Lessons Learned: A Celebration of a 30-Year Disney Career
As a child living in Panama, I knew about Disney from the classic animated films, the World of Color on television, and when Disney on Parade or Disney on Ice would come to visit Panama City. My first exposure to the Disney parks took place in 1976 at the age of 12. I was so captivated by the creativity and storytelling, I often wondered what it would feel like to work for Disney, but living in a completely different country, it was only a very distant and unlikely fantasy.
In 1994, that dream became a reality when I got hired at Disney as a Resort Sales Agent. Shortly thereafter, I transitioned to the creative area where I have spent most of my career. On November 20, 2024, I will be celebrating my 30th work anniversary with The Walt Disney Company. This long journey has taken me to jobs in both Florida and California, working for feature animation, ESPN, Partners FCU, Sales, WDI, DCL, and my present job at Publishing.
During all these years, I have learned many lessons about creativity, life, and about people. As this milestone anniversary approaches, I would like to share some personal lessons that helped me become the person and professional that I am today.
Feedback is a gift. I have met many artists/designers that cannot or do not know how to detach feedback from the emotions they put into their work. I was one of them. One should feel lucky to work with people that give feedback and know how to deliver it. They are doing you a favor, even though you may not think of it that way at that very moment. It helps to analyze the essence of the feedback, not the words or the way it is presented. While it is easier said than done, not taking design feedback personally will help you in the end. Be proactive and ask for feedback if you are not getting it.
Build Trusting Relationships. This is such an important trait. Building trust encompasses repeated positive and authentic experiences with anyone you encounter. Build a network of people that support and guide you and pass it on to others as well. Be proactive to connect with your contacts all the time even if you don’t work with them any longer.
Never forget the ethical rules of design. I don’t think I need to explain this one. Don’t steal and always work with an objective mind. Remember and use all the elements and devices of design. This should be part of your innate creative DNA.
Nothing is permanent. While we say that we have a permanent job, it’s only a moment in time. You have sure seen the news about so many people getting laid off due to many companies cutbacks. These days it is more important than ever to keep your two feet on the ground to this reality and to have a plan B, just in case.
Change is inevitable. If you work or have worked at Disney or many other forward thinking companies, you know well that they are always ever-changing. After all, life is about change as it is necessary to evolve. Embracing the mindset that things will be different, hopefully for the best, will make it easier for you to welcome that change.
Make mistakes. Don't feel bad when you make a mistake. You cannot evolve if you do not make them. Don’t make the same mistakes twice, learn from them. Each mistake is a learning prospect to become better at who you are and what you do.
Take risks. I will never forget a conversation I had with my grandmother many years ago. She told me to follow my dreams even if there are risks involved. Of course, she was talking about making calculated and smart risks because she didn’t want me to get to her age and wonder why I didn’t follow my dreams.
Never stop learning or finding ways to get inspired. For designers or artists alike, being exposed to other areas of the creative world is an important asset to build your inspiration boards when working on different projects. I look at what fashion, architecture, and interior design are doing so that I can help evolve design. Check out what other artists and colleagues are doing, especially on social media. Visit museums and art galleries to expose yourself to new creative directions and incorporate them in your work.
Update your portfolio regularly. This is important for anyone looking to grow in their design careers. I like to update sections of my portfolio at a time instead of doing an overall update which can be time consuming. Small updates keep the work fresh on your book or website. Be sensible when choosing what to show (Don't show everything or repetitive work). Writing a blog is also quite helpful to show your skills as storyteller.
Keep your resume updated. Your resume shouldn’t be more than one page. It needs to be concise and to the point. For designers, a good layout in your resume is incredibly important to show as part of your design skills.
The workplace is not a playground. I am a friendly person at work but the reality is that not everyone is. Regardless of the reasons, remember that at work you are hired to do a job first. While it is true we can make incredible friendships at work, not everyone wants to make friends at work.
Don’t let anyone underestimate your talent or self-worth. Never let toxic so called 'leaders' or anyone else influence negatively how you feel about yourself or your work. They do this because they lack your talent in addition to other issues I won't get into here. I believe it is true that people don’t leave their jobs, they leave their bosses. I experienced this first-hand. It does not feel very good working for someone that belittles others so they can feel better about themselves. My approach is to document everything and never sink to their level by always acting professionally. Regardless of the situation you might be in, always show up to work and do your best work because not doing so will only jeopardize your reputation, which is what narcissists, egotistical, and megalomaniac leaders hope for, so they can have an excuse to get rid of you.
Don’t be an A--hole. A so called 'manager' I was unfortunate to work for once told me that I smiled too much, and people thought I was too nice. Of course, he wasn’t very nice to anyone who wasn’t kissing his behind and he was too full of himself to notice that he wasn’t liked by anyone either. After all he had the title and thought he could treat others any way he wanted. He thought to succeed in life people needed to be just like him. I told him that I smiled because I truly loved working with people and doing my job. I always smiled at him as well, because I knew deep inside, he was a miserable person. He was eventually let go. This also goes for those leaders of leaders that endorse the behavior or look the other way. They are as guilty and in my book they don't belong leading people or organizations.
Mentor others. There is no greater satisfaction than sharing your talent and lessons learned in life with others. During my career at Disney, I have had the opportunity to mentor work colleagues and college students starting their creative journeys. Sign up for your local AIGA or check in with the company diversity teams since many also support mentorship programs. Mentoring to me also means helping your work colleagues when they need your advice or need someone to listen.
