Laura Henderson Design's photostream  

To-Do Today: Buy beans, check nose for Amberlith, conquer the world. Not necessarily in that order.

Signs and Portents
Armed with a sketchpad, a rainbow array of magic markers, and a B.F.A. in Painting and Printmaking, I set out to conquer my little piece of the world way back in '92. I paid my dues in traditional print design during two years at a small North Carolina ad agency where, day in and day out, I painstakingly carved intricate designs in Amberlith with a dull X-acto (new blades are expensive!). The monotony was broken only by relentless and often frantic demands to produce print ads, TV storyboards, billboard art, point-of-purchase designs, animated character art, and magazine and newspaper ads.

For many moons I slaved over the steep slant of the art board, wheezing in a claustrophobic office clouded by spray adhesives and marker fumes, slicing and peeling layers of orange plastic as if my life depended on it (because it did). One afternoon I looked in the mirror to discover that I'd walked around the building for the better part of the day with a long, thin scrap of Amberlith stuck to the end of my nose. It waved in my breath like a little red flag. It was a sign! A portent! It was time for a change.

The Big Change
In the mid '90's something happened to rock my world. I bought a computer. (What can I say? Always on the bleeding edge of progress.) I cut my teeth on Photoshop 3.0 running on --check it-- a Macintosh Performa 650 with a whopping 16 MB's of RAM! Smmmokin'! Good design jobs for computer neophytes like me were a little thin on the ground there in Carolina in '95. Nobody wanted me without experience, and nobody wanted to give me a job so I could get any experience. It was a vicious cycle. Then I met Andy. Andy offered me an internship which consisted primarily of me peering over his shoulder in an intensely disconcerting manner for eight straight hours each week in an effort to soak up what seemed to me to be his absolute mastery of all things computer related.

In spite of my hard-won vicarious knowledge, nobody was beating down my door to offer me a job. It was beans for dinner for the foreseeable future if I didn't figure something out fast. Like one of the proverbial Little Pigs, I tied my belongings in a hankie-on-a-stick and struck out for the big city to seek my fortune. Sadly, Amberlith carving and theoretical computer skills were not much in demand in Washington DC either. By day I was a mild-mannered secretary with an art degree. But by night? Pole dancing, baby! (Okay, not really. I'm a terrible dancer, and if I were to make any attempt at all to dance, a pole would probably be a good idea as long as it is bolted solidly to the floor and can support me as I stumble.) No, at night I was busy plotting my rise to world domination! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

A Little Bit of Luck
As it would turn out, luck was with me. After my employer discovered my design background, my day job metamorphosed before my very eyes. Suddenly I found myself in the fast lane of the newly paved information superhighway. I was very lucky to be trained in web design at the proverbial "knee of the master" -- an area DoD Contractor known for their seminal involvement in the birth of the internet. (How's that for a visual?)

Things spiraled delightfully out of control after I ventured out of my playpen into the Real World (ask me about that phrase some time). I signed on with Aquent Partners, a placement firm specializing in web talent. During 1998, 1999 and part of 2000, I worked to help the U.S. Mint design and build an educational web site, the Golden Dollar and 50 State Quarters web initiatives, and a top-selling online product e-commerce site. Moving at a rapid clip on down the road of life in June of 2000, I became Art Director for the Discovery Channel's online educational division, DiscoverySchool.com.

Since 2002 I've been a free agent, a hired gun, livin' la kind of vida loca which only another frenzied, self-employed creative can fully appreciate.

Not bad, for a Little Pig.