Me and my big mouth…

I never realised that the advertising for the Retail could be so… challenging.

I have 16 years' worth of design experience, and I have done just about everything a designer can design, and have applied those design in a myriad of different ways, and I have done catalogues before, but the work here at Johnson Haydenbry Afrika is in a different league. Hectic, rushed, precise, technical, fickle, repetitive, boring, frustrating, driven, all at the same time.

The client is the JD Group of retailers. The 'B-Team' studio all have a single designer that works on a sub-division of the group: Morkels, Price and Pride, Electric Express, and then there's the 'A-Team' studio where we are three designers allocated to one sub-division: Hi-Fi Corporation. Greg has been doing this for about as long as I have, but because it is all he does he has gotten very good at it, and Shannon is just as good. She admits that when she started she also had a hard time adjusting to that particular way of working, but I think she was just trying to make me feel a bit more confident.

Anyway, I could tell that I was falling behind, and the MD Aubrey also told me that I needed to pick up my pace. I did, and Aubrey mentioned that he could see that I had picked up the pace. However I have to work the entire weekend to catch up, and I expect that my work is going to be pulled apart by Greg on Monday. That's his job, and the challenge is mine to live up to those expectations. I have made a little promise to myself not to complain at the office. Nod, smile and carry on working – whatever they want.

It is now 19:10 on Saturday night and I have a crick in my neck and a crack in my butt from sitting and working for 10 hours straight… Three pages to go, but I'll do those tomorrow…

As I was saying…

Just last week I was waxing lyrical about all the things that I can be grateful for.

Today I got an offer from the advertising agency where I had been doing some freelance work to stay on until April 2010. I seriously considering it, and will probably take them up on their offer. Funny how these things pan out…