The Lettering List 004 - Getting Off-Topic
Hello!
Welcome to the fourth edition of The Lettering List! Four already! That means it's been two months since I started this, which is wildly upsetting for my inner sense of time, my hairline, my... well, everything, really. Thanks for sticking with me up to this point, hopefully another little dive down the lettering rabbit hole won't turn you off. But before we get there, here's a little collection of lettering tidbits from the past few weeks:
Fun, right? Bit of a silly job in all honesty, but there we go. You gotta read the words in the comics, I guess.
I was thinking about writing something clever and introspective about the art of lettering (or try, anyway), but the thing that's been on my mind lately is the practicalities of freelancing more generally. We're getting close to my eighth year doing full-time lettering work, and my thirteenth year as a freelancer more generally. There are times when it's difficult, and times when it's easy, and times when you have to kind of talk yourself into remembering why you picked to this rather than a proper job where someone pays you for your holidays and sick days and everything else. It's a strange rollercoaster where you are your own boss, which (in my experience) means that you're a lot harsher and stricter on yourself than another boss might be. But it also means you understand very acutely on the days when things don't go as well as they could.
And working in comics is a very personable job, you're constantly in contact with your collaborators and your editors, constantly at various stages across tonnes and tonnes of different projects (I've worked on about 22 things this month already in various stages, many with different editors and creators). But it's also a lot of administrative work. Sending invoices, logging jobs, keeping on track of dates and deadlines and meetings, and also being able to unwind afterwards, to stop working at a reasonable hour and be able to relax with your spouse or friends or pets or whatever.
I say all this knowing that what I'm describing is ultimately just life, right? We're all going through the same thing, balancing the same things, and I'm also in a position where I get to do this very fun thing every day, too. But I guess I'm in a reflective mood, and I had spoken to someone recently about what it's like to be on your own, so to speak, as a freelancer. And while everyone's experiences are specific, I wanted to try and pass on a few things to consider if you're just starting out doing this, or you want to. Or, you just want some examples of reasons to not do it!
The biggest bit of advice I can give is to understand the value of your time. This is really difficult, and it's also a bit abstract, but day-by-day it becomes clearer that it's the one thing you'll never be able to get back. It's all you've got, really, and it's ticking by every second. When I started out, I got some great advice, which was to figure out how much money you wanted to earn in a year. Be realistic, obviously, but if you get a sense of what you think you'd be happy to earn, then work out how many days you want to work over the year. Divide that by the money, and it gives you your day rate. That's the dream, ideal scenario of how much money you need to make every day you work to live the life you want. Now, look, my first try of that exercise left me needing a million pounds in one day, so it's not ideal, but it's a good starting point to understand how to make freelancing work for you. And I've spoken to a lot of people (myself included) who have come to realise that the thing they love is not necessarily the best use of their time in making that above maths become reality. Sometimes the field you want to work in will just not pay you the money you want it to. That's life. But it's good to get a sense of what you want from it before you begin.
I don't want this to run so long, and I could probably write about this all day, but the other bit of advice I can give about freelancing revolves around the same idea. You know how much you need to work for your goal, but it's good to learn how much you need to not work, too. This is much harder, because it's almost the inverse of the above equation. You can't assign a monetary value to this one (you can, but it'd be a bad idea in my mind). Your own time is a commodity in its own right, and it's much harder to assign how much a week off is worth to your sense of self, to your creativity, to your health. That's the most common thing I've heard other freelancers say, and it's a hard lesson to learn late, but it's often harder to put it into practise early.
So that's what's been on my mind the past few weeks. Decide how much time you need to work, and decide how much time you need to not work. Probably somewhere in the middle is the reality.
What's this got to do with The Lettering List? As you may know if you're reading this, I created and co-edited a magazine called PanelxPanel (panelxpanel.gumroad.com) for six years, and I think I'm just relearning what it is to have spare time after the magazine went on hiatus earlier this year. As I say, lessons sometimes come a little late, but it's been good to rediscover some of the things that I had stopped doing (there's a new Strip Panel Naked episode out at YouTube.com/StripPanelNaked, for instance).
Well, we're really running long this time, and I've veered us right off theme, too. Next time we'll get back to the lettering talk, for sure.
Hass
Comics featured in the Lettering List this edition: Midlife, Beneath the Trees, Sins of the Salton Sea, The Miracles, What's the Furthest Place from Here?, [Unnanounced Project] and, yep, [Unnanounced Project].
Sneaky plug for my upcoming graphic novel, THE UNLIKELY STORY OF FELIX & MACABBER - created with Juni Ba. It's available to pre-order now here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unlikely-Story-Felix-Macabber/dp/1506738222