The Job Search Goes On

Being a freelance designer can be a lonely and frustrating experience. I consider myself to be one of those type of people who prefers to be an employee, sticking around a company for years and possibly moving up in the ranks.

The order of the day in my business, and I gather in in the whole corporate world---is freelance. It's cheaper--no benefits, and you can fire someone for any reason when you're done with them with no legal repercussions.

The Leopard has worked at well known places for up to 6-8 months as freelancer and then told the project has ended with no ceremony. I usually work longer than is initially projected, but it sucks. You have to be a wizard of economizing in order to stay on your bills--they're still consistent even if your job isn't.

I just got off a freelancing job at a prominent advertising agency. I was really happy and it seemed like things were turning around. I was told they wanted to keep me on as a freelancer for month and if I did well, they'd bring me on as a staffer.

Well, the month went by and I was praised for my work, but lo and behold, the client was having internal problems and cut their budget on the project.--They couldn't bring me on.

So now I'm back to pounding the pavement.

I've been fortunate, I know, that I've been able to work at all. But if this is the way things will be looking in the future, It's gonna be a long summer.

My Job World, Part I

For the last 15 years, I have made my living as an Art Director. I started out wanting to be a cartoonist. I went to a well known art High School in New York called, appropriately enough The High School of Art and Design, hoping, as did many of my classmates, I'd make it as a cartoonist at Marvel Comics. Of course it wasn't long before I realized that this was more of a fantasy. For one thing, there were many better artists than me around, and also I realized I would never get to be as creative as I wanted, because as I had seen, Marvel had a factory-like atmosphere where the best attribute one could have to be a penciller was not only talent but to have an industrious nature, meaning to put out a large number of pages by deadline, not to have say on what characters you drew, and to do exactly what you were told.

I stumbled around until I ended up in Louisville Kentucky. I was brought there to be with my eventual ex-wife. She taught at a large well-known college there, and I had to make a decision on what I would do with my life.

I started working for a small magazine doing little illustrations, when I noticed the guy laying out was really lame and I hated the way he dealt with my artwork. I started laying out the pages by hand and giving him my sketches which he followed, but never to my satisfaction.

Eventually, he taught me to use Pagemaker and my designing life on computer began.