Erin Severson

Spring always is a time that feels a natural spark of creativity for me. Despite it being the worst time of the year for my allergies (thankful for you Zyrtec!), all of the life that comes back is revitalizing. Lately, I have been enjoying taking more walks when I need a break from sitting at my desk for too long. The sunshine feels energizing, and it’s an added bonus to see all of the flowers blooming and the greenery become saturated again. I think the most inspiring part of this is we all know spring colors and vibrancy has a limited window. It motivates me to break out my camera more and to slow down and look at things more closely. So I would say each walk I have taken in the last few weeks have been little bursts of inspiration for me. The walks have also helped me clear my head during a turbulent and stressful time and work as little mental resets when things start feeling overwhelming. 

I included my written paragraph of style choices on my mood board! Please refer there for text 🙂

With the different options of employment (freelance, agency, or full time work) at this point in my life for the sake of a more cohesive schedule I would first opt to try the full time work route with a company. I have worked for small design firms (in print production roles) for many years where I do not get health benefits and am underpaid, so looking for a company that provides fair pay with good health and PTO benefits is something I am more geared towards looking for. Freelance seems like a lot of foot work having to manage schedules, send contracts and invoices, doing quarterly taxes, and having to potentially deal with not being paid in a timely manner by clients. I believe agency work would be a back up plan if finding full time work on my own proved difficult, especially since the agencies I have reviewed build in a health benefit package for designers that work with them.

Job postings for full time employment I found:

https://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/graphic-design-intern-seattle-symphony-JV_IC1150505_KO0,21_KE22,38.htm?jl=1008616908484&utm_campaign=google_jobs_apply&utm_source=google_jobs_apply&utm_medium=organic

https://tapwage.com/job/60750612-senior-designer-inline-footwear-design?utm_campaign=google_jobs_apply&utm_source=google_jobs_apply&utm_medium=organic

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/c/Starbucks/Job/Designer,-Starbucks-Creative-Studios-(Hybrid)/-in-Seattle,WA?jid=ae461dd605b44c38&utm_campaign=google_jobs_apply&utm_source=google_jobs_apply&utm_medium=organic

For this weeks blog assignment, I picked photos from my 35mm negative scan archive. I have been shooting film since I was 13 years old, and it is what initially led me to my undergraduate in photography. I was never quite interested in the commercial world of photo, and I ended up at a college that was fine art focused. I had the ability to learn many alternative processes and larger format traditional photography. This in a small way is a little homage to the chair of my photo department who we sadly lost in a motorcycle accident late last year. He was a great mentor, and even better friend. Rest in peace, John!

I am not convinced digital, no matter how many filters you fuss with, quite gets the same nostalgic feel with the noise of the grain or the color (specifically the color of Kodak Portra which I have been using for over 15 years at this point). I will forever love the texture film offers to photos, and love the imperfections of raw scanned negatives without any dust removal.

Themes in my shapes are organic. I don’t like working with models, or telling people what to do and how to pose. I understand the language of nature better than humans, so I turn my lens in the organic shapes that feel inspirational to me.

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For the Cochella Valley Firebirds x Cochella Music Festival, I decided to extract the color palettes found on the music festival website to keep it in their brand colors. The logo I grabbed colors from the hero section of the website, and I pulled inspiration from the gradients of backgrounds and show line up graphics for the body of the jersey.

I wanted to add in one more visual element to tie the feeling of Cochella Music Festival and decided that since palm trees were a much used asset, to include them on the bottom back of the jersey.

Who am I?

• I don’t think it’s really easy for an individual to comprehensively state who they are. I believe we are adaptable beings who have many path changes and growth in life, and we’re ever changing. In this current moment I am an adult who has felt the need for growth in my working life, an am navigating being in my mid-thirties and becoming a student again. It’s a lot more trying at this age than being a student at 18 years old with less responsibilities and less bills. However, it does prove to me I am adaptable and dedicated, and that makes me feel good.

What is it that you want to do?

• For the long term, I am still figuring that out. For the “here and now”, I would like to continue putting all of my best efforts into my schooling, create work I am proud of, continue to explore avenues of professional interests, and hone in on the skills I build along the way.

Why?

• So I can have a better tomorrow.

Where do you want to go?

• Right in this very moment of finals chaos, I would like to go on vacation because I am very ready for a mental break and to finally see family I have dearly missed. When I am back, I will be excited for the next quarter of building my skills and networks to get myself to a career path that sets me up for the things I want in life: financial stability, healthcare, eventually a home of my own, the freedom to travel the world more, and a healthy work and life balance. 

What would you want to say?

• I am still on a path to figuring this out as well. I have never felt that I am much of a prophetic person. I’d like to have my work speak more directly for me and make a positive impact in line with things I am passionate about. Whether that’s working closely with communities I would like to help, or finding the right company to work for that is in line with things I care about… I’m not sure about the final path but I believe it will become more apparent when I enter the field as a working professional vs being a student.

For a theme I would find interesting in recreating a “Cut” style short bit, I have to make a nod to a presentation assignment we just had to present this week for Erik Fadiman’s class. Our assignment was to give a presentation on the worst day ever. This was super impactful on me, and I feel like I got to know my classmates a bit more.

This topic is interesting to me, because classmates had a lot of different approaches. I thought on this scenario pretty hard. I could have presented a very real tale of hardship, or a crappy scenario that happened but in hindsight was a bit comical. I believe a lot of us thought in depth of the tone of our story, some deflected with humor, others were very real and allowed themselves to be more vulnerable with us. I had a few moments where tears welled up in my eyes from the stories, and others I related to deeply.

