Hope

While doing my daily reading on the internet I ran across this article where cartoonist Mark Lynch says how companies are cutting budgets thus cutting creatives (me) from potential jobs.  I’ve already seen this happen to me as most of my illustration jobs come from magazines and newspapers. 

While the article does focus on doom and gloom there were two nuggets of joy I got from it which were:

All we cartoonists have to do, to quote of all people Rupert Murdoch, is turn a certain percentage of those eyeballs looking at that Web page into dollar signs. I’m do not like who Murdoch is, but disregarding the messenger, the message is spot on.

And, hey, everyone loves cartoons. I know I said that, but it gives me hope, so I say it again.

and

Back when vaudeville was in vogue, a comedian could make a career out of one comedy sketch. When radio came along, comedians played to the entire country, and so needed to come up with new material each week; which put a lot of vaudevillians out of work, but opened up new opportunities for writers and voice actors. Television cut into the market for voice actors, except as announcers or cartoon voices, but opened the doors for other performers and writers.

Media change, but there will always be a place for creative people. The trick is to find it, and figure out how to make a living from it.

This gives me hope and courage to try to stay on the forefront of being a creative.  I’ve switched from doing publishing work to illustrating logos and banners for the web with surprising success.  So my challenge to you creatives is to keep looking for new avenues for work.  Illustration will always hold a special place in media, it’ll just be different avenues.