OK…I have been thinking for a while about starting a series of posts regarding my place of employment. I’m going to start right off by saying I will not mention names regarding who I work for, who I work with, or what industry it is in which I work. Because these posts will not be placing a kind light on these people, and I don’t need to be fired just yet. Also some of these people with whom I work are decent folk at heart, just ignorant and misguided in my opinion. But there are hundreds of them that I’m sure spend their time googling for more information on their favorite ’sport’, and I don’t need them to run across the true feelings of their favorite designer thanks very much.

Yes, for I am a graphic designer. I work for a national publication. There are many designers who contribute to this publication, but I am the main designer for the in-house team. I work for the publishers, who thankfully are located in a different state. I work in a basement office somewhere in North Carolina along with the sales director. Just the two of us together, for hours at a time, in a small basement office. For four years I have worked here, and there have been some terribly difficult weeks. You see our publication is a large one though mercifully bimonthly. It’s 300 pages minimum, and up to 800 pages on the larger summer issues.

And it’s mostly advertisements. I’d say around 50 pages of editorial and 250-750 pages of advertisements. Roughly. That’s where I come in…I design our clients ads for them. Full page glossy color photoshopped to the extreme ads. Notice I abbreviate advertisement as ‘ad’ not ‘add’. That’s the first point I’d like to make about my clients…Anyway, there use to be two of us designers slaving day and night in this little basement office to crank out our mega-magazine. But the other fellow was let go almost two years ago. Unlike me he was a trained professional artist. I’m just a hack who had enough computer+photoshop skills to get the job done. Though he had started there a year and a half before me and was completely burnt out, various bullsh*t excuses were made to get rid of him by the publishers/owners. Afterwards it was just me doing the majority of the design for our mega-magazine. And has been ever since. We used to have a saying, my fellow ad-man and I, that our magazine was made for average joes who could ‘pay to see themselves in a magazine’. Except most of them are not ‘average’ joes. They are filthy rich joes. They have the money to participate in the sport for which my mega-magazine is based on. And the question you must all have now is, which sport are we talking about? Just what are these advertisements for? Why so expensive?

Well, my publication has a name but I will not be revealing that. We also have a website but I will not be giving the address (suffice to say it is an ugly mess of bad flash animation). I will say this: it involves innocent animals being bred and treated like slaves. And made to do ridiculous tricks in a show ring while their owners and trainers wear ridiculous outfits. And being bought and sold for beyond ridiculous amounts of money. I think you will all catch on soon enough, but I will not be giving away any google friendly search terms in my posts. Nor will I allow them in comments, so don’t even bother trying to be the first to show everyone you know what I’m talking about. I mean, please feel free to comment, just don’t go naming things.

So, yes, I hate what I do. I hate the people I work for. I hate the clients I work for. I hate the industry that I work in. I don’t even much like being a designer. It’s was fun for a while but I am 300% burnt out on all of it now. But at least I can provide a bit of entertainment for you all hopefully and show you young ‘uns just how important it is to get an education early on based on something you enjoy doing. Imagine that, spending your days doing something you like and getting paid for it.

Without further ado - here is my first point of contention that shall be made: you CANNOT pull a piece of clipart from a google image search and use it in your national print ad. Except of course, you can, if your paying to be in our mega-magazine. Many of my clients are barely literate and none of them understand design concepts and especially not the concepts involved in digital design. So when they see this:

They assume it will be perfect for their national print ad where they are, in fact, trying to sell something. That is the original size image I received with my project file at my work desk, by the way. It has not been shrunk for the purposes of blog posting. If you understand the concept of DPI and LPI then you know where I’m coming from.

So there you have it. Me whining about my job: Part 1. The first in a multi-part series that I just know my gentle readers are going to enjoy the bajeebus out of.

One might get a decent idea of what this week was like from the ‘Spring Party’ post below. But here are tidbits of the rest of the week, at least while I and my camera were around. Mostly sparkly stuff, if you’re into that sort of thing.

You'll find 40 pretty things here.

Here, we have a Sunday Brunch with my cousin Kevin and his wife Sarah. They just moved to the area a few months back. Sarah is a vegetarian and Loves to cook Indian. Notice the capital ‘L’. Mmmm tasty!

You'll find 14 pretty things here.

