It would appear, in regards to my career, I've come to a fork in the road. A crossroads. Or perhaps, a dead end. Not sure which just yet, but it appears I'll have plenty of time to contemplate that.
After months of being crazy busy, I suddenly find myself with nothing to do. I just emailed off my last job and when I checked the schedule, I saw nothing but blank days ahead.
Normally, I'd just chalk it up to the traditional summer doldrums. Historically, in advertising, the time from the Fourth of July to Labor Day is an absolute dead zone. The clients are on vacation, and their clients too. For two months, at any given time, someone up the food chain is away and nothing moves forward. Knowing that doesn't make it less stressful.
But there have recently been a couple of developments that cast a more ominous pall over everything.
The first came with an absolute dream job. One of my clients in LA was putting together a prospectus for new clients and in a bit of back-to-the-future, out-of-the-box thinking they decided to send out a lavish printed brochure, through the mail and everything, just like in Olden Tymes. Their feeling was that in this day and age, everyone is bombarded with email solicitations and link heavy promotions and most people just end up hitting "delete" without looking at anything. But if they were to receive an actual, physical artifact, something unexpected and rich and textural, well then, that would make them stand completely out of the herd.
It was right up my alley and a pleasure to design. Twenty pages of tasteful photos, lush textures, classic fonts, all in a muted palette of ochres and greys and cool tones. The client loved it.
I didn't hear from them for a couple of days and when I did, there had been a slight change of plans.
After further review, they had decided that, in the end, sending out a printed piece made them look backwards and out of touch. They were still moving forward with it, but with some minor revisions.
It was now going to be an email blast.
First of all, it was now going to be four pages, not twenty. And I was to remove all the photos. It would reduce the file size and make it faster to load, and research has found you only have three seconds to catch someone's attention before they hit the "delete" button. The photos would be replaced with hyperlinks. Also, I was to remove all the textures. At 72dpi, you couldn't make them out anyway. The fonts would have to be changed to something more browser friendly, something easy to read on a smart phone. They helpfully suggested Helvetica. And finally the palette. No two monitors are ever the same, and no one bothers to calibrate them anymore anyway, so my muted color scheme had to go, replaced with red headlines and black text.
The end result was hideous. It was so rudimentary that just about anyone could've done it. Hell, even Rodrigo could've done it, although nothing would be straight, which, I'm not sure anyone would even notice.
The client was happy, why I don't know.
The whole experience was heartbreaking, but I learned an important lesson:
I am backwards and out of touch.
And the final result of the project pointed out a fatal flaw in my future: nobody gives a shit about this stuff anymore. Which leads to the second ominous development.
It came from my biggest Bako client. They had been keeping me busy and paying the bills for months, and then after the Fourth, work started to dry up. I initially chalked it up to the usual summer slowdown. But then I started receiving emails and calls from the intern in their marketing department. Would I mind terribly sending over my original files?
That's never a good sign.
When I finally asked him what all this was about he informed me that the company had bought him all the same Adobe software I use and from now on he'd be doing most of the work. I asked him if he knew the programs and his reply pretty much summed everything up...
"No, but I can probably figure it out. How hard could it be?"
"Well probably still use you for the big stuff" he added, helpfully.
I hate to be the one to break it to them, but they have no "big stuff".
So thats that. I'm backwards and out of touch and anything I can do can be done by an unpaid intern. Doesn't really make for a promising future.
The more I think about it, the more it appears the only really big choice I have for financial sercurity is what color apron I want to wear...
Blue for WalMart, red for Target or orange for Home Depot.
I was always kind of partial to orange.
