Repeatedly, I meet designers, who maintain full-time jobs, while running their own freelance studios outside of their day-to-day duties. Not only do these entrepreneurs have a steady 9–5 job, but they also insist on doing more work in addition to the work they do at the office.
Which office is which? Do they call their 9–5 office the office, and the one where the magic happens the office? Maybe they defer to the IRS jargon and call their atelier with their computer and design book collection the home office.[i] Gigs, experiments, labs, research, freelance, authorship, software tutorials, entrepreneurial endeavors… call it what you want, I can’t help but calculate the hourly rate these folks pull down when working on home office work between 9–5 at the office away from their home. Working on said secret work during a full-time job can net you a pretty good paycheck at the end of the tax year. But as a college teacher, I don’t have the luxury of being able to work on other tasks instead of what I should be doing; when I’m in the classroom, I’m with students, not taking calls from clients or dabbling in Illustrator to revise a logo nor use campus facilities for printing a client’s stationery proofs.[ii] But academic life requires one to balance teaching, service, and research with research being endeavors like scholarly writing or consulting (or namely, freelance, for those of you that insist on that word).[iii] So when I’m not in the classroom, I maintain a communication consultancy that designs for a wide variety of clients. However, it’s hard to believe that so many designers do work on top of their 40-hour (or more) work week for no other reason than to satisfy creative urges. Or is it something else? Each time I meet these moonlighting superheroes, I wonder why they can’t be satisfied with their daylight duties.[iv] What warrants them to betray their boss, clients, and staff like this, with so many (fruitful?) distractions? Is it because they’re tired of working with the same clients every day? Maybe. Dealing with the same projects and a single style manual? Sure, if you’re in-house, I can see the problem. Do you hate the products you’re pushing, and want to invoke change from the inside? Okay, unless you work for Philip Morris cigarettes while also working for the Truth campaign or Adbusters, this probably won’t apply.[v] Surely, countless other explanations could exist where these gigging insomniacs become trapped in a tangled web driven by independence, commerce, truth, or beauty.[vi]
Now as for the sleepless nights and independence, they begin in one place: school. Today’s graphic design education still revolves around an antiquated mentor to student model, where a mentor assigns problems, projects, and exercises for students to solve on their own. Critiques and art direction move concepts from infancy into a mature state of refinement. Typically in a university setting, these budding designers must act as researcher (anthropologist, fact checker), writer (you need text to work with typography), creator (designer), and audience (pretending to see things with a discerning and objective eye). Rarely is teamwork employed or prescribed. Is it any wonder that designers are born (bred?) to work around the clock on self-directed projects? Akin to the artist model, this also breeds withdrawal, pushing designers into their Office of Solitude to work (or play) day and night, and through the night in order to arrive at something personal and/or rewarding.[vii]
During these around the clock nocturnal emissions (in medical terms, also called wet dreams or my favorite, night falls), the off-hours designer has ownership over gig choices, creative direction, client relations, and the coffee maker. Those who perform on the side tasks may have grown tired of being spectators, and would rather take the dog by the leash and lead. Unless you’re high on the totem pole in your office, designers report to a bevy of superiors: creative directors, art directors, editors, or any number of Executive Officers. One can easily grow tired of taking orders, being pointed at, and/or being told where to push and click the mouse. So to temper these directions, designers start up their own ventures, concocting experiments like Jekyll in his lab.[viii] How do they prevent a conflict of interest? If you work full-time at Nike, but operate in your home office doing work for Adidas, chances are you’ll have a subpoena handed to you rather soon. (And in all honesty, if you do work for both teams like that, you deserve to get caught, but I wonder how often it happens in today’s twisted world.) Right or wrong, the conflict may have more to do with money than legal matters because the designers who work off hours can rarely pay the bills doing off-hours work alone.[ix] (9–5 Paycheck + Gigging Funds = Cha-Ching) These folks can be heard talking near the water cooler or at Starbucks after the five o’clock whistle, throwing any of these proud nuggets into the atmosphere:
“I have a home office where I do my own design. I just work at FedEx Kinko’s to use their printing equipment for my own gigs. God, I couldn’t begin to tell you how much dough they’ve saved me!”
