At the beginning of this week I had an interview with a former colleague of mine from Mexico. After she left the magazine where we used to work she started her own graphic design business which turned out to be very successful and continues to be. I thought she would be a very interesting interview to understand if I could really focus myself in all types of creatives as I have been stubborn about from the beginning.
During our 10 minute interview I asked her what was the main issue that she was facing, and she said “Finding a space where I can look for graphic designers that are looking for a job, that is not as big as LinkedIn or other Facebook groups, where I could go through their portfolio and experience”. She confirmed my statement that her work as a graphic designer is very underpaid and undervalued, she said that working with clients that don’t value her work makes her sacrifice her creative visions most of the time.
It was a very revealing interview as well as a short one because I realized as I started listening to her answers that the more “practical” creatives within the creative industries, in this case a graphic designer which works solely on client projects, were not the stakeholders that I wanted for my project. Even though they are having mostly the same troubles of the rest of the creative industries their work (or at least from what I have learned) is more client based, more commercial and mainstream.
I believe I will be focusing mostly on visual artists, filmmakers and writers in the coming months and see what they have to say.