I am a sucker when it comes to freelance work. I generally go above and beyond the call of duty on a project when the payoff doesn’t really warrant it. Like this last week, I designed a brochure and splashpage for some plush toys I designed for a startup clothing company, designed multiple ‘roughs’ for a web design company I occasionally work for, designed and produced a long-running ‘zine, all the while having to address production issues on my own book. And let’s not forget I have a full-time day job laying out books. I busted my ass from 7A.M. until 11P.M. everyday up until today. I made probably $300.

The reward is, as it has been on these projects, that I get to work on some kick ass stuff from time to time. Granted, its insulting when you work this hard and clients dismiss your work out of a lack of understanding or direction, especially when you are working for them either pro bono or gratis. If I receive very little direction and spend 6 hours designing and painting an illustration only to have a client say, “y’know, that’s not really what I had in mind,” I feel like crying inside. For some reason, some clients think I just hit some filter in Photoshop and TA-DA – art! If it were really that easy I wonder why they don’t just do it themselves? Because there is more to it than that! Sometimes the only filters I use are maybe blur or sharpen.

Enough with the kvetching, let’s take a look at what I did last week. And my apologies to Chad, with whom I was late delivering the goods.

First up, here’s a project I love working on because I’m pretty much given carte blanche on what I can do. And this time, I got to illustrate the cover. This is a ‘zine called The Harveyville Fun Times! that’s been around for 16 years. I redesigned the whole thing for four color printing on the last issue and this is the cover to the most recent. I love designing publications and I rarely get the chance to do it. Most of the time at my job I just fill in and arrange a pre-designed template, but not here. This is the Halloween issue and it’s due out in October.

Up next, these are items I did for the children’s clothing/toy line. The plushies turned out great and I want one super bad, but I have to wait until after the Las Vegas trade show (which is this week!). The first image is the front of the brochure and the next one is a splashpage I painted for the website. It still needs some work, but for a guy who doesn’t paint that often I think it turned out nice. FYI: I did not take the photo for the cover.

And lastly, I did a bunch of business card mockups for my pal Jeremy at Circle Division. These are going to print on a transparent/frosted acetate and have a die-cut cover. As the card is pulled the circles divide in color. Pretty cool. This design has not been settled on, but I thought it was kinda cool.

As for this week, I have to start working on marketing and publicity materials for Lulu & Mitzy and continue to work on a new book, which you can see a sample of in the previous post.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.