ALL THAT’S FIT TO DJGITALLY SPIT
ENTRY00007 / APR 04, 2022 / HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF LENTICULAR GRAPHICS?
I've always had a day job, but never one involving actual art and design. Nonetheless, I had some scheduled interviews to appease particular parties (i.e. parents). So, between band poster slings and toilet bowl cleans, I had a "real" design job interview in Spring 2002. It was at a very old printing house on the extremely high and darkened second, maybe third, floor of what I had perceived to be a bombed out building. (For the record, much could be said of many blocks of downtown Kansas City, MO twenty years ago.) Narrow stairs ascended to a frail, middle-aged man (likely my present age, yet seemed ancient to my cracked vocals, then and now) hunched over a desk, who looked as if he had never accepted sunlight, reminding me of a Miyazaki or Coen brothers movie character. Sweating, looking around at archaic machinery, I had no clue what kind of "design" was being done here, nor if I'd even be granted permission to leave the premises alive, but this guy seemed about right for the part. He flipped through in about 10 seconds (barely enough time for me to unzip the case) the portfolio Kinko's had just milked from me. I was rather proud of its contents, he was not. Quickly, he jumped to the point behind a thick mustache, inky frame and sinister voice, "Have you ever heard of lenticular graphics?" I gasped and gulped a bushy tailed beet red fib of, "Oh yeah, totally!" as he flashed me the back ‘n’ forth magic in a Harry Potter trading card like it was a top / Topps secret. I thought I had the job. I looked around again and thought I could easily “fake it ‘til I make it” quite comfortably here. He then said I could go. With relief I flew down the stairs. I'm still waiting for that call back, even though I could tell he didn't like me. Not to mention I believe the building was demolished years ago. (I’m pretty sure it’s the building pictured above, but my memory could be playing lenticular tricks. I do know this building no longer exists. Did it ever?)
Anyway, there's a bombed out block of my blog partitioned for (almost) all of my art and design Innerviews from the last couple decades. It was an early pandemic project I finally got to, yet I don't think I ever shared it publicly. With the addition of some miscellaneous odds and ends, most of these long winded expressions of excess involve me answering the same questions over and over from the first decade of DJG Design. As for the last ten years ... it’s mostly me talking to my middle-aged self, hunched over a dimly lit desk surrounded by archaic machinery and whatever kind of “design” it is I have done or sometimes do.
-djg (Photo: Save the Lane Building - Facebook Page, 2014)
