Becoming a business owner

As I continue the job hunt for a career in graphic design, I have decided to start my own freelancing business on the side.  This will be a great opportunity to gain the experience they are always requiring you to have in order to get a job in the first place.  It will also be a great way to make some extra income.  Taking on new projects will allow me to improve my skills and develop my portfolio.

First step, apply for a business license and make it official.  I’m pretty excited about the idea of being a business owner!  Actually, I guess the first step should be to decide on a name for my company.  This is proving to be a little difficult for me.  I’d like to come up with something witty and memorable, but with the creative block I’m having right now, it’s looking like Layne Soike Designs may be it.  At least I’ll know the name isn’t taken…

In my portfolio development course in school, we were required to create a visual identity for ourselves.  Here is the logo I designed that I will be using for my business (at least until I get inspired and come up with the perfect name).

Layne Soike Designs logo

2010
04/02
CATEGORY
Freelance Business
2 comments

Hi, I’m Layne.

Hi, I’m Layne, and I’m a graphic designer.  It feels great to officially say that now that I have completed my BFA degree in Visual Communications!  I recently graduated from AIU – or American Intercontinental University Online.  AIU is a school based out of Chicago, IL with a wide variety of online programs for both undergrad and graduate degrees.  My decision to go back to school was an easy choice since I am a Boeing employee, and one of the perks they provide us is paying for school!  I graduated from the University of Washington in 2004 with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology, and then began to work for Boeing in the Europe and Russia sales group.  A few years later I decided to pursue my passion in graphic design, and found a program to enroll in at the International Academy of Design and Technology.  Here I started taking night classes once or twice a week.  It was a huge time committment, but I loved what I was learning.  However, I soon got discouraged by the amount of hours I was spending each week (class lasted untill 11pm at night, yikes!), and decided to look into other programs.  That’s when I found AIU Online.  Their program would take me a year to complete opposed to the 3.5 years that it was going to take me doing night courses, plus it was all online.  I decided that sacrificing the in person instruction I was getting at my night classes was worth it if it meant obtaining a degree faster.  Another draw back was that my graphic design courses I had already completed would not transfer over to AIU.  Fortunately, in this field, repeating a course just means more practice and more to learn.  So, now with two bachelor degrees under my belt and an online portfolio (check me out at www.laynesoike.com), I’m ready to start my graphic design career!  I can’t wait to start working in a field that I love.

2010
04/01
CATEGORY
Education
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Hello world!

So here we go, I’ve decided to jump on the blogging bandwagon! It’s hard to say at this point if I’ll have anything going on worthy of a blog post, but I like to think of myself as an interesting person with interesting things to say…so we’ll see how this goes!  If anything, this will serve as yet another outlet for me to talk to myself if no one is out there reading.

Mostly, I thought this would be a great way to market myself (…in the design world that is), and to update everyone on what it is I do and what I’ll be working on.

Thanks for visiting, and happy reading!

2010
03/31
CATEGORY
Announcements
1 comment