When I grow up I want to be a...

About four years ago, I decided I wanted to follow in my fathers footsteps and become an electrical engineer. I understood math fairly well, took all the appropriate courses in high school, and even received several scholarships to study in the field with a few well known companies. However after attending my first semester at MCCC under the NJSTARS tuition program, I quickly learned that engineering wasn't for me and that my hobbies at the time (airbrushing, tattooing, and music) would ultimately fuel my passion for something in the arts. I enlisted in the graphic/web/DMA program at MCCC and didn't look back. It went hand in hand with my job at a local graphics company in Trenton, where I designed and printed large format graphics (billboards, vehicle wraps, bus wraps for bands and such).
As I got better and better at making graphics and illustrations my interest in the field and industry of graphic design got stronger. I started to outsource my work on various freelancing sites such as 99designs.com where I could make a quick $100 for a few hours work, or registering with modelmayhem.com and doing portraits to add to my portfolio. I enjoyed doing large format work because it incorporated root information design and artwork that would be seen by thousands, BIG. Fast forward a year, when one afternoon at work, my boss who is heavily involved with dog agility competitions came to me and asked me if I wanted to design a few ads for a magazine called "Clean Run" a nationally printed magazine about dog agility competitions. I knew nothing about dog agility and that was ok, because I would just be laying out tribute ads for fallen dogs lol, and it would be awesome to have my work in a nationally printed magazine. Well, after my first ad went over well, I started doing more, and eventually did a 2 page spread for one of my bosses dog agility friends. My boss would bring in the magazine that month and she'd give me a copy and I'd hang them on my wall, each issue with each ad I did open to that page. It was pretty neat I have to admit, seeing your work you did on your computer get transformed and printed into a magazine. After that I was hooked, I was on various forums offering my services for free, just to see if I could get a hook and get my work out there.
I ended up doing websites for a cookie company, Phoebe Murphy Cookies, a powder coating company Powtek in Trenton, anything. Then in Summer of '08, I attended Vans Warped Tour at RaceWay Park in Englishtown, NJ as I always do, where I work part time every now and then. It's a pretty neat gig. I drive around in a golf cart all day and take dehydrated or beaten up kids to first aid, sometimes hot girls too. Well, while I was around, I take this cute Romanian girl to her lost band. She gets talking to me in my golf cart as we're driving and she tells me that she's from this band called "Me Talk Pretty" and was interested in my stuff. I ended up doing their website and eventually she approached me with talks of getting their bands tour bus wrapped. Now for those who don't know what a wrap is, it's essentially designing something on a computer, printing it on a large format printer on giant sheets of vinyl media, then sticking those pieces on the surface of whatever it is you intend to wrap, just like a billboard. I had never done a bus wrap before, but this was big, literally. I did the design for them, a 2gb file at 72dpi in 1/4 scale mind you, and it wasn't long before I was contracted by this other band called "I am Alpha and Omega" to do their bus wrap. It was really neat, seeing my stuff on the sids of 45ft buses in full color giant illustrations!
Now, I know everyone always thinks they always need to know someone on the inside to get a job, or the hookup or a position, but thats not always true. I used free means of online advertising to get my work out there, freelance. I have an uncle who is a singer and music producer in a rock band but he lives in CA, and I never contracted him for work. So with all that being said, once I graduate from Mercer this spring, with the NJSTARS program, I can attend Rutgers with NJSTARSII for free assuming I maintain my 3.0GPA at Mercer which I have done. Once I'm done with Rutgers my ideal position would be somewhere doing full scale illustrations either for bands touring, advertising firms, etc.

For the five positions we're supposed to lookup, I decided to use the site that I owe so much to, Craigslist.

Craigslist is great. It represents the most basic functions in terms of layout and features, but its the simplicity of the website that makes it so great, every hear the term, if it ain't broke don't fix it? yeah...KISS (google, helvetica, the big mac, blue jeans. dont mess with a good thing

When looking for a job on craigslist, it first asks you to locate the area in which you're looking in. New Jersey>Central Jersey> BINGO, everything that Craigslist has to offer is before your eyes at this stage. On the right, jobs, awesome, art/media/design, thats me.

1. Multimedia Developer, Bridgewater, NJ - Using FL, and PS to create training videos for our company, comp. 35-55k.
2. Wanted: someone to develop a social networking site - I actually started to create a SNS back in the day with Drupal, a CMS that I wanted to use to create an Instant Messaging archive site. called impile. http://www.bv-techsolutions.com/beta/drupal/impile.com
3. Product Photographer - When I did bus wraps for the bands at Warped Tour, often times, they had nothing to give me for artwork, so I had to get and make my own, which included photos, and lots of them (you know how big a bus is?)

4. Admin / Design - I don't really understand this position, they claim to be the best at what they do and are looking for people to join their staff WingIt Innovations. i like being the best at what i do...

5. Flash/Web Designer - This is my major, web design, so this looks like a good opportunity as a fallout for my first choice (large format design) because there seems to be less of a demand for large format advertising with the current economic situation. Although the best thing you can do for your business in a down market is advertise...


kyle-