Interview with Jake Mathew a freelance motion designer freelancing in the cicago area.

How did you get into your first job in the industry?

Landing my very first motion graphics job was difficult. A lot of students want to become motion graphic designers so there was a lot of competition. It is hard to get a job without a demo reel. But, it is hard to have a demo reel without working any jobs. It was a Catch-22 situation.

So in order to start building up a portfolio of work,  I treated every class project and assignment as a potential spot for my reel. After about a year of grad school, I had enough work to create a 30 second demo reel that I could send to companies. Thirty seconds may sound really short, but I made sure to include only my BEST work.

I landed a job as a motion graphic designer at a local post production company. I spent my final year of grad school working there between classes. The types of projects I worked on at that company were just local and regional TV commercials.

Jakes work:

Tell me a bit about where you work and what they specialize in. Are you at a studio? Freelance?

After I finished grad school, I got a job as a motion designer for the TV channel, Current TV. While a lot of people are not familiar with Current, they have a really talented in-house graphics department and I learned a lot during the 2 years I worked there. After Current TV, I moved to Chicago and have been freelancing at post-houses around the city.

How long have you been in the industry?

About 6 years.

What software do you use?

I use the Adobe Creative Suite and Maxon Cinema 4D for everything I do.

Advice Jake Mathews had to say about getting started and where to focus attention in your work:

While you are in school, take courses that will improve your design-sense. Learn about typography, color theory, composition. Good design never goes out of style.

Build a solid demo reel. Take your best class work and place a few seconds into it. If you have any freelance projects or personal projects that you are proud of, use that. Get a nice web portfolio together. Sending a web link to your demo reel to companies is going to be the way you get a job. Don’t worry about creating a DVD as most companies prefer viewing it on the web so they can easily email it around or bookmark it if they like it. Quicktime files are preferred.

Each year, you should be a better designer than you were the year before. If you stop improving, change something.