Week 7 - ON CAMPUS EVENT

ON CAMPUS EVENT 

Dave Brener

October 7th @ 7:00 pm

Breidenstine Hall Room 205

Overview

Dave Brener spoke to a small group of students Wednesday evening. Dave's presentation and Q&A talked about his experiences working an an in-house designer. Dave started off as a painter and became inspired with design and the arts through a janitor position at MICA. He was exposed to graphic design by seeing students work. Dave started to take night classes and self taught the programs to himself. He took the web design track at PCAD in 2011 and in 2012 was hired as a marketing assistant at Atlantic Tactical, a law enforcement supply company. . Over the past 15 years, Dave has worked as both a freelancer and in-house designer. Starting off he worked on catalogs, email blast, prints, web design and illustrations and with in a few years went through several promotions. Currently, some of the tasks Dave works on is web design, front-end development, email marketing, product content and price updates, social media marketing, and staying awake in meetings. 

Dave talked about the differences between working in-house and freelance. When your working in-house you are more motivation because your working with other people that you can feed off of. As Health insurance is important a steady income is necessary and available to in-house designers. By becoming a freelance designer you can stay home in your pjs but you lose the communication and creative thinking process between other co-workers.  Some cons of working in-house means you'll have to report to a hierarchy position who will tend to overrule your decision making even if your right. You may face moral  and ethical dilemmas that the company is doing and you may not agree on. This was the first time someone has ever talked on this point. Dave really put in reality what you can except and how to decide whether your working for the right company. 

Thoughts

Overall I thought Dave's presentation was very informational. Some of the life lessons that Dave talked about really caught my attention. Below are some of the points he talked about. 

• You're going to make mistakes, and that is okay. 
• Don't think that critiques are going to stop because they will constantly haunt you and you'll need to be able to talk about your work and back up your decisions. 
• You'll learn more through collaboration with others than you will ever learn on your own. 
• Keep teaching yourself something new everyday. 
• Your code will be lost if your not constantly doing it.