As you might already know, apart from designin’ I also have been lucky enough to teach courses in photography, video and digital media. This Spring 2012 semester I am teaching a course in the photography department at Tyler School of Art. Recently a conversation with one student evolved into a sort of round-table with the entire class about goals, graduate school, business taxes and the like. This conversation was sparked by students who are just a few weeks into their final semester in college. And they are asking themselves the inevitable question: What do I do next?

I can relate. Just 8 years ago I was a senior photography major at Tyler School of Art. Oh, I’m getting old. Take a look at “young, pensive Beth” in this polaroid from around 2003 or so. Deep.

Hearing my students express their concerns for the future reminded me of my own fears at that point in my life.

If you want to make art not only your passion but also your profession, prepare yourself for a truly fulfilling and challenging life. I decided to make being creative on a daily basis my number one priority. The creativity part came easy! It was all of the other stuff that required a bit of a learning curve. In the spirit of offering some advice to current art school students, here are five tips that I wish I had known when I was 22.

1. Don’t listen to your parents, you know better.

Mom, if you’re reading this on your iPad… sorry!

Let me preface this tip by saying that my parents have always been extremely supportive. For the longest time, they just didn’t “get it.” Throughout my four years of college, they expressed their valid concerns about what I would do with an art degree. They had similar concerns about my attending graduate school, but again they supported me and my decision.

The point here is that if you really want something, you need to go for it despite what most people will tell you. Many people will think it’s foolish to not want a full-time, nine-to-five office job. But those people do not know what’s right for you. If I had been swayed by parents’ fears, I would be living a very different life.

2. Get smart, ASAP.

Are you going to work as an independent contractor or set up an LLC? Do you need business insurance (tip: wedding photographers do)? What about your personal health insurance? There are lots of questions to ask, so educating yourself is extremely important.

As an independent contractor, you’ll need to figure out hourly or per project rates. Want to work as an independent contractor or start your own business in Philly? Well then you better start putting aside 30-40% of what you bring in for taxes. That’s right, you might owe up to 40% between federal, state and local city business tax. Get yourself an accountant, or at least go and meet with one (most accountants will set up a free consultation with you). Don’t forget to consider how taxes, insurance and other expenses might effect your net income. Take all of this into account when you determine your hourly rate!

3. Love what you do and make friends.

If you don’t love what you do then it’s probably not going to work out. You will need to perform so many roles from marketing associate to financial coordinator and everything in-between.

Along with loving what you do, you need to “make friends.” Seriously, start meeting people – surround yourself with people that are doing what you want to do. Set up meetings, go to lunch or treat someone to a coffee if it means you get to pick the brain of someone who is living the life you want. It’s so simple but it works; it just requires a strong personality. You can also join networking groups, local business associations and attend events and seminars that are related to your business. I am a member of the Young Professionals Network in Philadelphia and the yearly dues I pay are well worth the multitude of opportunities the organization provides to meet people. I also attend Philadelphia Interactive Marketing Association and Philly Build Guild networking events to meet fellow freelancers and potential clients.

4. Be Alec Baldwin.

I don’t mean 30 Rock Alec Baldwin. I am talking about Glengarry Glen Ross Alec Baldwin. If you haven’t seen this amazing 1992 film, get on that pronto. Although the film deals with real estate sales, Alec Baldwin’s classic phrase “A-B-C, Always Be Closing” is a mantra for everyone to live by. To be successful, you will need to eat, sleep and breathe your business.  As Blake (Baldwin’s character) says, it takes “brass balls” to sell real estate. I’d say it takes brass balls to run your own business!

On a side note, the salespeople that work with my Dad have compared him to Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross. This fact makes me extremely happy.

5. Don’t work for free.

The idea that a project will be “good for your portfolio” and therefore you should do it for free is a myth. If a potential client wants your talent and unique skill set, then they have to pay for it! How much money went into your education? How much debt are you now carrying on your back? Most people who strike out on their own to offer creative services take a lot of time to build the confidence necessary to demand the price they are worth. I know it was hard for me. But you need to assert yourself. Make that expensive education MEAN something! And don’t let a condescending tone from a potential client who assures you that their niece could do this project for $50 bully you into lowering your rate. Stay strong and determined, and you’ll find clients who appreciate your talent and hard work, and will pay accordingly.

One of the perks of working out of your home is getting to wear pajamas, although I love getting dressed up for business meetings. Actually I like getting dressed up for just about anything as my friends like to point out. In my fantasy, “going to the office” means entering the richly colored world of Mad Men. And in this world, every woman gets to be Joan P. Harris (nee Holloway).

