We recently connected with Scott Saslow and have shared our conversation below.

Scott, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?

Right after I graduated with my graphic design degree, I started to peruse the job ads on LinkedIn. I came across an art director job at an agency in Miami and even though, just a few weeks out of school, I didn’t have enough experience to be a full-fledged art director, I decided to reply to the ad, mainly because it was written in such a hilarious way. Asking questions like, “What’s your favorite Internet cat video?” and so on. I figured, “Hmm, I could get along with these guys.”

And sure enough, they replied and asked me to come in for a meeting. I ended up with my first freelance gig: illustrating six signature dishes from six restaurants across America as part of an ad campaign for Starwood Hotels. (They’ve since been acquired by Marriott.) I must confess I’m not even the best illustrator so it wasn’t the easiest task illustrating slices of ham and cheese. But thankfully they liked what I did. When they told me it paid $1000, my first reaction was, “That’s split between all of us, right?” Wrong! It was certainly the most amount of money I had ever made at one time.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Ever since I was a little kid, I was always interested in filmmaking. Graphic design entered the picture when I became a Star Trek fan at age 9 and started reading the making-of books. I couldn’t believe people got paid to do this sort of thing, in this case designing futuristic signage, graphics, etc. I was also into visual effects (this was just as CGI was entering the picture) and I even wrote a fan letter to George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic. (And of all the mementos I kept from my childhood, I have no clue what happened to their reply letter.) So I wanted to get into visual effects and eventually that led to wanting to be a filmmaker.

I spent a horrible year at Florida State University and was rejected from their film school, which was (and probably still is) very selective. I ended up at a small film school in Orlando called Full Sail which was truly the best and worst of times. We made short films, one of which my friend and I wrote (he co-directed it while I co-directed another… Full Sail was big on multiple directors and the one I did was a debacle). I actually won an award for set design which I probably didn’t deserve but as Mel Brooks likes to say, “When you got it, flaunt it!”

I moved to LA the following year where I worked as a PA, background extra, and movie studio records clerk. A friend from film school convinced me to move back to Orlando where I quickly realized leaving LA was a huge mistake. And not only that, I realized filmmaking wasn’t for me after all. When you realize your childhood dream isn’t what you thought it was, it’s not easy to deal with. So after I got over the initial disappointment, I basically spent the rest of my 20s in a series of go-nowhere temp jobs. File clerk here, customer service rep there, etc. I can safely say it was a quarter-life crisis!

I ended up moving back in with my folks and after another year of temp work, I read an article about test subjects for NASA. “Get paid to lay in bed!” And you know what? That’s what I did. Late 2009, after a series of medical tests, I found myself in Galveston, Texas getting paid to lay in bed at a negative 10-degree angle for 30 days straight. NASA wanted to study the effects of long-term spaceflight and the closest analog to that on Earth is extended bed rest. It was an experience and I knew what I was getting myself into so there was no caveat emptor. Some of the food was good, some of it… not so good. I’ll spare you the bathroom details but you haven’t showered until you’ve done it horizontally!

I took the money and moved into my aunt and uncle’s place in Jersey City. I wanted to give NYC a shot. I still love the city but I quickly found myself working a series of mostly soul-crushing temp jobs again. (I did some other stuff… took improv classes and voice-over lessons.) I was about to turn 30 and I realized, “I need to go back to school! I don’t even have a Bachelor’s degree… I can’t be a temp forever!” So I moved back in with the folks one last time and went back to school. A few years later, I graduated magna cum laude from Florida Atlantic University with my BFA in graphic design. And I do have to say, my parents are the best. They’ve been nothing but kind and supportive and I only hope I’m half as good as they are when (if?) I become a parent.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I suppose on one hand, ignorance is bliss. I never had a master plan. Not until my last semester of film school did it even occur to me that I could combine both interests of mine (film and graphic design) and do movie posters and home video packaging. A few weeks after I graduated I got a job at a small design agency but I quit after six months because I was miserable. I had just come from both a classroom environment and a retail job where I felt like part of a team. At the design agency, I was left alone at my desk most of the time. Funny enough, ordinarily I’d be okay with that, and as a freelancer, I work alone at a desk, but the vibe was just off from the start and I never felt like I was part of anything. I never had a problem with the work but I just couldn’t adapt to the bureaucratic part of it all, despite nearly a decade of office jobs under my belt.

So I quit and went back to my retail job. I felt defeated. One morning during an early shift I read about a designer in Australia who was doing one alternative movie poster a day: real movies, mostly minimalist designs, one per day. I immediately thought, “I can do that!” So I did… 365 posters in 365 days. To be fair, only about 1/6 of them are any good but that’s still 60 or so good posters. A few got attention online. I flipped when Kevin Smith re-tweeted my Dogma poster. And once I decided to move back to LA, the daily poster project got me an internship with one of the big entertainment ad agencies doing movie posters. I remember it took me a week to do my first poster comp… now I can do a dozen in a day. The internship ended after three months and I’ve been freelancing ever since.

And most importantly, I had been e-mailing companies I wanted to work with. I e-mailed Arrow Video, a boutique home video label based in the UK, and they liked my daily posters enough to bring me on to design a boxset of film noirs. My relationship with Arrow continues to this day (and I finally got design more film noirs when they did additional boxsets a few years later!). My work with Arrow led to additional work for other home video labels like Kino Lorber, Carlotta Films, and Fun City Editions.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

There are really two things. For starters, I love when anyone gives my work any attention. It’s always nice when someone shares my work on social media. There’s a wonderful poster design community online and everyone is so supportive.

And also, the “Eureka!” moment that comes when you’re working on a project. I recently did a 50th anniversary poster for The Parallax View… I had no clue what to do until I started doing it. Sometimes I go for a walk and let the problem percolate; other times I start looking at the film or even just imagery I’m thinking about using and then it’s like, “There it is!”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://scottsaslow.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/scottsaslow
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/scottsaslow
• Twitter: https://x.com/Saslow_Scott