Posts Tagged ‘client’
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Wednesday I made a promise that we’d stick with Newton’s artistic longings, so consider today’s comic a minor distraction.
I’m not sure how much I want to go into the issue at hand, for fear of exposing myself. Let me just say that sometimes in life, things happen, and the best way to deal with them is to share them in three panels.
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“Welcome back!” I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot lately. I honestly thought, coming off of the weak summer schedule, that Fall would be different, and return me back to the salad days of months and months of uninterrupted, three-comic weeks. Alas, it seems I was mistaken, and the workload of managing a full-time independent design career along with part-time professoring has steadily crept back into my comic schedule. So my goal is to start working up a buffer, writing strips ahead of time and roughing them out whenever possible. That should help.
Today’s strip is based on me, last week, pouring through old notebooks looking for ideas for strips. Occasionally something will happen in life and I’ll say “dag, I gotta write that down. That’s going into the comic someday.” This happens quite a lot, and dates back a year now. So please believe me when I say I have no idea what happened to cause me to write down the words “Newton has a client who is a stalker…” but we’re going there anyway.
Sometimes the process of writing these comics astounds me. I cannot recall the intended joke of today’s strip, only that it was far, far removed from what I wound up with. Somewhere around panel two things took a seriously unexpected turn when Newton started explaining his technique of meeting new clients. This is, of course, derived somewhat from reality. I do have a client meeting today and I do not intend to bring along a portfolio of work.
Some time ago I became a no-go-portfolio guy. I had a few meetings with potential clients that went famously well, and at the end, there I was, with this big black case filled with my previous work just sitting there, unopened. Once or twice I actually asked if they wanted to see it as we were winding down, and I cannot recall anyone answering in the positive. I occurred to me that I sent along my portfolio’s webpage (newest version here) long before the initial meet-up, and by the time we were in a face-to-face, it was really more about people getting to know each other and each other’s business, and less about “check out this sweet poster i did.”
So I’m a confirmed No-Go-Portfolio guy. Are you?
Nate Voss is a designer, illustrator, talkshow host and design journalist. Working in Omaha since 2001, Nate served four years on the Board of Directors for 
Donovan oversees all creative development at