“You like my new Audi, well, I have a freelance gig in addition to my full-time work. Oh yeah, and I play with my band on the weekends too.”
“My freelance gig pays twice what I make at the office because that job is dirt, and it pays me like I’m dirt. One day, I’ll run my own studio.”
“Sorry but I can’t watch Project Runway with you all tonight, I have got to stay home and finish this logo for my father-in-law.”
“I have a computer that I use for my freelance jobs, and it is way more powerful than what we have in the office.”
“I have to leave work early for a doctor’s appointment.”
(I have to meet a client for drinks, and need to beat rush hour traffic.)
There are occasions when some of the gigging designers choose to abandon their full-time practice and go solo. At lectures and conferences, you’ll notice them (a) at a great distance from each other because the competition is heated; (b) swapping war stories about how they have to manage so much work in addition to design and production; or (c) not attending because they’re so caught up with high-paying gigs. I’m most intrigued by these folks. With enough “on-the-side” work, they leave behind their colleagues and peers in order to do things on their own 100%. How do they cope with this change in lifestyle? Don’t they feel out of place when they start doing their off hours work during the on hours of 9–5? Maybe not. If Kal-El (Superman) didn’t have to be Clark Kent anymore, life would, in theory, be easier.[x] For Superman, this would liberate him since he wouldn’t need to pretend to be human, and could dedicate his time to saving lives. The designer wouldn’t have to juggle two lives either, so say goodbye to crammed schedules, all nighters, mistaking colleague’s phone calls for client’s, the speeding tickets from racing to press checks, missing one deadline in favor of your own, or hiding work from gazing eyes that walk past your office wondering why in the world After Effects documents are floating in your Finder when it’s strictly a print agency you work in. It would be so easy, being Superman without posing as Clark Kent.
Yeah, right. Orson Welles, who was one of the most promising talents to erupt from Hollywood, was quoted as saying, “I’ve wasted the greater part of my life looking for money, and trying to get along… trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paint box which is an… a movie. And I’ve spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with a movie. It ’s about two percent movie making and 98% hustling. It’s no way to spend a life.”[xi] Did you get that? Nothing to do with a movie! As a full-time gigging designer, you could be so caught up with non-design work, that you wouldn’t really be a designer. You’d be a hustler. Now we’re not getting into specifics, but for a moment think about this:
Yourself + The Number of Other People in Your Residence =
People You’d Have Contact with (excluding baristas, postal carriers, and other service people)
Would you be happy toiling away on God-knows-what by yourself? Okay, maybe you would, and rest assured, it is possible to do this for clients and make a living, as I know a few talented people (such as this dude) that manage their own high-paying gigs through a laptop, cafe, and cell phone, but not everyone is cut out for such a laborious lifestyle. (In the end, you will not even have a life outside all the design work and baggage you must carry.) Now I cannot tell you how lonely Orson Welles was, but he couldn’t even look back on his moviemaking life with pride because he got consumed by too much crap besides what he wanted to do: make films. Alas, poor Welles had so much to offer, but had to walk the tightrope of administration, pitching, and fund-raising, along with whatever else Hollywood demanded of him. He died a very lonely man, who endorsed spirits in his spare time to make ends meet.[xii] If Welles would have made good films (in addition to Citizen Kane), while still selling wine, then no problem. Even Leonardo Da Vinci had sponsorship.[xiii] Leo relied on the Medici family to further his personal research, that also benefited their kingdom and greater humanity.
