** This page is still under construction. However, that shouldn't stop you from reading the existing content. I'm still writing this up and what's below is a work in progress.
About the Man
If you were buying a car, you'd want to know how many miles it has on it, how many accidents it's been involved in, or if it's hot, right? I'm sure the same applies if you are hiring a designer or purchasing art from one, so I will supply a bit of background info on myself that will either help or hurt me. Either way, I find it's easier to be honest than to try tracking lies that you've told!
I can almost always be found sitting right here behind my Mac G5 working on some new business pitch, designing pieces for some promotion, working on a web site or working on the CAD files for one of my motorcycle parts. I tend to call myself a Designer because the term covers a lot of ground, and so do I. I may be designing a case card today and tomorrow I may be designing another prototype part for my motorcycle. My focus is on design, but the area varies so I just call myself a Designer.
I've always been into art of all types. I love to paint and work on a canvas when I can but I spend a lot more time these days with either a mouse or a pencil in my hand. Quite often they overlap and I'll start a piece on paper, then finish it off in Photoshop or Illustrator. Whenever possible I get out the welder and do my metal sculpture, and that brings me to my next great passion; motorcycles. Sometimes the bikes and the sculpture cross over; I build my own bikes and all the parts that go with them. A few years ago I patented one of my motorycle part designs, The HogLeg Kickstand, and produce it as a side business, which wouldn't have been possible without my design and motorcycle backgrounds overlapping.
About the Machine: Free at last!
I, Jeff Holter, am a Senior Art Director / Designer, currently in my second year of freelancing after starting Holter | DesignMachine, LLC in the fall of 2006. Having done more than 12 years of time from inside the walls of globally recognized agencies, such as Tracey-Locke/DDBNeedham and 141 Worldwide/Ogilvy & Mather, I am out on good behavior and bringing with me years of agency experience designing for Fortune 500 companies such as Motorola, Pepsico International, Labatt USA, Jim Beam Brands and more. Since starting my business in '06 I have also teamed up with a couple colleagues who bring along their experience as Creative Directors and Copywriters giving us a well rounded team with the experience and ambition to achieve almost any project we are presented with.
Owning my own business has allowed me to shift the focus of my job as an Art Director-Designer to a wider variety of services that I've always wanted to pursue. While working for an agency, my job title and description included concepting, designing and rendering POP, POS, Event Marketing, Packaging and online promotional pieces, but I didn't get to do as much design for the web as I would have liked. I see more and more advertising and marketing turning to the web and as a curious designer I can't help wanting to move along with that trend. I enjoy the freedom and the challenges of designing for the web, and this is what keeps my job interesting. As a designer, I believe you have to evolve with the times or risk becoming obsolete. The trend of advertising and marketing online isn't going away, and neither am I!
Being a designer who has primarily designed for print until recently, I've worked hard at learning how to design for the web and build sites that are standards compliant above all, but I'm just scratching the surface on web technology. Although I've been building sites for myself and friends/family for a decade, the technology changes so frequently that it's hard to keep up. While it may be a bit frustrating, I find this to be a challenge that never gets boring! There's a lot to learn in the world of web design and endless possibilities for new ways to take advertising and marketing; I want to be right out in front.
In the beginning...
I consider myself very lucky; I'm an artist that gets to create for a living. Not everyone find employment or careers doing what they love. It hasn't always been so peachy, however. I didn't leave high school and go right into college, then on to a career as an Art Director. Instead, I spent a few years doing what every kid from a small farming town in Minnesota does: Work. I've worked on farms driving potatoes and beets from the field to the warehouse, riding the diggers and plowing acres of dirt. I've worked in fertilizer plants taking soil samples and driving trucks and floaters, plus all the dirty shoveling and cleaning that goes with the job. I was a truck driver for a period of time, hauling grain and fertilizer over the road. I've worked as a mechanic at various garages from the canadian border to Dallas. I've worked construction driving heavy equipment and pouring concrete. I've worked factory jobs and I've worked in a small gallery framing artwork. Along the way and on the side, I've always done some kind of freelance artwork because it's what I really wanted to do.
If you're wondering what all of this has to do with being a designer, I can answer in one word: Incentive. Every day I have incentive to work as hard as I can at giving people what they need and what they ask for, reducing my chances of having to go back to one of those jobs. I know what it's like to put in a long, hard day of real work and I appreciate every job I get where my tools are my computer and pencils rather than wrenches and shovels. One thing that all my jobs had in common was that you do what it takes to get the job done, and that hasn't changed.