My journey from almost part time freelance graphic designer to full fledged, full time, work from home, graphic design genius!
I have finally taken the plunge and got myself some actual, honest to goodness webspace (YAY) and started my very own, self hosted website with an actual domain!
From now on, if you’r looking for me, you can find me at www.bxgraphicdesign.com
This is a very big step for me as it helps to legitimize my journey to freelance freedom making it just a little more real.
See you soon!
I’ve been listening to music for a pretty long time now. It’s a passion I share with probably millions of people all over the world. Ever since I was old enough to realize what art really meant to me, I’ve been using music as an inspirational spring board into my next work.
Recently, while listening to one of my favorite rappers (Common) I realized something. How did he know that putting those particular words together in that fashion and at a particular beat would be so appealing to me? It was this single moment of clarity which led me to the epiphany I will explain to you in the next few paragraphs.
When I listen to music, I tend to tear it apart. I separate and isolate every sound. For example, if the song has a piano, I listen to the song blocking out everything except the piano. I do this several times with different sounds. When I finally listen to the song as a whole again, I find I appreciate it more.
Listening to Common that day, I realized that music and art had more in common (no pun intended) than I ever anticipated. I imagined him sitting in his house, reminiscing on the hardships of his past life when a rhyme hits him. He takes that rhyme, nurtures it, expands on it, interjects the emotion associated with it. In the end, he has a product that HE likes and HE thinks is the baddest rhyme ever (at the moment) and HE has to stake his reputation, his popularity and his career on that new rhyme that NO ONE has heard yet!
Such is the life of an artist. We use our emotions, our memories, our experiences to produce a piece of art be it a rap, a painting, a design to convey that emotion, memory, experience to others. We as designers bank on this when we are working on a project whether we realize it or not. When a client approaches us with a design need, we take that idea and do what we do with it banking on the notion that they will absolutely love it and hire us again and refer us to others who hire us and so on and so on.
My point is that we have to have the confidence necessary to do what we do like WE do it, not like someone else wants us to do it. We have to have the confidence that the people out there will like what we do and buy it and come back for more and show their friends and they’ll buy it and come back for more.
Anyway, that’s my epiphany. Sorry if it was something that you already knew but, taking my art public like I’m doing is new to me and I just thought I’d share.
Well, as you can see I’m not very good at keeping up with blog posts. This is my first blog geared towards my desire to become a freelance graphic designer so please forgive me. My first attempt at a blog had nothing to do with graphic design and I haven’t updated that one in awhile either. It’s called “In My Sad Little Opinion” and, as you can tell by the title, it’s an opinion blog. I still want to add to it so I won’t close it down. I just don’t know when I’ll get to it.
A lot has happened since “Hello World“. My wife and I were expecting a little boy and he’s here. As a matter of fact, he came a good three months early so as you can expect, we’ve been pretty busy. I still hold a day job so getting into the swing of graphic design on my own time has fallen to the wayside. I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things but it’s going to take some more adjustments.
For the most part, I’m trying to concentrate on building my portfolio. I’ve got a few pieces posted (as you can tell) but I’m working on it. I just added a typography page. I love working with type and free handing letters and words so I would expect more of that (mental note: possible specialty).
Well, I gotta go for now. I’ll try to keep the posting more up to date.
Thanks for reading!
I know it’s really cheesy of me to not change the title of my first post from the default “Hello World” they give you when you open an account. It’s okay though because sometimes I’m just cheesy that way. This just gives you a little insight on my personality. Of course this is just one aspect so please; don’t go judging me just yet.
As I expressed on my “about me” page I am currently a part time freelance graphic designer… er… maybe part time is too generous. Is quarter time an actual term? If it were, that would be me. Let me give you a little more info on how my interest in art and design came to be.
Way back in my grammar school days I, like most boys, developed a hearty interest in comic books. An interest that I shared with most of my friends. We all used to hang out together and have art sessions wherever we could. Conrad, one of my oldest and dearest friends, started it all for me. For his age, he had a very steady hand and would come up with incredible drawings. The kind that would make me think, “I wanna do that!” Try as I might, I would never be able to grasp the same illustration skills.
I remember the first drawing I actually tried on my own without copying. It was of one of my favorite comic book characters even today, Wolverine. I was so proud of myself and I couldn’t wait show my fellow artistic friends. As it turns out, it wasn’t very good at all. My friends all took one look at it and laughed. I was heartbroken but, we were eight and they knew just as much about tactful constructive criticism as I did about illustration.
I didn’t let that stop me. I continued my pursuit and even though I’m still not quite as good as Conrad is in the area of illustration, I have developed a different set of skills that even he himself admitted he cannot grasp (which, oddly enough, made me feel better about that incident so many years ago).
Life being what it is, I strayed away from my artistic gift and got a job in what I consider the absolute opposite of artistic direction… insurance. This is where I have been ever since but NO MORE I SAY!!!
This is the part of my life where I take back my artistic talents and head towards what my career should have been… graphic design. I expect it’s going to be a great ride and I would like to invite you to follow along to witness both my victories as well as my set backs.
I hope you enjoy the ride with me. Feel free to leave comments, advice and critiques whenever and where ever possible. Whether good or bad, it will only serve to help me advance in my journey.
Until next time,
-Nino
