• Store
  • Design Jobs
  • Firms
  • Awards
  • Conference
e

Core77

Sign In / Join Now;
e
  • Topics
    • Product Design
    • Process
    • Technology
    • Lifestyle
    • Business
    • News
    • Furniture
    • Tools
    • Transportation
    • Education
    • Footwear
    • Impact
    • Reference
    • Video
  • Features
    • Features
    • Yo! C77 Sketch
    • Photo Galleries
    • Bizarre Inventions
    • Design Calendar
    • Weekly Maker's Roundup
    • DiResta's Cut
    • Industrial Design Tips
    • Hand Tool School
    • Tools & Craft
    • Design Experience that Matters
  • Shopping Guide
  • Projects
    • Projects
    • Firm Projects
    • Reader Projects
  • Forums
    • Forums
    • General Discussion
    • Students & Schools
    • Design Employment
    • Sketching
    • Software & Technology
    • All Forums
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • About
    • Contact
    • Advertise

True I.D. Stories #11: No Fame, No Fortune, but a Job Lead at Liberace Batcopters

By Rain Noe - Oct 08, 2013

  • Join Core77 Today
  • Submit your projects for publication
  • }Favorite This
  • Y1
  • m1
  • U1
  • [1
  • X1
  • H1
  • 4 Comments
hesge hesge

This is a true story. Descriptions of companies, clients, schools, projects, and designers may be altered and anonymized to protect the innocent.

Editor: This True I.D. Story comes to us from "Family Man," who spots a rather unusual ID job listing and hopes he can chase it down for the betterment of his family. With a wife and two young children to support, the stakes are higher than for you single folk; can he pull it off?


I'm not bragging, but the fact is I designed [something that became pretty famous]. And I know a lot of you designers are in the same boat and did something similar, but never got any credit for it, like I didn't.

You wouldn't think the designer of [famous object] would be making just $40,000 a year, as many units as that damned thing sold. On top of that, as this story begins I had [famous object] to my credit, two degrees in Industrial Design, both a Bachelors and a Masters, and four years of work experience, yet I found myself an underpaid Senior Designer cranking out consumer products at a fairly mediocre company. I can't tell you what I was designing, or where we were located, or you'll figure it out; but let's just say the weather there was hot and if you had children in the '90s, chances are high you used something I designed.

Now I noticed that all of these True I.D. Stories have come from single guys, so my story's a little different. The reason I could afford to have a lousy $40,000-a-year salary in a major U.S. city is because my wife made more than that. We had a four-year-old son and a newborn (also a boy) just eleven months old at the time that this story starts. Between the two of us we made just about six figures, and that was enough to get us a 1,400-square-foot house just outside the city that was about $150,000.

We were comfortable, and more importantly, my wife's career was fast-tracked. All we had to do was wait for a few years, and then something in my wife's career was scheduled to happen, and then we'd have a lot more money. So all we had to do was sit tight. I could stomach designing [certain category of unexciting consumer products] for another four years because I had my eye on the prize, and I knew we'd be able to provide a financially secure future for our two boys.

Well, all of that changed when we took a little vacation.It wasn't a vacation exactly; as part of my wife's job she routinely had to visit [certain type of institution] and I usually didn't go with her. But this time I did, and we were both pumped to go, because it was located in [Cold Weather State]. To explain, my wife and I were both raised in snow country. I grew up on a ranch and she grew up on a mountain. Prior to getting married we'd both found ourselves in [this lousy hot-weather city] because our universities and subsequent jobs brought us there, and that's why we settled there. But neither of us could ever get used to the hot weather and all of the bodies.

The trip was awesome. It felt good to be outside again in a place where you can see your breath, and we even managed to get some snowboarding in. (Well, I did; my wife was on skis.) We had an amazing time, and our life changed in the airport lounge while we were waiting for our return flight. My wife looked me in the eye and said "[Family Man], what are we doing?" I knew exactly what she meant: Why were we planting our family in [Hot Weather City] when neither of us liked it? And was that where we wanted to raise our boys? We decided, then and there, that we were going to move. We were going to find a way to figure it all out.

Back at home, I hadn't even finished unpacking before my wife called out to me from the den, where she was on the computer. She was looking at Coroflot—that's no ass-kissing lie, Coroflot is how I found every single one of my ID jobs—and had found an ID job I could apply for in [Cold Weather State.]

I was skeptical that she could've found something so quickly—I mean, our life-changing plan was still less than 12 hours old at this point—but the job posting was intriguing. Again, I can't get too specific, all I can say is that it was to design unusual vehicles of some sort for an extremely small subset of people, something like designing Batcopters for Liberace. And as the posting ticked off all the technical requirements, I found that I had them all, even though I'd never flown a Batcopter or listened to Liberace. I was in.

