Graphic Audio Visual Designer: What's this Career REALLY Like??

Transcription

(Music)

Carlos Steiger: Graphic design and so they think that they are, because they want to make art, no it's not art. If you want to do art, go into illustration, work for yourself.

Dan: Today on Time We Discuss, I wanna welcome Carlos Steiger and it's time we discuss what it's like working as a graphic audio-visual designer. Carlos, thank you for joining me today.

Carlos: Thank you for inviting me. Forgive my English, as you know, I'm Argentinian. (Laughing)

Dan: No, it's all good. I love speaking with people all over the world. It gives me a much broader perspective on what things are like from a career perspective all over, so I absolutely love it. I like to ask what a typical day is like. So in your career and in your job, what is a typical day like for you working as a graphic visual audio designer?

Carlos: Typical day for me is grab some mate, this is an Argentinian drink. It's my fuel for the day. And basically go to Jira, the platform we use for task management. And I guess go to the brief, see how complex or not it is, see the deadline. And then I manage my time. Sometimes I did it and it's far away, but the things, I know the task is time consuming, so I start earlier. Sometimes, I know it's a five minute job, so I can wait to start it. But basically like that is organizing my time and then having a point chart when needed from when the marketing people requesting me the job. Sometimes it's quite straightforward because, I developed already templates, which is like just update information. So sometimes it's about a creating new project from scratch or going to a location to film an interview. That's why I would be sure, because I do filming, video editing, as well as graphic and digital design, like interactive material and so.

Dan: Do you work for yourself? Do you have your own business or are you employed with another company and you happen to work remotely? What is that all like?

Carlos: I've been working for the same company for the last nine years here in the UK. But back in time, I used to work freelance. I used to run my own studio, which is really complicated for somebody in Argentina because clients will pay you from 90 days after, but you, to your suppliers, you have to pay at day one and you pay taxes since the very first day you create your company, whether you are producing or not. Now things are improving because with the new president, a lot of things are going into a good place. But at that time it was complicated. But yes, I know I've been working for the same company for the last nine years. We give support to 18 universities here in the UK.

Dan: So how much of your time are you actually spending out filming versus editing versus doing audio stuff, what is that blend like for you?

Carlos: My audio visual projects are, let's say, 30% of my queue while the other 70 is more on the graphic side.

Dan: Let's talk software packages. Okay, so what do you typically use? What have you found to be most beneficial? What are those hidden gems that other people might not be aware of? What are some of those tools in your toolkit that you're using?

Carlos: No, the thing is that as my laptop is managed by the headquarters, it's not that I can use wherever the software I want. So it's quite straightforward. Adobe package and a bit of Blender. But not, you know, for me as an illustrator, I love Procreate on the iPad, but that's different story. I see more mobile times, people studying graphic design and so they think that they are hard because I want to make art. No, it's not art. Art, if you want to do art, go into Illustrator, work for yourself, do whatever. In the end, you work at the service of a brand, at the service of content. Sorry to spoil it, but... (laughs)

Dan: One thing I'd like to talk about is education and especially for people that are outside of the United States, because I've very limited knowledge when it comes to how education works and getting into different careers when it comes from other countries. So talk to me about that being in the UK. What is education like there? How important was it to, assuming you did, you may not have, do you need to go to university to do what you're doing? How important is that? Talk to me about how the education ties into what you're doing.

Carlos: I grew up in Argentina, so all my students' years were in Argentina. I studied advertising and my first jobs were in advertising agencies as an illustrator, as a copywriter. Then, because I love design, I tried to, I got involved into projects, but I have to say, I never studied graphic design as a career, as a formal, in uni. I just have the skills and that's the thing. Most people say, no, because I studied the world, yeah, but if you can't prove it, a portfolio speaks much louder than wherever the title you have.

Dan: If someone is just starting out and they wanna build up that portfolio, what is the best way to go about doing that? I know some people will create like fake products or something like that to kind of illustrate the graphic design or their video or something like that, but what is a really good way that you found either personally or talking to other people, really good ways of building up your portfolio right from the start.

Carlos: Reviewing a lot of brands that you like. Try to not just put things over the table, but think about, do like reverse engineering. So when you see a brand, say, okay, this is the ... which could be the brief that this designer got. So you go to the psychology of the brand, the goals to broadcast, the target. Once you have all that blueprint, then you are able to, okay, considering this blueprint, I will start making a design for this brand, not just copying.

Dan: When it comes to video production, I think of different specifically animated videos, like your Pixar films or something like that. And you might have people that it's like they are doing character animation or they are doing background design or something like that. When it comes to your job, what you're doing, are there different specialties that go along with it where it's like you're only editing certain stuff, you're only doing color balancing? Does anything like that happen? Or it's like you're doing it all?

Carlos: I'm doing all, I'm controlling the filming, setting up, I set up the light, I set up the microphones. The, yeah, then I do the color grading. Yes, it's, yeah.

Dan: And you talked about audio stuff as well. So let's talk about that a little bit. What kinds of things are you doing with audio? Are you doing anything that is specific audio where you're maybe you're doing like radio commercials for lack of better words, or you're recording people that are just doing voiceovers? Are you doing anything that is just audio or it's audio in the scope of video as well?

Carlos: Both, because some explainer videos, I need to monitor the voiceover that then I will use for an animated video explaining like motion graphics and so with a voiceover. So yes, and I'm also a singer. So that's why I got into audio in the first place.

Dan: And I'm assuming probably at this stage, a lot of stuff is probably sent to you as digital files. Like even though you might not be recording something, it might come to you via some kind of cloud product where you download it, you edit it or something like that, give it back to the client. I'm assuming that happens fairly frequently.

