As conscious beings, we’re all on a Learning Curve. Always.
A Learning Curve, according to an amalgam of sources, is defined as, “The amount of learning and the time it takes to learn it.”
Some people arrange their lives in such a way as to avoid having to learn new processes; new job skills, to start over—and do so from scratch. In a society where a Liberal Arts degree is the default for all those incapable of adding Column A to Column B and or retaining three characters in an HTML code, we were taught said degree would make us more marketable, demonstrate our malleability, making us more enticing as a potential employee. We were not forewarned our “versatility” would also render us terribly, terribly expendable in the job force, nor prepare us for a state of perpetual adaptation-tumble.
I know a handful of people who’ve gone back to school (not unlike myself) on the State’s dime each and every time they were laid off or downsized out of a job and have done so MULTIPLE TIMES. It’s a veritable revolving door of New Worker Training.
But that is their experience, and this is about mine…and, anyway, I digress.
In 2005 I quit my job at Northwest Education Loan Association. I went back to school to study Graphic Design, and, in doing so; I started up the new slope of a Learning Curve. And, like little Sisyphus, I now find myself tumbling from its steepest incline, into the gully, where I right myself, listen to my knees pop, my back creak, and start back up the slope.
Graphic Designers in Seattle are not quite a dime a dozen, but they’re damn close. Granted, their job opportunities are not as slim as for, say, an actor or would-be acting teacher, but it is a career found within that same realm of the Liberal Arts, and tailored to be just as flimsy as far as any kind of corporate viability is concerned.
Upon completing the graphic design program I was hungry and eager for work, and nervous as hell I was simply re-inventing the wheel I’d forged with my MFA in Theatre. Where does a graphic designer look for work? Do you seek out corporate or design firms? Well…not if you’re fresh from a community college you don’t—but the school and your advisors are not going to tell you that. So, you sign up with every design placement agency in town. You build a physical and an on-line portfolio, and you network like a Black Gnat in estrus.
You also do potentially risky, if not stupid, things like applying for jobs on sites like Craigslist.
Craigslist; that domain of “self-policing” classified ads that’s nothing short of the lost island of THE LORD OF THE FLIES. The only way to police that site is to avoid it all together.
Case in point: Financial anxiety and desperation upon leaving school inspired me to respond to a Craigslist posting; CARTOONIST WANTED FOR NEW BUSINESS. Or something…the entrepreneur had a chain of businesses and was in the process of developing a web site and newsletter and he wanted someone to design a series of single or triple-panel cartoons to be featured therein. He liked my designs and suggested we meet.
The business was a massage parlor just off I-405 in Renton. Not massage therapist’s, but a massage parlor complete with bubbling hot tubs and steam rooms and dainty women of various Asian persuasion running about in short robes and doing a great deal of giggling.
Maybe I am naïve or maybe I prefer to give some folks the benefit of the doubt…or maybe it was pretty clear this chain of establishments were dyed-in-the-wool rub-and-tuggers and I simply didn’t care because I needed cash—and let’s face it, where there is vice, there is cash.
I met with the owner (who’s name escapes me at present) and we—no—I--tossed some ideas around. I came up with the notion of patterning the strip after Max Cannon’s RED MEAT. I always loved the stock-image, static, ink-stamp look of the RED MEAT strip and thought the minimalist approach was quite brilliant because of the time one obviously saves on new illustrations.
The owner gave me less-than-very-little with which to work as far as content was concerned. All he would suggest would be punch lines pertaining to, “Ahhhh- MY happy place…”
w.t.f??
I did up a series of characters based on his suggestions: “Cute Asian Girls.”
I drew up at least one strip, did a cost breakdown and invoiced him and was promptly blown off for the next month and the month after and the month after that. No money paid, no phone calls returned. I gave up.
That was back in October of 2007. This August I decided to do a little research into the doings of Red Dragon Spa—see if they had a website, see if they had an online newsletter and comic strips—I mean, maybe the owner simply didn’t like my designs and was uncomfortable telling me as much.
Instead, I found this…
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/371436_massage19.html?source=mypi
I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised.
But am I really so dim?
Maybe. But I have to admit this bit of information; “…a registered sex offender is believed to have helped get a business license for the Renton parlor. In a license application, the sex offender, who was convicted of child rape in King County and now living in Kirkland, is listed as one of three contacts for the business, police and court documents say,” REALLY unnerved me, and moved me from feeling as though I’d been played the fool to downright angry.
