First off, as you read this keep in mind that I’ll be speaking from the point of view of a corporate & in-house designer. Since sometimes you can’t really get to choose “creative” projects to work on. You know, not those ones that you get all pumped and stoked about when you read the specs in a brief…

There are those projects where you believe (emphasize: believe) that it’s got no potential to become a portfolio piece, all creative juice goes stale and suddenly you have a heavy feeling in your gut as you begin to work on it. Hell yeah, I’ve been down that road a gazillion times.

It’s all in the mind..

Yes. Or at least that’s what I believe. For instance, after working on a huge project, learning new ideas from the senior designers and info architects, peeking the newest CSS work-arounds from the programmers.

All our mocks got sent of for sign-off and green lights. There comes that waiting period where I get placed on a project in which I’ll have to build two dozen ads in different sizes. For you sales folk those would be big boxes, skyscrapers.

Specs I received were basically to fit in stock images with a huge body of text. A very tedious and repetitive project. My mind kept wondering off to that one cool project that’s “so awesome, and it would look sweet in your portfolio.” At the same time thinking of having to create around some 12 ad units times 2, feels like having to climbing the Himalayas.

The Difficulty / The Challenge

It was exactly that challenging feeling that got me down and bored out of my mind. “Dude, seriously? 24 ads? ” I felt myself sinking deeper into my seat.  It got me thinking… What if this was the project I will be judged by down the ages? What if this were the last ever project I’ll ever work on?

So I sat up and popped on my iPod and started looking for the cleanest way to layout the text and best place to add the graphics. After that I looked for the fastest and most efficient way to replicate the look & feel on the rest of the 22 ads, keep in mind not all ads were to have the same text and graphics being that those were ad units to be shown in different provinces of Canada… Six days later, I finished. Man, a huge rock just fell off my shoulders. Although they didn’t really turn out to be the greatest ad units on earth, I could look back and say I gave what I had to complete those.

It was exactly that feeling of difficulty that gave me the drive to see the challenge in it. The challenge being able to overcome the procrastination and follow through. Or beating a tedious job simply by seeing it as my last shot that had to count.

If I was to overcome this simple yet repetitive project, how much effort will I be able to put into a project that really catches your passion and drive?

I’ll just come right out and say it. Boring/tough projects are a good way to build creative character, as corny as it sounds… Not sure if it’s true, but I sure feel that way. It’s exactly that feeling that usually gets me through.

Quick note right here. This post has been inspired by a chapter in Paul Arden’s It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be A truly life changing book.

Great, seeing how depressing my journal looked like, I decided to throw in a quick post…

I’ve pretty much been stuck in front of some sort of monitor for many many hours on end. Sometimes I get the feeling 24 hours is not enough for everything I want/need to accomplish… There. I said it. I’ve been hearing that quote a million times, now I get to actually say with all honesty!

Yep, now it’s time to kick back and rest since my Time Capsule is backing up my entire drive…

Basically instead of dishing out for an iPhone, effectively giving a leg and an arm for it (on a monthly basis) I thought I’d invest in a new back-up drive. The last one I had was a basic 250gb external HDD firewire and backed up by Time Machine. Well, that one got fried by a split-second energy surge. Tried a couple of progs and apps to win back my old backups - 8 months worth to be exact.

All said and done, I didn’t experience any terrible file losses or lost documents in the few weeks I had to go without. I finally made up my mind and went and got myself the 500GB Time Capsule, which is backing up my files since this morning at 6am as we speak.

Second on my list would have been the MyBook 1TB Office Edition, actually. Actually had a difficult time getting one… No turning back now. Pretty happy with my Time Capsule so far. Now I can get to finally backup my MBPro at the same time.

Pretty important to have a major backup system like the Time Machine as a graphic designer though. Sometimes I overwrite files while working on them, busy beating the deadline. Some important assests get rasterized, cropped or deleted. Good thing I just need to “jump back in time” and pull it back out.

Speaking of lack for updates… I think I should go with twitter someday instead…

Before I ever built one, I thought ad units were annoying, boring, nuisance for users/visitors and for some designers to make them was a hairy thing to handle…

It’s been a year since I’ve made my first ever real ad unit (Sky Scraper) - and I never knew how much thought and work is put into an ad.

Behind the Scene

It’s quite a small space and a short period of time to work with, you’ll receive a “novel” of a copy to place (I’m just kidding my copywriting brethren, I still love you!), you have the imagery or materials to include and you basically should have only less than 2 seconds to really capture the users attention - and how many times have you been really intrigued by an ad unit…. and I mean REALLY intrigued? And I don’t mean those Apple ads with the Mac and PC guy going through their usual conversation like the ad on the tele. There’s no copy to read on it so that’s cheating, just playing, I love it.

Wax-on Wax-off

It is a challenge working on an ad that really has to hit the mark while maintaining the target deadline. In that small confined space creativity gets stifled really quick - But I can tell you one thing, after working on an ad, working on a site layout suddenly isn’t as difficult as it seemed initially… It seemed like sort of a creative warm-up or exercise.