I started doing research immediately, forgetting about my half-emptied suitcase sitting on the bed. I found that the design firm, [Liberace Batcopters Inc.], was located at the same address as another ID firm that focused on a particularly cool subset of consumer products. I thought that was interesting but I was unable to discover a direct link between the two companies other than the fact that they shared the same address.

Eventually, I had to get off the computer so my wife could look at her industry's version of Coroflot to find some job leads for her. While the cost of living in [Cold Weather State] was lower, we both agreed that we couldn't do this move unless either A) I got a job making a shitload more money, or B) she could also find promising job leads for herself. We also asked ourselves if we were really ready to abandon her career here, where once that guaranteed thing at her job kicked in, our bank account would grow pretty quick. Our answer was over on the mantle: There was a framed photo of me, my wife and our then-two-year-old son on our first snow vacation, all of us all smiles. We'd rented a cabin up north and it was one of our best vacations to date.

I put our sons to bed, finished unpacking, laid down on the bed and fell asleep. My wife woke me up sometime later. "Y'find anything?" I murmured.

"Three leads," she reported, happily. As I drifted back off to sleep, I was thinking about how I would represent myself to [Liberace Batcopters] tomorrow. [That famous thing I designed], I may not have gotten any credit for it, but it was damn sure going to help me land this job.

Continued here!


Got a "True I.D. Story" of your own? No writing experience necessary—all you have to do is send a brief description of the story to core77editors[at]gmail.com with the subject line "True I.D. Story." One of our editors will follow up with you—you don't need to give us your real name—and if your story is selected, after we interview you, you'll win yourself a $25 gift certificate to Hand-Eye Supply.

All specific names, companies, clients, designers, and details will be kept anonymous to protect the innocent. You needn't write the story out; a Core77 Editor will interview you to produce a write-up (and to be sure you ain't pulling the wool over our eyes to win that sweet gift certificate!).

Sound good? Drop us a line.


More True I.D. Stories:

NewbieDesigner
» True I.D. Stories #1: Off the Grid

Design Minion
» True I.D. Stories #2: Fun in the Sun?

Good Ol' Boy
» True I.D. Stories #3: Part 1 - Get a Job, Any Job!
» True I.D. Stories #4: Part 2 - My Master(s) Plan
» True I.D. Stories #5: Part 3 - Game of ID Thrones
» True I.D. Stories #6: Part 4 - Opportunity Knocks. And Her Name is Amber
» True I.D. Stories #7: Part 5 - Money, Revenge, and Miscalculations

Design Ninja
» True I.D. Stories #8: Part 1 - Corporate or Consultancy?
» True I.D. Stories #9: Part 2 - Man Over Board
» True I.D. Stories #10: Part 3 - When the Pitch is a Bitch

Family Man
» True I.D. Stories #11: Part 1 - No Fame, No Fortune, but a Job Lead at Liberace Batcopters
» True I.D. Stories #12: Part 2 - Snow Country for Cold Men
» True I.D. Stories #13: Part 3 - Cross Country
» True I.D. Stories #14: Part 4 - Man Down
» True I.D. Stories #15: Part 5 - Contract Killer
» True I.D. Stories #16: Part 6 - Man Up

Stephen Ambrose
» True I.D. Stories #17: Why "Spinal Tap's" 11 is More Like a 3.5

Diceman
» True I.D. Stories #18: This Job Interview's in the Bag

The Accidental Designer
» True I.D. Stories #19: Part 1 - Shop to Hell
» True I.D. Stories #20: Part 2 - Learning All Kinds of Ship
» True I.D. Stories #21: Part 3 - Is This Seat (Design) Taken?
» True I.D. Stories #22: Part 4 - I'm Not Gonna Take Your Craft Anymore
» True I.D. Stories #23: The Accidental Designer, Part 5 - Going Hollywood
» True I.D. Stories #24: The Accidental Designer, Part 6 - The Accidental Designer, Part 6 - Forget Hollywood, We're Going Big Time!
» True I.D. Stories #25: Part 7 - Chairman of the Board

The latest design news, jobs & events.
Straight to you every other week.

Join over 300,000 designers who stay up-to-date with the Core77 newsletter...

Subscribe

Test it out; it only takes a single click to unsubscribe

  • }Favorite This
  • Y1
  • m1
  • U1
  • [1
  • X1
  • H1
  • True I.D. Stories

Rain Noe

Rain Noe is a writer and industrial designer based in New York City.

