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Just thought I'd do a quick whip around the world and see if anyone else is experiencing a slow down in work. It seems some design houses in Sydney and Melbourne finding it a bit tough...lucky for them the porn industry is thriving and keeping them afloat :). Anyway, howz business in your knick of the woods?
flash is still the buzzword in denver... everyone seems to be updating their sites, but the general consensus on the internet is still one of hesitation imho...
it's nothing i'm very worried about, though :) in fact, i was expecting the slowdown to occur sooner than it did
It has bees slow around newyear but it has been a great spring , lots of new firms that wants a update and new look . This is normal in Norway . We are so sleepy in the winterdarknes .
Nice to see you again Mr W :)
[Edited by GmF on 04-28-2001 at 11:13 AM]
I think quite a few design/web firms in the US have been laying people off in the last month or so. MarchFirst, I believe, laid off close to 1,000 workers if not more.
I had a conversation about this with someone not long ago, and we agreed that the US economy has much to do with it-when people aren't making money and the stock market is down, they're putting less into their marketing budgets which in turn means less spent on all the bells and whistles of interactive marketing, advertising, Internet sites, Internet advertising, multimedia productions, etc.
(hard to believe that's not a run-on sentance. :D )
I guess that's just the ebb and flow of the market. It's nothing new but it's something that is putting a bit of a hold on an industry that for the past two years has experienced it's biggest growth and it's best work yet.
So whose to blame then?
mg33
the town i live in is a little slow on the uptake, so flash it really just starting to come in. as far as i know there's only two designers in town who really do flash. Me and another guy i work with during the day. :D
I am working on a new site for my employer now!! :D Work was slow around xmas time, but is getting busy now. Almost too busy.
In the US, a lot of analysts were saying that we were going into a deep recession. I heard a report that says something different entirely. Stock prices are up. That's a good thing!!
flea, stock prices in the US are up? since when? where?
They may be up a bit from where they've been in the past month, but they're not "up" in terms of where they were 6 months ago. All the dot.coms are dropping because of the stock market. You should have been in my Communication Technology class this past Monday night. We've all had to choose technology companies that are publically traded and follow their stock over the course of the class. (Roughly late January-early April) Many of the groups presenting Monday (companies like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Yahoo, tons of shopping sites, I did Macromedia) showed a considerable drop in stocks over that time period that closely matched the falling stock market. So then Greenspan lowers the interest rate half a percent and that's supposed to change it all.
I don't doubt that it will rebound-it's just nowhere close to the levels it was enjoying about 6 months ago. You couldn't help but notice every day on the news that it was topping out at record levels-no one ever though in the 90's that it would pass 10,000 and I believe we've passed 12,000 in the last year. I don't really follow this stuff, but I read over an hour and a half of news every day so I see what goes on. Whereas 6 months ago it was all about how high it would go, now it's about how low it might go and how fast people can sell of their stocks to avoid taking a loss.
mg33
The market is up as of this morning, not over all but from yesterdays earnings report. Steve
I meant up, generally. That they are moving in an upwards direction. Things were looking bleak for a while. For my employer http://www.EMC.com (EMC on the NYSE) the 52 week high is 104$. We were down to 25$ two weeks ago!! People here were going crazy. We are not a .com company, but provide storage to most (literally about 90%) of the data storage for most internet companies (yahoo, amazon, ebay, etc.)
Cool man, must be an interesting job.
I think (based on some of our replies) that the word is "fluctuate" in relation to what the market does. One day it's great, the next day people are pulling their hair out. I'm SO GLAD I'm not involved in that stuff, yet...
mg33
marchFirst is going under. they let go of their VC arm of the company and haven't paid any vendors in over 8 weeks now.Quote:
Originally posted by mg33
I think quite a few design/web firms in the US have been laying people off in the last month or so. MarchFirst, I believe, laid off close to 1,000 workers if not more.
best work yet.
?
mg33
hi Scills -- similar probs here in the UK
Take Razorfish for example, they sacked overall 800 ppl - The latest trend is of design agencies cutting down and reducing expenditure to make sure they can carry out being independent.
Also the hype is over ..prety much. Not everyone can apply now and say 'Im a web designer'.. they standards are much higher, creative directors expect to see high quality stuff and portfolios and samples of work that were done ideally for their comeptitors.
Which makes things harder for freelancers - noticed most of my friends are now looking for full-time jobs within big agencies and corps and cant demand the high fees they were used to for web design .
My dep is doing fairly well , we're part of a big corp and they always recover the losses elsewhere. so it hasnt affected us as much...but we're feeling the quakes at the moment
A
Aria-and I bet the are looking more and more for people with degrees over people without out them. Right?
