Hi friends! This year is flying by so I wanted to go ahead and post a little status update for any of you that might be curious about what I’ve been up to. I graduated with my MFA in December and life has been pretty nonstop ever since. Grad school was life-consuming so I’ve been trying to catch up with friends and family and do a bit of traveling. I’m also trying to prioritize some personal goals, such as improving my health, that have long been neglected because of school.

I’ve been freelancing pretty regularly this year and that’s enabled me to be able to take my time figuring out exactly where I want to go from here so I’m really thankful to everyone that’s sent work my way. As far as the future goes, I know that I want to teach in some capacity but I’m not in a hurry to teach full time so I’ve been trying to do some soul-searching to figure out exactly what I want to work towards. It’s so hard! 😅

I love being challenged and learning new things so I love doing a little bit of everything. Despite my desire to do-it-all, I have a pretty good idea of where I want to eventually end up career-wise but it’s tough trying to figure out the best way to get there. At the moment I am pretty torn between continuing to grow my freelance business or looking for a remote position as an art director. I love being part of a team, working on large complex problems, and helping mentor others so an art director position would be ideal. However, I also like the freedom that comes with being your own boss, and I have a dream of eventually building my own design team so I can create the kind of environment I’ve always wanted to be a part of so I’m planting seeds for that possibility. I’m also currently pursuing some of my own projects and am trying not to overstretch myself. But if I were to paint a picture of what a perfect situation for me might look like in the near future I think the dream would be to continue growing my freelance business, and to take a full or part-time job as an art director or UI/UX designer, and then teach one class a semester to keep my toes in the education water until I’m ready to possibly pursue teaching full time—or until one of my business ventures take off and I can grow one or more sustainable businesses. Mwahaha!

That being said, thanks to the encouragement of so many people, I’ve decided to prioritize trying to publish one or more of my tabletop games and am in the process of figuring out everything related to that—which is a lot! I started to write about that here but am going to make a separate post about it in a few days so stay tuned.

Life Here Lately

Anyways, I like to reflect and want to take a moment recap what I’ve been up to so far this year, mostly for myself, but also for others that are interested in day-in-the-life type content.

Preparing to Reenter the Job Market

I’ve spent a good chunk of this year preparing to reenter the job market. I don’t like to make short-term commitments so I’ve wanted to take my time, do my research, and really evaluate all my options. I legit spent over a month just researching salary information for my field, figuring out how to craft a better resume, and learning about how to prepare for job interviews. I also spent a good chunk of time updating my portfolio site—which still isn’t where I want it, but is good enough for the moment.

In the past, I really stressed about my geographic location but one of the good things to come out of the pandemic is the attitude towards remote work. It is now way more common in my field so I’m feeling very optimistic about that.

Freelance

I’ve gotten to work on several interesting projects for different clients this year. Some of which I’ll eventually share, but sadly a lot of my recent work is hidden behind an NDA (a contract that states I can’t share it). Most of that work has been doing digital ads for social media campaigns related to the trucking industry. I’ve also done several brand guides, billboards, and magazine designs in addition to a few misc projects. Some of this work has caused me to have to embrace Canva. I like learning new software and Canva has some really nice features but it’s definitely not a replacement for professional software and education. As a design professional, I have really mixed feelings about Canva. It’s a great tool, especially for businesses that can’t afford to hire a designer, but it’s really easy to create bad designs if you stray too far from the provided templates without having any design training.

I’ve been working with my friend Mary for House to House Heart to Heart a good bit this year doing a lot of publication design—mostly focusing on typesetting. Some of the most interesting projects I’ve worked on have involved typesetting foreign languages—mostly Spanish. Typesetting words you can’t read is a bit of a challenge. You have to really trust your editor and ask a lot of clarifying questions. Spanish translations usually run longer than the original English text so I have to find ways to reduce the length of the text via sizing, spacing, and layout. Spanish also has different capitalization and formatting rules. I’ve done a little research of my own but usually reach out to the translator for clarification to be safe. Working with text you don’t understand is interesting because it causes you to pay more attention to the form than the content. I’ve never really paid attention to Spanish text before and the punctuation is visually quite different from English.

Continuing Education

LinkedIn Learning, SkillShare, Conferences, Online Summits, Youtube Channels—I have been consuming it all. I love being a student and being in grad school was mostly great, but being able to learn exactly what I want when I want is awesome. I’ve binged the hell out of LinkedIn Learning this year. I’ve completed 24 courses and have watched bits and pieces of quite a few others. Most of my LinkedIn Learning studies have been focused on preparing to enter the job market, but I’ve also enjoyed brushing up and learning some new illustration techniques, and InDesign tips, etc. I have a running list of my favorite LinkedIn Learning courses here you can look at if you’re interested in some recommendations.

