Month: February 2023

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.

Video is not working to upload so I have written a transcript of what my elevator pitch would be.

“Pretty rad riff huh? I got to do the artwork for this bands album! I’ve been doing personal work for album artwork and layout design for the last 7 years as a fun project. In my regular day to day I’m a graphic designer, for fun personal projects I started making artwork for my own band. After that started, more friends commissioned me to do work for them, too. And since I have been a letterpress printer for 13 years, its fun to print my own work for these commissions.”

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For our group project, we decided on featuring a few of the independent cinemas we have here in Seattle. Each of us chose to represent information in three panels: Now Playing, Weekly Film Calendar and a small page of historical text giving information on the specific theater you are at. My video will not upload of the actual panels in use on the wordpress, but I took a few screen caps for measure.

I created a calendar template for everyone to use and drop their information of the films at their theater into. On these files I worked in Illustrator and exported each panel as a .jpeg file.