A Decade In The Top Tier… Part Four

Continued…
Spring 2003; I had spent the last 3 years freelancing in Chicago from South Bend, IN. I found success way faster than I thought I would, and the time came to find some stability after 3 years of lost invoices, sporadic workloads, and crammed all-nighters.
I worked with so many great people at some great companies and maintain contact with many of them to this day. I managed to keep my workload going during 9/11; during the stock market implosion of 2002, and in spite of the fact that the local area I lived in at the time had almost NO market for top-tier creative; I might as well had been a ventriloquist dummy salesman.
Basically I did the impossible; but I knew that I was pressing my luck continuing to freelance. All during the time I freelanced, I kept an eye on jobs in the Chicago market. I interviewed at a medium-sized toy company in Chicago as a Design Director. The gig looked promising; and it would have been a lot of fun; my background in comics and illustration would have made me a perfect candidate. They wanted to pay me based on what I made at my last full-time job; not what I made as a freelancer (approx. twice as much at the time!) So no deal! I also interviewed at a whole bunch of small/medium sized companies, and I even put feelers out at my clients. Although things picked up after 2002, nobody wanted to hire quite yet. Nobody except LPK!

I sent resumes to every recruiter I could find. One guy forwarded my resume to a company that did recruiting for LPK. I got a call out of the blue from one of their reps. She told me about a great gig in Cincinnati… here's what went through my mind: I'm black. Cincinnati had just had a RACE RIOT in 2001. The NAACP had a national ban on this city at the time; maybe coming here was not such a great idea.

Then I checked out LPK's website:
LPK (Libby Perszyk Kathman) is an international design agency headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA with four additional locations in Geneva, Switzerland; Frankfurt, Germany; Guangzhou, China; and London, England. According to its website [1], LPK specializes in “Building Leadership Brands” by integrating strategy, design and innovation.

I remembered this company's work! One of the things I used to do for Unilever was create illustrations of P&G products for comparison. I was intimately familiar with their Hair and Personal Care products in particular–LPK is the company that designed those P&G products! I set a date to drive the 5 hours South to meet with Robert Remley; the VP of Technology for the company. He expressed an interest to hire me for their Baby Care line; again I assume my background in comics and kid's stuff made me a perfect candidate.
The company had just created a new position: Design Delineator. This position is very challenging; a perfect candidate has upstream design experience as well as a production background. We were "Designers Plus" which meant that my job is to be "very good at everything". One of the things that frustrated me about my concept work was that it was ONLY upstream; I never got to continue working on the product once it passed consumer testing. Working at this company would give me a chance to "finish" the concepts I started; I was intrigued. Also; I never saw design and production to be different jobs. All of my career I always did my own "nipping and tucking". I always created my own designs and then got it ready for print on my own.
So here I am about to walk away from 3 years of freelancing to work at the very company that did design for all of my client's competitors. I had to come back three more times; once for another interview, and twice to "freelance" for LPK; kind of a "try before they buy". The last freelance day (which was a Friday), Robert called me to his office and let me know that they were going to make an offer to my recruiter; I passed the test! About a month later I moved from South Bend, IN to Cincinnati, OH.
Continued…

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