We recently connected with Art Tejada and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Art thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?
I think the most important lesson I experienced in a job is that school or prior experience does not fully prepare you for the next step in your design journey. I remember coming out of art school thinking to myself I was ready, I have a B.S. in my design field and in my mind at the time a really good portfolio. Months and months of interviews, design tests to gauge my design skill and odd interviews later I could not land a design gig. Once I did land my first design position seven months after graduation, I realized almost everything I learned in art school did not apply. The basics definitely did, how to navigate and work through design programs and the bare bones of what a designer/graphic artist should know were with me. However, there is a work flow and set standards of how a company works and I ended up having to learn a few new tricks as well as re-learn some basics that art school did not expand on. For example the methods I learned in school to edit images in Photoshop took up a lot of time, while watching a colleague’s process I realized he cut the time in half. Actually a lot of what I learned in art school was thrown out (except for bare basics) for better design flows my colleagues taught me. Thankfully I had great mentors at my first design job that were able to show me the ropes with their design methods.
As time goes on the lessons I learned in the first step of my career still apply today, but at times these don’t carry over to different employers. I’ve had to continuously approach things differently, deal with many different minds on one project, learn new programs, change direction on completed projects, move up the ladder, climb back down that ladder and start over then eventually get burnt out. Adaptation is key in every career, but I only realized that years later in my design journey. Design programs update, new apps appear almost daily, social media is the new marketing tool and… did I say social media? There is a lot to keep up with and with how fast information is dispersed it’s a continuous cycle of staying up to date on the latest in design and marketing.
One thing stays constant, the basics of design principles I learned at my first job. I still use a lot of what I learned in my beginning stages of graphics and subtract or add upon that. It’s best to know the backbone of design and be comfortable knowing what you may have learned in the past will eventually be an obsolete method. Like I said in the beginning prior experience does not always prepare you for your next steps in your career, but I like that you can take some of that experience with you to help build on whatever it is you may do next.
Art, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a graphic designer with about 18 years of experience in design. I learned computer design applications in high school and made things for fun until I realized it could be a career after taking art/design classes in college. I got into the design industry wanting to create clothing, but started off in the automotive industry. Luckily I landed in a good group and learned a lot while creating marketing pieces for Hyundai, KIA, Ford, Honda, Mercedes, Toyota, GM and plenty of other automotive brands. I also created web layouts and designed advertisements for a lot of the household products that you see on a typical Target shopping trip.
I now run my own web store Thirdvisual Design Lab at www.thirdvisual.com where I create products in the realm of pop culture. Most of the products will be based on things that I am involved in or take up a lot of my interests. If you were to log onto the site today you will definitely see a huge influence from the likes of South Korean pop culture. K-pop/R&B/Hip hop music all the way to products inspired by Philippines culture and classic Japanese automotive designs.
Lately K-pop has inspired most of my latest product designs. In my interview with Voyager a year ago I mentioned I am a fan of the Korean dramas and R&B/Pop music they are creating in South Korea. I used to include a little bit of K-Pop in my music sets. In the past year I have dived deeper into the realm of K-Pop culture that has taken the world by storm by including all K-Pop DJ sets to my repertoire. So much so that I have taken on DJ gigs in the last half of 2022 that include all BTS music nights and full on K-Pop only events. These events have inspired me to create more products that relate directly to fans or “stans”, AKA stalker fans of K-pop and casual fans alike (shout out to BTS Army). To go even further into this culture my wife and I traveled to Seoul and Busan, South Korea at the end of 2022 to attend the Yet To Come concert by BTS, along with this we visited countless cafes, sites and landmarks related to BTS and their seven members. If it weren’t for a limited number of tickets we would have been able to attend Blackpink and Crush concerts in Seoul on that same trip. So to say we’ve done our in person research on the K-Pop culture phenomenon is most likely an understatement. It now goes beyond just graphic design products or services within Thirdvisual. My wife has helped create some of the products on the Thirdvisual site and with collaborators we now offer DJ/hosting services for those looking to hold BTS or K-Pop nights around Southern California and beyond. In addition to hosting BTS events we also have been hosting a monthly K-Pop party here in San Diego named, “SEOULFUL” and bringing our products to pop ups around the city.
What sets us apart from others in the industry is our ability to adapt to what our interests are as well as others’ interests. We come from a generation where 90’s era hip hop was the main radio play, I take classic themes from that generation and blend them with the current generation of K-Pop to come up with something that ties generation X into current trends. An example would be the classic Wu-Tang Clan, I took the Wu-Tang and created a shirt that reads, “BANGTAN CLAN”. For reference BANGTAN Sonyeondan is South Korean super group BTS. So if you’re a generation X’er or just a fan of that era of hip hop you will definitely relate to our brand of designs that tie both cultures together. Our dedication to actually being immersed in the culture and connecting with others that are a part of it also sets us apart. We befriend other business owners, dancers, DJ’s, promoters, bar staff, designers, artists and so many more through networking these events. A lot of designers mention you need to find a niche to sell your work, we found our niche and a whole army behind it that we ended up joining! The dedication that fans have in the realm of K-Pop is something I have never seen and creating products that they can get excited about is gratifying.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
I’m not sure if there are resources that I wish I knew about earlier in my journey, but more like I wish these resources were around during my creative journey. So by saying that I might be carbon dating myself in the paleolithic era of design work hahaha! There are countless sites and services now that will teach you a certain skill on the fly. You can connect with others in an instant to get different types of design work done. I wish I had these resources when I was in art school and the earlier days of my career. If I get stuck on a design procedure I can easily type my issue into the search bar of YouTube and find someone with a solution. If I want to further my education with maybe user interface design I can sign up online and get accredited in months. If I need pre-set designs to speed up my design process for logos or symbols then those are available online for a set price by other designers. These are valuable resources for designers to streamline the design process or get to another level/aspect in design. I was in the middle of the first year of my career when YouTube first came out, it only had funny videos of cats and odd edits of people doing their daily routines. Eventually people were putting out free design tutorials that were so much better than my instructors in art school!
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
A time when I had to pivot in my design career was when I was in between jobs. The design market is saturated with designers that will do anything to get their foot in the door, so it was hard getting into any company unless you had a connection. Luckily I was recruited into a start up company in its infancy stages, but they needed more than someone that could lay a design out. So I ended up taking mini courses and reading books on CSS/HTML to learn coding. I absolutely love doing the creative part of this work, however sitting around and typing out code was the last thing I ever wanted to do in the creative field. I bit down and just took some time to learn the basics to help our developers out. Another pivot was when I decided to start Thirdvisual Design Lab, it takes time to build up product and ideas in addition to having to go through all the work to get a business license, sellers permit, build a following and more. I definitely enjoyed the latter pivot much more, I get to enjoy my own designs on my own time.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thirdvisual.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thirdvisual
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Thirdvisual/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-tejada-5a17783/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xagrFU7zsQ
- Other: You can find our monthly K-Pop events & specialty BTS events on our instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seoulfulparty/