exurban

I don’t know why, but I think this is funny. I’m sure it’s a really effective ad for it’s target audience. When I worked at the cosmetics place I spent a lot of time on cheap stock photo sites, looking for an image to use as a cover model. When I look at this girl I just see some model that a Czech or Russian photographer shot, she can be yours for 3 download credits on shutterstock.com or a similar site. That’s the danger and the punchline of cheap stock photography. I’ve seen some of the same girls come hithering me to join a dating site that I’ve also seen them selling computer parts in a print ad.

Anyway, I need a girlfriend, some pens and a gallon of milk, I’m running out to the store…

DSC_0010, originally uploaded by jayson.shenk.

I couldn’t sleep last night. I was just up and awake at 3 AM for no reason. Eventually I wandered downstairs and then outside. The moon was out and it was really nice outside. I tried to take some photos of the night sky. I am not sure my settings were the best for this, and I know I could have done better with a tripod and remote, but I didn’t have those. I also wasn’t thinking super clearly. Still I kinda like these.

Despite my insecurities about my career and what to do, in the core competencies I am well respected.

If you are an indie rocker and you want to know what Misfits album to buy, call me. Alec and Jason have done this. I can also tell you which Smiths album to get, but you will have to listen to my ‘goths hear the Smiths like dogs hear people talk’ theory.

I fixed that access issue after getting some help from Dreamhost. It was something I screwed up while trying to set stuff up for overspeak.net.

After spending a good bit of time trying to mess with prebuilt php based photo sites I’ve come to the conclusion that not knowing php is going to make it nearly impossible to change the prebuilt formats into a new site.

This is what I’m talking about:

Shawnee State University, Fine, Digital, & Performing Arts Department , is seeking an individual to teach all levels of digital arts courses in graphic design, digital 3D and game design, digital illustrations and well as traditional art courses.

Uh huh…

Well. I lost my job. I’m on indefinite layoff because of the diminishing fortunes of the company. I’m actually not sure how the whole enchilada is doing, but the part I worked for is doing pretty bad. They liked my work and would be intersted in having me back if things turn around. I’m not going to hold my breath for that though.

I was let go on the 17th of October. Yesterday two people asked me how the job search was going. Last time I was out of work, after quitting the cosmetics place, it took me nine months to find a job. I didn’t want to be mad at my friends, but I thought ‘Geez people, I spent half of last week moving…’

I feel I’m back in 2002, out of school with no prospects and a resume that isn’t that exciting to anyone I send it to. What’s worse is that I’ve been doing this for six years. Despite the latest job loss not being my fault, I feel like a failure. I haven’t been able to get myself anywhere in the field with my work.

I’ve come to some realizations about this: You’re limited in what you can do on your own. If you don’t have anyone that can help you, networking wise, it’s just a lot harder to find work. I’m not saying anyone should hand anything to you, but it’s a lot easier to get a foot in the door if someone is saying ‘yeah, I know this guy, he’s good’ vs. being the 83rd resume in the stack.

That is one thing I really feel was bad about both schools I went to. They absolutely and utterly didn’t care what happened to their students in either program. The place I went for my fine art degree just didn’t support the grads. If you weren’t going to be a high school art teacher, then there was nothing for you. At art school you went down to see a guy who gave you a book with some internships and you applied for them yourself, just like a job. I never heard back from any of them. What irks me about this is these were ‘top’ schools. Faculty and staff have a lot more pull than the students do. Two of my friends are going back to school to change careers right now. Both of them are going to state colleges, which are way cheaper today than what I paid for both of my educations almost seven years ago now. Both of them are in departments that have much better placement for their students, because the faculty actually care a little about that.

In retrospect, I should have transferred, both times. Although in retrospect I graduated high school not knowing what I wanted to do in life at all, having given up on the idea of being a comic book illustrator, and was going “find myself” or something at college. Entering school in 1995, they were also talking about how awesome and employable liberal arts majors were going to be. Seriously. I also blame myself for not doing more/trying harder. It’s kind of abstract, because I don’t feel like I really slacked off, but I just… I never ever thought about jobs or working in school, ever. I thought degree=job, that simple.

All the bitching about programming stuff that started this blog a year ago is still true. I still don’t know what I’m going to do about it, learn it myself, go back to school, change careers because I don’t want to be a programmer…

I think what’s really bad is that I don’t feel like getting back up again.