Carlos: Yes, yes, because most people think that they know much more than what they really know. So yeah, this is terrible when I need to clean the audio... Like, come on, you don't listen, there's a dog barking behind you.

Dan: It's interesting, I was talking to Henry Willard back in, I think it was 2024, and he's also in the UK. And he does primarily voiceover work, if I remember, He's a voiceover audio engineer. And we were talking about cleaning up audio. And I think he was talking about a lot during the pandemic, I wanna say, that there was a sudden influx of lesser quality recordings that were coming in because everyone was recording in their own space.

Carlos: Yes, and the thing is that, not as a consequence of the pandemic, but kind of almost at the same time, lot of audio books came out to the market and a lot of people trying to, you know, but it has to do with pandemic because when they were unable to go to studios, to proper studios, they start recording at home. And they were using wherever, the pillow, wherever they had by hand to make it sound better. But sometimes, you know, when your best is not enough, (laughs) here we come to

Dan: save you. When it comes to your work, are you ever working with people directly on the other side of the world? Do you have flexibility with your time because you might be working with people over on the other side of the world? What is that like?

Carlos: When I was in Argentina, I used to manage the advertising for the company I was working for, for other Southcon region. So I was managing Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina. And I used to work a lot with people in Portugal. And yes, and then sometimes the schedule is terrible, but I have to say, I've been always lucky because they were not expecting me to work non-sense hours because of their different schedule. Here it is great because if your contract says you work till five, it's till five. 501, you are not there.

Dan: It also looks like you're working from home. How common is that? I work in ... yes.

Carlos: I go to the office once a week. I go to campus once a week on Wednesdays.

Dan: Here in the States, there's been more of a push to go back to, you heard like the return to office mandates. What's it been like over in the UK? Is that, have they been more flexible about that? Or is it more like they're following that trend as well? What's that like?

Carlos: No, no, it's depends on the company, but it's basically, it's a real estate problem because they, as they paid for the buildings and so, they don't want to feel that their money is useless because they're still paying the rent for those buildings. So the things that we have to use it because we have it. No, here is more. We will use it when we really need to.

Dan: I don't know if you would know the answer to this, but when it comes to the world of video production, what type of videos are most common? Are they like, like demo videos? Is it more commercials? Is it a strong brand oriented? If someone wants to get into making videos and editing videos or producing videos, what types of videos are they more than likely going to expect? I'm assuming it's not gonna be cinema most likely, but what can they expect?

Carlos: No, back in time, working for advertisement agencies, it was like products, was like commercials. Here it's more about interviews for the BHC because working for universities and promoting universities and promoting and videos or testimonials on people moving from academia into the private sector and translating skills from academia into private sector, it goes more like life experience and they go more that way. And then explain the video, so how to guides, how to submit a time sheet in that university for work, people working for the university and they need to load the time sheet and they need to understand the platform. So yeah, I do the animation for people to understand how to.

Dan: One question I like to ask people is, one unexpected perk they might get from working at a particular job. So for instance, if you work at a coffee shop, maybe you get a free coffee when you get there or maybe you work at a restaurant.

Carlos: No, no perks here.

Dan: No?

Carlos: No, no, no, no perks here.

Dan: You get your paycheck, that's your perk.

Carlos: Yes, I bring my own stuff. I invest in my own equipment for filming sometimes because I'm telling, look, I need to improve the quality of what we do and I end up investing in my own equipment.

Dan: That's a really interesting point because a lot of times people, they say, well, here's the camera you're gonna use, here's the software you're gonna use, here's the whatever. But people, a lot of times they might say, well, but my stuff is better, I can give you a better product, I'm gonna use my own stuff. How common is that? And is that accepted? Is that frowned upon? What's that like?

Carlos: Most people, they may know what they want, but they have no idea on how that, what they want is actually produced. So people may think that, ah, because having a camera and know how to film is not the same. And most people just, it's the same with deadlines, for example. I need to explain time to time, look, yes, that is possible. Not in the frame window you wanted.

Dan: One of the questions I'd like to ask, I like to identify barriers for people and one of the examples I use is that when I went to university, I went to learn about music recording and being an audio engineer is what I wanted to do. And I learned a little too late that if I wanted to be the audio engineer that I wanted to be, I needed to be in a big city. I needed to be in LA or Philadelphia or something like that. And for me, that was not for me, I didn't wanna do that. So if I knew that earlier on or thought about that earlier on, it might've impacted what I had done with my education, so on and so forth. So what is a barrier that you can think of that if someone knew this early on, they might say, you know what, this is not for me. So maybe I don't like being in front of a computer for eight hours a day, this is not for me. What is something like that where someone could identify and say, this barrier, you know I hadn't considered it, this is no longer for me.

Carlos: When you know that you love things that there's no market in your country, your career sometimes has to do more with the access you have to things that you really would love to. And most people buy this thing of, oh, the passion, the passion. Well, if the passion pays the bills, great. If the passion will not pay the bills and you have a family to provide for, do whatever it's there that you can do and leave the passion for your free time.

Dan: Carlos, unfortunately, I am running out of time. One thing I like to do whenever I'm speaking with someone, I like to give them the opportunity to talk about a project they're working on, a cause they believe in, a business. It's my way of saying thank you. So if there's something specific you'd like to discuss, the floor is yours.

Carlos: I would invite you to go to my Instagram account. It's chuck_siger_caricatures. I would then send you there. Well, I already follow you on Instagram, so you can come from there. Because that is, you know, as I said, that's my passion. This is my job.

Dan: That's awesome. I'll make sure I get the links for that for everyone else. I'll put them in the show notes. They'll be in the description. They'll be on the website. They'll be all over the place. So when people are trying to find you, they can easily do that. Good, great. Carlos, it's been absolutely awesome having you on Time We Disguss and we learned all about what it's like being an audio visual designer.