to those of you already working in this field for a living, what

Agency co-founder here. I wake up around 1pm or whenever. Walk into my office most days unless I've got other shit going on, work for a few hours. If it's a Friday maybe crack a beer open and drink with my partners. Take off around 5 or 6. Chill at home for a while before working on some projects. Repeat.

It's pretty cache, but I don't think my experience is typical.

>>280120

how long did you work for before you felt like you were a strong enough designer to help start your own agency? would you recommend it as a future career path?

I'm not opposed to having to work at home but I just wanted insight on the balance of home life and work life in this field.

>>280121
Don't get me wrong, it takes some adjustment to be your own boss. Sure, sometimes you set your hours, but often they'll set themselves.

I freelanced for close to 5 years before starting a full-service creative agency with two other people. Our biggest advantage is that we offer more than design (video, web, copywriting, etc.)

Balance between work and home fluctuates depending on what you've got on deck. Some people like to keep them separate, (one f my partners in particular, who comes in from 8am to 5-6pm), and then there are people like me who don't mind the lines blurring.

My advice? Don't spend as much time freelancing as I did. Do it long enough to build a portfolio and then get into an agency. Go to networking events, because networking is 80% of the real work of an agency. When you want to start your own thing, be risky and bold with your ideas. Save the mellow, super professional work for when you have more to lose. Being splashy early on, especially in a well-served market like mine is, will get you noticed. And you'll want to do the fun risky projects while you can, because when the bigger fish start swimming into your conference room, the fun oddball work tapers off pretty fast.

>>280126

I appreciate the insight. I can't see myself ever wanting to be my own boss in this field but I suppose I wouldn't rule it out. It's not a decision I'm in the position to make currently.

how many people do you have working under you? and so you give your designers the freedom to choose if they want to work in the office or at home just as long as they meet the deadlines? that would be the type of working environment I'd love to be apart of.

>>280128
With us, as long as you get your shit done and it looks good, I don't care if you're drunk on a beach all week. Yeah, if you're going to present something to me, please do it in person and talk me through your design, but other than that I don't care where you work.

For our animator, it's a different story. He's got to come in so he can work on our dedicated editing desktop, but if he had one of his own, we'd have no problem with him working at home. But he's pretty chill and easy to hang out with, and tends to like coming in anyway.

We don't have an attendance policy or dress code, that's all the kind of shit my partners and I hated about our old jobs. I think you'll start seeing more of that as the giant dinosaur agencies are outnumbered by smaller, faster, fresher creative houses. It's a workplace culture that's benefited us fine in the four years we've been open.

Granted, when we're going to pitch or present to a client, especially publicly-traded corps and larger fish of that sort, we're all business. But I think that's really just a matter of common sense.

>>280130

thanks again for the insight.

>>280130
not OP, but if you don't mind another question. What's your level of education? I've started a thread last week on self teaching design. I could go to Uni but i'm 25 and If i spend 4 years outta a full time job things are going to be tight. really tight.

File: kos-57.jpg (427KB, 1000x848px) Image search: [Google]

427KB, 1000x848px

>>280126
>comes in from 8am to 5-6pm
What do you mean? If s/he's starting at 8:00, the schedule ends at 16:30. Are extra hours paid double?

Adding a few more related questions to what OP asked for: from what I've observed, USA is still working under slavery patterns, especially IT companies in NYC & SF. People have no respect for themselves; they sell their time (i.e. youth, life) so that someone else at the top can get rich. There are many agencies that force you into cretin hours like 10:00 – 18:00. Add 30, 45 or in some cases even an hour for the commute. Your whole day is gone. So is your week. And your early life. I'm trying not to sound patronizing, I'm sorry if I do, but let me tell you something—you're never *ever* going to buy back your 25 years old again, no matter how much you cash in per annum. And you don't even get to benefit from it all. What's the point? For a six-digit and a couple of weeks off during Christmas, New Year's Eve and Easter? Just so you can have the benefit of being employed? Is this really 'security'? How do you establish a family in these conditions? You barely even get to talk with your partner, let alone raise a child (the kid might be more attached to the nanny than his/her father). The only viable way to live comfortably and relatively satisfied with yourself internally is being self-employed. Working on myself, improving my lack of skills where necessary, decide what's the right choice, no red tape, no egomaniac CEOs et cetera. Am I being delusional? You're not actually free if someone else micromanages most of your life and decides your routines. I don't want to go full Žižek here, but this is the postmodern slavery of the corporate-feudalist globalization.

>wake up
>go to office at any time below or exactly 9am
>check emails
>if empty, dick around
>if non-empty, read the briefing and do the job
>log your work hours
>dick around
>lunch
>when 7.5 hours full, get the fuck out

>>280182
I think you missed something here, or maybe I wasn't clear. But the 8-6 guy is not an employee, he's a full partner. Neither him, nor me, or the third partner are paid hourly. We take dividends based on sales. Our employees are salaried, and were actually making twice as much as us while we were starting out. They got paid for their time and my partners and I divided up what was left over after expenses. Only within the last couple of years has our pay started to exceed theirs, and it's maybe by 1 or 2 grand per year.