I think this is also an interesting topic in terms of how it gets others to think. We are all these very multifaceted humans with experiences that shaped us into who we are today. I think it is a good reminder that at the end of the day, we contain multitudes and how we experience individuals sometimes is just the first layer, and there are so many complex layers before you get to the core of a person.

I think this can be an all ages all demographics type of prompt. I could see it being very innocent and hilarious if you were to ask a group of very young children this question. I think it would be interesting to get many ages and see how much variation of content you get from it.

For the at home solo Metaverse experience, I ended up visiting that Taco Bell Wedding. Unfortunately, there were not many people logged in (the counter was at 4) and it seems like a pretty limited experience for joining as a guest under a free and limited profile.

I was able to find other online users that were congregated in a building of black jack tables. They had Pepe the frog meme as the croupier, which was kind of funny. It defenitely felt like a humorous place to be, especially with the theme and a place it is dedicated for weddings.

Though I could see other online users, this specific metaverse required you to be a paying profile in order to interact with literally anything. There were advertisements blasted on billboards so I assume it’s a good opportunity for companies to get their branding and marketing out. Though I don’t know how many people it would really draw in. Feels like a very specific type of user would be frequenting places on the Metaverse, so it might only be a slightly good tool to use for companies. It will be interesting to see how things shift as time progresses.

I didn’t really enjoy my experience as a limited user, but there’s little for me to be motivated over seeing more and actually spending money on a paid profile.

An instance that comes to mind for me when not meeting expectations on creating and fostering trust with a client is one I had with a friend who wanted album artwork done. I was working a full time job and took on commissions that interested me. This album had potential to be a very fun and fulfilling project, so I accepted the job.

I worked way too many hours on this project due to the clients not having a full understanding of what they wanted or how they wanted things executed. I helped with forming the album artwork (I shot the photography and created the layout design, so all hands on deck) and everyone was very happy with the end result. I turned over all of the artwork for them to get the print production started on the Friday it was due. That evening I had plans to attend a friends birthday party, so after tying up all loose ends for my project I packed up and went out to my friends celebration.

I ended up getting a frantic text message an hour into my friends party, insinuating I did not properly center the album cover image. I know this was not true, so I stepped aside to phone the clients and best explain why visually it may have looked like it was uncentered. Without having my design right in front of me and physically pointing out the spacing it was nearly impossible to prove there was not a fault with the centering of the design. So, I excused myself from my friend’s birthday and took myself home in order to get on a video call and show them there would not be an issue.

Long story short, after the video call it was determined everything was centered the way it should be. I got no apologies for interrupting my personal time, no thank you for promptly leaving my friend’s birthday to give them peace of mind, and no further compensation for the run around and extra time and energy logged into their project.

Through this example I have learned it is equally important for me to feel trust within my client’s as it is their trust with me. I stopped taking on projects from close friends since it puts a strain on the friendship if things go sour. I also have learned it’s important to go over contracts and what my parameters are (ie: I will not be running around on my non-work hours and cancelling plans just to appease my client. I would not expect that from them, and I won’t be bending over backwards for others in this way going forward.)

Hard Skills:
– UX / UI design
– Adobe Creative Suite
– Letterpress printing

Soft Skills:
– Highly adaptable
– Emotional intelligence
– Collaborative

For all of my hard skills, these are areas I have had job experience or education in and have been working hard towards. Soft skills I have learned through life lessons along the way. I have become a highly adaptable person through uprooting my life a handful of times in my adult life with 3 across country moves. Each time to a new destination where I have had to learn how to grow myself into new communities, find employment and navigate life’s ups and downs while very far from my normal support groups from any family or friends. I’ve learned how to collaborate well through my experience with joining bands and writing music with bandmates, and my emotional intelligence has been a lifelong learning experience I feel like with every social exchange I become more understanding and empathetic towards others.

Becoming more skilled with the entire Adobe Creative Suite would be on my list for continued hard skills, along with project management because that is an area I tend to have a difficult time with. Soft skills I could use work on are how to effectively communicate across the board with individuals (especially difficult individuals that may treat me or others with lack of respect) and how to self advocate a bit more. As I reflect on the self advocacy, I realize through my upbringing, being a woman, and also experiences in relationships I have normally given way to others’ wants and needs before my own. Often this has led me to feeling like I get the short end of the stick in matters that I should be stepping up for myself on. I have made steps to advocating for myself a bit better in the workplace. For instance, I was working for an employer a year ago who was not giving me sick pay and argued against me when I explained that it was a labor law here. He tried to say that this was new as of the pandemic (claiming sick pay did not become written into law until 2020, but he was lying and I found it had passed in 2018). I was new to Washington and not fully familiar with the labor laws here, but I was out of work for an extended period of time due to surgery. It put a lot of financial strain on me, so I confronted my employer with the Washington state labor laws with sick pay so I could be compensated for a portion of missed work hours. I gathered a log of all of my totaled work hours from the beginning of my employment and totaled the number of hours I was owed in sick pay. I kept all my emotions in control, presented all my gathered information and totaled hours, and finally got him to agree I was owed back pay for the sick hours I had acquired. I continued to work for this company for another month or two, but things like this kept happening so I advocated for myself again and found a job elsewhere. Since then, my new place of employment has been a very positive change with a boss who is very respectful and uplifting and I am happy to have made those choices for myself since it has improved my work life.