Category: 1998–2008.
After having spent most of 2001 without a proper job, living off my savings and the occasional freelance gig, things were about to change. 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…
Kleber had always been high on my list of agencies to work at, so I didn’t waste any time emailing them. I waited the obligatory week before emailing them again to see if they received my application. Three weeks passed without a reply. I’d learned from experience that if you haven’t had a reply after a month, your chances of hearing anything positive are small so I put this job application on the back burner and continued freelancing and worrying about ever getting a full time job again… Continue reading…
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.
Continue reading…
After having left my first job as a “multimedia designer” I now found myself in the centre of London during the summer of 2000 to start my new job as a “Senior Art Director” at the London branch of Vir2L Studios. It was going to be exiting, but I quickly found out I had to start at the bottom of the ladder again. The Vir2L adventure only lasted a year, but it was the year that changed everything…
Continue reading…
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.
A few weeks ago it dawned upon me that it’s been 10 years since I graduated from college and started my professional career as a graphic designer.
10 Years is quite a considerable time, and although it sounds like a lot, strangely it doesn’t always feel that way – time flies when you’re busy, as they say.
Out of curiosity I started digging through my archives (yes, I’ve kept practically everything on disk) and started looking through all the work I’ve done so far. It was interesting to discover that – even though I think my work has massively changed over the years – some sort of common thread has been running through my work: a love for comics and science fiction.
At the same time I’ve been flipping through my copy of the excellent How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy, and this all spurred me on to – over a series of blog posts – write about my education and experiences in design, the ups and downs, and how I learned from my mistakes along the way (never do 3D rotating logos or use lens flares “as a joke”).
Of course every story needs a proper setup. So instead of jumping right into the action, let’s rewind the clock a little.
Continue reading…