Unofficial, Unpaid, and Unoptimised

I can still remember watching my dad make them on the computer.

When I was younger – long before the days of TVs that let you pause a live broadcast or watch something on demand – if you wanted to watch something later, you had to record it on a physical VHS. Nowadays, there are YouTube channels that archive almost every show known to man. This wasn’t so back when I was a wee lad.

And before we go any further, for anyone below the age of thirty, a VHS was a big tape you’d put into a machine and have it record what was being shown on the TV. I know, I sound like an old man. If you’ll join me in the reading room, I’ll be putting on a talk about the virtues of the humble floppy disk at four o’clock.

Back in my day (to be read in the old man voice), you’d have to be there in person to record what was on the TV. You’d need to be physically sitting next to the machine, with VHS locked and loaded, ready to hit the record button when the show you wanted to save came on the screen.

This is where my dad would be every evening at six o’clock sharp. Or, if he wasn’t available, I’d often be employed in the role of Button Pusher.

Both he and I were huge fans of The Simpsons. It was a thing we’d do together, watching the Simpson family get up to all sorts of shenanigans. And naturally, there came the realisation that, at some point, we’d want to watch the episodes outside of the strict six o’clock schedule given to us by Channel 4¹.

This is where the VHS tapes come in. My dad would record these episodes of The Simpsons onto an ever-growing collection of tapes. And then one day, he started making covers for them. His own unique archive of Simpsons episodes, complete with the ads being shown on Channel 4 at the time. To watch them now is like stepping back in time. The grainy programmes, the old adverts for discontinued products, and the Proper English continuity announcers all give off the vibe of looking into a world that’s no longer with us.

But anyway, back to the tapes. Before Adobe Photoshop, you had a tool called PaintShop Pro. It was a slightly jazzier version of the standard Paint programme that came with Microsoft Windows. It was with this tool that my dad used to create the covers for the bootleg Simpsons tapes he was putting together.

I’d watch him painstakingly paint, pixel by pixel, Simpsons characters into new compositions and positions, each of them becoming a part of the unique VHS covers. A favourite of mine is a photo of him standing in his work overalls (he was a mechanic) with a painted Barney Gumble (wearing the same overalls) standing alongside him.

When I think about my “career” as a graphic designer, I can chart the journey back to one specific event. I imagine many people who’ve found themselves making a living in design can do this too, pinpointing one specific event that acted as a catalyst for their interest in design

For me, if I cast my mind back through the various events of my life, this is the memory I settle on: the image of my dad creating these VHS covers on the Windows 95-powered family computer.

I think it was then that I realised I wanted to do the same thing.

Making Things for Strangers Online

Rooster Teeth was a video production company based in Texas, USA. It became known for a web series called Red vs. Blue, which was created using an animation technique called Machinima.

Instead of complicated animation software, Machinima utilised video games to create narrative-driven content. Nowadays, this technique has become so widespread that many modern video games come with specific tools to aid the process. But back then, the guys at Rooster Teeth were pioneers of the technique.

Almost instantly, Red vs. Blue (created with Halo) became a huge hit, with the first episodes reaching tens of thousands of people. For something to go “viral” in the early days of the Internet was nothing short of incredible.

At the start, Rooster Teeth was just six friends working in a spare bedroom. But through the success of Red vs. Blue, it soon blossomed into a fully-fledged production studio producing a wide range of content for their growing online audience.

By this point, YouTube was starting to see a huge influx of gaming content and, quick to capitalise on the trend, Rooster Teeth created Achievement Hunter. This would take Rooster Teeth to even greater heights by embedding itself firmly in the gaming culture that was beginning to develop.

And it was through Achievement Hunter that I’d get my first hands-on design experience.

As the popularity of Achievement Hunter grew exponentially, so did the community of fans. All these people would congregate in the dedicated community forums of the Rooster Teeth website. At its peak, this community was around two million members strong. And one of those members was me.

One of the forum topics was centred around customising the Achievement Hunter logo. People would send in their requests, and someone from the community would create what they were looking for. For example, one person could say, “Hey! I want the Achievement Hunter logo with SpongeBob in the middle,” and another would make it.

After seeing people making these custom logos, I figured I could do the same.

At this time, I was in sixth form, so would have been sixteen years old, or thereabouts. I was a kid who didn’t pay much attention to anything school-based, but then also had no interest in getting a job. I imagine that was a fairly typical story of a British teenager back then.

This lack of interest led me to take the path of least resistance, which resulted in me joining the sixth form, for no other reason than my friends were doing the same.

The result of my apathy is that whilst everyone else was studying, I would be looking on the Rooster Teeth forums, hunting for new logo requests. Crucially, the school computers had Macromedia Fireworks installed (something which would eventually be bought out by Adobe) and, because I was busy avoiding my schoolwork, I was often the first person to see new requests. This meant I could make them before anyone else had the chance.

I think I did this for about six months, making logos and posting them to the forum page. It was a hobby, and I never once considered that people could do this sort of thing as a job.

One day, though, I made a logo for someone who wanted to give me money to say thanks. It was something small – I think five dollars – but even still, it blew my mind. Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that people would be willing to pay someone to create a silly little picture. The fact that this was also done over the internet, with me not needing to do anything other than click a couple of buttons, was wild.

A goal was born on that day. I wanted to be a graphic designer.

Building, Learning, and Working

Eventually, as it does for us all, my time in education came to an end. I had to leave school.

