Retrospecticus or Lots of Links to Old Posts
I feel as though little happened this year, in comparison to the banner year that was last.
High off of the success of last years work related progress the year started strong but then crumbled instantly. My boss quit, which gave me a bit of a panic attack. After his departure the scope of work I was doing drastically declined. The projects I was being put on were the kinds of projects I was doing when I started. A total regression in responsibility, and it wasn't until late April that I flagged this with my supervisor, who later became (and still is) the interim Creative Director (we still haven't found a permanent replacement but she's great and should have the job anyway). She assured me that things were to be put in motion to get me back on the big stuff. The very next day she tells me I've been promoted from Junior Production Artist (production work = grunt work, changing copy, minor revisions after design is done) to Junior Designer. I had endeavored to drop the Junior title but effectively jumping a whole step from production to design is good by me.
About two weeks after the promotion I'm pulled onto the Saturn & Saab site refresh. The biggest project our department handles and I was one of 3 designers on it. So that was a big fuck yes in all regards. The project ran from May to October. The fruits of our labor speak for themselves.
After flying high and receiving accolades for the work done on the SS Refresh I finally took my trip I won from the previous years summer party with one(1) John Roberts. We blew the trip out to a month long Euro-excursion. I won't bore you with the AMAZING details, you can read the travel log here and see pictures here. I never finished the travel log, the portion about Scotland remains undocumented. Aside from sight seeing and pubs there wasn't much to read about.
I came back to work right when the annual performance reviews were starting and my review was quite excellent. It's broken into the good and the needs improvement so our delicate egos aren't crushed by a category of "what's bad". The needs improvement category was filled mostly with "Stu needs to work on bigger projects, he's ready" and a little "Better time management and attention to detail". The year has come to a close positively, despite economy fears our company has come this far and hasn't shown any signs of that changing.
High off of the success of last years work related progress the year started strong but then crumbled instantly. My boss quit, which gave me a bit of a panic attack. After his departure the scope of work I was doing drastically declined. The projects I was being put on were the kinds of projects I was doing when I started. A total regression in responsibility, and it wasn't until late April that I flagged this with my supervisor, who later became (and still is) the interim Creative Director (we still haven't found a permanent replacement but she's great and should have the job anyway). She assured me that things were to be put in motion to get me back on the big stuff. The very next day she tells me I've been promoted from Junior Production Artist (production work = grunt work, changing copy, minor revisions after design is done) to Junior Designer. I had endeavored to drop the Junior title but effectively jumping a whole step from production to design is good by me.
About two weeks after the promotion I'm pulled onto the Saturn & Saab site refresh. The biggest project our department handles and I was one of 3 designers on it. So that was a big fuck yes in all regards. The project ran from May to October. The fruits of our labor speak for themselves.
After flying high and receiving accolades for the work done on the SS Refresh I finally took my trip I won from the previous years summer party with one(1) John Roberts. We blew the trip out to a month long Euro-excursion. I won't bore you with the AMAZING details, you can read the travel log here and see pictures here. I never finished the travel log, the portion about Scotland remains undocumented. Aside from sight seeing and pubs there wasn't much to read about.
I came back to work right when the annual performance reviews were starting and my review was quite excellent. It's broken into the good and the needs improvement so our delicate egos aren't crushed by a category of "what's bad". The needs improvement category was filled mostly with "Stu needs to work on bigger projects, he's ready" and a little "Better time management and attention to detail". The year has come to a close positively, despite economy fears our company has come this far and hasn't shown any signs of that changing.