Work Blog

  • Started a year ago
  • Last post 2 months ago
  • 54 Responses
  • canoe0

    40k for a designer who can also execute editing, titling reels - how many years experience and age rage are these people? In context of not NY, LA, CHI, MIA - maybe Dallas or Austin.

    • Austin should be able to get you more money, similar to Chicago and Miami market. If you can stand to work in tech
      ********
    • 40k is an insane salary these days, I would quit design as a career if I was looking at 40k offers
      ********
    • I want to hire someonecanoe
    • 40k for a year? That’s what people get paid to work at Walmart.
      ********
    • a babysitter makes more, unfortunatelymonospaced
    • If that's for a part time / 20 hr sort of work week and it's remote... I'd take itPonyBoy
    • I didn't start out making 40k, and that was at BBDO, so not a small budgeted agency.canoe
    • Yeah but was that this year?
      ********
  • canoe0

    Developing a process for post tournament stat graphics on social. Like a branded leader board.

    AI is suggesting to use Illustrator, but I always thought that InDesign was easier to use for tables and linking csv data. I remember tables being a bit wonky.

    Has anyone else had to use CSVs for tabled data, like nutrition labels, product catalogs, etc?

    • Yes, definitely indesign, you can set the styles too, but need to manually check to make sure everything fits.Hayoth
  • canoe2

    Hanging up the towel and the title. Average of 60 hours a week doesn't fit into my 2025 plan - less of them, more of me and my world.

    And that goes all around: less of them - anyone that sucks the life out of me. I pissed on my people pleasing paradigm. It's a crushing new beginning. I'm scared shitless.

  • Beeswax2

    I'm not creating much digital artwork anymore because I feel like I can't compete with AI, which is now in everyone's hands.
    Maybe I'm afraid that what I create won't be appreciated as much anymore.

    Do you ever feel that kind of block?

    It’s pushing me more toward traditional, handmade arts. But at the same time, it feels like it would be a waste after all these years of effort spent learning and practicing.

    • I felt that way about music... I like being in my little subgenre, but I realize now, that music is for them. I really gotta make it for me...canoe
    • So if you still have something to say with digital artwork, then say it, otherwise do what feels like the most honest version of yourself..canoe
    • you are still better than 'everyone using AI' because of visual training and experience. use AI to get to step 7 fast and use skills to get to 11 in less time.uan
    • https://www.youtube.…canoe
    • I decided to make a career change. Just want to finish my website and then make an online shop and sell painted stuff.oey_oey
    • No more websites. Just graphic design if it comes my way but probably not actively promoting.oey_oey
    • And no more illustrations. I'm gonna do something AI doesn't do yet. Or something else. Really don't feel motivated anymore.oey_oey
    • It's tough! And I've been trying to make a store for years, I really gotta get around to it this year.canoe
  • mg3321

    I'm a month into my new job as a lead ux strategist / designer in the corporate world for an international financial business. I've been in the agency world for most of my career, but for the last nine years that was an independent agency that morphed from UX/creative work with enterprise businesses, to content marketing and advertising where I was leading B2B and B2C web projects, wearing way too many hats, and generally being concerned with every single aspect of what went into web projects. So much "get it done yesterday," so few concrete processes, too few people who knew how to run web projects, too many opinions, too much eccentricity, too many egos, too much of the "this work is AMAZING and we're the best in the business" ethos for work that was good, but average.

    When I got laid off in March, my fork in the road was to either continue pursing the kind of work I was doing, kind of XD creative direction which I'm really suited for, or, going in house and finding a more narrowly focused role in a mature UX / tech / design department where I can see a path towards defined career growth, great learning opportunities, and something that reduced the number of hats I had to wear.

    I chose the latter when an opportunity came to me and while I'm still early in new projects, the difference between what I was doing, and this, is so night and day it's as if I went to a different planet altogether. So many new things to be exposed to from massive high quality design systems, to defined processes for getting work done, to business teams that know what they're talking about, to UX colleagues who are kind and knowledgable and helpful. I'm putting in a more focused day each day than I think I did in the past five years, and I'm finishing my work day not feeling exhausted creatively and affected by the stress of off-the-rails projects, creative indifference, and know-it-all crap that can come in the agency world. I'm not burning myself out using that part of my brain all day, which makes it so much more enjoyable to spend my evenings on my own creative projects, whether that's the album I'm working on, the generative art tools I've been building, or making art on the pen plotter I got over the summer.

