized images won’t lose their luster when I put them on the web. I had moderate success with this when I was looking for my last job. I just put my flash portfolio on a CD, wrote the website on the outside cover (don’t do this, especially since mine was at the mywebspace site and still is)

I was going to put them on Mini-CDs with my business card logo and info on them, I even designed a fairly good layout, but alas, I forget that most designers use Macs, and Macs hate mini-CDs, because most Mac laptops are slot fed, and will bust their computer. Nothing says “you’re black listed” like destroying their computer during an interview. Knowing me, this would actually happen.

Zip Disks are right out. I had the boss ask me what the heck this “thing” was one day. I only knew because at one time it had been how I backed up all my data after a bad crash. When a designer of 20 years doesn’t know what an archaic piece of machinery is, you know it’s in trouble.

DVDs are nice if you have a demo reel. I don’t. Next!

I could do the laptop thing, if only because this one has little side to side glare, and I always make a CD anyways.

The personal website, CD and Laptop combo sound like they will work out well for me, after all, if they lose the CD, they’ll hopefully still have the business card, and if I just drop off the CD and business card, chances are about 50/50 that they look at it when I’m not there, and then I can’t explain the work.

Never bring in a portfolio with all your work in it. Organize and be prepared. I brought in a bunch of sketches to my Connecticut Magazine interview. I botched that one right good. Too much bad work and not enough focus. Make sure it’s organized and preferably digital.