Next Level Design

In my professional life, away from running, marathons, clubs, music and any of the stuff I generally write about on this blog, I am a desktop publisher.

What I really would rather be is a graphic designer. That is to say, I would rather be employed as a graphic designer than as a desktop publisher, even though they are both pretty closely related things.

I see the graphic designer as having a more creative role than the DTP person who often will concentrate on laying out documents to fit a corporate style, rather than coming up with imaginative ideas for branding, corporate identities, logos, adverts and the like.

I do a little bit of freelance graphic design on the side which keeps my hand in the more creative side of things that I don't get so much of an opportunity to do at work. I've never really pushed it that much as most of the time I have worked a full-time job and have lots of other things going on.

Often the work I do isn't payng work. I'll help a friend out with some business cards or some promotional flyers to advertise an event of some kind.

So I do that as a favour, because I enjoy it, and they are trying to get a business off the ground or are trying to keep costs to a minimum. But the good will I receive doesn't help pay the bills or put food on the table.

So, in an effort to push for a few more paying gigs I have decided to put my portfolio online. As such, I have set up another blog where over the next couple of weeks I will be putting up a selection of my work from over the years.

Please stop by and check out the Next Level Design blog, and if you have a need for any design work, bear me in mind. Although I'm hopefully going to cut back on the free stuff and increase the paying stuff, I'm sure you'll find my rates very reasonable.

Any comments more than welcome. I'm always interested to hear what people do and don't like as it's a very subjective and personal thing.