Working For The Man

As we move into our 11th year as OtherWisz Creative, we reflect back on the first 10 years of our design business. It is pretty incredible to think about doing this for 10 years! (...and here's to 10 more! Cheers!). I can also brag that this is my 24th year in this wacky field- officially starting my freelance business way back in 1987. Anybody remember Adobe Freehand 3? "Anybody remember laughter..?"

For the celebration of "Completing a Decade of OtherWisz," I am going to take some time to reflect back on things past.  I know I do that often here on this blog, but I am old school and this may be one of the best ways to preserve my designs from long ago.  The ghost of design past will haunt the internet... until Google decides to erase all this free disk space it has been handing out for the past few years.

So for all you kids that have dreams of starting your own company, I give you my LAST resume.  After this one, there was no need to produce another. All the marketing for myself became company bios, client lists, brochures and the corporate OW website.   This resume was designed as a tri-fold brochure, clever, eh? It was divided up into 3 sections including my Design, Publishing and General Experience in the graphics field.  Starting with Wizard Graphics in 1987, while in college and lasting up until my last real job at the now-defunct Syrinex Communications (ending Jan. 2001).  Oh, the memories come flooding back as I review this document.  Please note that this was probably created in Adobe Pagemaker for those at home keeping score.

Some illustrious past experience included my pre-press days at Graphtrix (1981-1992) and The Retouchables (1993-1997), where I cut my teeth in the file prep, drum scanning and matchprint making world. I learned all about a process that is almost completely handled in-house by printers these days- but the experience was invaluable.  Another highlight is my brief, yet deep stint at Steve James Design (June 1992-May 1993), where I brought my then-extensive 2 years of computer experience to a traditional advertising studio and made a life-long friend.

My publishing past is laid out in detail starting at The Record (the Buff State paper), including the Sign o' The Times, the famous Slack magazine and finally ending with one of Buffalo's first on-line publication, the BuffaloPOST.com. Created with writer David Staba and a gang of misfits, writers and ex-journalists, the BuffaloPOST preceded the popular Buffalo Rising, which rose from a similar era online pub, One-4 (I think it was called, or was it 1-Four?).

From the cut-and-paste acrobatics as the graphics guy at Appliance Parts Distributors (1988-1990) to the early days of the web at Perception Publishing Group, where I learned web design back in 1997, this resume is chock full of nuggets.  Programs listed that I had experience using include BBedit, GIF Builder and Quark Express, baby!  All in all, this resume is a nice flashback set in P22 Johnson Underground. 

For your other old schoolers out there, " I can also use a pen an an x-acto blade…"

I scanned the resume for you all to enjoy- click to enlarge.  Please post questions and smart-alecky comments below.