Let me take a moment to point out that as an avid Mad Men fan I realize that while there are many fashion highs for the female characters, they are often accompanied by career lows. Back to the wardrobe… the Mad Men era is my dream time period for fashion. Also, part of the fantasy is getting to have Christina Hendrick’s amazing body.

To me, there is nothing greater than a fabulous dress and a pair of pumps. As an amateur seamstress (thanks to my BFF who taught me the basics), I love to make skirts and dresses. I found the perfect Joanie-inspired pattern from Butterick. The best part about the pattern is that it’s a “Fast & Easy” pattern – perfect for this somewhat impatient seamstress!

My favorite element of the dress is the collar option which definitely adds the vintage flair or “the Joanie element” as I will call it. The BFF and I set off to Philly’s Fabric Row located on South 4th Street which is chocked full of amazing textiles. Be careful while browsing as the price per yard of fabric in this area of this city is often a bit more expensive than what you might find in Jo-Ann’s.

I had to scan the fabric I ended up using for the dress (check it out below). I guess it’s a wool of some sort… I don’t really know! But it’s gorgeous. The blend of orange, yellow, pink and a bit of lime green makes for a fantastic palette. I didn’t cut the fabric for the longest time because I was nervous about screwing up… and because this was the most expensive fabric I’d ever worked with (about $30/yard).

And voilà! My very own Joan Holloway dress! What do you think? I love it! Now I just need a business meeting to attend…

Are you interested in learning to sew? It’s really not that difficult to get started. Decent sewing machines can cost about $150-200 (I have a Brother machine that I bought from Overstock.com). Vogue, Butterick and McCall’s all carry great “easy” patterns that are perfect for beginners.

Spool on South Street offers a 2-session “Learn to Sew” class for only $52! All of the materials are included and you get to use their machines – what have you got to lose?

Of all my dork-level obsessions, music is the first and foremost. Ever since early childhood, I have voraciously devoured every record I could get my hands on. After years of refining lists, analyzing songs, memorizing liner notes, and most importantly, making mixes, it came time for one of the most important mixtapes in a man’s life: the Wedding Mix.

As Rob Gordon tells us in High Fidelity, “the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many dos and don’ts. First of all you’re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.” We knew early on that we would make a mix for our wedding guests to receive on the Big Day. We would compile our favorite love songs, tunes that appeared throughout our courtship and ended up on several Valentines, birthday and anniversary mixes. A melange of old and new, featuring standards, Doo Wop (and Hair Band) ballads and indie anthems. But as always, we needed to go that extra mile. So why not design four alternate covers and record a few of the songs ourselves?

One of my favorite “art projects” from when I first started learning how to use Photoshop was re-creating the look of classic record sleeves, complete with the aging marks they’ve earned through the years, as A Christmas Present from Beth & Andy! shows. For our Wedding Mix, I though we should re-create some classic duet sleeves. Our wonderful friend and Beth’s colleague (and dare I say mentor?!) Sam Fritch offered to do a photo shoot at his studio for all of our covers, to be photoshopped later.

The first that came to my mind was Dylan’s Freewheelin’. Even though it’s not a duet record, the image was too iconic to pass up.

Beth was thrilled with her coat choice!

Using a Philadelphian winter picture (“Snow on League Street,” thanks Brian Biggs!), Beth photoshopped us right on in, added the film coloring, aging and Franklin Gothic font to reproduce the cover:

One of Beth’s favorite films is What’s Love Got To Do With It, which becomes obvious the umpteenth time one hears her quote it (“Five… Dollar… Fine.”). I knew we had an incredible cover to work with in my record collection: Workin’ Together.

For this one, Sam took what was our favorite photo of the day:

I handled the photoshopping on this one. It only needed some earth tones, a little subtle texture, aging and the ICBM SS-20 font (the closest match I could find) to recreate Ike & Tina:

Our third cover was photographed by Beth at Penn Treaty Park when we realized our ordering configuration for the CDs would be for two sets, each containing a cover on each side. It was our fourth concept, left out when we thought there would be only three covers. We’re both huge Johnny & June Carter Cash fans and wanted to use one of their more playful album sleeves:

Beth really captured the spirit of the sleeve in her re-imagining:

For our final cover, I thought it would be fun if we could do Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, with Beth playing all three sisters. I wasn’t even sure if there was an album featuring all of them on the sleeve, but sure enough we found what we were looking for:

Sam took pictures of the both of us separately, with Beth changing up her poses for the three sisters.