Don't give up. During my career, I found myself feeling down when I didn't get a job offer. This is a normal feeling and know it is not personal. Take the time after to assess what you need to work on to get the job you want. If you can, ask the hiring leader what you could have done or missing in your portfolio to get hired. Be proactive and look at it as a learning opportunity. And more importantly, don't give up, I was turned down many times before I was hired for the right job.
Great design requires time. There is a perception among many people that it is easy to design. If design was so easy, more people would do it. Design/creative time needs to be part of any strategy, it should never be rushed. I’ve met teams where their leadership refuse or avoid this important aspect of successful design causing an unhealthy environment where everything is a last-minute request. This is not conducive to good design and adds to low morale in the creative studio. There is no excuse about it. Showing the appropriate respect to creatives by thoughtful planning creates a healthy work environment where everyone wins. And as I always say, marketers can have great ideas, but without design, those are just ideas. Designers make those ideas a reality; give them the time they need to make that magic happen.
Be a voice, not an echo. I saw this inspirational message on Instagram the other day and it stuck with me. This is something I always keep in mind when I am designing. While we must work within budgets and brand limitations, we can always expand the horizons of design by coming up with new and unexpected ways to communicate visually. An inventive designer does this by breaking the mold and trying new things. That is a way we can create our own individual voices and move design forward.
If you have read through the whole list, thank you for staying with me until the end. I would love to hear your feedback or if you have other traits you can think of, feel free to leave a response.
Designing a bank deposit campaign
If you work for a bank or credit union creative team, you know exactly how I have feel when the word "Deposits" comes up. It's like getting an automatic writer's block, in this case a designer's block. Creating marketing for a product as bland and boring as a "Deposit" is perhaps the biggest challenge for visual designers because of the lack of visual queues we can connect to the word "Deposit", especially if we are trying to go for the unconventional. Producing a unique design and successful creative while communicating the strategic needs of our brand is even more difficult. Most banks usually highlight the rates in big numbers. I am sure you have seen those everywhere. We've also done that, to be exact it was last year, but we went a little more unique by creating the numbers out of US coins. It took quite a while to create the graphics but the result was very successful.
2015 Deposit Campaign Example
For this year's campaign we wanted to do something different and more unconventional. We did a brainstorm session where our fantastic writer and I started to play with words that we could connect to the effort, such as "Power Up", "Charge Up", "Electrified" came up. From those words I quickly came up with two ideas to pitch. For the first idea, I wanted to utilize the wealth of creativity that our company has to offer, and in particular the film Monsters, Inc. came to mind. My idea was to show the scream canisters but here used as canisters where people keep their money. For the second idea, I pitched the visual of a battery charger (such as a jumper cable) where the money is getting charged. After the meeting, I began creating concepts for both pitches since I had a little time to work on this project. The canister idea was interesting but when I went to design concepts for it, I quickly realized that it was going to be difficult to explain what the canister had to do with the idea of charging the money. For the second idea, I was able to find a perfect image on iStockphoto of jumper cables charging dollar bills. The image is exactly what I was looking for but it was not going to be enough to be convincing and engaging. I quickly looked for other images or sparks and electrical charges and was able to find some good choices that would work well for the project. Finally, I decided to use an image of metal texture for the background that closely matched our brand style. For typefaces, I decided to use a newly released modern clean font, something that no one has seen before in order to focus on a more fresh and new experience. I found a good font called Sullivan that came in three different versions: Regular, fill and bevel. I went to work once I had all my assets.
My design process is very internal. I am able to get ideas in the brainstorming process and layout the elements in my head. I remember when I started to work as a designer, I sketched everything. Mostly they were blocks in a page to help me place the main elements of the composition. This helped me better visualize to the point that today it is a completely mental process. I can see visuals in my mind, and slowly create a full picture of what the design will look like before it is fully completed, often before the end of the creative session. I know when I do not fully understand a project because I usually have a hard time visualizing it in my head, and that is when I ask a lot of questions.
Once I had all my graphic elements for this project, I started in Photoshop to color manage the image of the money with the jumper cables because the money didn't appear as colorful or as lively as I originally wanted. I proceeded to mask the image from the white space. Next, I pulled elements from the vector image that would work well in the space. For visual clarity, I was conscious to keep the money clear from the sparks and electrical charge effects while still showing the effect across both positive and negative sides. I actually ended up rounding some of the effects in order to better frame the electrical charges around the money. Finally, I added the sparks right where the metal connected to the money. Since the raster image of the spark was dark enough, I was able to apply a screen effect to the layer to remove the black space from the photo. I added the spark on each connector.
Completed Print Full Page Ad.
After the effects, I added the background and played around with drop shadows to give the design more depth. Once the design was completed in Photoshop, I moved on to InDesign to lay out the copy. Normally, I will do a preliminary headline in the same Photoshop art file for several reasons. First, I can align where the headline will go in the InDesign workspace, and secondly, it may give me more opportunities to be creative by adding effects to the headlines, something that is not possible in InDesign. For this particular project, I ended up including the headline in the Photoshop file in order to give the design even more depth. The body copy, call to action, logo, tag line and disclosures were placed in InDesign and the composition was complete.
In-Branch Horizontal Digital Slide
For this project, we created elements for the web and for our in-branch digital posters. We had motion graphics created that took full advantage of the sparks and electrical charge effects on the money.