Hello Again
Well hello there!
It seems that I am still alive, after all. What’s been happening in the world? In my own little rounded corner of BizarroLand, I have made a major career decision and left my professional job with Paramount Home Entertainment Australia to pursue my dream-design. Hence the lack of time for updates, information, and other assorted luxuries like adequate sleep and peace of mind.
Now, I know what many of you are probably thinking (is 3 “many”?). How could I leave a good paying (the best I’ve probably ever had it) job with a large and powerful corporation that produces some of my favorite film and TV shows? How could I walk away from an office full of cool people (and they were cool, and nice too) and the perks of a corporate office-free internet, air conditioning and a stunning top floor view of lovely downtown Sydney?
And most especially, how could I do this without having any Design work lined up, a reputation, and/or talent?
To this, I say: “Hey, that last part wasn’t very nice. I have lots of training to make up for the lack of talent, I’ll have you know!”
Honestly, it wasn’t easy leaving that job. It was my first big-time corporate office experience here, and I really enjoyed most of it. I loved seeing Watchmen on BluRay in the store and thinking “I helped produce that.” And I won’t lie, I enjoyed being able to tell people that I was in the industry and where I worked, I liked the respect. Even for an office peon such as myself, there was a certain cache with working for Paramount.
But truth to be told, I wasn’t entirely happy with the job itself. In my position, I was responsible for making sure that the artwork for DVD labels and sleeves and occasionally special boxes and stuff was formatted to given specifics and that there were no mistakes in spelling and color, etc. It was interesting usually, but the whole time I found myself thinking how I would design the packaging, what I would have done differently. And in addition, there were some personal issues that I was (am?) going through that made it exceptionally difficult to concentrate on petty things like multimillion dollar print campaigns. (Admittedly, this was my own unprofessional fault also.)
So here I am now, a couple of months into the grand adventure of searching for a new job that I am (finally!) trained and qualified for. The latest news on this front is that I have set myself up a website portfolio (for maybe the 7th time, but this time I really mean it!), applied for a few dozen jobs, and even managed to do some freelance art for the theater chain I work for. Could be worse, of course-but it’s still not good enough for me. Hopefully something good is on the horizon, if I can just get the smoke from my burned bridge out of my eyes.
So long, giant aircraft-endagering logo...
Hopefully guarded,
Nathan
