About Making Moves

Today I found the blog post «Making The Move» of Emily Reid Kehe in my feedreader. It was posted on the official blog of the Society of Publication Designers called «Grids». In her post she reflects on her decision to give up her job of seven years and to leave behind all benefits of her hitherto life.

If I was going to become a better designer and start climbing that ladder, it would have to be in New York, and it would have to be now.

No sooner said than done. So in the end she gained ground in the magazine business and found better working conditions than in her old job in the newspaper world.

But why do I mention this story? She starts her post with the words:

I must be a lunatic. In the most tumultuous, cost-cutting, sky-is-falling era in our industry, I left my comfortable and salaried job at The Boston Globe Magazine and put myself on the chopping block in NYC.

It reminds me in many ways of my own situation. Ok, I won't give up a long-time job, but I'll finish my studies in this year's September in the middle of just these «tumultuous, cost-cutting, sky-is-falling» times to go out and search for a job. And like Emily did I'll move right into the focus of – in my case – the German design world, to Berlin. And unsuspectingly she put an idea of my own future brutally into words as she writes:

Joining the herd of forever roving designers, I've been blessed to land a great long-term "freelance" job at Fortune.

2009 will definitely be an adventure of a year for me as it will be for many others in the design sector. And long-term freelance jobs seem to be the rare maximum of stability we can expect. Berlin like other creative hotspots is full of designers, artists etc. fighting – fortunately more often with than against each other – for their economic survival. But let's have a look wether I'll find «that ladder» Emily mentioned to start climbing up. Who's with me?