Unless you want that hustling lifestyle, you need to keep your day job for the same reason Superman needs Clark: Kal-El can’t afford to pay the rent saving the day 24/7 as Superman. And some gigging designers cannot support themselves on gigging alone either, especially when they do it for some higher purpose as activists. Those that pledge allegiance to non-profits or other self-defined, meaningful ventures will supply their talents because they believe in the cause more than the financial compensation. (Think of any time you’ve donated time, money, or design to the AIGA.) It’s a noble endeavor that takes a special person. However, the designer’s lifestyle won’t always adhere to the 40-hour work week, but rather, can total 50–60 (or more) and this will become nearly unmanageable with extra gigs thrown in. Doing pro bono work in addition to full-time labor strikes me as not only courageous, but also crazy. These superheroes moonlighting for free have to be one thing: untethered, or namely single (and there’s nothing wrong with that). Those pursuing experimental work in the lab—searching for function, or that dangerous word beauty—won’t get paid either. The authorship craze that finds today’s designers as writers (or vice versa) has been visible since the advent of desktop publishing, although it can be traced farther back to the early 20th Century movements like Futurism and Dadaism. The 20th Century writer, film-maker, and poet B.S. Johnson, who shared similar avant-garde notions championed new forms too:
The novelist cannot legitimately or successfully embody present day reality in exhausted forms. If he is serious, he will be making a statement which attempts to change society towards a condition he receives to be better, and he will be making at least implicitly a statement of faith in the evolution of the form in which he is working. Both these aspects of making are radical; this is inescapable unless he chooses escapism (Aren’t You Rather Young To Be Writing Your Memoirs, 1973, reprinted in Dot Dot Dot Nine, page 6).
Johnson wholeheartedly believed the writer must shape his work (as a publication or body) based on need, experimentation, invention, or media influence instead of using the same vessels over and over again—some vessels he deemed primitive because they did not agree with how his stories unfolded. Leagues of designers search independently (without clients) for new forms that function, decorate, explain, narrate, or the like. And similar to Johnson, they do it for one reason: for themselves (Dot Dot Dot, page 11). This experimentation does not pay, so unless you’re doing R&D (research and development) at industries such as Intel or Google, chances are you need that other job while experimenting in your lab.
And in the end, balancing these two poles benefits your intellect and character. Go ahead and experiment, pad your wallet, or work for a cause, but imagine if you needed to drop your 9–5 job, in favor of doing this freelance (fine, call it that if you want), secretive, and/or pro bono work full-time.[xiv] Would you still love doing it now that it’s full-time work? No, probably not. Even Superman needs a vacation, and for him that comes in one of two ways: escaping from planet Earth or dressing up as Clark Kent. If Superman did in fact drop his alias Clark Kent in favor of being a full-time hero, he’d be miserable, doomed by the demands of that job. Now you can’t escape from the planet Earth (because you’re not Superman nor Supergirl for that matter, and for the record, I do not endorse the notion that designers are superhuman nor world saviors, if you like that idea, go to more design conferences), but as Clark Kent (9–5 Kal-El), Superman (after hours Kal-El) gets a break from hurling asteroids away from Earth’s orbit, chasing Lex Luthor, and managing any other calamity that requires his attention. Furthermore, Clark keeps him in touch with the world. How invaluable. Even if you simply need your 9–5 job to support the other gigs, this job job should do something: connect you to current practices, technology, administrative operations, peers, the economy, friends, and best of all, culture, to name a few things that will make you well-rounded. Who wants to be alone, isolated from human contact in their home office?[xv] Sure, you may get clients, some worthwhile gigs, or discover brand-new-self-involved design, but you will not be around many other people besides print and paper reps, or other fulfillment staff. If you’ve already been down that path, you know what I’m talking about, but if you haven’t gone solo to stew your own secret broth like a wizard/witch mixing bat ears with snake skin, then maybe you should, just to experience it. Just remember that even Superman came back to Earth, and he didn’t give up being Clark Kent either.[xvi]
[i] My mentor said, “Freelance is code for unemployed,” and to this day I see what he meant because you have no place of business and no benefits.
[ii] I have observed many designers, programmers, and the like do what I like to call double dipping. For instance, when I worked in an agency, a colleague of mine didn’t get enough web development work, so he had a lot of downtime spent on high-paying animation and video. He drove the newest model of BMW, while the rest of us could barely manage the payment on our Hondas.
[iii] I despise the term freelance because (a) while I’ve done pro bono work—and it is in fact free—I don’t like the word free associated with me since I am not free, thank you very much, so get a coupon if you want something at a discount; and (b) I once met a designer with business cards including his freelancer title equipped with a lance logo, to which he said, “Get it, freelance”—he insulted my intelligence and taste, blech. Still, I’ve survived (very well) doing nothing but contract work (fine, call it freelance if you like).
