Chaos Love: love, life, design and more.

In short: still looking!

I had lunch with my cousin Meg (I finally determined that she's my first cousin, once removed!) last week, who – by a pure coincidence – works in the design industry as well. She looked at my book and gave me the names of some people to contact, as well as adding my résumé to her list of freelancers to use in peak periods, saying, "Looking at your book and understanding your experience and skills make me feel quite comfortable about adding your name to that pool as a production artist, designer, and senior designer. This wide range of skills will be helpful when a variety of needs come at us." Quite a vote of confidence, I must say!

Like many other people in town, she uses 52 Ltd to fill a lot of positions, but also pointed me towards Jackie Mathys Creative Staffing, who mainly fill production (rather than creative) positions. After emailing my portfolio through yesterday, I had a long talk on the phone with Jackie herself today. I could sense that she was a little reluctant to consider a senior designer like me for production only positions, but after talking about my experience and reviewing my portfolio, she could see that I'm not a "prima donna, no gruntwork for me" type of designer. I love getting my hands dirty, working as part of a team and finishing what I started. So, I'm on her books now, although she's a bit short of clients to place designers with at the moment.

I also finally got an actual interview with 52 Ltd organised today! I see 52 Ltd as more of a long term solution to my employment prospects, as they will place creative positions, but they've taken a long time to get back to me. Apart from assuring me that I was on their "yes list" – meaning my portfolio impressed them – I hadn't really heard from them before today. So I'm meeting with their Talent Manager on Thursday week... can't wait!

Posted in: chaosboy, employment, portland on January 29, 2008 at at 8:57:00 PM 0 comments    

Because our awesome space wedding was at such short notice, we weren't able to have a big family/clan celebration - there simply wasn't enough time to draw everyone together into a big cohesive mass. Our notice to family before the wedding indicated that we would try to have a larger event somewhere near our first anniversary... and the time is already upon us to start organising!

My parents had already planned to be in Portland for the actual anniversary before we could pitch the idea of moving the whole shindig to the East Coast to them. The reason for moving to the other side of the country simply stems from the fact that most of Christine's family lives over there – New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan and so on – and we figured we would get better attendance if we brought the party to them, rather than getting them to all descend upon Oregon.

After to talking to my parents, we determined that they would be flying into Boston from Europe and would be there for three days... just the right amount of time for a party! Once the festivities are done, we can then fly on to Portland with them and show them a good time without having to worry about another party... sounds like a plan, eh?

So now we have our spies in Boston searching for the perfect location for us, while we try to think of a theme for the party and what exactly it is we want to do. It's early days yet, but there's a lot to plan!

Posted in: anniversary, boston, chaosboy, party time on at at 8:41:00 PM 0 comments    

Yesterday was Australia Day... yes, the day we celebrate a bunch of convicts arriving in some god-forsaken land half a world away from their home some 220 years ago. When I was still back at home, it amounted to little more than a public holiday - a guaranteed day off work. But being so far from home seems to have awakened my patriotic pride, so Christine and I planned a fitting party!

We planned to organise a cricket match with our friends, followed by a good old fashioned Aussie BBQ. First though, we had to find a cricket bat... not an easy task in the US! We left things too late to order one off the internet, and phone calls to all the sports stores in Portland came to nothing. They all knew what cricket was, but thought we were crazy for thinking they had any equipment. One store used to have lots of them, but they were all bought for Shaun Of The Dead Halloween costumes and they haven't bothered to restock since. (If you've never seen Shaun Of The Dead, you really should! In it, our English hero – the eponymous Shaun – uses a cricket bat to ward off attacking zombie hordes... true!) In the end, Kevin's brother-in-law came to the rescue as he had a cricket bat in his office at Nike.

However, after five days of glorious sunshine throughout the week, Australia Day dawned raining and icy. We walked down to the shops to get last minute supplies in the morning and almost slipped on black ice on the pavement several times. We had a temperature of 33°F, rather than Sydney's more usual 33°C. The rain didn't let up all day, so – unfortunately after all our efforts to acquire the equipment – our cricket game had to be cancelled.

However, the BBQ still went ahead and we had a good gathering of friends to help us celebrate the day. I tried explaining cricket to everyone and was probably partially successful... they were definitely all impressed by the rock hard red ball! Most people made an effort to be "Australian"... Kim wore her summer clothes that she used most of the time while she was in Australia (under her rain gear!), Ryan and Spencer turned up in rugby jerseys from a high school in Perth that they had bought at a Salvo's in Perth years ago, while Lindsey had a strange shirt that proudly proclaimed "Tulips Down Under" in English and French!!!

Here's a couple of pix: Colin wielding the cricket bat in a most unorthodox fashion, and Ryan and Spencer doing their "Tweedledum and Tweedledee" impression. Fun times!

