Holy smokes! 
What a story!
I have a friend whose first job in the design field was putting stars over the private bits on adult movie packaging … way, way back before Photoshop.
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You’ve got a pair of hands!
One of my first sign jobs was making vinyl section headers for a porn video store.
Not my dream job, but it sure was funny.
I really don’t think I have a dream job any more.
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Lol!! Not sure if that’s a great convo starter or stopper for interviews 
Likewise, I have had some jobs that I’ve had to pinch myself to check if I was still awake. My take from those experiences is similar to yours. The dream jobs often come with some rude awakenings.
When I say, ‘I’ve had some jobs…’, they weren’t quite actual jobs. I have only ever had one job and I got so fed up with being exploited and over-worked for a fairly poor salary, that after sticking at it for almost five years, to gain the experience, I quit and went freelance and have worked for myself ever since.
In the early part of my freelance career, once I’d established myself, it was loads of fun. Initially, I worked through an agency in London, who basically placed designers with design agencies for short periods, be it holiday cover, or to work in particular projects. I got to work with some really good agencies for anything from a few days to a few weeks at a time. A few less good ones, but you have to take the rough with smooth.
The best thing about this was that you sometimes got to work on some really fun stuff, but had none of the responsibilities and hassles of an employee. You just walked away at the end of the day,
Because you were ‘on the clock’, ironically, you got far more respect than you would have had as an employee. The assumption was that you knew what you were doing. It was a fantastic learning curve, because you had to be able to back that assumption up and slip straight into diverse company cultures and workflows and hit the ground running. You never got the abuse that employees got; ‘Can you just…’ at 6.30pm on a Friday evening.
After a few years of this, my work evolved, being split between about 70% book design and 30% more corporate work, as I built my own client base. The former has been the mainstay of my career for the last two and a half decades, but with a few detours along the way.
One of these detours has to be the dream job, I could never have dreamt of. I was asked to work on a consultancy contract basis, still working freelance but committing to spending probably 80 to 90% of my time on one particular project. A half way house between employment and the no-responsibility of stealth freelancing – so not quite so detached as the previous agency work and requiring serious business commitment and responsibility.
This particular job and its spin-offs lasted around three years and consisted of working on the design of an album cover for a triple-release anthology for a particular band from Liverpool. For the little boy in me who, growing up in the North West of England and being a bit of a wannabe muso, The Beatles were – and still are – a bit of a religion for me, It was just about my dreamiest of dream jobs, combining my two great passions.
It didn’t disappoint, even though it was incredibly hard work and included doing absolutely everything from the covers and booklets themselves, to vinyl, singles, press ads, billboards, in-store displays, etc, etc. You name it. Everything put out there was done by just three of us (with the US production output done by Capitol Records in LA), and the odd bit of help from a fourth designer this end, when needed.
It has to be said, there were some pretty good parties too! I never tired of any of it. To work for your childhood heroes never got old. That project then led on to a couple of other album projects. Fun times.
So… now that it sounds like I’m just being overly self-satisfied and blowing my own trumpet, there is a reason for saying all this; the downside – there had to be one! Soon after this had all finished, I ended up in hospital with a suspected heart attack – in my late twenties! Of course, it turned out not to be and was just overwork and stress catching up with me. However, the doctor said if I continued to work at the same pace, in ten years it wouldn’t be just stress. Within a year, we’d sold up and left London.
Since then, most of my work has been in book design – both kids’ educational an Trade. I really enjoy it. It is a lovely thing to do with your day. Of course it has its own stresses, but nothing like at the same level as before – mind, just living in London is a stress all of its own. Great in your 20s, but there’s definitely a pay-off.
Now, my dream job would be split between doing what I am doing and playing bass for a living. The latter I just do for fun and anything earned just pays for studio time, etc.
Mind you, even playing music comes with its own stresses if you were to go fully pro. When I was a teenager, I was in a band. We did OK, but we split up at that time where you make the decision whether to push on, or go to university. Four of us went to uni and one didn’t. He is doing well now (a little while back, the b*****d sent me a photo of himself in Rockfield Studios sitting at the Bohemian Rhapsody piano), but it took a couple of decades of itinerant jobs to be able to even scrape a living together before he got to that point.
So, the moral of the story has to be; careful what you wish for. Everything comes at a cost.
Still, I wouldn’t change it. It’s been quite the ride so far.
Blimey, I think this one has turned into my most tediously verbose post of all time. If it sent you to sleep, I hope, at least, the dreams were sweet.
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My dream job;
- I get to use the latest and most powerful computers and software
- People bring me interesting things to do
- I learn new skills all the time
- I get paid enough to pay the bills
I been living the dream for 30 years. What industry? The print industry.
If I wasn’t doing this? Teaching the next generation how to do this.
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Wow! The members of that Liverpool band are as close to musical deities as I can imagine (at least for me). Having worked on a Beatles album would have been several rungs above fantastic.
Was this the anthology set where Klaus Voormann put together the collage?
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It was. Initially, there were a few possibles in the running, of whom, Klaus Voormann was one, naturally. One other was David Hockney, but he was too busy for the Beatles apparently! Glad it ended up the way it did, with Voormann painting it.
Considering the Revolver album cover and his storied connection to the band members back to their Hamburg days, Voormann was an obvious choice. Dang, I would have loved to have been involved in that.