There's nothing to do at all. I'm here to receive advice and read tips and posts too, as well as give them. It's the nature of the forum.
You could send $1 to Happy Dude at 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, USA if you want.
But seriously I don't need anything. I don't have or have never written a book and I certainly don't plan to.
I like giving advice and writting up tiny tutorials as it keeps my skills and knowledge of InDesign fresh. If it helps people, or people care to add to my advice then great. Or if people point out that I'm wrong, great too because then I learn something too.
A brief history of me.
I left school in 1998, didn't go to college. I got a job screen printing for one of the biggest screen printing company in Ireland. After 2 years of being there I was promissed I would be given my chance in the Artwork room, away from the machines and the printing. But alas, they hired someone else for the Artwork room so I decided that if I was going to get a job doing artwork/prepress/origination I would need some training.
So I left that job in 2000 to take up a DTP course, which was full time and it paid £200 a week. At this stage I was 20 years of age. I needed to take up a second job to cover the expenses and live the 20 year old life style. So I got a weekend job as a security guard for 6 months (that was the duration of the course too).
After I finished and passed my course on DTP and with flying colours. I wrote to every single printing company in Dublin (where I live). I hand wrote about 150 envelopes, bought stamps and shoved my cv in each of the envelopes and in turn into the mail box.
After about 4 weeks, I got a call from a printing company asking me to come in for an interview. So I did. I got the job with the small, junior type, portfolio that I had made from the DTP course. Fantastic. For about 6 weeks I got calls from about all the printing companies I had applied, but I kept turning them down stating I already had a job. Until one printing company rang me and offered me an apprenticeship in "origination", which is basically a term for graphic designer who knows all about print and technologies. I turned down that job, but about 10 minutes later I rang them back and asked if it was too late to come for that interview, it was an apprenticeship after all so that meant good salary at the end of it.
I got the apprenticeship, taking me £80 a week, so I had to work all the overtime I could get, no time for a second job. The apprenticeship also came with 6 months of college for the first year, 8 weeks for the second year, and 6 weeks for the 3rd and 6 for the 4th year, on the 4th year I was earning a whopping €280, we moved to Euro by then.
So there I was getting get actual graphic design training and how lithographic print works on the job and then going to college to study the theory and practice of both.
After the 4 years apprenticeship was over, I decided to go to a role that offered more money, after all I had basically worked for free for about 7 years of my life, well very little money.
So I took a contract job, paying me a fantastic €3,000 a month, for 3 months.
After that I decided I can't do contract work anymore, too unstable as I was out of a job for 2 months after that.
I went for 2 interviews in one day, one was in a shabby industrial estate with a shabby roof and Macintosh that was older than me. The other was in nice plush offices, working for a private firm. I was rejected by the shabby place, but luckily the plush offices took me on.
So 2 years later I'm still in the plush offices, doing some interesting work with Long documents, dealing with books of about 3,200 pages (that's the max).
I basically struggled, fought hard and studied my ass off to get where I am today.
Back when I was learning this stuff there wasn't that many sites dedicated to offering tips, videos or other resources. I spent hours upon hours in libraries, subscribing to magazines, doing tutorials.
I know how hard it is, and I know how hard it is when you're faced with nowhere to turn to. So that's why I like to be able to help other people. Because, this day and age there's no reason for anyone to struggle on £80 a week at 20 years of age.
That's why I insist that people pay $100 dollars here and $40 dollars here on subscriptions to magazines. It really does help you in the long run.
And use the help menus. :=)
Have a good day.
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