LinkedIn Learning is my favorite because the content is so well organized but I do also subscribe to Skillshare which I find is great for more specific techniques. One class that I’ve particularly enjoyed this year is Digital Illustration Techniques: Creating a Paper Pop-Up Style by Michael Fugoso. Michael is a super cool and talented dude who I met at Creative Works in 2019. I had no idea how talented he was until I looked him up after the conference. He’s done some super cool illustration work for the space industry. I’m a huge sci-fi/space fan so I love his work extra hard.

The Board Game Design Course

When I first started making games I just had to figure it out on my own with a bit of help from some of my professors and classmates. I wasn’t able to find any resources at the time but I’ve been looking for things to help fill in my gaps and came across this game design course by Joe Slack. I’m currently about halfway through the program and am hoping to pick up some information I need to help me figure out the business side of things, especially regarding production, marketing, and publishing. It’s been really nice to go through a step-by-step guide on how to approach designing board games and I’m really happy to report that most of what Joe teaches I already figured out on my own. There’s a lot that I haven’t figured out but it’s nice to know that I’ve been going down the right track.

All the Conferences & Groups!

How does one maintain a sense of community after leaving school, especially when freelancing, and continue to grow as a professional? Conferences! I love conferences. If I could get paid to just travel around and attend conferences all the time that would be the dream. Sadly I’m not that great at public speaking and I don’t particularly enjoy being the center of attention but maybe I’ll give speaking a shot someday if the opportunity arises.

  • Simply Profitable Designer Summit
    • This annual online summit took place in March and was filled with so much good content specifically curated for freelancers and small design businesses. I definitely recommend bookmarking this one if that kind of content is of interest to you.
  • Creative South | Columbus, GA
    • My first in-person conference since the pandemic. Creative South did not disappoint. The community is amazing and this is my new favorite design conference in terms of community. I loved it so much that I signed up to volunteer next year.
  • Designer Boss Summit
    • An online summit with a lot of great information. This one is based out of Australia so it ran from 5 pm to 4 am for me (CST) which was actually kind of nice. I don’t like to stay up that late but I’m definitely a night owl. It was really cool to get a feel for the Australian design community.
  • AMA | American Marketing Association
    • A friend told me about some free events hosted by AMA and I tuned in for several really informative UX Design and Strategy sessions.
  • UCDA | University & College Designers Association: Creative Summit
    • I attended a UCDA conference in 2019 and one previous online workshop in 2021 but this was my first time attending one of their online summits. I was only able to attend one of the two days but it was a great experience. I didn’t really get a great feel for the community at the UCDA at the conference I attended in 2019 but the people at the online summit were great so I’ll have to give this group another shot.
  • JSU Art Alumni / JSU Alumni Association
    • I’m currently president of the Art Alumni Chapter of the JSU Alumni Association. I helped plan a few really nice events before the pandemic but then the pandemic happened and all my attention turned to trying to finish grad school so now I’m trying to get things going again. Kind of feel like an army of one most days but I’m determined to keep it going as long as I can. If you’re a JSU Art Alumni and would like to get involved please reach out to me. I need help! lol
  • Design Week Huntsville
    • Learned about a free weeklong design event that takes place in Huntsville every year. I drove up for one of the events and had a great time socializing with the community and listening to Michael Fugoso talk about his work.
  • SPE | Society for Photographic Education
    • I have really missed my SPE community. I was able to join one of the Caucus events last week and it was so nice to see some familiar faces.
    • I’m super pumped for the national conference happening in Denver next year and am working on a proposal for it this week. I have been looking for a way to marry my loves of graphic design and photography together so I am really looking forward to sharing my game with the SPE community. I essentially made this game with them in mind so I’m really anxious to hear what they think.
  • P.S. – Can someone just pay me to attend and review conferences? 🙏 😅

Everything Else

  • 🎨 My #MeToo photography series was chosen for inclusion in AltenativeProcesses.org’s Women’s History Month Exhibition. I’m not sure how long the show will be up but the page they’ve put together is really nice and there’s some really amazing work. I’m so pumped to be included. Give it a look! 😊
  • ✈️ Travel, friends, family, weddings, funerals, baby showers, game nights, and birthdays. We’re only four months into the year but it has been packed full to the brim.
  • 🎮 Gaming and the gaming community I’ve been building since 2007 are very important to me so I try to schedule at least one community game night most weeks. My community has grown a good bit this year and it makes me so happy to see so many people making new friends and finding a home in the Discord community I’ve built for us all. Discord is my favorite app and I highly recommend it for community building.
  • 📷 Karl and I are trying to learn astrophotography. We’ve attempted two shoots so far this year while on the west coast and have learned a lot from our failures. I’m hoping to get some new equipment and have more success on our next shoot planned for this summer.

After writing all this out I kind of want to delete some of it because I have definitely been doing too much. I’m currently shifting focus from absorbing all the information to applying and executing all the information so please wish me luck. 😅  If anyone has any advice for someone starting a small business, or for any of the other things I’ve mentioned please reach out and I’ll be happy to return any assistance I can. ☮️