Man… Talk about getting derailed. I didn’t plan on having such a huge gap between my first post in the series and this one. But you know, that thing called “Work” often comes between me and the blog. Anyway:
In my first post in this series I talked about the time I graduated and how I lucked into my first job by chance, and no experience whatsoever in the field I was going to work in: webdesign. The next two years (1998-2000 roughly), would be my trial by fire. Here we go once more…
August 1998, and I had my first job, starting at the bottom of the ladder as a “Multimedia Designer” at Vintage Productions in Antwerp – with a modest (very modest in hindsight) monthy paycheck. What can I say, I just graduated, was still living at home and thrilled to have job.
The first thing I learned was that time equals money – and that no matter how “artistic” you are or want to be, all that goes straight out of the window in favour of that magic word: communication. Admittedly, this was quite the steep learning curve – especially in the early days where I had tried really hard to infuse some sort of graphic design aesthetic into the work I was doing, and I quickly realized that it was pretty much in vain. The company I worked at specialized in the so called “below the line” advertising and B2B (Business To Business) communications – and that of course comes with a set of invisible rules. Most of my time there was spent learing HTML and Flash (for starters) while updating page after page of digital (i.e. web) product brochures until I could manage to operate Dreamweaver on my own without breaking the sites I was working on.
After a few months I “graduated” into my first full project – a customer-facing site for Contax and Yashica cameras
VICTORY! My first proper site, for Contax Cameras
I busted my balls on this one… I had to work within the framework of the larger site, meaning brand graphics (i.e. purple sidebar) had to stay. Everything else was (relatively) up to me. While I was designing the site I slowly started to discover design books properly, which I could afford now that I had an income. Of course, most of the books featured web design and included the now classic “Browser Project” books from Laurence King.
Finally having fulltime net access, I’d spend my lunch hours at my computer, books on my lap, entering one URL after another and having my mind blown away by what I saw was possible – discovering The Remedi Project, VolumeOne, Attik, TDR, kleber (yes yes!) Futurefarmers, Dextro, etc… . The sad thing was that I seemed to be one of the few guys at work to be genuinly interested in this, and most of the time when me and the two other guys tried to be somewhat innovative or tried to experiment, our creative director politely blocked our efforts, handed us a Photodisc “Business” collection and sent us on our way (OK, I might be slightly exaggerating here, but it wasn’t that far off).
Within my first year I was bumped up to senior designer and slowly but surely got offered more creative freedom. Not a lot, but probably just enough to keep me happy. The clients hadn’t changed, but now I had the chance to do more creative work on new projects and pitches.
Trying to break the mould for a Biosense pitch
Sometimes it worked, most of the times it didn’t. Doing work for people that essentially only look at spreadsheets, profit margins and sales figures is sometimes a thankless job. There were positives of course – I was learning new stuff at a breakneck speed. Soon I was pretty good at doing HTML coding, Flash animation and managed to add animation and 3D modelling (using Infini-D!) to my list of skills. I wasn’t making pieces of art, but one year on I started feeling quite confident in myself and felt that I could build a full site on my own.
My first freelance site for my local comic shop, Mekanik Strip in Antwerp. Animated GIF overload!
The first site I built myself — my first proper freelance gig — was for my local comic shop in Antwerp. It was great! They let me do what I wanted and in return I got an open tab at the shop (for a while at least). I crammed everything I’d learned on the job in there – ridiculous flash animations, framesets, popup windows, 3D – to show off my l337 skillz, and more importantly to satisfy the growing craving for more creative work.
By now I was at Vintage for well over a year. The company had moved from the 2 rented flats in the Antwerp suburbs to their new offices in the city centre (incidentally 5 minutes away from the comic shop). I was still happy at work – I got to do some trade shows abroad, which were a fun experience, but I started to wanting more out of my job. During that time I’d become quite versed at surfing the web, and had discovered all the great design portals out there: K10k, Three.Oh, Kiiroi and Holodeck 73 — those became my favourites early on — which showed an even bigger world of design I’d never seen before. And I desperately wanted to be part of it. As a result I started to work evenings and weekends on my own designs, instead of going to the pub, mixing design and 3D, emulating the styles I discovered and infusing it with the cyberpunk style of design that was so popular back then.
