Looking for "graphics" Job

Its good that you want to find a job BUT. 8 months is pretty much monthing i have been doing it for over 6 years and i still cant get a job ahah. You should do more logos, ads, photography. You will probably not get a really steady job with your experiance but someone might hire you and pay you peanuts for the amount of work you will do. Real world graphic design isnt really just throwing a few images together and making them look cool. You have to be able to stop someone in their tracks on a street and make them buy that product or attend that show that same day. Thats what Graphic Design really is we are making money for our clients no matter how many programs you know or how much you have gone to school if you cant get a point across like "this is going to make your life fun" you will never find a good paying job that you will have for a long time. :eek:

i recommend you buy "Graphic Design Solutions" by Robin Landa its the only book you will ever need.
 
and u seem to have limited your work to photoshop.. graphic designers heavily heavily heavily heavily heavily use illustrator... and get some layout experience too.

im not sure if the media companies would hire someone so young
but if theyd want to intern you..go for it

if you really just wanna make money then freelance.



btw reading your resume/portfolio you shouldnt highlight your weaknesses to the potential employer like that..
 
dude I hate to be the one to tell you this but no company or anyone for that matter will ever pay you $ if all youre creating is sigs... sigs arent even art. Sigs are like "omg wtf gewgle image search a hot sexy render from a game im playing, throw some weird abstract brushing around, mess around with some layer styles and bam!" you know? You need to get something like illustrator as well seeing as how all things that are to be "printed" on shirts or whatever, usually need to be a vector so it can be infinitely scaled/descaled.
 
Im just a kid, and I didnt mean to be so blatant, I wasnt trying to offend anyone. I'm just saying you need to try doing your own renders and maybe illustrating your own stuff, and get out of the forum sig genre.. what use is a forum sig to a company, ya know?
 
"btw reading your resume/portfolio you shouldnt highlight your weaknesses to the potential employer like that.."

yes my teacher a pro for 30 years said "never say something bad about your work" what if the bad thing you point out is something that the client likes.

Its fine to have dreams i have dreams that i might see my AD on a big billboard but lets be realistic i mean he can work for some site freee of charge and gain experiance but if he gets hired by a company and they say "ok we are going this logo for a client and we need it to look this way and to attract only these kind of people its going to be used in this atmosphere around these surrounding etc etc" you will not know what to do. I suggest you get that book its not too much money around 50 bux form amazon and read it. It teachest you everythig you need to know. Its not as simple as making a cool looking image. YOu need to know colors and stuff like what color would create what mood you know. Forget photoshop thats only for images. Get illustrator and in design i garantee you thats what you will be using. Good luck trying to create a logo in a raster program. Also visit a printing hosue. Lets say you have the coolest fucking logo/image or whatever and you try to get it printed the printer might take one look at it and say its impossible to print. So then someone has to take that file and pretty much redo your logo to make it printable. Look at it this way. Youre the architect and the printer is doing the construction . Not every building is possble to be made. Belive it or not you really have to think about if the printer will be able to do this or not. Dont be discouraged just keeping doing your thing and trying new things the more things you know howto do the better off you will be. You should concentrate on building a good portfoio for colleges. Take a few basic art and graphic design classes. They will teach you ALOT. You need to know color theory and other aspects of art texture, shape, line, contrast, saturation , hue etc etc Umm thats pretty much all i have to say.

"u dont have to be so blunt about it dude,
hes just a kid at least hes trying"

we are being blut because no one will hire him if he doesnt even know color thory we are trying to say that its fine to have dreams but you have to work for them. There is accseptions if your work is the crazyest stuff ever and youre fucking good i mean ground breaking he will get hired but hes not ground breaking :/
 
Karant said:
Please close if this topic is not alloud
Ok, recently I've been looking for something to do to make some extra cash, and I've been suggested that I start doing something in graphic design, so I've decided to initiate on that. If you own or are part of a graphics team, design company, or personally need some custom designs/graphics, please thoroughly go through and consider my application. I am willing to be %100.00 and push other things aside if there is a money profit for me. Thank-you.
Click to expand...

I'm weighing in on this because when I was in high school I was in a similar situation as you. Even down to being in the middle of nowhere in Canada, except in my case I was in Newfoundland.

Note: my perspective is from the 3D graphics/Television/Film end of things, but some of this applys to print media as well.

The short, short version:

A. You can't work legally.
B. You will get ripped off by con-men if you manage to get anything.
C. Focus on your art not your computer skills [DRAW, PAINT, SCULPT].
D. Go to a decent art college after highschool.
E. Move somewhere where you can actually get work [see D.], Ie. Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or New York is your North American options.
F. Be an ok generalist but find something to specialize in.

The Long version:

A.>

First off, you can't work legally. Lets get that out of the way, because you are a minor and therefore are a liability to a company. The only minors I've seen at any decent company, were interns as part of a highschool program, and even then they were not trusted nor experienced enough to do any work beyond fetching coffee and doing photocopies.