Posted in: australia, chaosboy, party time, portland on January 27, 2008 at at 12:54:00 PM 1 comments    

... is what a fellow concert-goer called out as The Decemberists prepared to launch their nautical epic "The Mariner's Revenge Song" last night at the Crystal Ballroom. I've talked about these guys before as one of the shining lights of Portland's musical scene, but last night was the first time either Christine or I have seen them live. And they didn't disappoint, belting out their eclectic mix of sea-shanties, dirges, murder songs and strangely poppy gems with much aplomb. Front man Colin Meloy has to be one of the wittiest, most literate singers ever, entertaining the crowd effortlessly with his banter and mocking rock'n'roll posturing. The night had it all: great music, re-enactments of shanghaing in 1870's Portland and a full house screaming in agony as they were all swallowed by a giant whale.

The support act was also excellent, another Portland band called Pseudosix. We'll keep an eye on them in the future!

Last night was also interesting, because we met a guy in the crowd who was recording the show for his own personal use. Not with a mobile phone or a smuggled tape deck or iPod, but with fully professional-looking microphones mounted on a huge pole! We got to talking and he simply said that neither the venue or the band minds, and in fact, he often gets to patch into the sound desk as well! I'm more used to venues that throw you out if you try to take a picture using any kind of camera or if you attempt to record the show, so this was all a bit new. Anyway, we have his contact details and juicy MP3s of the show will be coming our way soon!

Posted in: chaosboy, music, portland, shows on January 24, 2008 at at 5:19:00 PM 0 comments    

Okay, entries for Wieden + Kennedy's "Seeking" have officially closed for the year - the page on their website now just thanks everyone for their entry and then lists all 6000-odd names, complete with the exact date and time they were submitted. I feel sorry for those who enrolled on the 14th of January... one day to come up with something exciting and creative couldn't have been easy!

So, as promised, here's my entry (PDF, 2.8MB). Thanks to my web stats, I know that I have had heaps of visitors to this blog who have searched for "wk seeking" or some variant thereof over the last month... looking for inspiration, perhaps?

Anyway, I'm really happy with mine. I set myself the challenge of telling my story and showing my creativity without showing one single piece of design work that I've done for any previous client or agency. The drawings were all done in pencil on tracing paper, scanned into the computer, cleaned up and converted to bitmap. This allowed me freedom to experiment with colours and placement and had the added bonus of keeping my file size small... my 2.8MB file easily beat the 6MB limit set by W+K. All the photographs (with the exception of the wedding shots) were taken by me.

If you do come here and look at my PDF, I'd love to hear what you think of it in the comments section.

But I haven't been resting on my laurels: I sent my résumé and portfolio out to four Portland agencies yesterday, and I've also teed up a lunch meeting with my cousin who works in the industry here in Portland... it's time to get to work!

Posted in: chaosboy, employment, portland on January 18, 2008 at at 9:40:00 AM 5 comments    

Well, I've put a lot of hard work and thought into my application and I finally sent it off last night – two days before deadline! I'm really pleased with the way it turned out: it looks great, tells a good story and also puts forward the way I see the world through my "designer's eyes".

I've already got a receipt email back from W+K saying that the review process will take 2-4 weeks, so here's hoping! I really don't think I could have done any better. Once final submissions to W+K have closed, I'll post the PDF for people to look at, but until then, everyone will have to fend for themselves!

On another note, 52 Ltd still haven't got back to me on my résumé submission, which is a little disappointing. I'll get in touch with them soon to see what's up... maybe it got lost in the pre-Christmas rush.

Posted in: chaosboy, design, employment, portland on January 14, 2008 at at 9:28:00 PM 0 comments    

How could we forget to put in this classic photo??

After the traditional dress up the snowman and pose, Cam was sent to destroy the evidence of any fun snow activity. I regret not taking a burst photo. It was quite the spectacular tackle.

Posted in: chaosgurl, photography, united states on January 10, 2008 at at 9:09:00 PM 0 comments    

Christine's dad came to visit us in Portland for a belated Christmas get-together over the last few days and we had a great time while he was here. On Tuesday, we decided to go cross-country skiing at Trillium Lake near Mount Hood. The weather on Monday had been beautiful and we were hoping for a similar day for our excursion. This wasn't to be, as the day was a typical Portland leaden winter sky, and we even had rain as we set out. Fortunately, the rain turned to snow the higher up we got, and Trillium Lake turned out to be a winter paradise with lots and lots of thick white snow, with more falling all the time.

We strapped on our cross-country skis (which are longer and narrower than downhill skis), got rugged up and headed off to do a loop around the lake. The section from the car park to the actual loop was a very steep downhill slope and I had a very rough introduction: I fell over multiple times, finding out that the worst part isn't the falling, it's getting back up again! Not easy with 6-foot planks of wood strapped to your feet!