One of my very early personal pieces – a pun on Y2K and the fusion of Apple and Microsoft
Asimov – basic attempts to do some simplified 3D modeling and character design
A few months of this and I had created a very small body of own work. At the same time work started to become a drag. It was a good job, but closing in on the 2 year mark I felt I’d learned everything I could learn and it sank in that I’d never be able to do the stuff I really wanted to do for a living there. So I started to entertain the thought of leaving.
The problem was that, deep down, I wanted to go to New York, or London… well anywhere that seemed to have a vibrant design scene, because I couldn’t find anything like that in Antwerp or Belgium even. Especially in the type of work I wanted to do.
Disclaimer: I’m fully aware that is a very myopic view, but thats how I felt back then. Of course Belgium has a strong design industry and world-class agencies.
Of all the agencies I had discovered online, one in particular stood out: Vir2L Studios – an American interactive agency based in Washington (if I remember correctly?). The thing that intrigued me about Vir2L was the lack of client work on their site – especially compared with rival agencies like Kioken and Razorfish. No, their site was really selective in what they showed, the rest of the work – as the site itself – was more abstract design work. And that appealed to me. The fact that Vir2L was making waves online and that the whole company was a virtual (see what I did just there) Who’s Who’s of prominent designers made it look like an amazing place to work.
Around March of 2000, during my usual morning office routine (get coffee, sit down and check the design portals — something I still do) I noticed a very interesting post on threeoh.com: Vir2L was opening a studio in London and needed Dutch speaking designers!
This was my chance I thought, and immediately started putting together an online portfolio, which I hosted on the servers at work (not the smartest move as it would turn out) since I didn’t have any webspace of my own. I started emailing with James (Widegren — who ran threeoh and worked at Vir2L) and a few weeks later I found myself taking a day off and on the Eurostar towards London to meet with the MD of their soon to open London office for a job interview at a posh hotel overseeing Hyde Park.
I remember the interview being a relaxed affair, although I couldn’t make out if it was going to have a positive outcome. As it turned out, they hadn’t had a lot of applications for the position — something that gave me a glimmer of hope. If anything, at least I’d gotten a free day trip to London out of it.
Back home, I pondered the next weeks about the outcome of the interview, whilst having email conversations with the Vir2L MD about salary expectations and general info regarding the possible job. Around the end of April I finally received the email I was hoping for: I was hired and would join the London office in July.
Now of course came the difficult part: informing my current employers that I would be leaving. I called in my boss for a meeting and with a bit of hesitation told him I’d gotten an offer too good to refuse. He took it remarkably well. Too well I thought. He called in the business director, and he too seemed to have an “Oh yeah, no surprise” attitude. They told me they felt sorry I was leaving, and even tried to persuade me with the promise of a fat paycheck and a creative director position in a few years if I’d stay around. I didn’t tell them I was going make that fat paycheck in a few months (and again, in hindsight the paycheck wasn’t that fat either – but substantially more than I was making at the time).
The next few weeks I wrapped up work, had my farewell drinks and prepared for a new life in London. I already knew I was sharing a flat with two of my Vir2L workmates, who had scored a small flat on Exmouth Market – quite the hip/posh area in central London (with equally posh rent). I shipped over my stuff (luckily paid for by the company) and so finally around the middle of July I set foot at the Vir2L London office.
Next: 1998 – 2008, part 3: A Brave New World.
October 13th, 2008
sweet posts, thanks for sharing.
October 16th, 2008
nice, I’ve been looking forward to this post.
October 21st, 2008
interesting posts, looking forward to the next one.