Ever since creating my first online advertisement, I browse yahoo!, MSN or CNN (or the other news websites for that matter) I actually enjoy watching and analyzing the art work and finesse other designers have in placing the copy that has been handed to them together with the images and graphics they are supplied with.

Having said that, ads are little inspiring creative snacks on the side, for me when they are well done!

I’ve recently read an article in an old Computer Arts mag (October 2007 issue) that was lying around. It was mainly about how other graphic designers keep their ideas and creativity fresh in the corporate world, as well as getting through a rough day of nine-to-five.

I was actually glad to read that another designer also chose to get up early in the morning to work on personal artworks and projects. And I’m not talking about deciding to or not to get out of bed at 6 a.m. I’m talking about 04:00 hours. The time some people come home from a night out. Or the time bakers in the old world are already awake and baking the nth batch of fresh bread.

Up until this day, every time I mention that to people around me they’d think I’m a little desperate and should re-schedule my time, since “If you love something, you’ll always find time for it.” Yup it’s true, but hey sometimes your battery is just drained at the end of a long and fruitful day. And guess what, I found the time!

Going all the way back, the first time I tried hopping out of bed at four in the morning was back in my school days, just to get some homework done. And then of course I stopped after leaving school — A couple of months back though, I got up to hit the road for a couple rounds of jogging. I was standing at the front door, that’s when I noticed the world around me was just silent, streets were empty and I only could hear a bird or two twittering in the distance. You could say the atmosphere was like past midnight and your standing in the dark, in the middle of the living room.

After that I just had to try out working on a few projects, since I was desperately looking for time to work on some artworks. Getting through a long day and coming home, the only thing you sometimes want to do is just get to some video gaming or you end up watching some reality show you’d usually hate to watch.

That one morning I got down to some work on personal sites and ideas I had swimming in my head. And guess what? As if everything just happened magically, new ideas started emerging - they weren’t the greatest but I was thinking about the projects and artworks in front of me. Not that I’m saying the pieces I was working on turned out to be some kick-ass portfolio piece. But what really happened is I was actually was able to work on some personal stuff for the first time in a long while and I had the time to experiment and play. Something I haven’t done in ages.

I’m not really sure if it was a fluke, oddly enough on those days I got up early to work on my stuff, the ideas at the office came easier.

Let’s just say waking up early and being “creative” is like the warm-up before you get to the actual work-out. Instead of jumping in to warm-up-mode at 8:58a.m. when you enter the office, you’re actually already run-in and ready to tackle the problems of the day.

Yes, of course if you don’t go to bed early enough and you pull something off like that, you are bound to be really burnt out at the end of the day. Trust me I’ve been down that road once too many, but that’s not something Redbull can’t fix…

I know there have been many stories about how rough it is being an in-house web or graphic designer for a huge firm. How much politicking you get involved in and the constant question you ask yourself “Hey, I thought I signed up for web / graphic designing?” … This post is not one of them.

Well, yes of course there are the difficult times everyone has to get through. But talking from the perspective of a freelance web designer - who went through his fair share of droughts - there are also those bright and sunny sides that get shoved to the back. It’s those inspiring times where you say “Hey, this ain’t as bad as everyone keeps telling me…”

Too many cooks ain’t always bad

In huge companies you also get to talk to people (aside from the Art Lead) who directly affect your work but don’t necessarily have to be web or graphic designers. For example the marketing and sales people, programmers or information architects who you usually pass on your mocks to for inspections and quality assurances. They often see layouts and designs in a different light or spot things you may have missed out since you were busy getting lost in the thick of thins. It’s always interesting having things viewed from a different perspective. Eye opening? Probably. But you get to see things outside the view of being a designer for a change.

Of course you may or my not disagree with some suggestions but ultimately it could improve the product, which is the site, as well as broadening your sense of perspective and creative process as a designer just that little bit more.

“In-House != Creativity?” I don’t think so.

Depending on which big company you’d be working for you may have to adhere to certain in-house creative rules such as what logos and wordmarks to include, colour themes, where to place what, look & feel or other factors. Basically a hand few of things that possibly could dampen your creative process… Only if you want it to have that negative effect on you.

I believe the creative part is in the process of finding solutions, which means including all the needed elements combined with your personal touch, what ever that may be. Nothing is more satisfying when marrying solution with the project’s requirements and adding your personal touch to it. Everyone involved is going to be happy. Above all the good ol’ clients will be quite pleased, too when everything goes according to project reqs.

Some may say…

Starting out in “the web design game”, I constantly read sad and depressed folks in huge design companys and how they’d rather work for places like kioken (at the time) or ad agencies, all of which put me into the wrong mindset of believing corporate is evil and long live the freedom of creativity. Approximately four years ago, after a few droughts and more education on how money works in the real world, did I give a corporate design gig a try for the first time.

Hell yeah it was difficult to start with, but which job isn’t? The constant pressure forced me to think and design differently and the high paced environment help me find the quickest and best solutions to problems. Those newly found experiences follow me around to this day.

Long story short

All I’m trying to say here is that corporate graphic and/or web designing can also be a great alternative to freelance or agency work and it doesn’t necessarily have to be the ugly step sister and last choice you’d have to resort to. There is also a wealth of knowledge to be found in that side of the industry.