1.How many hours a day do you invest your time into graphic design.
Between my full-time job, my freelance work and my typography design, probably around 11 or 12 hours per day, six days per week. That sounds excessive and probably is, but I’ve been working that way for a long time.
2. What was your first job as a graphic designer? Current job?
I’m not sure if it was really a design job, but I painted weekly sales signs for a chain of grocery stores while in high school. This was before signs like these could just be inexpensively printed out.
As for current jobs, which ones? My day job doesn’t really have a well-defined title, but it amounts to communication/marketing/creative director. The other job is, I guess, owner/designer.
3. How many jobs have you had as a graphic designer. How many as internships?
One internship in college and three part-time design jobs. Since then (not counting freelance stuff), probably eight different full-time design job.
4. What artists do you pull inspiration from?
Artists are different from designers. I love art, took lots of art and art history classes in college, but I don’t draw any inspiration from them regarding my design work. They’re totally different things that occupy two separate spaces in my head.
5. How old were you when you discovered graphic design?
When I was in, probably, jr. high school there was a really good made-for-television animated movie titled The Point (look it up). The commercials in the movie were for a paper company, I think, that was selling things like stationery, school notebooks and loose leaf binders. The guy in all the commercials called himself a graphic designer, and he explained why his job designing all this stuff was so cool. I had never heard of such a job, and it stuck in my head. When I finally took my first design class in college, I decided that’s what I wanted to do.
6. What is your biggest accomplishment? Biggest challenge?
I’m assuming you mean a design accomplishment, as in hardest or longest or biggest? I can’t really point to one certain thing, but the most time-consuming single project was a top-to-bottom, inside-and-out redesign of a daily metropolitan newspaper. That project took over a year’s worth of my time.
My current biggest challenge at work is convincing clients that it’s in their best interests to let us do what they’re paying us to do.
7. What happens daily as a graphic designer?
For me, lots of meetings (I’m in a long, boring one right now).
8. What do you do, as a graphic designer, to stay motivated and creative?
Nothing in particular. It’s just what I do — long-term habit, I guess.
9. Why be a graphic designer?
There is no good reason unless you’re compelled to do it. Most people can’t make a long-lasting career out of it. It’s not nearly as lucrative as becoming an attorney or a plumber. The field is oversaturated with designer wannabes, and most will never find steady work.