How does one go from being a graphic designer with relatively weak design skills to managing million-dollar marketing budgets and helping establish ecom best practices for a large pillow company? It’s a long and complicated path that relied heavily on hard work, a bit of luck, and a drive to succeed in any way I could.
When I started college, I thought I would become an animator with the hopes of one day getting into video game development. While growing up in the backcountry of Colorado, I discovered a love for video games. They let you escape your realities and struggles and dive head-first into a realm of fantasy. You could be whatever you wanted and go wherever you dared to go. The only limit was your imagination. Surrounded by the beauty of the Rockies, it was also easy to merge some of those fantasy landscapes into my real life.
Maybe it was due to my wandering mind or just my general disinterest in academics, but much of my time in school was spent daydreaming about other worlds and how I could create my own. The only class I ever actually looked forward to was com-tech. My teacher gave me a lot of freedom when he noticed that I had a deeper understanding of the software we were learning than the rest of the class. As soon as I was finished with the assigned project, I was allowed to tinker around with personal projects. There was a program called Macromedia Director (later bought out by Adobe Flash) that gave me my first foray into creating my own games.
Having no teaching on the program and learning just from the book, the type of game I was able to create was pretty limited, but still offered a bit of fun for myself and my friends. It taught me how to problem solve using a restricted set of solutions and opened up a creative part of my brain that had not fully been engaged before. No longer was I working through a quick math problem with no real use outside of the academic sense. It gave me tangible difficult questions that had no simple “proper” solution. I could play out scenarios in my brain when bored in other subjects.
Due to this, as you might imagine, I didn’t do so hot with grades in school. I typically scored quite high on standardized math tests but had little patience for homework that basically equated to hours of busy work for repetition sake. Since I typically pick things up on the first go, that always seemed like a complete waste of time. As high-school progressed, I knew going to a large university and studying for a career I would probably hate wasn’t likely in the cards anyway due to my poor GPA. Art school was a more likely path and I set about achieving that goal.
Upon first attending a design school, one thing became very apparent right away. I did NOT fit in with the typical design kid. I grew up playing sports. I was considered a bit of a star basketball player and generally loved to be active. Now, I was surrounded by all the people who were marginalized by sports cliques at larger schools and who generally did not like anyone who would be associated with those activities. I never found myself to be someone who didn’t engage with another simply due to their choice of hobbies. It struck me as a bit weird.
As college progressed, I learned that I didn’t have the patience for certain animation processes nor did I find the future career prospects to be all that enticing. Through talking with one of the counselors, it was determined that I could pivot into graphic design, graduate 2 years sooner, and work on projects that were a bit more my speed. It seemed like the best fit at the time. Now, I will also be perfectly upfront and say that moving into graphic design had me lacking in skill compared to many of the other students there. You had amazing artists and creative people that lived for design. I could get by, but I relied more on my analytical brain to get through.
After graduating, I found myself not really sure where my path would lead. After a few months of searching, I ended up taking a role as a print coordinator for a CD / DVD manufacturing company. This would provide a launching point for my career in production vs design. My ability to problem solve well surpassed my design skills and that allowed me to branch out a bit at each company into areas beyond the art room. As the years went on, I would find myself spending more and more time trying to help with operations solutions than behind my desk setting up art files.
You know the saying “when one door closes, another opens?” Sometimes it comes in really unexpected ways. In 2017 I was having an all-time rough year. I was going through a divorce, completely tore my ACL, and the company I was working for was having a very tough go of it creating an incredibly stressful environment. Once it got to be Fall, I had enough. I left the company that I had now spent a combined 6 years at, packed up my stuff, and moved back to Minnesota. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I just knew I needed a reset.
As it turned out, my friend / former roommate was working for his uncle’s pillow company (yes, THAT pillow company) and told me I could work in their shipping department while I was looking for a new job. It seemed like a good way to make some cash while also not being tied down to a gig that I would feel guilty leaving when I found something I was actually looking for. About a month in, however, my chronic lower back issues were crying uncle and I told my friend I needed to move on. He told me to hold on and to talk to their head of purchasing as he was in need of another body for their department.
This is what led to a surprisingly swift rise that I could have never imagined. First, the interview with the head of purchasing was quite an odd setup. He clearly was not happy about having to talk to a “graphic designer” when he needed someone with a background in analytics. I pressed him with questions related to inventory tracking, ordering, and systems. He warmed up pretty quickly. He moved me over on a probationary basis and we went from there.
Not long after working in the purchasing department it became clear that there were some design needs that were not being met. Mainly in the area of packaging. The box they had created for retail stores needed some updating and the original one had been created by the box manufacturer itself. It lacked a designer’s touch. I gave my rendition to the team who eventually sent it up the line to the CEO, Mike. He loved it.
After a couple more side projects that expanded into online advertising and other areas, Mike decided he wanted to move me up to corporate so that I could work on more projects with him. These projects lead me to working closely with just about every department at the company from the shipping and import team on up to marketing and even accounting. It was a situation where all of my years of branching out and learning as much as I could about each area of operation was finally starting to pay off. I ended up managing our social and email campaigns which had marketing spends in the millions of dollars. It was crazy.
All of this is simply to say that even for someone who prides themselves on being able to look at trends and predict possible future outcomes, this was one I could have never imagined. You just never know where one random turn can lead you. The newest struggle has been to accept that I belong here, but that’s a whole other can of worms.
J. CURTIS CUSTOMS 