A few shots of Maryjo Rose, posing with a Rose. And two of her outside kitties. She feeds them but they live outside. We’re not sure what will become of them when Maryjo moves out in a month. It’s rather sad, really.

You'll find 10 pretty things here.

Shelby’s friends from New Mexico visit, it’s nearly memorial day, and it’s nice out. Time for a Very Special Fenario Spring Party 2008!

You'll find 55 pretty things here.

Our porch is lit with the light of a thousand candles. Porch furniture thanks to Jackson. Candles thanks to Shelby. Photos thanks to me.

You'll find 6 pretty things here.

As promised, more photos. Here we have the unveiling of scotts’s brand new 24″ iMac. Oh, he loves it so! It shall replace the dead powermac G5 as the heart of the Fenario Studio.

You'll find 14 pretty things here.

Hello! Finally, I gots some new photos for everyone. Well not quite new exactly - these are from middle to late last year. Not a lot of stuff taken at that time, but these are a few little trinkets to enjoy anyway. More photos to come!

You'll find 35 pretty things here.

So I’ve been working on a few ideas for posts. They’ll be coming real soon now. They are in the cooker and I’m letting out a bit of steam on them first.

But right now, I’d like to let everyone know that Maryjo and I attended the Swell Season concert in Raleigh this evening and it was amazing. One of the best shows I have seen in a long time. The music was so very beautiful, uplifting, sometimes sad, and powerful. Their voices were like angels. And the band was tight. And Glen Hansard is a funny and charming irish fellow who can belt out a tune like his life depended on it. And the sound, in the Meymandi Concert Hall, is so clear and perfect. Those who know me know that I can be cynical and sarcastic nearly 100% of the time. But I am seldom so with music. Hear me now and believe me later, it was a damn good show. And they gave the spotlight to Marketa Irglova for several songs. They let the violinist do an instrumental number from his new CD. The bass player got the spotlight and sang a song (score!). Jeez, even the tour manager came out and sang a Steve Earle cover. It was a bit like being in their living room watching them sing a few numbers, I should think.

Yeah, it was a good time. I should have been a musician…I mean a real, gigging musician. I think I would do much better now touring around a countryside than when I was in my twenties. I’m laid back enough, and can tolerate the constant presence of others, enough that I think I could truly enjoy it now. Ahh, if only there were no bills to pay.

Two other things. The first - they did a Pixies cover, just the two of them plus an acoustic guitar, and rocked it. I cannot tell you which song because I am not a huge pixies fan. But, uh, maybe it’s about freaking time I listened to every single track from every single Pixies album before I once again say I don’t care for the Pixies. Because I seem to be the only one who ever says that.

Second. Is it not the most depressing thing to come right out of a concert that has inspired and spiritually uplifited you, only to be thrown into a maelstrom of concert-goers all trying to be the first to reach their cars? And then braving intense traffic, near collisions, and rude-ass people while trying to get out of the parking lot. It’s just such a jarring transition. It always ruins the magic for me a little bit. I hate driving. That will be a subject of a future post, currently in the cooker.

Out.

Okay, I’m trying this thing again. AGAIN, I said! Let’s see if we can’t keep it up this time. My GAWD, there is so much that goes on in my life that you people need to know about. I’m sure of it…Umm yeah anyway so I’m checking out the internets a while back like I like to do, when I read that Wordpress 2.5 has just been released. And with fancy new gallery features no less. So I decide that if I can import my photos into wordpress itself using the new gallery feature, then I won’t have to keep an install of wordpress and gallery2 up to date. Nor will I have to fiddle with making themes for both of them work together every time I update them both.

And that’s exactly what I did. I installed wordpress 2.5, found me a new theme, and spent a week or so tweaking it to my liking and making it work nice with the gallery feature. Strangely, this ‘exciting new feature’ does not actually have too many options just yet and the ones it does have are not well documented. So it took a few days to get the galleries looking like I wanted them to in my new theme.

But now the work is done. Wordpress updated, theme galleryized, and photos imported from the old gallery2 database. Now all of my content is in one handy dandy place. Enjoy!

Oh, and I may even post some new content/photos soon. See above paragraph re: trying this again. Thanks to my one surviving faithful reader. I couldn’t have had the strength to go on without you…(psst, it’s me).