Design!
It’s everywhere! From the little Victoria’s Secret package
to how a hospital is laid out it is literally everywhere.
For the longest time I thought of myself more in the realm
of designer than artist. Yes, you might wonder, I was still a photographer but
the nature of work I was doing was completely Design oriented. My job for a
time was being a photographer’s assistant for a company called Gibson
Photography out of Northwest Arkansas. My task was to set up flashes, light filters,
move furniture, and carry gear. However since I was the assistant and being the
lowest on all totem poles I also helped the stylist we would have with moving
furniture or ironing/steaming clothes and setting up sets. As proof I did
managed to find one shot that I could use from when I was there, It’s funny to
note that I am taking the picture so they can all look like they are working
mostly since it was going on a social networking site.
When it comes to working for clients it doesn’t get much
bigger than working for one of Wal-Mart’s departments and to see how everything
works together to get a final image created and all the financing behind it. It
was also great experience to work for such large and great client to also
understand just how it is to work for one. My boss told me that this job would
entail a lot of “hurry up and wait”. Puzzled he elaborated that even though an
art director would be there to oversee everything and help give imput he would
send it on to someone higher up (generally one of the billions of VP’s Walmart
has) and they would have to approve it or make suggestions. At times it could
take as much as 3 hours to hear back if it was approved or not. Generally we
would try to set up in another location in the studio (or house that was being
rented for the time of the shoot) and work on another set up while we waited. If
three photographs were taken in a day it was a good day, four was the most I
ever had ever been apart of. For the longest time this apparent lack of getting
back and approving it quickly was baffling. Then it hit be this is a corporation
that is spending more than 5k A DAY (yea its nuts) to get exactly what it
wanted right so these images on displays in stores would sell millions of
dollars of merchandise. This is a
corporation that is having photos taken in June and July to be shown in store
in October and December.
How else did I realize that design is a MAJOR role player in
literally everything we see?
The first time I walked into Wal-Mart’s layout center.
The layout center isn’t really that crazy of a building. The
largest Supercenters come in around 261,000 square feet and average around
197,000. The layout center is literally just a plan and boring design warehouse
at 240,000 square feet. What makes it different is that inside every single
type of floor setup could be seen in there if you looked. At the time what
caught my eye was the Christmas tree display, followed by a proposed back to
school section and everything else you could imagine, in the middle of June. At
the time young old me thought it was baffling that so much time and money would
be spent on such a simple setup of even back to school stuff. Throughout my
time things made more sense. It was about how to engage and draw in a customer
to a product and to see if they could find ways to get them to buy other things
as well. Throughout my time I learned so much in terms of design and even
though I don’t call myself a designer (most days) it’s still very much a part
of me. I have several other stories about what I learned about corporate
Wal-Mart, design, and signage and if curious I will gladly share more.
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