Where Will I Go?

It's that moment. Well, it's almost that moment. It's about 7-8 months away, so we're getting closer than before. This is the final legs of my academic career (for now) before I embark on my journey to obtaining a career outside of retail, commissions and customer service. I'm excited. I'm nervous. I'm scared and I'm ready. This is the moment I've been waiting four years for (really, I've been waiting 16ish years).

The big question I have for this moment is:

What do I want to do after University?

That is an answer that I'm still seeking to get. For four years, not only have I been trying to figure out my major, and what it is that I love, but now I'm figuring out where I want to work. What types of companies best fit me? Do I want to be a freelance designer or work in-house? Am I interested in UX or motion? I think I've been able to narrow down the field of work that I want to do, but only time and experience will tell me if that is true. Motion, video and film is the path that I want to take. This is not to mean that I will forbid working in any other form of digital design, because the world is vast and that industry is constantly booming with new technology. However, my preferences lie in motion and video and I find myself enjoying that line of work more than any other, and if it doesn't make you happy then what's the point of working somewhere bad? I know I don't want to be stuck in a career that will never satisfy my needs or keep me happy and that is one of my biggest fears after university.

I've done my time of horrid working conditions and while I'm not expecting to be the next big hit designer or movie director, I feel that my skills prove I deserve better than terrible customer service conditions. It's time to do what I love.

Design.

For this post, I've begun to research potential career options and choices that are local and national. This is the beginning of a list of options for me to look through.

Local:

1.Frost Animation Studio - Denver, Colorado

Frost is a local motion graphics, video and animation studio that provides stunning visuals to clients. My interest in Frost lies in them being a video and animation studio, which is my ideal career path, and the list of cliental they have worked with. Ranging from Best Buy to Nike to local places such as Denver Start Up Week and Denver Comic Con. My skills in motion and video range from 3D motion, to 2D graphics and animations, and video editing and audio, which helps to put me in a position of influence to apply for this company. Frost would be one of the most established companies to work for right after graduation. They're a small company of less than 20 motion artists, which means they aren't freelancing nor are they a large corporate identity. This would help me to establish myself as an individual designer by not getting washed out by hundreds of other workers in corporate, and getting to work with some power-house clients right here in Colorado.

2. Avanoo - Boulder, Colorado

Avanoo is a company that specializes in educating teams and companies through visual storytelling and interaction. They pride themselves on helping companies to build up their teams to their fullest potential through storytelling, micro-learning and customization tools to track progress of learning. I am interested in working for this in-house agency first due to the fact that I would not be freelancing but working on a team of people with different backgrounds and specialties. This agency is also very visual and professional when it comes to its graphics, even on its website, let alone their videos, giving it a good fit for me to practice and expand my motion graphic design skills even further. As a visual learner myself, I always enjoy when tools are provided for me to learn and better help my team, so being able to work with an agency that works to improve the quality of teams in the workforce at different companies, sounds promising to me. I want to improve the quality of life for the client and audience that I work for, whether it is improving their work experience, improving an experience on the go or at home, Avanoo is a company dedicated to improving the quality of culture, dynamics, individuality, teachings and more of work teams for company clients.

3. Starz Entertainment LLC - Englewood, Colorado

Starz entertainment is a television broadcast company that broadcasts nationally across the US. As someone who wants to work in all fields of film and television design, whether it be advertising, broadcasting and editing, video or motion graphic & packaging, to start at a company like Starz would be beneficial in building up my career within the industry. I would be working and learning first-hand from the film television industry as it is constantly and rapidly changing, which is the type of pace I would want to be working with in the beginnings of my career. Starz is within an industry that is constantly changing due to societal interests and emerging technology, and I am someone that works well with rapid changes and challenges especially earlier in my life. Later, I would see myself moving away from an industry that changes so rapidly and live a calmer life within my career. My concerns for this company would be that there are several reviews and complaints about internal management conflicts with employees and the lack of the ability to move up. My goal in a career is to not remain stationary in the same position that I start with for a decade, but rather to expand my skills and advance onto other career opportunities.

National:

1. Lionsgate - California or New York

Lionsgate is a dream career for me to be a Art Director for Creative Services Entertainment. Lionsgate is a well-established and well known film company, that works on movies and television entertainment, which is the field in which I want to dive into. Lionsgate is also a large agency with many in-house works, and feels the best fit for me as I want to begin my career in an agency setting rather than starting off as a freelancer right off the bat. Coming straight out of university, if I were to obtain these career, I realize I would have to start off as an assistant or a junior designer within the Lionsgate agency before making my way up the ladder through the years to Art Director. Lionsgate is a company that has prided itself in being available to the community, and offers several summer paid internship workshops for students to attend before hiring these interns onto their workforce. I admire an agency that dedicates such attention to its interns, which many companies could consider interns to be the grunt of manual labor and free work. However, Lionsgate believes in paying for teaching interns how to be successful at these jobs so they can hire personal workers that know how Lionsgate works.

2. Inward Marketing Agency - Alpharetta, Georgia

Inward is an agency that differentiates work between design agencies and being a marketing firm. The focus on the marketing and advertising aspect of clients in order to becomes a "voice" for their clients to audiences. Inwards also has a large agency setting with a variety of job descriptions available in order to tell the story that their client is trying to reciprocate, which gives me an advantage to work on a team with people of different skill sets and backgrounds. Personally, I am someone that works well alone or within a team, in order to complete a project to the best of its ability. The company focuses on getting the work done before objectives such as paychecks, which I find admirable. Georgia is also an upcoming huge network for television and film, becoming a rather established and large city within the TV industry. Which is where I want to be. Even the application process to this company is highly amusing and enjoyable, rather than very corprate and strict and while I do enjoy rules and some corporation design, overall I am not a corprate person. I need guidelines to follow as I am not one to freelance my entire life, but I don't want to be tied down into a specific mindset.

3.

These lists are set in stone and I may find a career that comes to me that is not on this list. I don't want to set my life before I've even begun to experience it. But I know this:

I am excited to start this journey after the experiences I've gained from university. I'm excited to see what industries I fall into and find my passion within design. I can't wait to become more than a student and for the world to see who I am.

I'm ready to hit the ground running, so don't wait up for me.