Departing and Uniting
Monday
07.21.08
After much deliberation I have decided to leave my day job as a designer with Departika to pursue a partnership opportunity with Landon Lewis at Ethix Studios. This decision comes at a time when the desire for freelance work and dreaming up projects outweighed the benefits of full time employment.
For the past two-ish years, I’ve been a staffer for the famed (at least in our heads) little design firm, Departika. I joined the team when they were known as Blacksuits Creative, after just a few months of having established their business. The owners at the time were 5, and the employees were 1, with several contractors and two interns. Intern number two being myself. Due to a lack of desk space… or just space in general, I was shoved in a corner where no light shined and servers buzzed so loud that headphones blasting the Distillers did little to remedy the situation.
At this time I was a freelance designer with very little industry experience, and a touch of formal education in which I had ended enthusiastically a few months earlier to have a go in the “real world” of design. The first few months left me star struck at the beauty that was the design industry. Lots of fun, friends and beer. A few months after that and the truth hit hard, as fun, friends and beer turned into fun, friends and pulling all nighters to get shit out the door on time. Smoking cigarettes just to keep your eyes open, while once again blasting the Distillers at full throttle. I learned a lot during this time, and one of those things was that a relationship has a lot of trouble surviving when you’re working 80 hours a week and have an active Halo addiction.
With the help of Departika I have been able to advance not only my fundamental design abilities, but have also learned a lot about life. My future will be driven by the experiences received during my employment. I’ll miss the ping-pong and people, but am anxiously looking forward to growing our business and being part of great projects.
