We recently connected with Grier Dill and have shared our conversation below.
Grier, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?
For the last decade or so I’ve been able to work almost completely full-time art directing and doing motion graphics for interesting projects, with friends that I love working with, on projects that I’m proud to attach my name to. A lot of these projects have been television shows where I created the graphics packages (show intros, explainers, transitions, etc) but also a feature film that I was VFX Creative Director. The core reasons I’ve been able to thrive in the TV and film world are my network of friends, working well with others, and being good at design and motion. These three things are interconnected and without all three I would have a very hard time surviving in this career.
Every job (except one) I’ve been offered has been through a friend, or a friend of a friend, someone I’ve worked with in the past, or someone they’ve given my info to. Only one job, out of maybe a hundred, I’ve gotten because someone saw my name in the credits and reached out. People want to work with someone they know, someone they’ve seen perform, someone they don’t have to interview extensively to figure out if they’re right for the job. I hate to use the “networking” because it sounds so icky and sleazy. I’m really just working with as many people as I can, doing a good job, and focus on being easy to work with.
That leads to the second point, working well with others. It’s easy to pour yourself into your creative work and become defensive when it comes time for feedback and changes. I’ve learned how important it is to take feedback critically, understand where they’re coming from, discuss intentions, and come back with new ideas that satisfy their needs. Even if your AMAZING at your job, if you’re an asshole, people won’t wanna work with you again.
This touches on the third point, which is being good at your job. This is kind of baseline for success in the creative world, but it’s less about comparing yourself to the top motion graphics instagram accounts or graphic design pinterest boards. It’s about working hard, pushing yourself, and experimentation. In the motion graphics / design world, you need to deeply understand a broad range of skills that you won’t grasp if you’re trying to cut every corner, use templates, or copy other’s work. Don’t get me wrong, copying other people’s projects is a great way to learn, if you use it as a means to LEARN. But you also need to experiment because when you’re on the clock and it’s time to get to work, I guarantee you won’t have as much time as you want to play with different designs or art direction. You’ll be super grateful if some weird experiments you did six months ago work for a current client.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’ve been working in design and motion graphics in NYC for almost 20 years now. I went to school for traditional graphic design before they even had motion graphics classes. I did my own independent study, and took animation classes while studying design and knew that this was the field for me. I moved to New York after graduating and got a full time job as a low level designer, but I showed how interested I was in motion and pretty soon I was doing that almost entirely. I moved my way up the ranks quickly (as I was an ambitious young designer trying to take over the world) but after 6 years there, the internet bubble bursting finally hit the company and I left just before it folded.
I had no intention of freelancing for the next decade but the jobs kept coming and I loved the ability to take time off and work on personal projects (mostly short films and animations). For years I bounced around different companies, working a couple weeks here and there, which was great experience to work with lots of people, and see how companies operated.
Eventually I was offered a job doing VFX and design on a feature film for Godfrey Reggio (dir. Koyaanisqatsi). It was maybe 8 months of full-time work and it was a complete dream job working at opticnerve™ with Godfrey. It wasn’t a very glamorous job, mostly doing roto/cleanup on 4k footage (before 4K TVs and monitors were widely available) but seeing the creative process of Godfrey, and how collaborative it was, was inspiring. The office dogs, fireplace, and chef were also pretty great.
One interesting thing about this gig, is that it came through a friend I made at my first job in NYC, had stayed in touch with, and had worked with on random small freelance gigs. That kind of unexpected way friends and connections you made years earlier can lead to big things is good to keep in mind.
After the film ended I got worked on a Comedy Central special doing graphics for Jordan Klepper’s documentary about gun control. This job was also through a friend I made in the comedy world. This led to
Klepper’s late night comedy show where I created the entire graphics package including live stage elements and daily graphics needs as the show went live.
This led to other TV shows which all ended up lasting anywhere from 6 months to over a year. All of this to say I felt extremely lucky to work on all these cool shows, with my talented friends, making silly television, doing design and motion work I was proud of.
When the pandemic hit the TV world obviously came to a halt and work dried up, but I appreciated the break and was able to focus on learning 3D character animation.
In the middle of the pandemic though, another dream job appeared on my horizon, a new film project from Godfrey, but this time I would be on the film from the very beginning, helping conceive the visual style, working on pre-production, actual production and then through the intense post-production process. This project was around 16 months, crafting the 52min film from beginning to end, entirely in our small studios in Red Hook Brooklyn, using miniatures, rear-projection, stop-motion animation, green screens, 3D animation, just every trick in the book to bring this movie to life with the tiny budget we were given.
After the film project wrapped I had my first child, which definitely put a twist on my work/life balance. Luckily I was able to find a job doing art direction and motion graphics for a documentary news show that I’m proud of that has allowed me to work from home and be present in the first year and half of my daughter’s life in a way that many dads aren’t given with 9-5 office jobs.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Well, this is related to the question, and I might not know the answer just yet, but looking back over my 30’s when I was really deep into the freelance / TV / film world, there’s a few insights I wish I had understood a little better. Life was good when I was freelancing. I made good money, could take time off, jobs were always waiting for me, and I really liked the work I was doing. This made it easy to continue on the path without thinking too much about the future. I figured my career would keep elevating, the projects getting bigger, and day rates going higher. This might’ve happened had the pandemic not pulled the rug out from this trajectory. BUT what I realized with freelance work, is for the most part, people hire you for what you can do, right now. They don’t often think, “huh, Grier’s talented, but I’ve never seen him do X, maybe let’s give him a shot and see if he can do it.” They hire me for what they’ve already seen me do. I didn’t get many “promotions” when doing freelance. If you’re at a full-time job with a whole infrastructure above you there’s a path upward, with promotions and raises. So, I would say, if you’ve been freelancing for a little while, figure out your path into the future. This could be trying to get a full-time job at a company that gives you the ability to grow. OR, you can forge your own path into the future, but you need a concrete plan to grow yourself as a business. There are ways to leverage your connections as an individual to take on bigger jobs that go beyond just a freelancer’s day rate. This is still something I’m struggling with myself. The “golden handcuffs” of a good day rate can make it hard to transition to riskier but larger jobs.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
This is a little off topic, but I feel like it’s an interesting concept, that I don’t know shit about social media. I’ve never tried very hard to create a social media presence. I’m not drawn to social media, and I’ve gotten enough work in the past that it didn’t feel necessary. My own approach to design is problem solving. The client has a problem or a need, and they come to me to solve if they think it’s design/motion related. I try to create a solution to that problem that best fits that client’s needs. The problem/need comes first. BUT because I have stylistic preferences and conscious/unconscious tendencies, my work ends up feeling very “Grier” even if that specific style is not why people come to me.
I do think though with social media that there is an alternate business model to find your style, your “voice” and draw clients in through that specific niche. I think this has it’s own challenges, especially finding your voice as you’re just starting a career, and building a large enough network that work becomes consistent. But it certainly is fun and fulfilling to make creative work that you’re proud of.
Contact Info:
- Website: grierdill.com