Once on the relatively flat track around the lake, I improved quite a lot, although I still wouldn't claim I had anything resembling a "technique". Kim and Christine often zoomed out of sight ahead, while Russ had a few problems with his older skis sticking, meaning he often brought up the rear.

The scenery - snow covered pine trees covering the mountainside - bordered on the surreal, all blinding white and contrasting black. Christine's yellow jacket certainly stood out! The lake itself was completely iced over and covered in a blanket of snow, and there was no hint of the famous view of Mount Hood for which the lake is renowned: in fact, it was difficult to determine where the land ended and the sky began!

We headed back to the car park, but the loop was longer than we thought (5 miles instead of 3) and we were all pretty beat by the time we finally hiked back up the big hill. The car had been covered with a good few inches of snow while we had been gone and we entertained ourselves by making a big snowman in the car park while we waited for Russ. A big burger and hot chocolate at Calamity Jane's Burger House on the way back to Portland made us all feel a lot better and warmer!

Posted in: chaosboy, sport, united states on at at 7:25:00 PM 1 comments    

I really shouldn't write any more on this blog without first noting the passing of my maternal grandmother, Joan Gregory. Always a kind, friendly, loving and generous person, I don't think I really knew how much I would miss her until the very end.

Posted in: chaosboy, general musings on at at 7:20:00 PM 1 comments    

As soon as I got my employment authorisation, I started to set the wheels in motion to find a job ASAP.

Even before I had left Sydney for Portland, I had singled out 52 Ltd as a company that could help me: a graphic design recruitment agency that works solely in Portland, helping designers find full-time, part-time or contract work. So I sent them my résumé and portfolio just before Christmas and am now waiting to hear back from them. They did tell me on the phone that they normally review portfolios on a Monday but that due to the holidays, there may be a bit of a delay to their normal schedule.

The other application I have in the pipeline is to the enormous independent ad agency, Wieden + Kennedy. This agency was founded in Portland and now has offices scattered all across the globe: New York, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Shanghai and Delhi. There are 337 people employed in Portland alone, and they boast clients like Nike, Coke and Starbucks. Basically, I'd kick myself if I didn't at least try to work for an agency of this calibre.

So I went to their website where I had to fill in a curious little questionnaire, ticking off personality traits and skills that matched me. Then I just hit a button and my answers were "photocopied" – complete with green light buzzing across the screen – and sent on their way.

A few days later, I received this email:

Hi Cameron,

You sound like an interesting person. We want to know more. We want to see what you can do. Send us something before January 15 and maybe win a prize.

The content is up to you, but here's our guideline for format: a pdf document, 20 pages or less, formatted 11x17 inches landscape, no larger than 6MB. It will be viewed on screen and not printed, so design with this in mind. To be eligible for prizes and adventure, please send to seeking@wk.com before January 15.

Thanks, we're looking forward to learning more about you.

Wow! So I'm guessing from this that they don't want to see my everyday portfolio here... what they're after definitely seems to be an exercise in creativity and communication: a single chance to impress them with my skills. My thoughts were confirmed by another email a couple of days later:

Dan Wieden and David Kennedy created W+K as a place for people to express their voice and create the best work of their lives. This place depends on those people.

We created wk.com/seeking to meet more talented and interesting people. Specifically, people who could work in our creative department - people who can tell a story well in all sorts of media, people who solve problems with ideas. We seek designers, writers and art directors, but expect to find a few artists, product designers, editors, people who create all kinds of things and who don’t fit into a neat basket. People with experience, people who’ve never created an ad in their life. You maybe.

We are on track to receive 6000 profiles by January 1. We will fly 50 of those people to Portland in late March for an adventure. We’ll put you up for a couple of days, you can check out Portland, we’ll meet each other, no strings attached. It ought to be pretty incredible.

Next step, if you haven’t already, is to submit a PDF to seeking@wk.com by January 15. Please follow the specs that Robin sent.

The content of the PDF is open. Tell us your story, show us what you can do. Surprise us, delight us, amaze us.

We can’t wait to see what everyone sends. This is going to be fun.

Even more wow! 6,000 applicants??? It's kind of daunting, but hey, I got into Randwick TAFE's Graphic Design course all those years ago by beating out 3,000 other prospective students! So I've been working away on my document since we got back from Idaho Falls and I'm pretty happy with the way it's turning out so far. There's still a lot of work to do, but at least I have the advantage of a really interesting story to tell! Here's a tiny glimpse of a page that I'm working on:

Posted in: chaosboy, design, employment, portland on January 1, 2008 at at 3:21:00 PM 3 comments