Yes, maybe I am naive, but the giggling Asian girls and steamy atmosphere of the place were not lost on me--you can be a bit of a perv and still be a good person, right? Just because you’re a perv, doesn’t mean you’re bound to skip on your bills, does it?
Am I rationalizing, or am I feeling the long-term after effects of the bald-faced acceptance of people—the Benefit of the Doubt-- bestowed on me through years of internalizing the teachings of Sesame Street, Sid And Marty Krofft, and the ABC After-School Special?
I do know for certain I’m out about $300.
I’ve had other gigs for which I’ve applied to through Craigslist (not to mention the pursuit of available single women…god…don’t get me started down that path…or up that curve as the case may be) that have not been so spectacularly abysmal, but disappointing nonetheless. There was the potential gig with Pacific Coast Monuments in Everett, WA. They were looking for illustrators to design and typeset custom cemetery memorials and headstones. And as a friend pointed out I may want to think twice about the job as, “You’ll be dealing with so many sad and angry people…”
Geez, it like a wasn’t a mortician’s gig…besides, the job would pay almost $30.00 an hour, a wage I’ve never had in my life. I did a sample design to the Creative Director’s specs, landed an interview, and afterwards was asked to design a second, more detailed, memorial stone. This took about 5-6 hours, as the illustrations were more complex than the first. I never heard back—no, “Thanks but ‘No Thanks.’” Nothing.
That’s very typical of job-hunting in the metro-Seattle area, mind. No common courtesy just institutionalized apathy that borders on the passive-aggressive. All part of a cultural perspective, here, I have yet to understand.
Then someone advised me that I really shouldn’t be doing such extensive work as part of an interview…after all, what’s to keep the other party from using your work as their own..?
Crap.
I supposed I could do some kind of obit search for the stone(s) I designed, but I fear it would be more trouble than it was worth.
I no longer trust anything or anyone found on Craigslist.
So this was one of my first forays into the land of freelance design…this was one of my first efforts to climb a new Learning Curve. And if a Learning Curve is defined by the AMOUNT you learn and the TIME IT TAKES to learn it, I live in fear of not living long enough, as I need plenty of time to process.
A Learning Curve, according to an amalgam of sources, is defined as, “The amount of learning and the time it takes to learn it.”
Some people arrange their lives in such a way as to avoid having to learn new processes; new job skills, to start over—and do so from scratch. In a society where a Liberal Arts degree is the default for all those incapable of adding Column A to Column B and or retaining three characters in an HTML code, we were taught said degree would make us more marketable, demonstrate our malleability, making us more enticing as a potential employee. We were not forewarned our “versatility” would also render us terribly, terribly expendable in the job force, nor prepare us for a state of perpetual adaptation-tumble.
I know a handful of people who’ve gone back to school (not unlike myself) on the State’s dime each and every time they were laid off or downsized out of a job and have done so MULTIPLE TIMES. It’s a veritable revolving door of New Worker Training.
But that is their experience, and this is about mine…and, anyway, I digress.
In 2005 I quit my job at Northwest Education Loan Association. I went back to school to study Graphic Design, and, in doing so; I started up the new slope of a Learning Curve. And, like little Sisyphus, I now find myself tumbling from its steepest incline, into the gully, where I right myself, listen to my knees pop, my back creak, and start back up the slope.
Graphic Designers in Seattle are not quite a dime a dozen, but they’re damn close. Granted, their job opportunities are not as slim as for, say, an actor or would-be acting teacher, but it is a career found within that same realm of the Liberal Arts, and tailored to be just as flimsy as far as any kind of corporate viability is concerned.
Upon completing the graphic design program I was hungry and eager for work, and nervous as hell I was simply re-inventing the wheel I’d forged with my MFA in Theatre. Where does a graphic designer look for work? Do you seek out corporate or design firms? Well…not if you’re fresh from a community college you don’t—but the school and your advisors are not going to tell you that. So, you sign up with every design placement agency in town. You build a physical and an on-line portfolio, and you network like a Black Gnat in estrus.
You also do potentially risky, if not stupid, things like applying for jobs on sites like Craigslist.
Craigslist; that domain of “self-policing” classified ads that’s nothing short of the lost island of THE LORD OF THE FLIES. The only way to police that site is to avoid it all together.