[iv] David Barringer’s association between the day-to-day Bruce Wayne and Batman’s nocturnal activities stands as the most well put off hours metaphor I’ve read (American Mutt Barks in the Yard, p. 13). And who doesn’t want to be a superhero?
[v] Fans of Rudy Dutschke (and Max Bruinsma’s article) will no doubt appreciate that change can happen—and from the inside out.
[vi] I get urges and oftentimes act on them in the middle of the night when it’s dark and quiet; best of all, neither student, wife, nor client will bother me. During one of those nights, having read a Design Observer article about Barbara Kruger in between making a client’s style guide, I was consumed by the thought of Kruger herself having a style guide. Oh, the irony, and I had to see it through. It consumed me, literally. Between the hours of 10 p.m. that night and 5 a.m. the next day, I gave birth to the Barbara Kruger Style Guide.
[vii] Apologies to David Barringer for my own superhero analogy. And please insert your own definition of rewarding here. Don’t rely on me for this answer, you’ve got to identify it and subscribe to it.
[viii] To those designers that call their ventures labs, I congratulate you. This is an intriguing idea, to create as if experimenting—searching for new forms that have purpose, either applied or intrinsic.
[ix] As much as Armin Vit loves working with Michael Bierut at Pentagram, I bet that if given the opportunity, he’d resign and work full-time on all the Underconsideration ventures: Speak Up, the Design Encyclopedia, and the other hot ideas brewing beneath its URL. Of course, he’d want to make at least the same salary. Right?! And by the way, Mr. Bierut is an awesome person and designer, from which Armin will (and has certainly already) learned a lot. But like any other person moonlighting, there comes a time when you want to go all out, and ditch your alter-ego cloak for what one could call the real you.
[x] Apologies again to Mr. Barringer.
[xi] For an indepth look into Welles, and his Hollywood struggles, I recommend this TCM documentary.
[xii] One of my favorite scenes from Buckaroo Bonzai has Jeff Goldblum’s character discussing Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast to which one of Goldblum’s colleagues states, “Orson Welles? You mean the old guy from the wine commercials?“ Oh, to be remembered solely as a spokesperson.
[xiii] Please don’t get us started on the Da Vinci / Designer with a Capital D comparison. Okay?
[xiv] Whatever your secret work is, you can do it, and it doesn’t have to be design-centric. It could be making sweet relish with a logo and identity system that you designed, and selling it in jars at the Farmer’s Market.
[xv] This supposes that your secret work would be done 100% in your home office, all by your lonesome. Sob.
[xvi] My closing remarks about the superhero references: you are not a superhero, designers are not superhuman, but Superman was used to illustrate the 9–5 labor (Clark Kent or your day job) plus the off hours (Superman or your gigs). No part of this essay is intended to excite designers into visionary comparisons with any member of DC comics Justice League of America.
Jason, great post.
> “You like my new Audi, well, I have a freelance gig in addition to my full-time work..."
As far-fetched as this sounds, it seems common, at least in my experience. At marchFIRST, one of the designers had a lot of freelance work after (and even during) our 9 to 5 job. He drove a nice VW Jetta, always had the latest gadgets and was always looking for vacationing spots. And this was a guy in his mid-20s tops. It helped (a lot) that there wasn't much work at m1, so it was a 10 to 5 job with plenty of time during the day to work on other things.
Regarding footnote number 9... Yes, there is the parallel utopian possibility that I would not be working in a design firm (whether it's with Michael at Pentagram or with Joe at DesignRocksDude) and instead devote myself full time to UnderConsideration IF I were able to make the same amount of money. The reality is that I would have to moonlight as a designer to maintain my UnderConsideration endeavors, so in the end it comes to working your ass off if you want to achieve what you want to achieve and at the same time be able to live a life that involves cable TV, good wine, hearty food, more than 600 square feet of living space and nurturing entertainment.
Plus, personally, I can't deny the thrill of doing more than I should – or more than I thought I could. It is rewarding and fulfilling and much more interesting than picking lint out of my belly button. (Although I do enjoy a good picking every now and then).
On Jul.26.2006 at 08:50 PM