After my first year in London I’d learned how to properly tween in Flash, launched my first site, and lost my job. Luckily I had cash in the bank so I didn’t have to worry for a while.
That cash came from having lucked into producing a series of images for Digital Vision’s Infinity Collection just a few months before I was shown the door at Vir2L. I think at one point almost everyone in the office was working on a collection for DV. The money involved was excellent and we pretty much got to do what we were doing in our spare time anyway.
When the collections were released it created a bit of a tidal wave in the design sphere. All of a sudden everyone was creating the popular “Emotional Abstract Visual Images” and every other day there seemed to be a company popping up offering the same services (and subsequently trying to poach the designers of DV collections to their side). All what mattered to me was that I had enough money in the bank and that I had a nice piece for my still non-existent portfolio.
One of the images of my DV collection
Actually, I had two noteworthy (to me at least) projects in my portfolio now — the DV images and the site for an artist called Ashley Wood. I’d been working on the site for my old local comic shop in Antwerp, and had decided to put in links to artist sites. I was a fan of Ashley’s work, who at the time was illustrating Hellspawn for Image Comics, and decided to drop him a line to say I had “featured” his site there. He thanked me for the link, and asked if I was up for doing his site, even though he couldn’t pay me. He completely understood if I wouldn’t do it for free, but it looked like too much fun to pass on. So I made a deal with Ash: complete creative freedom.
Seven years, 4 sites, a few books and lots of logos later we’re still chatting, and I’m still designing the odd thing for him when time permits.
ashleywood.com V1
Still no “real” job though. By now I was spending most of my time at home in a reversed routine.
I’d regularly work until 3-4AM, go to bed, wake up at 3-4PM and start over again. I was constantly working on my own stuff: creating new versions of ximeraLabs to keep it circulating on the portals, building a decent portfolio site and most importantly — make a giant list of every advertising agency, design studio, and web company in London to send my CV to.
Over the course of the next 4 months I must’ve approached around 70 companies. I even went as far as digging up contact info of marketing execs at movie studios in the vain hope to land movie site projects, with an almost unanimous response: “Thank you for your email. Please remove me from your contacts asap”.
During that time I wasn’t completely out of work. Through luck and persistence I had managed to land authoring gigs at publisher-du-jour Friends of Ed to co-author 3 books.
The first book, Photoshop & 3D was a success (and still available) so I got offers to write more, and I said yes to everything they sent my way. More on that later (have to keep it chronological here!).
In the meantime I started to get replies to my emails from a few companies. I think out of all the companies I approached, less than half actually took the time to reply. I’d sit up every time a new message “Re: Possible Job Opportunity” popped up in my inbox, but usually it contained either the automated “Dear Tom, Thank you for considering to work at XXXXX, but we’re currently not hiring. We will however keep your information on file in case a suitable opportunity arises!” response, or the possibly worse “We love your work! We’ll give you a call when we need you!” reply.
The ones that offered some ray of hope turned out to be duds as well after the obligatory interviews.
I was either too experienced for the role, too expensive, or — according to SCEE (Sony Playstation Europe) — not versatile enough in my work. My most spectaculair putdown has to be my ill-fated job interview with Foundation 33 (back when they were still around). They were incredibly nice people, and SMART. It was clear from the moment I sat down in their office I was in for a critical grilling. It didn’t help that most of my work was clearly abstract stuff with no meaning whatsoever, so when I was asked “What is the idea behind this? Why did you design it this way?” all I could do was stutter my way through a feeble attempt of explaining why I used 3pt type and random 3D shapes…
EXPLAIN PLEASE! One of the pieces that was over analyzed at my job interview
Anyway, they weren’t really looking for a web designer. Needless to say I didn’t get the job, but I learned a valuable lesson right then and there, and started to be far more considerate in my design work, and tone down the exessive visuals in favour of a more concept driven approach.
It was nearing November 2001 and still no work when out of the blue I got an email from Lost In Space (actually a really late reply to my “can I haz job pls?” email) inviting me over for a chat.
Lost In Space was high on my list of “desirable agencies to work for”, specialising in high-end graphics and VFX work. I met them at their Islington office and had quite an informal chat about my work. The Digital Vision images in particular was what had piqued their interest in me. They showed me their showreel — showing footage of Björk’s All Is Full Of Love GFX, Squarepusher’s Come On My Selector, graphics for the Bond movies, etc… — but of course I was already familiar with their work and had to hide my wide-eyed enthousiam and design geekery. Especially because in a dim-lit corner Alex Rutterford was working on what was becoming the infamous Gantz Graf video.
Alas, they couldn’t hire me because of the fact that work was slow at the moment, but were seriously considering adding me as a freelancer. We exchanged contact info and I left. Only to receive an email from them a few weeks later saying that they restructured the company, and were now working as an agency representing designers/directors — and it turned out I was on the books. Great success! It didn’t take long for press releases to appear announcing the news, and the lineup of designers. Things seemed to be happening for once, but at a very slow pace. My money in the bank was slowly running out, so I kept on the lookout for full time work.
Meanwhile I was keeping busy with Lost In Space, creating a motion reel of abstract 3D and working on broadcast pitches and moodboards which never materialized in paid work.
Then, in January 2002 whilst checking my list of agency sites to spam with more pathetic pleas for work I discovered that Kleber had a job opening for a designer…
Next: 1998 – 2008, part 5: Coming home.
November 26th, 2008
I still have those obligatory rejection interviews, not fun.
Sometimes I felt like I was THE PERFECT fit for a job, but somehow did not manage to get them, but at times the interviews I went on just because some recruiter had recommended me and they liked my work ended up being the ones that I half assed, showed up late to, and ended up getting offers at like an hour after the interview.
That never made sense to me…
December 6th, 2008
Just want to say hat I read all the parts with concern