Bandwagon Graphiks

It has officially been a ridonculous amount of time since my last blog post. Yep, time to bust out those New Years resolutions and vow to blog more than once a month. The last four weeks has been to say the least; insanity. A lot has changed, and a lot has been learned. Finally some time to decompress, I’m on vacation! Still working while on vacation but its good work

Originally I planned to do this huge Bandwagon launch email extravaganza way back in early November…its now lets see…4 days before January? Yeah. That is probably the most difficult aspect to owning your own business, learning how to stay up on all the social media, personal promotion, and management. Some would say I’m crazy but I honestly and truly believe than any crazy client can be dealt with; but add in the social networking commitments we freelancers have these days and that pesky thing called life…and you get one mad recipe. Don’t take this as me complaining…I actually thrive is this kind of pressure, but it sure would be nice to be able to hire a studio manager who can take care of everything…sometimes I’ll go a whole day without designing a thing because I am taking care of accounts, errands, tech, and who knows what else.

Don’t let this scare you away from what you love, its just part of the job, and in the end its quite rewarding. You pick up things along the way that you simply will not learn in an agency setting.

So enough intro. I’m here to tell you a story about ego. This could easily turn into a long one, so feel free to get up now and grab some coffee. I’ve had the topic in my head for this blog all month and I keep finding more material to write about; but finally I’m off my butt and writing it.

A few weeks ago I was listening to an old Design Matters w/Debbie Millman Podcast and her guest posed a really interesting question that has had me wondering and hungry for more info ever since. That was from David Berringer and he asked “How important is ego in the evaluation of good design?”, then concluded that bad design is devoid of ego while good design is a representation of the clients/designers ego. I was immediately intrigued, since I really had never thought about design in that way. I always chalked up bad design to a lesser education or lesser commitment to the creation of good work, or less money! I had never though looked at bad design as devoid of ego. Everyone, from every walk of life as some sort of ego in them, not necessarily a big ego, but something somewhere that causes someone to care about what they do? This doesn’t even have to relate to design specifically, but isn’t pride a basic human instinct?

Thinking about ego this way, really bought everything around full circle for me. At the time I had already taken huge steps to prepare for the final exit from the day job I have held for the last year and a half, and it just got my tired juices flowing again. It almost summed up what I have been thinking and evaluating the last year of my career. Where do I want to go? How am I a valuable asset? What has changed about me over the years? Are all questions I have been tossing around the last year, and it all has to do with this question of ego. I never saw myself as one of those with the ego so big you can’t fit your head through the door, but apparently I’m busting at the seams. I have a lot of pride in my work and what I do, so much so that I have always taken the hard and difficult path in life in order to better prepare myself for whats out there and I’ve always believed in never sending out bad work, no matter how long it might take me.

In school I took the difficult degree path, and the difficult classes; surely I crashed and burned – but I still was uptight and proud. After I left school, that came crashing down when I finally realized in the real world that your awesome accomplishments in school have very little bearing on your money making job. It’s like this whole health care debate – sure ok we’ve made the first little steps, but we got a whole big pile of crap to still deal with. I had these two big shiny degrees and my first gig was more or less a glorified postman. I had to learn very quickly that my ego wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Then came my first design gig, where for the first time I worked with people who controlled a lot of cash flow and knew some serious heavy hitters. It was there that I quickly learned where the term “dog-eat-dog” was born. People in the studio would back stab and give false fronts, I suppose in an attempt to get you to screw up.

I had never been exposed to this before, I was a wimpy naive junior designer who grew up in an environment where you took care of your fellow brethren. It was a rude awakening surely, but now looking back – that is part of it. Especially in Los Angeles where the douche-bag per capita is on par with the GDP.

Seriously I’m not complaining, so no offense! I love Los Angeles, really! The vegan-thai-fusion food is amazing here!

This all ties together because in this big ego is as ego does debate, I think everyone has a big ego in some way when it comes to their work, where it evolves is how that person utilizes that ego. Have they turned into the typical screaming, backstabbing type without any humanism? It’s all about who you want to be as a person, then its all about who you want to be as a designer. Only then can we evaluate the role ego plays in our work and lives.

I’ve never really thought of myself as busting at the seams with ego – but I am in some respects. Like anyone who loves what they do, I feel like I do good work. It’s strange, I really don’t like people fawning all over my work – I like knowing from the beginning that I’m sending out good work. In the last few years I have made a heartfelt and conscious decision to not let that ego go crazy and create one these backstabbers. Most likely that is going to make my journey to financial stability a long hard road but I like it that way, bring on the forbidden forest!

So now what? How does all of this get applied to real life? Well, that is ultimately up to you, but one big way is that if you are a student getting out of school or in a mid career change trying to figure out a way to navigate the swamp – is that you have to stand up for yourself, your work, and your beliefs. Don’t worry about finding another job, worry about how that job is overall effecting your portfolio and professional record. I mentioned earlier that a few weeks ago I was in full swing preparations of leaving my day job and making Bandwagon my full time gig yet again. Well as of 4 days ago, this has come to be the real deal, and you know what? It came down to who I wanted to be as a person and if I wanted to continue getting walked all over and having my design work be a back burner thing. The answer was no. What’s the point of living in one of the most expensive cities in the country, not doing what you love full time, and just scraping by? Isn’t the whole beauty of Los Angeles the promise of starting over? Isn’t it all about jumping in feet first and not looking back? Do I have a big ego about it all?…you bet. So we will see where this endeavor goes, hopefully in six months I won’t be writing this blog from my parents basement with boxes all around because I couldn’t pay rent. By the way, if you need any design work…

Alright, time to wrap this monster up. In conclusion I’d like to quote some lyrics from a great song that always gets me fired up…

“I’ve never been so alone…and I…I’ve never been so alive!” – Motorcycle Drive By, Third Eye Blind

Good Night.