I keep hearing about how digital downloads for movies, music and games will become the next big thing. I’m sure downloads will be one day, but I don’t like them.

In general, I like buying a copy of the thing. There is almost no price difference between buying a hard copy and a download so it’s a free hardware copy. Sure I can re-download whenever, but I find it more convenient to have a disk.

For music, the CD sounds better. Most CDs are recorded in lossless formats. If you look at the bitrate encoding for most downloads is decent, but its not lossless. Now, I haven’t ripped all my CD’s to lossless but the option is there if I want it.

I like art and packaging. This was what I wanted to do when I got into graphic design. I still might be able to do it someday, but regardless I really really appreciate cool packaging and artwork on stuff. This is more for music than games but I did preorder Fallout 3 with the bobblehead and lunch box. I think that kinda stuff is awesome, to me album artwork is a big deal, I’d hate to see it go away.

I’m a jerk. I tend to think that buying a single is for little girls and dilletants. I think having a music collection composed of individiual songs you downloaded from iTunes is lame. You may be insulted, but I just said I was a jerk.

I read through my whole blog and its a lot of bitching. I’m still afraid lack of programming acumen will force a career change, despite what seems to be an assesment that I’m pretty unhappy with what I’m doing a lot of the time.

A lot of times when I am driving I will fantasize about being a professor and teaching design classes. I come up with projects and work on my lectures. I think about all the stuff I could tell the kids. I am clearly insane.

I keep taking my sketchpad around with me and never sketching anything. It’s still an energy issue. I got a new lens, goes to f1.4, photo will probably be receiving most of my creative energy.

2 days until vacation.

As of today, I am for the time being totally out of the web business. My mighty empire of three whole sites are all being taken over by other folks, how did this come to be?

Well I think the primary thing is the swinging between being an unemployed freelancer and working somewhere. The times I’ve been out of work the last couple of years I spent mostly ekeing by on small freelance gigs, three of which were websites (although one I did for free). Besides the money I was really pursuing the work to add to and strengthen my portfolio. With the web stuff specifically I was trying to keep current and well rounded (as the tremendous bitching about the expanding demands of a graphic designer here will attest to, or something.)

So I think the big problem is that people really expected to me to stay on ‘freelance time’ when I started working again. I feel bad about not being able to keep up with stuff but I don’t know what to do. Actually, its not like I missed a bunch of deadlines, I just wasn’t there for super quick service. As a code monkey, I’m still pretty sub par, the stuff takes me forever to make and then forever and a day to fix.

So now I’m down to my own site, which I plan on overhauling sometime in the next 6 months to 10 years.

I finally figured it out today.

When you design something you are interpreting conceptual data and building a system of internal logic in order to create actual designs for the intended audience.

In my entire work experience the input data is entirely conceptual. Its based on some combination of previous experience and some client supplied data. The client supplied data is something to the affect of “Person in certain age/income bracket who wants to buy the thing but not think about it, this person is not cool, but thinks they are.”

So what you end up doing is asking a few questions and while you may get more data it is still conceptual data. You are going to build a model of who you think this target is, because the data is highly indeterminite, compared to say “This needs to support 1000lbs.”

The problem arises when you show your finished work. What it boils down to is that you’re comparing, in the example, your conceptual framwork for this target audience with the one generated by the marketing person/client/other designer/whoever. Because of the lack of real data, you cannot actually draw a definitive conclusion so there is almost inevitably disagreement. Whats negative about this is that its not “Socrates at the Forum” kind of disagreement, its more of a negative assessment of your performance as a designer kind of agreement.

So you failure is that you didn’t think about the project in the same way as the other person. You didn’t see it from the same angle, interpreted the data totally differently. Conflict arises here because whats being called out is the way you think. This actually pushes all the same buttons as a disagreement about religion or politics.

That’s what I hate about graphic design.

I realize part of this is just language. Most people go immediately with “You didn’t do X.” in a hostile tone of voice, because from their point of view, it was really obvious that it needed to be done. If you say “I was looking at it from this perspective.” most of the time you get “Well thats wrong.” rather than “Oh, I see.”

One corrallary I forgot to mention is when you’re given something as “inspiration” and you fail to realize that’s code for “rip this off.” If you take it as it was said, inspiration, you may also be in for the same when the artwork is reviewed.