Hughie's and Life Updates

It's been a while since I've posted anything and I felt like since I wasn't doing anything right now that I would do a quick look at what I've been up to. Let's start from the top. I still haven't found a job and I've been stuck at home taking care of "mommy duties" due to family problems. When I say "mommy duties," I mean like waking up early to drop the kids/siblings off at school and going to pick them up when school was over which is all fine and dandy except for the fact that I have 7 hours of nothingness to burn. I found out that I would hate to be a stay-at-home mom.

On to my Hughie's project. While I haven't been able to find an actual job, I've been doing some freelance work for a restaurant/lounge that's opening in Houston sometime this year. The person that approached me is an acquaintance from church who's aunt owns this restaurant. When I first received my creative brief it was labelled as a casual Western themed bar/lounge. My job was to create a logo and to help with marketing. Sooo many logo designs were drafted between November until now and I'm still not sure which logo was chosen...

To see all the logo designs I drafted up, click the link below:
https://plus.google.com/photos/112994609708042405063/albums/5841725880853578785

Marketing is something that I'm not really comfortable with at all. I guess it's time to put my minor to use. Actually, I find that my ATEC class is more useful to me for this project than my marketing classes. Without my ATEC class, I would have never found out about HootSuite. So far HootSuite has been a lifesaver when it comes to digital marketing. What it is is a consolidation of different social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ all in one platform. This site allows me to create a post and post it on several different sites at the same time. It also allows me to schedule posts so that they'll show up at certain times so that my target audience can see them. Anyways, I hope this project provides me some useful experience that might land me an actual job. Freelance work probably can't support me cuz I don't have enough clients looking for me. Blehhh...

Seriously, though. I feel like I'm dying at home and need something to do. I think I would rather go back to my crappy job at Studio Movie Grill if it meant being productive. At least I made money. All I do at home is take naps while waiting til it's time to pick up the kids...

Selling Yourself Short: Placing a Value on Freelance Work

Using crowdSPRING as a guide for freelance design pricing...

So I'm definitely in a pickle right now. Recently, I've managed to pick up a potential client and I'm trying to figure out the pricing for my services (no, not those kinds of services). For me, putting a price on my skills has always been a challenge. Up until this point, I've always sold myself "cheap" designing t-shirts and posters for free. Of course, that's because my projects were almost always for my youth group. I had two clients before that wasn't related to my youth group. One had requested a poster design for a youth rally, and in return for my help I received a $25 Target gift card and a tin of brownies. The other project was a logo design for my cousin's tax and bookkeeping services firm. For that, I earned $50 in cash.

The difference between this new project and my projects before is that this is going to be an established company. What it is is a Western themed bar and grill in Houston. Any logo that I create will ultimately be copyrighted and be associated with the company for(almost)ever. Since the person that asked me to do this job is a religious brother, I'm a bit reluctant to charge too much. My friend says to ignore that fact and treat it as only a business thing, that I shouldn't sell myself short. So what is a good price for a logo?

On top of the logo design, he asked me to help market and advertise the grand opening of the restaurant which is set to open early next year. I mainly consider myself a graphic designer so I feel uncomfortable even trying to set up advertising strategies. But then again, I got a marketing minor for a reason. Ugh. This is going to be wayyy outside of my comfort zone. Time to put my business classes to use.

Welcome to the Real World, Alyssa!

So I haven't really written a post in a while, and if you follow me on Twitter, you know why. Anyways, this is a just a little update about me getting thrown into the real world after living in my ivory tower so long. Recently, I've started a job at the new Studio Movie Grill that opened on Spring Valley. Honestly, I kinda hate it. I work as a server so my pay is really unstable since most of my pay depends on tips. Base pay is only $2.13 an hour, which is average for a waiter job. Everything else is tips, tips, tips. It's like the first week that this location has opened so the managers kind of overstaffed just cuz most of us are new and might need help. The bad thing is that the more people that we have in our little team, the more times we have to split our tip pool. Saturday I walked away with an okay amount of money for 10+ hours of work. Sunday was okay. Monday I only walked away with $10 for the 6 hours I was there. They put me in a 6-man team for a 2-man job. Bleh.

Another thing I hate about working at SMG is the fact that we don't have a definite end time for our shifts. They give us a start time and they'll keep us as they need us. Saturday I started at 10am and got stuck at work til 8pm. Sucked balls.

At least the people I work with are pretty cool (for the most part). I just hope that everyone I work with is reliable. Sunday I had a team member barely do anything. Every time I saw him, he was in the kitchen taking a drink break. And he walked away with an even share of the tip pool even though he didn't do scrap. Seriously? Ugh.

On to life after college. So you know how I went to a job fair back in September with Hien? Well, I got a call back from the Reynolds and Reynolds place. Went through an interview on Skype and got to the second step of the interview process. If I get this job, I'll be set the moment I graduate from college. The thing is, I know nothing about what to ask for for a yearly salary. It says on most of the websites I've been to that the average starting salary of a graphic designer is around $30,000 a year. Landing a job at Reynolds and Reynolds means that I would have to pack up and move to Houston. Can I live on $30,000 a year alone in Houston? Maybe. My parents were making a huge deal out of it saying that I should've tried to push for more and whatever. Ugh. I don't know what to do.

In the meantime, while that second step is going through, I'm still trying to find a job closer to home. I applied for an internship at the Richards Group and got rejected. Now I applied for a full-time position as a designer. If I can land this, then I can drop Reynolds and Reynolds and live at home and stay close to the people I know. I also applied for a graphic design internship for the Dallas Mavs. If I can land either of those jobs, I'll be fine.

So the moral of the story is, start applying for jobs before you graduate so that you'll have something lined up as soon as you get your diploma. That way, you won't have to bum around for a few months after graduation waiting for a job offer. The second moral is that waiter jobs are hard. Don't do it.

UTD Job Fairs are Pointless for Me

So in the light of my very recent rejection from the Disney College Program, I decided to hit up the UTD Career Fair with my good buddy Hien. Turned out to be a huge waste of time for me. Not that I'm surprised by that fact or anything.

Now, this isn't the first time that I've been to a career fair on campus. The last time I went, it was a lot less crowded. But huge crowds aren't the problem. The problem for me walking into any of these career fairs is the lack of variety in jobs or internships. What do I expect? UTD is a school focused on business and engineering and computer science. Of course there's mostly going to be job listings for program designers and business managers. Being a graphic designer, it's hard to find a niche in any of these job fairs. For artists, we have to rely on building connections elsewhere like on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn. Meanwhile, business and computer science majors can just walk into these career fairs and boom! Opportunities everywhere!

My time spent at this job fair wasn't completely wasted. I did hand out a couple of copies of my resume (a couple being only 2). I handed one to the lady from Michaels (like the craft store) for a summer internship next year. Not exactly what I was aiming for, but if I have no job by the time summer rolls around again, I'll take it. The second resume went to a company called Reynolds and Reynolds. What they do is that they provide marketing and business solutions for automotive retailers. Luckily for me, they did have a graphic design internship even though it wasn't listed on the job fair's program. The only thing about this internship is that if I get accepted I'd have to relocate to Houston. That's not too bad, but I wouldn't have anywhere to stay.

So in essence, UTD needs to learn how to expand and accommodate these job fairs to not just business and computer science majors. That is all.