We don't run some corporate slave plantation. You don't build a talented and loyal staff by trying to fuck them over.

>>280200
Apologizes. I wasn't my intention to attack you. The rant was a bit caustic because I've seen too many job opportunities that lock the employee down on a ridiculous schedule, taking up his whole day. While that's not such big issue when you're fresh out of college or high-school, it grows into a tumor later on.

I appreciate the feedback guys.

just a few more questions, if anybody can provide info feel free to contribute. it would be greatly appreciated.

for in house graphic design jobs, what can I expect the interview process to be like? do they test you on what you know? how should I dress? I'm in New york if that helps.

>>280826
Most places worth working at will test your skills by giving you a design test to see how well your skills fit what they do. If they give you a brief read the entire thing at least twice before you even start.

Some will contact you and have you do a little design test before interviewing, some have you do the test at their office so they know you did the work yourself. Some companies do both.

The company I work for now did both. An initial design test to make sure they weren't wasting their time interviewing people who were exaggerating their skills (or lying), two interviews (different days), then a surprise in-house design test after my second interview with a time limit.

As for dress I'd say business casual, young professional. Button up shirt is fine.

For the interview, research the company and have some questions ready to ask about them. Show them you're interested and be ready to explain what about the company interests you and what you feel you could contribute to it. If they hit you with the "what's your biggest weakness" question make sure you've thought about it. Don't do the cliche "i'm a perfectionist" BS that no one wants to hear. Actually think about something that you want to work on professionally, address why you feel you need to improve it (how it ties in with your career goals), and what you are actively doing to improve this area. "What's your biggest strength", try and make it relevant to the company.

Think about projects you are most proud of and use those as references. Think about some projects that were disasters and what you learned from them.

>>280831

How long was the time limit and how complex were the design tests? I appreciate the in depth answer, thank you.

I'm really just nervous for the tests more than anything. I feel like I'd be able to conduct myself well on the interview portion but nerves might get to me during the test.

>>280174
Associates from a community college. Seriously.

If you like this line of work, that's all the incentive you need to start learning on your own. You learn and retain so much more when you're studying a subject from a place of real passion, and not in between busywork and tests and the rote memorization of content required to complete said busywork and tests. Not to mention that my total student loan debt was only like 4k. I'm serious when I say I'm the only one of my colleagues and friends with zero debt.

>>280835
>>280174
This, I think it's mostly because GD falls (at least a little) into computer sciences, where experience and examples > a piece of paper saying you wasted years of your life.

>>280835
I'm not seeking to be the next AIGA medalist but drawing has been something I've been good at since i was a child. Yet i never pursued any studies beyond secondary school, granted now my drawing is a bit off. After i saw a couple of video on the elements of typography, grids etc i instantly fell in love.

>>280835

right now I have a certificate in website design and am about to gain an associates in commercial arts. both are from community college.

do you think those 2 degrees along with a good portfolio would be enough to get an entry level graphic design job?

>>280880
Honestly, just the good portfolio would be enough to land an entry-level position. If you can design *and* code, you're already ahead of a lot of your competition. Pursue the schooling if you want experience in interacting with other designers, get a taste of deadlines etc. But regardless of how long you go to school, don't ever stop learning and practicing. There will never come a day when you know enough, so keep exploring new fields and new techniques, and revisit foundational basics often.

My case isn't typical, so don't take everything I say as gospel. My partners are very smart guys, and if I didn't open up an agency with them I'd still be a starving freelancer who wonders if a better degree would make his life easier.

You might be the type who would benefit more from a formal design education, I'm just saying that honed skills and well-informed design instincts don't automatically come with a diploma.

>>280894

yeah, at the moment I've just been reading a lot of graphic design books recommended by my one professor in college who actually knew what he was talking about. my other teachers would just slap grades on anything you hand in without actual feedback or criticism. I'm at the point where I feel I have a good grasp on what is shit and what is not so I sort of had to discipline myself to make sure I was making work that could actually help my portfolio down the line and not just be good enough to pass classes.

I have nightmares about being stuck in this "career". I think about suicide a lot. Fuck you.

File: image.jpg (211KB, 715x450px) Image search: [Google]

211KB, 715x450px

I wish i never became a Graphic Designer, i really don't like dealing with the pressure of being creative all the time.
I should have stuck to something more technical like Web development.

