This dates back to 2011, I had moved to the South coast with the goal of setting up as a self employed web designer. This was done at a point when I was also taking on any work with a temp agency to make sure I could pay the bills whist my business was getting off the ground.
I was doing night shifts at the time for a printing company that made boxes for pharmaceuticals in Portsmouth. My job was to use a lump hammer to separate the excess card from the printed boxes on a sheet, doing huge stacks at a time for 10 hours a night. So these piece’s are largely done whilst wired on Monster energy drinks.
You’ve got to do what you love.. but you have to work hard to get there. It’s was while I was doing this job that I got asked to take part in a design competition for a Southampton based web agency. I came second, but I was open, friendly and flexible on the phone call to them and so when the girl who finished first declined their job offer they called me.
Their patronage took me out of that factory and gave me the full time design job I had been working towards. I’ll never forget that job though, the constant ache in my forearm and tendons from the hammer and the fact that some of the lads there had been doing it for years. Poor bastards, needs must but I hope they’re doing something better now.