    So glad I took this path instead of holding out for agency opportunities. It's been so refreshing - it's still UX work but for enterprise applications, and I don't have to worry about so many of the things I used to. It's a proper UX role whereas my previous role was so much more than that.

    My eight months off were nice, but damn am I glad to be working again, and enjoying it.

    • Congrats! I miss the benefit of in-house ux of really digging into the tools and having a longer-term vision.akiersky
    • I happy to hear this.utopian
    • Awesome congrats!YakuZoku
    • Very happy to hear this.monospaced
    • I've experienced the exact same thing this last year contracting w/a major corpo (evil insurance co)—Ridiculously organized, no egos, very kind, helpful folks.PonyBoy
    • ^ the banality of evilmonNom
    • Thanks! Really apprecate it. :)mg33
    • I feel your gain :) Made a similar move on a smaller scale 8 years ago.mort_
  • BonSeff8

    Had to leave a perfectly fine job of 3 years due to a toxic director.

    There were 2 UX squads working independently on two totally different products, lots of momentum on both, work wasn't exciting but moral and enjoyment was up. I led one of the squads. Then C-suite decided to create two new positions, a UX director, who would merge both squads and a VP of UX & Product. The VP was fired shortly after his hire because he didn't disclose his SEC trading violations from a former endeavor where he tried to cheat investors. And the Director absolutely murdered the vibe across two squads. I had never seen anything like it before, absolutely no interpersonal skills. Everyone looked to me to be a change agent and try to reason with the director, the director looked to me to reason with the squads. It totally drained me.

    So I spent about 4 weeks coding a portfolio, curating a decade and a half of work, writing case studies, and putting together a resume that would hopefully compete in this landscape. Once ready, then applied like hell and had about a dozen interviews and countless rejection letters just from those that actually took the time to send them.

    Finally found something that I think I am going to be really happy with, doing something very similar as the place I left. But starting over.

    I feel terrible for those still there at the old place and see them all leaving in the next 90 days. It's really a shame. We made noise, voiced our concerns and went completely ignored by management. Hate to see it because it is a really talented team of UXers in the weeds. But any care for quality has been tanked due to one guy who couldn't read the tea leaves.

    • I went thru an eerily similar thing a few years ago. (I actually got fired by the toxic leader the morning before I was asked to do provide feedback on him.)
      ********
    • And I can totally relate to the point about feeling terrible for the people who still work with him.
      ********
    • Craziest thing: him firing me turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to my career. like Top 3. Ironic!
      ********
    • I am glad things turned around for you, and I hope I am as lucky. I have a good feeling about it. It sucks seeing your workmates deflated.BonSeff
    • Wow, no respect for the OG internal team's opinion... not sure if that's normal or not. How's it going at the new place?canoe
    • Congrats on finding a new job you're happy with! I'm on the hunt now too after being made redundant.microkorg
  • canoe1

    Doing taxes...

    Shaking my head at Adobe's $715 CS yearly expense. That's nearly 8k to date.

    "The company's gross profit for 2024 was $19.147 billion, a 12.27% increase from 2023."

    Fucking pigs.

    • You are free to not use it
      ********
    • bro, start a cancellation process on your CC, it will give you an option to keep your subscription from 60-ish to 30-ishYakuZoku
    • per monthYakuZoku
    • Lovecanoe
  • canoe0

    It's been a while since I've worked on outdoor, so here's a little reminder -

    1 point (pt) = 1/72 of an inch
    36 pt = 0.5 inches

    Also, would love to pay someone to make a video for my upcoming single. Last time I made a video, I ended up not being able to listen to the song again, made me nauseas. Pretty simple concept, protest footage, fists in the air, and a digital-oriented typeface with the lyrics. The "radio edit" is 3min45sec.

  • canoe-1

    My font guy quit.

    Looks like I have to throw in the towel.

    See ya on the assembly line fuckos!

  • canoe-1

    They said ‘cricket club.’ I showed up with a net and a terrarium.

    Off to a great start.

    • Sponsorship package completed for a cricket club and academy in Torontocanoe
  • canoe0

    Starting a billboard project for a super car dealership. In all places... London.

    I hope I can get them out of their mechanic mentality when it comes to execution.

    • gonna blame graf if the project fails?face_melter
    • i'm going to pretend I didn't see thatcanoe
    • my advise to you - know your audience - can't become a senior designer, let alone CD and CMO by fucking up billboardscanoe
  • canoe0

    Was involved in a focus group this morning regarding client acquisition. Two interesting questions at the end...