I’d been through sixth form, and the next option was to either go to university or get a job. Owing to my lack of interest in school, I didn’t think university was the right move. Plus, I hadn’t even thought about applying to them, so by the time I looked into the idea, I’d missed the window anyway.

Suffice to say, I got a job.

I found myself working at Staples. It’s about as boring as you can think. I’m not sure what they’re like in the US, but in the UK, you get about two customers an hour. For the rest of the time, you’re either tidying up the shelves (which often didn’t need touching because nobody had been there to disturb the products), sweeping the floor or, if you’re like me, playing with a cracked version of Photoshop you’d installed on the work computer.

No doubt highly illegal, but Staples went bust, so I think I’ll be okay.

Even though working in that place was incredibly dull, I do have to thank it. Through my hours and hours spent at the customer service desk with nobody to help, I taught myself how to use Photoshop, and how to write HTML and CSS. So that’s something.

By this point, I’d also gotten into making Tumblr themes (back when Tumblr was much more popular than it is now) and had been paid for a couple of them. Again, mind-blowing.

Staples, after trading as Office Outlet in the UK as a last-ditch effort to salvage what was left of the rapidly dying company, eventually failed and went into liquidation. Naturally, we lost our jobs.

This, it turned out, was a blessing in disguise.

All through the time messing around at Staples, I’d managed to build up a portfolio of designs and projects that I was quite proud of. And the first place I applied for, a marketing agency, gave me a job. Once more, utterly mind-blowing.

Who would have thought that seeing my dad making artwork for bootleg Simpsons videos would have led me to a job working at a marketing agency?

Certainly not me, but there I was. To this day, I still work at that same marketing agency, and I love it. I get to experience and work on so many different projects, from creating content for global brands to developing the branding and website for the agency itself; there’s always something interesting to work on. Plus, even the Tumblr theme experience came in handy!

However, with this new job flexing my design skills, something else was put onto my plate…

Deadlines.

When Play Became Output

If you look online, you can’t move for accounts telling you how to take your passions and convert them into side hustles. How you can, and absolutely should, monetise your hobbies to make them your full-time job.

In a sense, I did exactly that.

I went from having a passion and a love for graphic design to making it a full-time job at the marketing agency, as well as some freelancing I did on the side for a little while. And let me tell you, it doesn’t take long for those passions to become just a job.

Speaking from experience, once you have deadlines introduced, and once you have multiple stakeholders involved in every project, the fun is dramatically reduced. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy graphic design, but the love I had for it ten years ago isn’t ten per cent of what I have now.

I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think it’s only natural that this is going to happen.

For me, graphic design went from a thing that I did in my spare time (and also on the clock at Staples… oops) because I enjoyed and wanted to improve. It was a passion, where I could work on my own things and come up with my own project ideas. But now, I’m working on things that are given to me, and told what to make. The vision is no longer mine alone. And that’s fine, it’s the way the world works.

But I really fear for the people I see online, those who are working to build a business out of the thing they love, because I’ve seen how it can end. Or at least, how it ended for me. Again, I really enjoy my job and wouldn’t look to change anything, but it has to be said that the thing that was once a passion is now just a part of what I do for work.

The thing that I once enjoyed, that I once spent all my time thinking about – the magic – is lost. The feeling of seeing a blank canvas was exciting; it meant a world of possibilities. Now, the blank canvas is something to be filled with branded, promotional content designed to sell a product. I’m no longer creating art; I’m creating a product.

With the world moving in the direction it is, and things becoming more and more expensive, the rising trend of people looking to monetise their hobbies is going to get worse before it gets better. And I worry about what’s going to happen when all of those people either don’t manage to do it, or worse, do succeed, then realise their passion isn’t giving them the same happiness as it used to.

To quote the great Oscar Wilde: There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

For a time, I dabbled with making a bookstagram – a dedicated Instagram page and blog that focused on all things books. I love to read, so on paper, this seemed like a no-brainer. Yet, as I gave myself deadlines for book reviews, for posting something to Instagram every single day, I saw the same cycle repeat itself.

I wouldn’t be reading books because I enjoyed them. I would be reading them as fast as I could so I could write a review to post on my blog. It was an endless loop, and one that very quickly led to burnout. It’s probably very obvious, but that project didn’t last very long.

Those bootleg VHS tapes are more than just an archive of TV shows. They’re a symbol of a time that’s no longer with us, a relic from an era when we used to do creative things just for fun, not because they’d become an income stream. They’re pure creativity, unburdened by the demands of the modern world and its unending drive toward monetisation.

They’re creation for the sake of creation; for the sake of doing something you enjoy.

Ultimately, I think we all need hobbies.

We need fun activities that are just for us. No money involved, no posting on social media for clicks and views, no showing off about what it is you do. None of that.

Instead, a hobby that just lets you switch off from the world and enjoy doing something “offline” for a little while. For me, that’s what reading has become again. I might publish the odd review here and there, but there’s no pressure.

I’ve also recently started drawing again. The things I draw look like the product of a child, but that doesn’t matter. The point is doing something that I enjoy, away from the internet, and totally free from the pressure to make money.

You know, the way the world used to be.

Perhaps we could all benefit from making bootleg VHS tapes again.

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1 / To this day, something like twenty-five years later, Channel 4 still shows episodes of The Simpsons at six o’clock every weekday. That’s crazy to me. The world may truly end if they ever decide to reschedule.