We recently connected with Amy Herzberg and have shared our conversation below.

Amy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.

The majority of my work is creating collateral for established brands and businesses, but I recently had the opportunity to take on a freelance client to help with redesigning their logo. The client has a small business as a handy man, and had made their own logo a few years back. Now that their business had expanded, it was time for a redesigned logo to help grow their business further. I worked with the client to design a logo with a unique and memorable design, incorporating the client’s favorite colors, as well as achieving the desired look of down-to-earth yet still professional.

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

My name is Amy, and I’ve been working professionally as a graphic designer for 5 years. I work part time as a graphic designer at All Things Hospitality, a marketing agency which works primarily with hotels and hotel management companies. In addition, I also occasionally take on freelance design work. My design services run the gamut from digital interactive PDFs and social media ads, to printed collateral anywhere from business cards and restaurant menus to billboards and elevator wraps. The road to working in design was a long and winding one. I’ve always been a creative person; from as young as I can remember I loved to draw, paint, anything arts and craft. When I was 14 years old I stumbled into the world of amateur graphic design by making graphics, icons, and profile layouts for MySpace. I took a graphic design course in high school, where I learned Photoshop and Illustrator, and did design work as a hobby but never considered it as a career until I was 27 years old, burnt out and exhausted from working retail, and unsure what I wanted to do with my life. While researching career options, I realized that the thing I loved doing as a hobby I could do as a job. From there, I taught myself the basics and fundamentals of graphic design, relearned Adobe products, built a portfolio, and began freelancing. I began working at All Things Hospitality in 2020, and have grown and learned so much in the years since. Being self-taught, I continue to learn something every day but I love the aspect of problem-solving that comes with design. I pride myself on being able to adapt to a design style or branding guide, to learn new programs or techniques on the fly, and to effectively communicate with clients and understand what they’re visualizing for their design.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Resilience is key when trying to land any job, but especially in a design field. Unfortunately, like many industries, the competition for design jobs is intense and it’s common for job postings to receive hundreds of applicants. I spent about a year applying to jobs, sent out hundreds of applications, got dozens of rejection letters, and, even after landing a handful of interviews, would ultimately lose the position to someone else. Despite the rejection emails, I kept building my portfolio, improving my résumé, learning more skills and programs, and, most importantly, continued applying. Finally, I had a great interview with my current company and was offered the job – beating out over 300 other applicants. It’s disheartening to get rejection after rejection, but continuing to improve my portfolio and apply for jobs finally landed me with a great opportunity.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

My career path throughout my twenties seemed like a series of pivots before I, thankfully, ended up where I am now. My original career goal was to be a foreign language teacher, and was what I went to school and earned a bachelor’s degree for. However, I struggled to pass the certification tests, took a retail job to pay the bills, and found myself falling out of love with the idea of teaching. It’s difficult to explain to people, especially in a job interviewer, how one can lose passion for something, but it’s part of life, part of growing and changing. I had to learn that it’s okay to not have your career all planned out at 18, or 22, or at any age. I was, and continue to be, extremely lucky to have the support of my husband throughout all of this, and thankfully had the time and space to soul search and find what I really wanted to do with my career. It was terrifying making a career change, and sometimes I wish I had just realized earlier that I wanted to work in graphic design and been able to change degrees while still in school. Regardless, I’m happy to be where I am now despite the bumps in the road!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://amyherzberg.com/

Image Credits
Personal photo by Nicole Johanna Photography (nicolejohannaphotography.com)