A Message to students : Your hard work counts and will make a difference in your career.
In 2010 I was the classic design student. I thought I was the absolute worst, “I will never get a job, my work sucks, I am a failure!”. Students fall into this black hole of self-inflicted insults all the time. I know this because I still see it in my students and interns today. The truth is, while you think you are failing, you are simply learning the “do’s and dont’s” for a successful future.
Remember, the work you do as a student counts. The Bicycle Transportation Alliance promo I directed back at Art Center College of Design is still getting me work today. Both because it’s a good looking project with an important message, but mostly because it was an eternal life lesson about the importance of a team.
This was a challenging project because A, I had never directed anything in my life, and B, I wasn’t quite grasping this whole Motion Graphics thing yet. Still, here I was, with a team of two students I barely knew, Hae Lee, and Kevin. We just wanted a passing grade. What I didn’t realize at the time was that this project would have been a crucial stepping stone for me into the Motion Graphics industry, and would have shaped my attitude as a designer for years to come.
When you are a student, you’re like an only child. It’s all about, “me, me, me”. Once you step out into the professional world, you realize, you are part of something much bigger, and unless you learn how to work in a team, the industry will chew you up and spit you right back out.
Working in a team is hard. It means you are responsible for other people’s time. It means you cannot make decisions without considering a whole other group of people. It means you are not always right, and it means that sometimes, you might be right, but you just don’t get to have it your way anyway.
These are the kind of lessons I learned during the BTA project. Our team fought, we pulled all-nighters when one of us flaked, we disagreed, miscommunicated and got upset. We were failing! We also got to know each other. We slowly learned to understand one another. We learned how to speak clearly while staying respectful. We discovered each other’s strengths which helped us divide our workload appropriately, eventually setting us up for sucesss. What seemed like an absolute train-wreck at the beginning, turned into a powerful and rich animation that still stands strong today.
The project for the Bicycle Transportation Alliance in Portland was a success. The promotional animation was praised by BTA and was displayed on the company’s website as well as shared on social media outlets including Twitter and Facebook. The project was also displayed at the coveted Art Center College of Design Gallery. I was offered an internship at an Award Winning production company. This was shocking to me at the time. I had spent weeks failing my team, and here I was being praised on all sides. It didn’t make any sense. Now that I look back, it couldn’t have made any more sense. Faced with a challenging project, a group of students set their differences aside and stuck together to the finish line. Boom.
When I began to work, I knew I had ways to go when it came to technique. Thanks to my BTA project experience, I had learned about team work. Knowing how to work with others was what kept me afloat for the first part of my motion career. My ability to fit into different professional environments forgave my rookie mistakes and bought me time to learn the craft of Motion Graphics.
What I hope you can take away from my experience is that school projects can be more than passing grades. And while some of these projects may land you gigs because they look great, all of your work has the potential of shaping you as a designer. Embrace your challenges and failures, you’re doing just fine.
