May 10, 2008

Hire A Student

Photobucket
It was ten years ago, almost to the day now, that I handed out these little state-of-the-art jobbies to interested and prospective gawkers at the 1998 Advertising Art Open House. Imagine, my entire portfolio of college work on a 1.44MB diskette, complete with self-contained slideshow software. A technological marvel, and about as practical today as a Beta tape.

I was the prototypical student then; I had a dive apartment with a hand-me-down spider plant and stalactites of gunk hanging from a leaky ceiling. That sport jacket in my diskette design here, I nabbed from a box of free clothes at CoreFest, the long-defunct alternative music festival at Garbage Hill. Those shoes were ten-dollar loafers from lord-knows-where. I ate macaroni. I had a firm grip on frugality.

My portfolio today is markedly improved over the one you’d see if you cracked this floppy open. That should be a given. I was quite high on my college portfolio at the time, but now find it embarassingly bad. The one standard I work by is whether, as a whole, my output as a designer each year is better than the last. I’m a harsh critic on myself – and that extends especially to creative output – so I may be thrilled with any one thing I make at any given point in time, and be blasé about it weeks (or even days) later. I must continuously remind myself this attitude is healthy.

3 comments:

Ian said...

nice knees!

That dissatisfaction with one's older work, I share that trait, to a fault. Reading several books on re-evaluating one's career, they caution to discount EVERYTHING from your past. You can look back to those college days for clues on the kind of work you enjoyed perusing and use that info to move forward.

Oh BTW I am about to toss an old G3 Beige box to one of the e-waste drop offs. let me know if you need something that can read floppies :-)

Anonymous said...

I think it looks cool...but I never got to see it, so it's all new to me. I guess you'll be wanting to redo my bus. cards someday....Deenie

Jeope said...

Ian, there will always be a computer at work I can pop it into. Or at the landfill.