Bandwagon Graphiks

And so the saga begins….a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Ok, enough with that, write this blog I will.

As I sit here at my desk on this glorious Friday evening, my boy cat is crawling up on me squeaking his usual play with me tune, I’m sipping some scolding hot cinnamon apple tea w/honey – hoping it will sooth my ravaged throat – and yet, as exhausted and drained as I am – I can’t help but reflect upon the happenings of this week. Glorious might not be the word to describe this particular Friday, but nevertheless it is Friday which means it will be Saturday soon, and that is glorious.

This week has been, to say the least, busy. Busy to the point where time for a shower becomes a luxury. My studio is thrashed, I couldn’t tell you where my shoes are, and after it all – I have apparently worked myself sick. Good Job Jen, congratulations – you give birth to your baby yet now your too exhausted or sore to take care of it.

I should be used to this life though, I’ve been out here in LA – nose to the grindstone, kicking my arse now for 3 years; before that I was married to my education, dreaming of one day moving to LA and becoming a successful entertainment designer right out of school. Heh, memories.

In my last post, I sort of touched on what this whole blog is about, and that was for it to become an educational tool of sorts to people who like me jumped into the snake pit feet first. In the last 3 years, I have craved for advice and stories of other fresh grads experiencing the same unemployment woes, tasting what its like to be taken advantage of, and being the fresh peon who’s the first to fire. But in order to even begin to start with the comic gold that will soon be, I need to set you up with a little back story, a bit of a rehash through the college years or the “College? years” as so brilliantly declared by John Belushi in Porky’s.

So, way back when, about three weeks before 9/11 to be exact – I started college, it was big, scary – but boy was I glad to be out of the house and on my own, proving to everyone back home in Michigan that I could do it . Up until then, the kids I grew up with never thought much of me, I even had teachers who scoffed when I applied to big name universities and ivy league schools. I had a brother who by all means was already an astronaut in training and what was I going out for? Theater. To everyone around me, an arts degree was about as useful as dog poop. My parents were optimistic and supportive to the nth degree, but I still had/have that feeling that I had to prove everyone wrong.

Smash cut to my 2nd year at the University of Arizona in Tucson – I was the rebel, the defier of authority and breaker of rules. You see, UofA has A LOT of degree programs, so many that you could basically stay in school for life. I started out thinking theater was my thing, but realized quickly that I was more interested in film making, so I switched to Media Arts early on and began to immerse myself in classes like Survey of Media History 201 with Dr. Selznik. While learning about the Lumiere brothers and Zoetropes, I made friends with some older film students and this is where I found out about BFA programs. I had no idea what a BFA was compared to a BA – all I knew is that all my new friends were BFA students and I wanted to do what they were doing.

To make a long story short, one BFA led to two, which didn’t make the registrars happy, and confused my professors. It wasn’t that I was not confident of my film production BFA but late in my 2nd year I discovered that I had an affinity for drawing and became absolutely fascinated by how studio art plays a large part in film production. I wanted to stand out once I left school and had to push myself to the limits. Most of my advisers thought it was a clerical error that I was working towards two separate BFA’s and hadn’t been to see a school official in a while, but in actuality I was actually working on two separate degree programs and capstone projects.

There are quite a few stories of my rebel rousing ways in school, but the main underlying theme to all of this is that I have always been the one who takes the most difficult path to get somewhere. I’m not saying that in order to be successful at anything, you should take my route, not at all, but what I want to convey more than anything is that no matter how difficult the path you choose, you shouldn’t let anyone get you down and tell you that you’re not good enough to accomplish something. As a full time freelancer, you will face people like this every day. People who know more than you and can talk you into a trash can in no time. So from day one, you need to learn how to stand up for what you want to do and do it. It takes an incredible amount of focus and commitment to support yourself as a freelancer, especially when you are new to a city and know few people who will pay you.

You’re probably wondering why I even had to mention my college pedigree in order to convey that point but I’m a person who likes real world examples and not just inspirational lines that are hard to apply to my daily life.

In the years that I have been out of school, I’ve had quite a few students ask me about BFA degrees and how they actually help you once you leave school. Well in truth, they don’t directly help you at all, but that doesn’t mean they are not important. School is meant to flush out your creative brain and teach you how to think. This is what differentiates all the various degree programs. The class structure, time in school, and how you apply yourself is what sets your education apart from others. There is this great quote I heard during one of the first AIGA Y Conferences I went to, said by the illustrator Tim Biskup and that’s “Everyone has 10,000 bad drawings in them; the trick is to get them out as quickly as possible.” What I took away from that, was that the harder and faster I worked in school, the better prepared I would be for jumping into the proverbial snake pit.

