Tuesday 24 July 2007

Creative business

For more than ten years, I was in the graphic design business. It’s a tough and highly competitive business. Everyone claims to be a designer these days. Even clients who come out with the most appalling ideas expect you to give them a big discount for doing your job!

There were endless deadlines to meet, design briefs and brainstorming sessions to sit in, storyboards to present, clients to convince, print checks, proofreading, fire-fighting, proposals, sales pitch, not forgetting a huge list of "to-dos" that stay perpetually on the back burner… We’re not even talking about the never-ending battle of the limited budget, cost tracking or roughing out the bad times.

But there are some perks. For a start, you get to work in an intellectually stimulating environment. You’re learning something new everyday…. about wafer fabs, how things work, how public-listed companies stay afloat, how technologies change…

I’ve been out of this business for several years now, though CH is still in it. That explains why his adroit answers always impress me. While my brain cells are slowly dying, he gets to go food-tasting in restaurants or stay in the suites of luxury hotels. Sometimes he appears in advertisements (when they have no budget for hiring professional models) and even gets to muck about posing for cheesy product endorsement shots in between the actual work, like here...

Gee, I do miss this job!

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wasn't really selling cooking oil. The art director, photographer and I were mucking about posing for cheesy product endorsement shots in between the actual work :-)

Unknown said...

I used to be in advertising but I was in Creative department - doing the writing part, but my very good friend was a graphic designer and we would sit together to come up with the concept. It was so much fun

The Real Mother Hen said...

CH - that's it dude, you're now formally the SNAKE OIL SALEMAN! Ouch! hahaha :)

Epimenides said...

Your creative part shows in the pictures and words in your posts! :)

SOUL said...

that's so cool. how fun too. i used to want to get into the advertising biz. ended up an aircraft mechanic in the NAVY. what a stretch eh. see what a little education and some cash can do? :))
i still don't think i'd make a trade if i had it to over again. i kinda like how things turned out.

Anonymous said...

Oh designers....i used to be in the design department before i moved to the exporting department blur....we used to talk to designers from the car manufacturers...Ford, GM. Toyota... they'd look at some patterns and go"geee...that line is a little TOO yellowish grey.." i'd be going..."wha...??grey is grey isn't it???" (Ha..guess i wasn't cut out for THAT type of work")

Blur Ting said...

Yes, it's fun working in the creative business..though I wasn't a designer. I was more in account servicing but still, I had to participate in brainstorming, checking and stuff. It was always exciting....but we published lots of annual reports and the work can be really tedious....loong hours!

Thanks Epi. It probably helps but I'm not trained in design, so I'm still learning.

Blur Ting said...

JY - Yup there are so many types of grey in the colour chart. Grey is broadly caterogised under Cool and Warm grey, with lots of variations under each one.

Anonymous said...

I can't imagine how much fun that would be. My jobs have always been so ...dry. The only "creativity" involved is what I order my boss for lunch!! :)

Blur Ting said...

ha ha, it's fun now when I try to recall but it was probably the most stressful time of my life!

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