graphic designers
Out of context: Reply #144
- Started
- Last post
- 146 Responses
- exador10
hey pockets...
back in the day when i first got out of school, i had an interview that was EXACTLY like the one you had...dude looked at my portfolio, made a few 'meh' comments, asked if I'd done anything 'real' (as in a real paid gig) then to make it even worse, he got up to take a phone call and didn't even say good bye or let me know the interview was over...i sat there like an idiot for 10 minutes before i got up and saw him chatting away on the phone at his desk...twat didn't even make eye contact with me...just gave me this brisk be-on-your-way' wave of the hand...
fucking idiot....
that shit sapped my confidence like crazy...i mean look, i was under no illusions..i knew i had a 'just out of school' folio etc...but i was eager, hard working, and thought i had as good a chance as anyone else (the ad said they were looking for a junior designer for chrissakes)the point is, although it sapped my confidence like a punch in the gut, i didn't let it knock me out....i thought about what the guy said, thought about how the first thing he mentioned was how my folio had the 'just out of school' look, thought about the assholish questions he asked me to see if he could fuck me up (how do you trap in illustrator, how do you deal with colors in quarkXpress (this interview i'll mention right now was back in 1994)
i took all of that in and thought 'i'm going to prove that fucker wrong if it kills me.....i spent the next 2 months working on my folio as much as possible...i ditched everything in it and started from scratch...100% from scratch....
i thought up projects for myself along the lines of 'what are these fuckers expecting?' what would I look for in a folio? i did a ton of fake mock ads, logos for companies that don't exist, all kinds of things...but the trick was i got them all professionally printed (which was a big deal back in the early 90s for some reason lol) that sealed the deal...a lot of the stuff, you couldn't be absolutely sure whether it was a mock ad or not....i made sure i took a lot of time on them and when i got asked about them, i just was blase about it 'well, it ran last year in Chatelaine magazine...don't recall which month....etc...just lied my ass off.....
all of that, plus redoubling my efforts on looking for work paid off.....
big time...but that jack-ass in that interview was what set it off....he made me so mad, i promised myself i wouldn't give up....
if you love the work, if you love design, advertising, graphics, whatever...if you really really love it...nothing and no one can stop you from making it your career...