P1_p4_O'Byrne

For the interview I decided to reach out to some local Graphic design companies. One in particular, Visual Ventures, emailed me back. I got in contact with Dan Taylor a designer that has been in the industry for a few years. Dan at the young age of 24 has plenty of work under his belt doing hundreds of projects that include but are not limited to web banners and print ads, datasheets, email blasts, and direct mailers. He also conducted studio photography for client products and ads.

I was able to get a phone call with him for about 15 minutes. We talked about how we got into graphic design and what he did as a teenager that truly showed he was going to do some quality work in his later years. At a young age Dan was making videos with any program he could get his hands on, designing funny things in Photoshop to show friends and constantly making music with a variety of programs. Dan was fortunate to know a friend in the industry so he was able to get some internship with Visual Ventures. After doing that for a while and going to Sweden for some college he scored a job with the company and started on some cool projects right away. He designed websites for Hasbro and helped with lots of projects for biomedical equipment and other things that he doesn’t find as interesting but he’s glad he did it for experience. He also was able to get lots of connections through school for internships which got his foot in the door.

I was very happy after I heard all this from Dan because it sounds like something I could pull off. Getting connections through school and friends seems like something that would be easy for me to do in the near future. I am excited to see what Dan does in the future and  I hope to stay in connection with him over email.