The most expensive mistake a company can make is getting a un-experienced person involved with a big job.

B.>

Which pretty much leaves small time outfits, fly by night companys, and con artists offering to hire you. [Ie. Classics like "Work for free you can use it to build your portfolio", or "Do free graphics for our game, we will pay you options once we sell it" and other baloney. Don't believe it. Your time is more valuable then that.]

Find other people with similar interests, networking is very important, find other professionals and artists. Learn from them.

The internet was just barely starting to take off in the private sector when I was out doing my first graphics gigs when I was 15-16. So I networked by going to local area computer user groups and finding people who had similar interests as me. At the time I was using the Amiga series of computers, and the only professional use for these machines was 3D Graphics and video production. Because of this, I hooked up with a few local area video production people, who started hiring me to do flying 3d logos and graphic layouts for weddings and other cheesy low end jobs for a flat rate.

I generally made 100-200$ for a weeks worth of work, and being still in high school with no bills to pay, it was decent money.

I eventually realised that my 200$ flying logo, was being billed to the client for $8000.The other guys were pocketting the difference and keeping me in the dark. Expect that to happen to you a few times, its the nature of the business.

Granted the rates aren't like that anymore, but doing 3D Animation in the mid 90's was like having a money printing machine in your office.

There wasn't much l could do, but after I finished highschool, the people who i worked with before, wound up forming a small company. I ended up as staff getting about 20$ an hour right out of high school, which is genreally fairly high for essentially a junior position. Most Graphic designers I know in the film/tv industry in Canada tend to start at 30,000$ a year. The advantage I had at the time was that I was in a remote area, where there were only 3 other lightwave artists in the whole province, so I was able to get more money.

C./D.

Having software knowledge was ok, but its useless unless you can create something with it. I had a co-worker at that first job who had software knowledge, but could not do anything meaningful with photoshop or lightwave. The best he could do was steal scans or pictures from websites, and change text and layer stuff around differently.

Even though I had no formal art training , I did have a minimal sense of design and some drawing ability, and eventually replaced that guy [he quit once he found out I was making more money then me, but in all honestly, I did more work in a week then he did in a month.].

Job security in Newfoundland was ass, so I needed to go someplace where real work was being done and that meant that I needed to get formal education and expereince in a major media center.

I moved to Toronto and did various graphic design, illustration and animation courses at Sheridan College and Seneca college.

I realised how badly I sucked at art when I went to college. I thought I was good at highschool, but I was blown away at the quality of the students in college. My highschool in Newfoundland had no art budget, the kids from schools in Toronto had massive highschools with massive funding, including specialized art programs where you could earn college level credits.

My ghetto school had to do watercolors on newsprint paper. WTF? You can't use watercolors on Newsprint, it all falls apart. But thats all my ghetto school could afford.

In Toronto the high schools had full blown life drawing, clay sculpting, painting with acyrics on canvas. Things I wish I had when I was in school.

So basically the big city kids have an advantage here in terms of exposure and resources, but with hard work you can match that.

So I worked hard, and learned how to work in various mediums, photography, painting, technical illustration, life drawing, and only after a few years did I start doing work on the computer again.

The computer is only a tool, an expensive paintbrush. Thats it. Any idiot can use a paintbrush, but it takes practice and skill to create any quality artwork from that.

I was an average artist once I finished, I was decent with watercolors, and was pretty good at drawing human and animal anatomy once I was finished. You'll learn many new ways to do things while at college. After 3 years of traditional art study, I took a crash course in Maya [version 1] for 4 months, then landed my first real job.

E.>

I worked in Toronto for 6 years doing various work on tv commericals, tv shows and feature films.

In Canada your realistic options for any form of graphic design work is limited to the big media cities, which is Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. There are exceptions to the rule, but chances are there will be minimal job security, you'll need to go to where the jobs are.

Eventually, I moved to Los Angeles, which allowed me to work on higher profile jobs.

F.>

Figure out where in Graphic Design you want to go, its a wide field.

Want a shortcut to crazy money? Go to art school, go crazy on drawing human and animal anatomy, take a few of the cadaver drawing classes [I'm not kidding, you can go into hopsitals/universitys and draw disected corpses.] And for what?

Medical Illustration.

You *will* make a killing. And if you are good, you'll be making 6 figures within a few years easy. And you don't have to nessessary work in a big city.

Screw doing web graphics, unless you are on the extreme high end, any kid in a basement running pirated software with clipart can underbid you. ;)


One last tip, do some normal stuff in your graphics. I know as a teenager all I wanted to draw was big breasted vixens with guns fighting giant robots, but take the time to draw normal stuff. Normal subjects are good, stuff like your grandparents, other kids, dogs, cats, horses. I've seen some self stylized artists who can draw comic book characters ok, but then fall apart when you ask him to draw a horse.

Sorry if thats a big long winded, but keep at it and you can do it, just take your time and enjoy being a teenager.
 
Ya pretty much what i said but longer wow thats long :)

Traditional art is very important.
 
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