4 Comments

  • Core77 Editorial Team
    4 years ago
    Z
    Z
    Reply
    Hi Andy, Thank you for your comment: we have indeed published the rest of 'Family Man's' story--we publish this series on every other Tuesday (we should probably mention that somewhere in the posts), but unfortunately the index at the end does not update automatically. We have brought the indexes of several of these posts (including this one) up-to-date for the time being and we will do our best to do so in the future. FWIW, the reason for the biweekly schedule is because we don't have quite enough stories to go weekly… so if you or anyone you know have stories to share, please send them to core77editors[at]gmail.com.
    !Report as spam
  • andy
    4 years ago
    Z
    Z
    Reply
    Have core77 forgotten about these?? This was published in October and still no part 2 for this article or many others.
    !Report as spam
  • kara
    4 years ago
    Z
    Z
    Reply
    Agreed! Dying to find out what happens! (And lovely drawings!)
    !Report as spam
  • MDS Chill
    4 years ago
    Z
    Z
    Reply
    argh these segments are never long enough
    !Report as spam

Core77's Design Directory

View all Design Firms »

Core77 Adlets

Advertise Here

Recent Posts

  • Advanced Bondo Tips for Designers and Modelmakers

    By Rain Noe - 5 hours ago

  • Why Diners? David Rockwell Reflects on Theme of His Milan Design Week Installation 

    By Emily Engle - 23 hours ago

  • Co-Creating Towards a Better Future: A Journey Through the 2018 Lexus Design Awards

    By Carla Zimmermann & Megan Dinius - a day ago

  • Urban Design Observations: What is This Thing For?

    By Rain Noe - a day ago

Continued Reading
  • True I.D. Stories

    By Rain Noe - Sep 24, 2013

    True I.D. Stories #10: The Design Ninja, Part 3 - When the Pitch is a Bitch

    This is a true story. Descriptions of companies, clients, schools, projects and designers may be altered and anonymized to protect the innocent.Editor: Where we last left off, Design Ninja had practically killed himself to generate 100 concept drawings, in an effort to impress the design consultancy where he'd been hired....

  • True I.D. Stories

    By Rain Noe - Sep 10, 2013

    True I.D. Stories #9: The Design Ninja, Part 2 - Man Over Board

    This is a true story. Descriptions of companies, clients, schools, projects, and designers may be altered and anonymized to protect the innocent.Editor: In Part 2 of Design Ninja's story, we look at his rather...enthusiastic approach to his first work assignment at his new job. If you missed Part 1 of...

  • True I.D. Stories
    2 Comments

    By Rain Noe - Aug 27, 2013

    True I.D. Stories #8: The Design Ninja - Corporate vs. Consultancy

    This is a true story. Descriptions of companies, clients, schools, projects, and designers may be altered and anonymized to protect the innocent.Editor: This one comes to us from "Design Ninja," who early on in his ID career finds himself grappling with something many of us have: Should I go Corporate...

  • True I.D. Stories
    6 Comments

    By Rain Noe - Aug 13, 2013

    True I.D. Stories #7: Money, Revenge and Miscalculations

    This is a true story. Descriptions of companies, clients, schools, projects, and designers may be altered and anonymized to protect the innocent.Editor: Here we arrive at the final chapter of Good Ol' Boy's quest to attain his dream job at [Hot Design Consultancy]! There's a twist we didn't see coming....

K

{

Welcome

  • YSign In with Facebook
  • mSign In with Twitter
  • USign In with Linkedin
OR
  • jSign In with Core77 Account
  1. Forgot password?
  • Cancel

Don't have an account? Join Now

K

{

Welcome

Create a Core77 Account

  • YJoin Now with Facebook
  • mJoin Now with Twitter
  • UJoin Now with Linkedin
OR
  • jJoin Now with Email
  • Cancel

Already have an account? Sign In

By creating a Core77 account you confirm that you accept the Terms of Use

K

Reset Password

Please enter your email and we will send an email to reset your password.

  • Cancel
Today On the Core77 Network...
  • ]Design Jobs

    • 3D Designer - Product Modeling

      Lighting Manufacturer Jacksonville, Florida
    • INTERIOR TRANSPORTATION DESIGNER

      MECAER AVIATION GROUP S.p.A. Roma, Italy
    • Mid-Level Industrial Designer

      Flex Milano, Italy
    • Senior Packaging Production Artist

      FAI Design Group Irvington, New York
    • Post A Job
    • View All Jobs
  • ]Design Directory

    View other design services:

    • _Hand-Eye Supply

      • Trusco 2-Level Cantilever Tool Box

        $65
      • Kaweco Highlighter Color Leads 5.5x80mm 3 pack

        $7
      • Hand-Eye Supply 6 PC Screwdriver Set

        $50
    • *Coroflot Portfolios

      • Coros Omni Helmet

        Dave Windham
      • Hexa, the first ever smart air filtration mask

        Kip Nordby
    • © 2018 Core77, Inc. All rights reserved.
    • Terms
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact
    • Advertise
    • About
    • Y
    • m
    • '
    • X
    • S
    • © 2018 Core77, Inc. All rights reserved.
    Advertise Here