Searching For Design Jobs and Work

I receive resumes on a daily basis. Hav­ing looked at every sin­gle one for the past few years (even for just a brief moment), there are things I know now as to what “not to do” when approach­ing a prospec­tive employer. I also receive inquiries and phone calls ask­ing for advice as to break­ing into a graphic-related field. While there isn’t a patent answer, there are some things a per­son search­ing for design jobs and work can do to help increase their chances of obtain­ing a job in a design-related field.

Ear­lier today, I received an email from a stu­dent ask­ing how one could “break into” the field of archi­tec­tural renderings.

Here’s a copy of the let­ter this stu­dent had writ­ten with some edits to per­sonal information:

My name is Kris.

I am inter­ested in graphic design but my main inter­est  lies within Archi­tec­tural mod­el­ing, walk­through ani­ma­tions and photo real­is­tic Rendering.

I cur­rently live in Aus­tralia  and I’m a 19 year old student, doing Cer­tifi­cate III Media as well as year 13 at Col­lege study­ing Art Pro­duc­tion and Graphic Design.

The main rea­son for me wast­ing your time is do you have any tips to get into the indus­try and what pro­grams do you use etc.

I’ve been using 3D Stu­dio Max for about 4 years my lat­est project was my major last year for graphic design.

Here is my reply:

Kris, thank you for writ­ing LunarStu­dio.

I receive sev­eral resumes every day for the past few years, most of which (unfor­tu­nately) are of a sub­stan­dard qual­ity. I have to say that the biggest mis­take I see is a lack of port­fo­lio. Sites such as Flickr and DeviantArt work, but there are plenty of other free web­sites which are avail­able to peo­ple who don’t have too much HTML or blog setup expe­ri­ence. I feel that when it comes to graphic design in gen­eral, every aspect should be “pack­aged” neatly, just like show­ing up to a job inter­view well-dressed and kempt. This field is all about pre­sen­ta­tion. That’s just a per­sonal pref­er­ence on my part, how­ever most of the really good design­ers I know are even pick­ier than I am.

If some­one wants a career in the field of archi­tec­tural ren­der­ings (or any other design-related field), you need to have a good, rel­e­vant port­fo­lio. One can­not expect to obtain work with just a few images – there needs to be diver­sity. For ren­der­ings, that might include inte­ri­ors and exte­ri­ors as well as a broad spec­trum of light­ing con­di­tions. I do not rec­om­mend using pre-made scenes down­loaded off of the web or through tuto­ri­als. These are often eas­ily spot­ted by indus­try vet­er­ans. How­ever, there are plenty of plans and pho­tographs you can work off of from sim­ply brows­ing the Internet.

No mat­ter what, there is no easy short­cut in this field. If there was, every­one would be doing this line of work. It involves hard work and one needs to put the time into this whole process.

As for actual resumes, to be hon­est – most of the time I skip right through the writ­ing. The first thing I always do when some­one applies to LunarStu­dio is to look at their port­fo­lios and images. If some­thing catches my eye (usu­ally I look for pho­to­re­al­ism fol­lowed by style), then I’ll review the rest of their work and resume. If an image or two looks bad, I won’t even bother look­ing at the rest of their work as I get flooded by inquiries daily and sim­ply do not have the time to review every sin­gle application.

As for what defines a “good” image from a “bad” one, there are numer­ous indi­ca­tors. I’ve had peo­ple apply and send images that con­tained door han­dles as big as water­mel­ons. I’ve seen images where the peo­ple they inserted touch the ceil­ing or sim­ply look copy and pasted. There’s plenty of images in which peo­ple do not use Global Illu­mi­na­tion (aka Scan­line) in which their work appears “car­toony.” There’s even sit­u­a­tions in which their sub­jects are sim­ply bor­ing (just a box with windows.)

Occa­sion­ally, I do receive a port­fo­lio in which a person’s body of work is not nec­es­sar­ily pho­to­re­al­is­tic, but I can see their design intent and the work they put into all of their details – clean lines, etc. This is often enough to war­rant seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion. How­ever, I’m not look­ing to always train some­one in my meth­ods as I often have much bet­ter stuff to do with my spare-time. There’s plenty of resources on the Inter­net in which a per­son can learn the var­i­ous aspects of ren­der­ing before approach­ing a company.

When approach­ing a com­pany, show that you really want to work with a par­tic­u­lar com­pany. And per­son could send out a hun­dred copy and pasted inquiries and cover let­ters, but those are eas­ily spot­ted from a mile away. Explain why you would want to work for some­one. Show some pas­sion. Show your ded­i­ca­tion. Also explain how you can con­tribute and how you want to help grow another person’s com­pany (I know that’s a bit of a stretch but that’s what some­one wants to hear.) If you don’t show ini­tia­tive in those areas, then I wouldn’t expect any busi­ness owner to want to hire you. My main con­cern in tak­ing some­one on is hav­ing to train them, and a cou­ple of years later they take my meth­ods and move off to “greener pas­tures.” In today’s day and age, peo­ple tend to float around with work as there’s lit­tle job secu­rity in gen­eral – as a busi­ness owner, you really want to know that some­one is will­ing to stick around oth­er­wise it could be a big loss.

As for soft­ware, if you’re using 3D Stu­dio Max, than you are using an indus­try ren­der­ing stan­dard. Cou­ple that with Vray and Pho­to­shop, then you should be good to go. If you hap­pen to know Men­tal Ray and Sketchup, then those pieces of soft­ware are an addi­tional bonus. As for learn­ing them, there’s plenty of resources scat­tered through­out the web. Take a few months to go through some tuto­ri­als, then start cre­at­ing your own scenes for your portfolio.

I real­ize that this reply was rather long, but I hope that might have helped answer some of your questions.

I have also pre­vi­ously writ­ten another arti­cle on the topic here which may be worth reading:

http://knol.google.com/k/3d-architectural-renderings#

Kind­est Regards,

Charles