As I went about photoshopping this sleeve, I realized that Beth’s hair pulled up and hidden wasn’t going to cut it. Luckily, I was able to find a great higher-resolutuon picture of the Andrews Sisters to “borrow” their hair, and then got a little help from the beautiful Lauren Bacall when one didn’t work:

In the end, with the hair transplants, age filtering and Bing’s pipe addition, i think this cover stands as some of my finest Photoshop work to date:

With the album covers complete, it was time to record covers of some of our favorite love songs. We decided on six special selections:

• The New Pornographers’ “Challengers,” a song very special to us when we started dating,
• “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” in honor of our love of the Brill Building era, done in the style of Carole King’s recording off of Tapestry,
• two classics, “You Belong To Me” (a song I discovered through Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters’ lovely rendition in The Jerk) and “Blue Skies” (a tune we sing out of our mutual love of White Christmas), both done with the arrangements recorded by husband-and-wife musicians Devon Sproule and Paul Curreri on their highly recommended set of Valentines Day EPs,
• “I’m On Fire,” the Bruce Springsteen scorcher, also based on a Sproule/Curreri arrangement, and
• “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” one of Beth’s favorite Whitney Houston tunes done with a sad-boy Indie arrangement by me.

The songs were recorded over two weeks in our office in Fishtown with nothing but my MacBook Pro, GarageBand (thank you Steve Jobs) and one condenser microphone. Keeping out the sounds of the neighborhood from our very much non-soundproofed apartment was a constant struggle, as was learning a lot about recording and GarageBand as I went. Luckily, my Fender Strat and Hot Rod Deluxe amp did a lot of the heavy lifting for me.

We hope you enjoy our little Wedding Record! Check it out:

When Beth & I first talked about tying the ol’ knot, there were certain aspects of our personalities and tastes we knew we wanted to include in our event (e.g., we knew it should certainly be “an Event”). One of the first tastes we giddily discussed was beer.

As some of my family and friends know, I was a virtual mess before Beth picked me up and brushed me off, so to speak. She used her powers of Keen Fashion Sense to zap some decent clothes onto my person and recommend a stylist. She also refined my liquid pallet, delivering me from the watery, flavorless wasteland of Miller Lite and into richer brews, gradually from Blue Moon to Hoegaarden and then Walt Wit and DreamWeaver. Now I wouldn’t say that I have the chops to claim the title “Beer Snob,” but I’m certainly on my way.

During my transformation, two of my best friends were tinkering in their basement labs and concocting beer recipes. When they heard about my proposal, they had one hell of an idea: they would prepare a nuptial ale for our festivities.

Beth and I discussed some beer theme ideas and decided to name the proto-brew GingerBury Ale, a combination derived from my red hair and her homophonic last name.

Our two brewmasters, Jay “Hype Man” Slowik and Dan “The Man” Friel, joined forces under the Friel-conceived FancyPants Brews and decided that, true to its name, their nuptial ale would incorporate ginger and cranberries. Their trial brewing run was a huge success, yielding a rich, weizenbock-styled beer. When we all sampled it, Beth and I immediately knew that our wedding would reign supreme.

As I’m sure you’ve gathered from our previous wedding posts, we push all of our ideas to the extreme (Doritos-style son!), so simply having this beer available at the wedding wouldn’t be enough – we had to dress it up.

For logo inspiration, I turned to Ian Brignell’s ultra-classy redesign of Miller High Life (even as an aspiring beer snob, I know full-well that it’s The Champagne of Beers) as well as Dan Becker and Lance Wilson’s excellent photo collection Beer: A Genuine Collection of Cans (check out their Flickr here).

Incorporating my favorite label elements of circular series, slanted type, etched shadow strokes and some color inspiration from Philadelphia Brewing Company’s Kenzinger, I 23-skidooed the look of GingerBury Ale.

Everyone agreed that the look fit the brew. The logo also looked dang sleek in black & white, so we figured “let’s get our wedding guests some GingerBury pint glasses to enjoy their beer in!” Thanks to the quick and top-notch facilitation by local company Penn Graphic, we had our glasses in no time!

After FancyPants spent some Beatles-fueled sessions bottling, I spent a few days inhaling photo mount spray fumes to dress up our toasting beer.

This beery wedding idea couldn’t have come to a better fruition, and we owe a lot of thanks to Dan and Jay at FancyPants Brews.

Oh, did we forget to mention they rock out as well? More on that when our wedding series gets to the BlineGowan Sound! But next up will be Beth & Andy’s Wedding Record! Stay tuned.