Set sail for the future!

With a quite 'plink' of my inbox the process of steering my life in a new direction begins.

I've come to realise that I need to apply more focus to my goals in life - where I want to go and how I'm going to go about getting there. I've been toying with the idea of studying further for about a year now. Ever since I realised that sadly I can't really travel on my qualification as a Graphic Designer as we're dime a dozen and I'm decent, but not brilliant.

I always knew that at some point I'd have to make a career change. Designers either burn out or give up and there are not a lot of positions open to those who are considered ageing and less 'hip', and there's also not a lot of room at the top of the tree for those considered to be 'senior or heavy weights'. The fact that people are considered to be a Senior designer after a period of only five or six years should give you an idea of the longevity of the average designer's career. And hell, it's going to take me more than a few years to build up to the qualification I'm looking for, so I need to start the ball rolling now.

So, I've decided to move towards Marketing and Client Services - it's related, but I think with time and training I may well do better there than I ever have as a Graphic Designer. There's also a greater chance of me getting hired as in that field than as a 'foreign designer' in the UK - since I have every intention of going back.

So I've signed up with a distance learning institution to do a 6 month course in PR as starters. If that goes well and I cope with additional demand of studying added to the already full schedule of work, martial arts, role-playing, relationship and friends I'll then consider taking the next, more ambitious step I've got planned.

It's somewhat amazing to consider that all this is motivated by my loyalty to TJF Jujitsu. My greatest goal at the moment is to make it to brown-belt, so like Davis I can start my own club where ever I may choose. I early want to be back in a country where I can train whenever I choose with a variety of people and not feel constantly that I'm being held back by unfortunate circumstances. It also helps that I have more close friends in London right now than I have anywhere else on this planet (although it'll be just typical that they'll all leave just as I get my act together and head back for the UK...)

Filthy, little, capitalist, colour facists!

This morning is the first time I've really had an opportunity to use the Internet Archives, and I have to say I'm sold!

What a brilliant plan! Lordy knows how they afford all that sortage space but bless their little geek hearts.

A few months back I found a brilliant website that lists every Pantone colour along with breakdowns of these colours into print (CMYK process) and web (RGB hexcode) versions. It also gives far more accurate breakdowns than can be achieved by dropping the Pantone colour into Freehand or Photoshop's conversions (which also don't contain the latest 300 or 400 hundred colours in their libraries) and it's been an invaluable resource for me, especially with my current agency having buckets of trouble with colour matching in the past.

Now of course, Pantone makes money off their system and the multitude of very expensive books and guides they sell to all those who deal with colours in print. There's one for each stock of paper, pastels, metalics, muted tones and additional guides that match Pantone to process or RGB and display the comparisons - all of which they try to tell you are indispensible and must be changed every year since wear and the aging of the inks and papers will alter the appearance of the colours!

So of course, sometime in the last couple of weeks someone at Pantone must have come across this site two, got in a little frothy about it and demanded it removed before they take legal action. So with a quiet apology in German most of which I find incomprehensible the site has removed the chart leaving me bereft and cursing my foolish nature to trust that such a resourse would always be there. Why, oh why didn't I save the page earlier.

Dun du la dah! Enter internet archives to the rescue and - there it is! My lovely colour page in all it's technicolour glory, ready for me to save for posterity! Happy happy joy joy.

Oh, and praise be to Andy for telling me about the internet archives! Wheew.

Meanwhile in other news I'm trying to figure out how much I of my life I feel like sacrificing to be able to potentially change my career. Looks like a BComm with Unisa will take me 6 years at a managable pace of study and seeing as I've only been out of Tech for 5 I don't think I can stomach that prospect at this moment. On the other hand they offer a 6 month course in Public Relations which might add a little more interest to my CV and perhaps allow me to sidle that little bit closer to going into client relations... Without sacrificing every ounce of spare time I posess for rest of my fading 20's and early 30's. However, I have one week to make up my mind in or hold my peace for the next 6 months.