Case in point: Financial anxiety and desperation upon leaving school inspired me to respond to a Craigslist posting; CARTOONIST WANTED FOR NEW BUSINESS. Or something…the entrepreneur had a chain of businesses and was in the process of developing a web site and newsletter and he wanted someone to design a series of single or triple-panel cartoons to be featured therein. He liked my designs and suggested we meet.
The business was a massage parlor just off I-405 in Renton. Not massage therapist’s, but a massage parlor complete with bubbling hot tubs and steam rooms and dainty women of various Asian persuasion running about in short robes and doing a great deal of giggling.
Maybe I am naïve or maybe I prefer to give some folks the benefit of the doubt…or maybe it was pretty clear this chain of establishments were dyed-in-the-wool rub-and-tuggers and I simply didn’t care because I needed cash—and let’s face it, where there is vice, there is cash.
I met with the owner (who’s name escapes me at present) and we—no—I--tossed some ideas around. I came up with the notion of patterning the strip after Max Cannon’s RED MEAT. I always loved the stock-image, static, ink-stamp look of the RED MEAT strip and thought the minimalist approach was quite brilliant because of the time one obviously saves on new illustrations.
The owner gave me less-than-very-little with which to work as far as content was concerned. All he would suggest would be punch lines pertaining to, “Ahhhh- MY happy place…”
w.t.f??
I did up a series of characters based on his suggestions: “Cute Asian Girls.”
I drew up at least one strip, did a cost breakdown and invoiced him and was promptly blown off for the next month and the month after and the month after that. No money paid, no phone calls returned. I gave up.
That was back in October of 2007. This August I decided to do a little research into the doings of Red Dragon Spa—see if they had a website, see if they had an online newsletter and comic strips—I mean, maybe the owner simply didn’t like my designs and was uncomfortable telling me as much.
Instead, I found this…
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/371436_massage19.html?source=mypi
I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised.
But am I really so dim?
Maybe. But I have to admit this bit of information; “…a registered sex offender is believed to have helped get a business license for the Renton parlor. In a license application, the sex offender, who was convicted of child rape in King County and now living in Kirkland, is listed as one of three contacts for the business, police and court documents say,” REALLY unnerved me, and moved me from feeling as though I’d been played the fool to downright angry.
Yes, maybe I am naive, but the giggling Asian girls and steamy atmosphere of the place were not lost on me--you can be a bit of a perv and still be a good person, right? Just because you’re a perv, doesn’t mean you’re bound to skip on your bills, does it?
Am I rationalizing, or am I feeling the long-term after effects of the bald-faced acceptance of people—the Benefit of the Doubt-- bestowed on me through years of internalizing the teachings of Sesame Street, Sid And Marty Krofft, and the ABC After-School Special?
I do know for certain I’m out about $300.
I’ve had other gigs for which I’ve applied to through Craigslist (not to mention the pursuit of available single women…god…don’t get me started down that path…or up that curve as the case may be) that have not been so spectacularly abysmal, but disappointing nonetheless. There was the potential gig with Pacific Coast Monuments in Everett, WA. They were looking for illustrators to design and typeset custom cemetery memorials and headstones. And as a friend pointed out I may want to think twice about the job as, “You’ll be dealing with so many sad and angry people…”
Geez, it like a wasn’t a mortician’s gig…besides, the job would pay almost $30.00 an hour, a wage I’ve never had in my life. I did a sample design to the Creative Director’s specs, landed an interview, and afterwards was asked to design a second, more detailed, memorial stone. This took about 5-6 hours, as the illustrations were more complex than the first. I never heard back—no, “Thanks but ‘No Thanks.’” Nothing.
That’s very typical of job-hunting in the metro-Seattle area, mind. No common courtesy just institutionalized apathy that borders on the passive-aggressive. All part of a cultural perspective, here, I have yet to understand.
Then someone advised me that I really shouldn’t be doing such extensive work as part of an interview…after all, what’s to keep the other party from using your work as their own..?
Crap.
I supposed I could do some kind of obit search for the stone(s) I designed, but I fear it would be more trouble than it was worth.
I no longer trust anything or anyone found on Craigslist.
So this was one of my first forays into the land of freelance design…this was one of my first efforts to climb a new Learning Curve. And if a Learning Curve is defined by the AMOUNT you learn and the TIME IT TAKES to learn it, I live in fear of not living long enough, as I need plenty of time to process.
