Let's Get A Job

This week, Patrick Drake, a product designer for Dealerware, an automotive tech company located in Austin, discusses how you can’t separate UI from UX because they inherently enhance each other towards a product’s overall goals. He discusses why demonstrating sound problem solving in your work and the ability to walk someone through your thought process is the most effective skill a designer can develop. Patrick shares his process for usability testing, downplaying biometric eye tracking in favor of fast, high-fidelity prototypes because you don’t have to guess what someone is thinking after a biometrics test. We talk about using parallel work examples to get a job doing something new and how sending perfect work isn’t as important as just showing some level of competency when starting out. Lastly Patrick compares the autonomy and depth within an in-house design role vs the fast turnaround of project based freelance work at a design agency - it’s all about the iterative self-sustaining loop of finding and improving novel problems.
SHOW NOTES

• Dovetail - A User Research Platform
• Johnathan Stark - Freelance Mentor
• Articulating Design Decisions, by Tom Greene

This week, Corey Zucco (@czooksmedia), a recent graduate from the spring of 2021, talks about moving back to her hometown and how she landed her first full-time job as a digital designer at Red Ventures. We tackle mental health breaks, personal branding and network utilization. Corey also shares her journey through the virtual interview process, her fears about never landing a job, and her relatable disdain for LinkedIn. Lastly, Corey gives her tips for navigating the job market, including patience and persistence.

This week Autumn Moore, editor at Trailer Park in Los Angeles, talks about the full scope of what it takes to get a trailer on screen and how she loves that her ideas are the first thing you see on a project. We discuss how you can edit the beats of a trailer’s story in several ways, and breaking the formula is where cool work comes from, but you have to first know the editing formula to justify why you broke it. Autumn details the how assistant editing is the best way to become an editor, but editing is something you do on your own time because their skill-set is completely different. Lastly, we watch and dissect Autumn’s favorite current trailer breaking down why they work and why she loves them.
Trailers we discuss:

• The Social Network (2010) - trailer #1
• Little Children (2006) - trailer #1
• Promising Young Woman (2019) - trailer #1
• Ratched (2020) - teaser trailer

This week Adam Johnson (@the_creative_explorer), a Senior Graphic Designer at Nike, talks about the balance between branding and appeal in apparel graphic design and how that ties into the overall narrative story. We discuss working two years ahead of real-life and how he designs outside of trend while using the combination of cyclical fashion and innovating performance technology to be on-trend in the future. He explains the collaborative ecosystem between the roles that make a piece of apparel happen and how he allows himself to explore new ideas within its boundaries and restrictions. Adam reminisces on feeling completely unprepared right before graduating college, how exhausting applying for jobs is, and his strategy on faking it to land a job. Lastly, we dig into his creative process, abandoning the idea of perfection and how hard it is to let a side project be a thing instead of trying to make it A THING.
Show notes

• Fishing Jersey project
• Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight
• Camp Mug Supply Co.

This week reality tv editor Greg Whitlow (Ridiculousness, Bridezillas) breaks down not only how to craft a 30 minute story from 100 hours of raw footage, but how to up the emotion of those 30 minutes to an eleven. We dig into what makes an assistant editor stand out and how to avoid the trap of getting good at one genre. He discusses how to break down a show in order to pick up on its tendencies and the amount of of Keeping Up With The Kardasians he watches for research. Lastly we talk about why stubbornness is more valuable than confidence, relationships more important than being right, and just moving to Los Angeles because you’re going to end up there anyway.