    1. Do you think there's a way to screen "the bad clients" using technology?

    2. What do you think an agency will look like in ten years?

    • What defines a bad client?Morning_star
    • Good luck on this, on filtering the bad clients.

      If the budget is high, You should always take all precautions and have a lawyer behind you.
      OBBTKN
    • Good luck on what? I'm just starting a conversation.canoe
    • Bad client = don't pay on time, change scope, disrespectful, misunderstanding their role, etc, I'm sure there are some objective attributescanoe
    • 1) no
      2) no also
      monNom
  • canoe1

    Cramming in Data Driven Marketing course and AI Marketing Course....

    Work has been super fucking slow lately... Tons of gigs out there but they pay horribly.

    Thanks for the great economy Cheeto

  • canoe0

    Chatbots

    Quora Poe: https://poe.com/
    Claude: https://www.anthropic.com/earlya…
    Chat.DID: https://chat.d-id.com/
    Pi: https://pi.ai/talk
    Personal AI: https://www.personal.ai/
    Snapchat: https://newsroom.snap.com/say-hi…
    Amazon Q: https://aws.amazon.com/q/
    TextGPT: https://textgpt.net/

    Conversational search

    Bing Copilot: https://www.bing.com/new
    You: https://you.com/
    Perplexity AI: https://www.perplexity.ai/
    DuckDuckGo: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckas…
    Google Search Generative Experience (SGE): https://labs.google/sge/

    Text to image/design

    DALL-E 3: https://openai.com/dall-e-3 (available via ChatGPT)
    Stable Diffusion: https://stablediffusionweb.com/
    Adobe Firefly: https://www.adobe.com/sensei/gen…
    Midjourney: https://www.midjourney.com/home/…
    Dream AI by WOMBO: https://dream.ai/create
    Canva: https://www.canva.com/ai-image-g…
    Leonardo: https://leonardo.ai/
    Galileo: https://www.usegalileo.ai/explor…

    General resources

    There’s an AI for That: https://theresanaiforthat.com/
    Future Tools database: https://www.futuretools.io/
    Click Up AI tools database: https://doc.clickup.com/25598832…
    Marketing AI Institute: https://www.marketingaiinstitute…
    Future of Marketing Institute: https://futureofmarketinginstitu… (Note: Martin is a member of the advisory board.)
    OpenAI Guide to GPT Best Practices: https://platform.openai.com/docs…

    Hybrid (writing and design)

    Tome: https://beta.tome.app/
    DesignerBot: https://www.beautiful.ai/blog/in…
    Gamma App: https://gamma.app/

    Productivity and collaboration

    Salesforce Einstein GPT: https://www.salesforce.com/produ…
    Copilot for Microsoft 365: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/…
    HubSpot ChatSpot: https://ecosystem.hubspot.com/ma…
    Google Workspace AI: https://workspace.google.com/sol…
    Zoom IQ: https://blog.zoom.us/zoom-iq-sma…
    Mailchimp Email Content Generator: https://mailchimp.com/announcing…
    Shopify Magic: https://www.shopify.com/ca/magic…
    Motion: https://www.usemotion.com/ (organizes day)
    RescueTime: https://www.rescuetime.com/
    Missive: https://missiveapp.com/
    Conversica: https://www.conversica.com/

    Prompt engineering resources

    PromptHero: https://prompthero.com/ (visuals)
    Promptist: https://heroku.com/
    Lexica Art: https://lexica.art/
    Krea: https://www.krea.ai/

    Video, voice, and sound

    Synthesia: https://www.synthesia.io/
    Lumen5: https://lumen5.com/
    Runway ML: https://runwayml.com/
    Genmo: https://www.genmo.ai/
    Pika Art: https://pika.art/login
    GlossAi: https://glossai.co/
    10 Best Voice AI Generators: https://www.unite.ai/10-best-ai-…
    Meta MediaGen: https://www.axios.com/2023/08/02…
    Stable Audio: https://stableaudio.com/
    Google MusicFX: https://aitestkitchen.withgoogle…
    Maverick personalized video: https://www.trymaverick.com/
    Gan personalized video: https://gan.ai/
    Captions AI: https://www.captions.ai/

    Writing and editing

    ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/
    Google Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/app
    Microsoft Copilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com/
    Jasper AI: https://www.jasper.ai/
    HyperWrite: https://www.hyperwriteai.com/
    Rytr: https://rytr.me/
    Wordtune Spices: https://www.wordtune.com/spices
    GrammarlyGo: https://www.grammarly.com/gramma…
    Copysmith: https://copysmith.ai/
    Copy.ai: https://www.copy.ai/