Posts Tagged ‘illustration’

So if you’ve been any­where within a ten-mile radius of me any­time in the last week and a half, you’re prob­ably well aware of The Big Card Pro­ject. I took it upon myself to design a set of six macabre Valentines, thinking it’d be a a fun little pro­ject that’d get me away from the com­puter, make me feel more cre­ative, and force me to relax a touch.

Thumb­nail sketches. This is how things started. I hate showing people my sketch­book because things invari­ably look like they were drawn by a blind five-year-old. Basic­ally, I’m just trying to get the com­pos­i­tion right.

Of course, I forgot to factor in the fact that I’m a crazy work­aholic per­fec­tionist with an insom­niac streak a mile wide whenever I get really pas­sionate about a pro­ject. My little lark of a pro­ject kept me up late, made an utter war­zone of my apart­ment, and still took far longer than I’d anticipated.

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I really enjoyed this little story­book. Some­thing about childish/60′s-esque illus­tra­tion (espe­cially when paired with more adult sub­ject matter) really appeals to me. I like that the illus­trator man­aged to use a techy “cold” object like a Mac­Book and still have it work with the more tex­tured & nat­ural style (the screen static was an espe­cially nice touch).

I was recently con­tacted by a design stu­dent at Loy­alist Col­lege looking to inter­view a designer for an essay she’s writing. Ego-bloat aside, I do really like it when young(er), just-starting-out designers ask me for a “worldly” view of the industry. (Amaz­ingly, it’s happened more than once!) (more…)

It’s been offi­cially a year today. A year of no paycheques, no health bene­fits, no vaca­tion time. No nine a.m. starts, no staying indoors all day staring at a com­puter screen, no mon­strous amounts of unpaid over­time. (Okay, I lied, all of those things have happened, and worse.) I love that I can say that I’ve been run­ning my own busi­ness for a year and I’m still in love with it.

I’ve had the chance to work with a huge range of com­panies and people over the past year, pro­du­cing a range of dif­ferent pro­jects. I’ve done news­paper ads, illus­tra­tions, resumes, and a whole slew of web­sites, logos, busi­ness cards, and bro­chures. I’ve learned how to use Quick­books, I’ve stream­lined my pro­cesses, I’ve learned some AJAX tech­niques, I’ve rewritten my CMS code base, I’ve read about grids and typo­graphy and golden ratios. I’ve lost out on con­tracts, and I’ve taken on pro­jects that thrilled and chal­lenged me. I make an awful lot less money now than I used to, and I prob­ably work harder. But it’s just so much fun.

How­ever, my one-year-mark is a time for ser­ious con­sid­er­a­tion. What’s my goal here? Where am I going? How is my little busi­ness going to grow up? And, most import­antly, how can I keep doing what I love, stay sane, and make enough money to keep me in chocolate and red wine for the rest of my life?

I am coming to realize that:

1. Del­egate, del­egate, del­egate. I am a creature of many tal­ents, but I am not any of the fol­lowing: Salesman. Accountant. Pro­grammer. Mech­anic. Stop thinking you can do everything, and start spending more of your time doing what you are good at and do enjoy.
2. Nothing comes quickly. Pro­jects will take longer than you expected to reach com­ple­tion. A two-minute fix will turn into a two-hour ses­sion of slam­ming your head against the wall. Some­times you’ll put an inor­dinate amount of time into researching an estimate for a pro­ject you’re not awarded, only to be handed a bigger and better pro­ject a year down the line. A lot of what I do is investment.
3. It is great to be a work­aholic, but make sure you get at least three seconds of fresh air every day.
4. Stop taking things so per­son­ally. Not everyone can think you’re the next coming, and some days, you will just suck. This does not neces­sarily mean that you are a total failure in all areas of your life, and it is cer­tainly not cause for a mental breakdown.
5. Nancy Reagan was right, sort of. Some­times, you should “just say no”. As a small-business owner, it’s easy to fall into the trap of jumping at any­thing that dangles a cheque in front of you, but that’s not really why you’re in this busi­ness, anyway, and it’s cer­tainly not the most important factor to consider.

These are my mon­sters. I’m hoping that, by this time next year, I’ll have mas­sacred at least half of them.

It’s only the most pop­ular ques­tion asked by anyone who knows me over the past few months. And it’s always hard to answer—my stock response is “It’s too soon to tell”. And it really is, but I’m def­in­itely keeping busy, and new pro­jects keep coming through the door. Every now and again I sit back for a moment and think how lucky I am to be 23 years old and sup­porting myself doing what I love, being my own boss, keeping my own hours, and set­ting my own rules. I never thought this would be what I wanted to do, but I’m utterly thrilled that I get to do it. (more…)