Appendix I: Selected work, 2004-8
PennWell Publishing:
In May of 1998, following my first senior year at Oklahoma State University, I sent out several letters of interest to anyone in Tulsa that I thought may hire an illustrator… not understanding at the time that that’s not really a thing. By and large, illustrators worked on a freelance basis as much then as now. BUT PennWell was a decent sized company, here in town, and it turned out that they had a generous staff of in-house illustrators. I had a good interview and started June 1. This, by the way, was the last interview for which I sat.
At the end of the summer, my boss asked me to to continue on the payroll, working remotely from Stillwater for the next year, while I finished school. The old 56k modem would scream (literally) under the weight of photo-illustrations (300 dpi), but it handled vector files just fine.
After a final semester of commuting to Stillwater twice a week (I didn’t do college well… or maybe too well), I settled in to having a real grown-up job, drawing pictures all day. The Creative Services department was in the basement, and you would think stuffing a bunch of creatives into a basement just wouldn’t be a productive environment. But that’s where I learned that as long as you’re surrounded by good people and doing work you love, it just doesn’t matter where you do it.
I worked at/for PennWell for exactly 8 years, from June 1998- June 2006. Every time I think of my time there, I smile. PennWell, sadly, no longer exists. Many of its titles were acquired by Endeavor Business Media*, and many of my former colleagues made that transition as well. My old books are in good hands.
Some of the illustrations on this page were featured in:
Power Engineering Magazine
Portable Design Magazine
Clean Rooms Magazine
SmallTimes Magazine
PennWell Books
HobbsHerder Marketing:
Sometime during that run, I’m gonna say 2003ish, a production artist coworker asked me to help with a freelance illustration project which she was working on with the wife of yet another coworker.
The project was greeting cards for the less-carded holidays…New Year’s, St. Patrick’s, Thanksgiving, etc. The assignments were always fun, though personally I thought it was a dumb idea… the big card companies under-represent those holidays for a reason. So we just kept on for years, they would ask for a new set of the same odd holidays, and I enjoyed the work, but secretly feared the sustainability of the overall project. Until May of 2006, when the owner asked me to leave PennWell and become their Art Director. Art department, actually, but potato-potahto.
So, the deal was, all those weird cards already had buyers and the singularity of receiving a Day After Christmas card, for example, was exactly the point. The cards came in huge kits for insurance agents, mortgage lenders, and real estate agents to send to their clients. The idea was that while the businesses that send direct mail to existing customers on the traditional holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, etc., HobbsHerder clients’ clients would be more likely to remember getting the card which would be a driver for repeat business and, more importantly, referrals.
It was pretty ingenious and did well for quite a while, but if you look at the industries HH serviced… mortgage lenders and real estate agents… in 2006. If we’d only known what was coming.
As for me, it did not take long to realize it was not a very good fit for me. I immediately longed for the creative womb of the PennWell basement. I had an office, with a window, which was awesome. Just outside of it was a revolving door of cold-callers trying to explain a not simple concept to folks who wished they hadn’t answered the phone.
But the main problem was just a lack of work. They didn’t need me. They certainly thought they would but it just wasn’t there. I left in February of 2007, after less than a year. In my brief time, I did learn a lot about marketing, advertising, and sales. Throughout the entirety of my relationship with HH, I thought a lot about the kinds of cards that would sell to the public. All of this would be needed for what was next. See Appendix II for that.
Personal Work
Is just that. Please have a look, but the stories behind them are either self-explanatory or too convoluted to get into.
*If PennWell Publishing had a name like Endeavor Business Media, I may not have made the mistake I made in The Origin section of this document. And then what….?