Now that I’ve been out of school for a few years, I can say that this is absolutely true. Many of my professors pushed students to sketch and sketch and sketch, till our pencils were wore down to the nub. I hated sketching, it was like forcing a little kid to eat their peas. I wish I would have listened because sketching is actually really important to what I do now. Creative directors are hiring a system not a portfolio and I did not learn that until post school. Sketching is your system, it shows how you think, and if you don’t flush out your sketching skills so that you can quickly and accurately convey your idea, then you’re going to hit a few walls.

So anyways to wrap up this parsec long blog; College does not give you real world throw down experience for your first design gig whether its in an office or freelance. However if you make the most out of those years and really throw yourself into it, you’ll be that much more prepared for life post school. It’s all about doing what is right for your and what you want to do. So go do it!

Welcome to Bandwagon Graphiks. It’s been an epic trip getting to this point and let me first thank you all for taking the time out of your busy days to visit our brand spanking new screaming baby site. So new I think there is still slime and goop all over the place. You’re probably wondering what this whole adventure is for and why in the world you should even consider reading, bookmarking, linking and forwarding my rambles?

Well, how about a little intro, eh?

First things first, let me introduce myself…I’m Jennifer Beatty, no relation to Warren sadly, but I like it. I’m a designer, an illustrator, a filmmaker, a cyclist, a Slovak, a vegetarian, a wannabe triathlete, a story-teller and most importantly a rebel. From day one I was letting people know my opinion, ask my mom. I’m the baby of the family, #2, after my older brother the rocket scientist who is soon going to be the holder of a PHD…Soon I will have to address him as Dr. Scott Psha! Anyways, my whole life I have been blasting through the walls around me like the Juggernaut. Telling me no will just make me work ten times harder, trying to find a way around. Sounds a bit snotty, but I believe in failing, you learn from your mistakes and learn well. Whether I succeed or go down in flames, I come out of the wreckage smarter and tougher.

The rebel in me has brought me to this point, this site has been under construction for what feels like an eon, or about a year. Finally we are winding down this design/optimizing saga and are now ready to show our work in the venue it deserves.

So now you have an inkling of who I am, the surface has been scratched and now comes the juicy stuff. Well this ain’t no TMZ but I can sure try to make it juicy. Bandwagon Graphiks was born at the start of 2007 – right around the time I got laid off from my first post college design gig. Freshly unemployed and in need of rent money, I went to work making portfolio samplers, a “website”, sending out packets to all the agencies I wanted to work for and looking for anything that might keep me from moving back in with my parents. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that we have been in a recession? Well at the time being unemployed was the new hotness and I ran with that crowd for some time. In that time I had to survive, I had to learn what getting business was all about, how to invoice, how to talk to a client, hire vendors and get your stuff made! It was certainly not easy but somehow I’ve made it through the forbidden forest and come out on the other side. In the past three years I have turned Bandwagon into a full fledged, tax paying, legal design biz. I’m always amazed at just how much I and Bandwagon change year by year.

So now why this blog? Well as long as I can remember I have wanted to be an example for others, teach and share my knowledge. At most design events I have been to in recent years I have always found myself gravitating to the fresh grads/freelancers and talking my head off. Friends from college entering the freelance ranks have called me up to pick my brain, and hopefully soon I will be applying this experience to a Masters program. I’m writing this blog for every student, fresh grad or freelancer who is as scared as I was when I started climbing this mountain. Even now, I’ve found it difficult to find testimonials from other grads leaving school and competing for the few and far between junior designer positions. Even then, good luck finding a position that entrusts you with one of their clients. In this day in age, I have found that you have to be a jack or jane of all trades fresh out of school with multiple degrees to compete for an unpaid production artist internship. It’s a little strange leaving that safety of school where you might have once been on top of your game.

As people who know me have found out, I don’t sugar coat anything. I’ve always asked my peers to be truthful with me and I will be nothing but truthful with you. Every week I’ll post a new story from my three-plus years of anxiety inducing stress fest also known as my professional life. I’ll also be updating the crowd on all the new and excited work going on around Bandwagon, and I hope that with all this, we can get some good questions/discussions going on around here.

With that, I hope I have intrigued you…hopefully a little. If not with my words, then how about the work! Visit the Folio section and check out what I’ve been up to, and leave me some feedback! I welcome it!

For now, I will bid you adieu….tomorrow I’ll start you off with my rebel rousing college days.