Lucky me, I'm graduating in three weeks! Well, it's nothing new. I know a bit about how this all works, and the strength of having a degree and having a large range of knowledge about the field/major you've studied is more ammo for anyone to get jobs that people without degrees can get.
mg33
Dot.coms were mostly hype anyway. Everyone with a computer for awhile opened a dot.com. Then the speculators jumped in and pumped cash into ideas that really had little basis in reality. Now reality has caught up with them and the companies that have a sound basis are catching some of the backlash. Let's face it, a lot of the dot.coms went south long before the market took it's dump. What I wouldn't give to have some cash to hit the market right now. Just do a track of the market over the past 25 years. A little sound investing 25 years ago and you would be really cool at this point. The economy does this regularly. We have seen the longest and strongest economic growth ever over the past 8 years and the economy is just balancing itself.
things are bad here in Chicago, especially for designers. Chicago is too business-oriented anyway to have ever cared much about design (a lot of old business that do things old-businesses-way; I've turned down my share of jobs because they were asking me to wear ties, shave every day, and cut my long hair -- me, a flash designer). Even when things were good, it was mostly for developers, so now that things are turning South it's designers that got kicked first.
It's bad enough that I'm leaving Chicago.
LuxFX,
Man, you make it sound like dressing nice is terrible! :D
I mean, just because you do Flash doesn't mean you have to not dress nice.
I dress very nice when I want to, I'm very into fashion and I do what I can to not look like the rest of the crowd that wears all the latest mainstream fads and whatnot. Geez, I've had hour long conversations with a few girls about how I say I don't care what anyone things about things I do, yet I make an effort to look sharp and classy-what's that about? (the clash of the two things-not caring/caring)
Anyhow, that's a whole different conversation.
I'm going to a job fair in the morning, many creative and advertising firms as well as interactive companies will be there. Trust me I'll be dressed to a T because that's what they expect. Not wearing a tie because I think that would be a little overstated for a Saturday job fair. I'm graduating in barely three weeks with a BA in Advertising and a Minor in Architecture, the types of jobs I'm going after aren't looking for people that are unkept and the like.
All I'm saying is if you feel you can't give up your look, that's your choice. But limiting yourself to jobs that will let you dress the way you prefer (which sounds like a beard, long hair, jeans and t-shirts-nothing wrong with that BTW) kind of shuts you out of possible oppurtunities.
mg33
Sounds like we have a bit of a mixed bag, in any event I am sure any downturn will be short lived. I also noticed a few comments about MarchFirst and RazorFish but no one should pay much attention to them as their deals went like this.
1. Friend to M1st or RF exec: "Hey, How about you invest 1 or 2 million in my new dotcom company/idea for 19.9%.
2. Exec : "Yeah, sure! We will give you $2 mill worth of professional services.
3. M1/RF corporate books $2 mill revenue and a $2 mill asset.
4. New dotcomm shops around other VCs noting M1/RF involvement... raises $10million.
5. Valuations in both companies go berzerk during dotcom mania.
6. Dotcoms go broke during tech wreck, M1 files for Chapter 11 as the revenue they reported never actually existed.
7. Razorfish will go the same way unless they can "divest" all their staff doing "non chargable" work and have enough cash to turn it around....at best 50/50.
8. The end.
same here in SoCal- worked at 2 dotcoms in the past 3 years- they are both hanging on by skeleton crews.. most of my coworkers are scrambling for anything... contract work flow for me at least is still pretty strong, but Im getting weirder and weirder offers- one guitar website offered to pay me entirely in guitars! fine by me...Quote:
creative directors expect to see high quality stuff ...noticed most of my friends are now looking for full-time jobs...
A [/B]
the truth is : yes! There re a few notable exceptions and Ive seen some designers out there who ve never been to artschool and their stuff can blow you away. They tend to get hitched by small independent agencies who do some pretty original stuff (My big fave : kerb in Brighton :D)Quote:
Originally posted by mg33
Aria-and I bet the are looking more and more for people with degrees over people without out them. Right?
mg33
its one of those places where corps go to commission them to design their site and the CE0 (under 30) turns up at the meetting late.. and asks everyone: ''Have u guys seen my skateboard yet' ?:D
theyre doing well and I really dig their stuff but yeah..if youre going to freelance and go out there a good degree is a huge plus!! :)
A
Hey mate,Quote:
Originally posted by GmF
Nice to to you again Mr W :)
Norway seems like a kick ass place, I'm coming for beers with you next time I'm in Europe :)
Great :)
yep, very slow.. dieing from boredem
Personally, since my last company shut down (iCAST) - I became a Flash Ronin and have been busier than I have ever been! I can't say the same for a lot of my friends in Boston though - and I honestly feel for them and wish them the best of luck!
I dunno - if you ask me - true designers are not having as much trouble finding gigs in the Boston area. The people having trouble are the people that were hired to do something only the dotcom boom would support - jobs that just didn't make much sense.
In response to other topics mentioned earlier:
Dress -- I dunno, I hated the shirt and tie dress code at one of my old companies. iCASTs dress code was literally "nothing too revealing", but I'd still put an effort in to look decent because hey, cute women worked there - and I like clothes! It's always better to be overdressed than underdressed!
Art School -- I graduted from a state college with a degree in Marketing. I have had trouble getting the foot in the door without the "BFA from RISD", but after awhile - your work speaks more than any education would. I've met some amazing designers that have impressed the crap outta me. Only one of them went to a serious art-school...
-A02
DN will have an article on the "web recession"
DN will have an article on the web-recession