A DAY IN THE LIFE
"If it's really busy," says
Kimberly
Levitan, "I'll spend 12 hours a day
designing. All I can do is stare at
the
computer and go as fast as I can. If
it's
slow, I'll spend six hours doing
office
work like billing and paying bills,
orga-
nizing and filing, and I make a lot of
calls
and try to drum up business. It's one
or
the other--it's like a roller
coaster."
POINTERS FOR THE
JOB SEARCH
Build a portfolio that is
representa-
tive of your best work. Design CD
pack-
ages for local bands or redesign a current
release using scanned images. Design
fictitious ads or flyers.
KIMBERLY LEVITAN, DESIGNER AND OWNER OF GOOD
AND EVIL DESIGN
Kimberly Levitan grew up in Nashville, the
daughter of a successful entertainment
attorney/artist manager Ken Levitan who also
served as a label head. Yet music busi-
ness was not a natural progression for her.
Instead, she enrolled in design courses at
the prestigious Pratt Institute in New York for
a year, then transferred to CalArts in
Los Angeles to finish up. After graduation, she
worked as a designer for a printing
company in Atlanta. She realized, "the music
industry would be fun and I could move
home." Unable to land a paying job, she acted
as in-house designer for upstart label
CASE STUDY:
"Remember that it's business--
it's not just art."
You must be able to take direc-
tion from others and accept
sometimes harsh criticism. You
may have a great idea, but if
the artists or their managers
don't love it, or the marketing
team thinks it's the wrong
image, you have to put on a
smile and go back to work on
another concept.
THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT THE
JOB:
"The hardest part of my job is there are many
hands in the pie. You
have a creative idea, but there are 15 people
at the label, that have 15
different ideas, and you have to take your idea
and incorporate it with
all those other ideas. It's hard to keep a good
solid design when you've
got so many different opinions, but it's part
of the job."
THE BEST THING ABOUT THIS JOB:
"I have a chance to be creative and I get paid
for it. That's a dream
come true."
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