>>280910
>>280911
I've started experiencing the same dreadful feelings. This career (which isn't even that much of a deal; you can't really brag about it that you're doing something for the greater good) requires constant learning, you always have to be up to date with new releases, the latest software updates, the latest trends, if you want to start developing websites you'll never be able to learn it all, the sum of frameworks and libraries is ridiculous, all of this only to stay relevant for the market, otherwise you're out of the game, fired, on the streets, suicide. I wish I had taken another rout, maybe something more blue collar. It's a never-ending-always-a-student situation.

first off...don't call yourself a graphic designer. that will be the end to your life. then design will become a "job" instead of "fun hobby thing i used to like..."

it's better if you keep incognito and not tell anyone about your "talent" or people will try to mostly give you nothing for what you do.

i tend to never bring it up, rather hide it, work in a non-design field, and treat it like a commission thing.

btw if you are not employed in a designy field, you might feel more awesome about flairing someone else's baddie stuff and people around you will think you're some kind of godlike typographical wordsmith.

*hehe*

File: tumblr_inline_mpsmlmTnIC1qz4rgp.png (49KB, 444x287px) Image search: [Google]

49KB, 444x287px

>>280973
Are you from a Jamaican shanty town ?

>>280973
All of these statements are dead false. Especially the last one. If you can't clearly articulate how a design could be improved, and instead opt for "flairing", whatever the fuck that is, no one is going to automatically assume you'd do any better. That's a juvenile fantasy that I assure you comes true zero percent of the time.

And design is a job. If it's nothing more to you than a "fun hobby thing i used to like...", then you have absolutely nothing to gain from trying to compete with someone who eats, breathes, and shits design.

tl;dr You're full of shit up to your eyeballs, and were never cut out for this line of work in the first place. Your outlook barely rates you as a hobbyist, and the only thing you got right was your very first sentence, but only insofar as it applies to yourself.

***hehe***

>>281038

took that bait too seriously. nom.

File: erik-spiekermann-8.jpg (43KB, 600x401px) Image search: [Google]

43KB, 600x401px

full time designer at a pop-culture related company on the west coast. NOTE: corporate company designer, not a start up or agency.

>what is your day to day work life like?
really fucking easy. i work on my side projects at work because it's so dreadfully dull here. I'm a design bitch for making newsletters, graphics, and banners really. and some web/app coding. The subject matter is pretty entertaining, so I deal with it

>Is having a full time graphic design job difficult to balance with having a life outside of work or is it strictly dependent on deadlines and the type of content you are creating at that time?
a corporate design job begins and end with your work hours. youre not taking jack shit home with you or anything.

>If you are working for an agency or a company, are you expected to finish projects entirely at work or do you have the freedom to take your work home with you?
Entirely at work.

For my first full-time position out of college, doing mostly highschool-level requirements for 34k a year isnt a horrible outcome. I'll probably stay here for a year or two more and then jump ship once I've got a decent stay at a big name on my resume.

my tip: just because you get a full time job, dont stop doing side projects and outside work. my creativity isnt nearly sated by this cyclic routine garbage, so I do my own stuff to keep my sights fresh

I decided not to just be into the design aspect but I still do design. I use photography and Take videos. I use Photoshop and After effects plus I maintain a website, example (adding products, prices, pictures, videos, descriptions yada yada yada) plus also I do shipping and receiving. I love the fact that I do not just design, I would actually kill myself if I only did one job. I also do some Auto-cad, Fix computers on the side. Just love what you do and if you don't just love it add more to it until you do....Just my advice on this OP.....

I'm the lead visual designer at my agency. We make apps and websites for the most part, though I do foray into animation and all sorts of different work, so I feel like what I get to do is multidisciplinary.

>what is your day to day work life like?
I'm usually the one churning out concepts or visuals to win or impress our clients. It's exciting for me to see my work come to life at the end of a project, win awards, etc. It's a good job.

>Is having a full time graphic design job difficult to balance with having a life outside of work or is it strictly dependent on deadlines and the type of content you are creating at that time?
This really depends on where you work and what design field you're interested in to be honest.

Most creative agencies are stereotyped for managing projects badly which means they have undercharged and underestimated the amount of effort needed for a project which leads to people working ridiculous hours to meet a deadline. That's just bad project management and going with a cheap client.

One of the fellows we recently hired came from a background where he regularly worked 7am-8pm, sometimes until 3am. He has a family and two kids. One of the reasons he switched over to us is because we are only expected to work an 8 hour day, which is unusual in this business (at least where I'm from).

>If you are working for an agency or a company, are you expected to finish projects entirely at work or do you have the freedom to take your work home with you?
I suppose I could, but it's not conducive to productivity in my opinion. I work in a highly collaborative environment where the work is shared amongst a team of designers - it's much easier to communicate face to face and get shit done. We're also expected to be client facing, so it's better if we're in office for obvious reasons like meetings, client workshops, etc.

>>281061
>get btfo
>NO_I_TROL_U.pdf