Danny McEnerney / the hardest workin' man in design ;)
workin’ man creative is born out of what my wife Tobi and I call “a death bed issue”. During my last grumpy, sore, visually and aurally impaired days, I want to say “I lived my dreams and was true to myself”. Of course I wish my dream was to be a volunteer, to help the starving, to save the hurting, and to only give of myself for the benefit of others – and these things are important to me – but my compulsiveness shouts a need to design, and that need has been with me since the 2nd grade, and I can’t turn it off.
My experience after graduating from The Art Institute of Seattle’s School of Graphic Design started at Watson Furniture Group. I worked at Watson for 3 years as an in-house print designer before spending the last 2 years managing their web design needs. Watson was where I learned how to treat people well, how to work hard, how to deal with clients, manage projects, pack tradeshow crates, and that working with good people is pretty damn important.
Before 5 years was up I felt I could design whatever was needed for Watson, and I wasn’t growing – even though I enjoyed going to work every day. So, in order to grow as a web designer I left Watson and headed to Razor Planet Inc., a parent company to Seattle based design firm Tribal Scream Design and successful software company Church Web Works. At Razor I learned about user interface design, information architecture, programming, speed, informational graphics, and very importantly, how to run a small company.
Three years in a faster than fast paced environment like Razor taught me a lot, but the call to work for myself was getting louder. I wrote a vision statement that included 80% freelancing and 20% teaching design at the college level. Soon enough a teaching job at Peninsula College showed up and I landed the gig. Simply put, teaching is hard. It turned out 90% of my time was spent teaching, and 30% freelancing – which means work overflowed to personal. I committed 2 years to teaching in hopes of meeting the challenge of becoming an effective instructor. I think the challenge was met, (always room for improvement), and now I can include private instructing as a service provided by WMC.
The time to take the big leap had come. Do or die, make it or break it, go for it and see what happens. After increasing my freelance client base for the two years I taught at Peninsula College, I realized I might actually have a chance at living out my professional dream of owning my own design studio. Stupid idea in a bad economy, but that’s livin’ right? Life is good, my passion for designing and growing is being met, my wife and I are happy and I’m more than lucky to have her support. The sun is actually warm and bright in Port Townsend today.
With a Little Help from My Friends
Because workin' man creative has a militant stance on staying small and flexible, there are no employees. Each project that comes in the door gets a specific team of professionals and creatives assigned to it, if needed. Often Danny can handle most of a project's ins-and-outs, but when copywriting, business development, photography and other scary technical needs arise - friends and colleagues step in to take the lead. And if there is something WMC cannot do for some reason, we will let you know and try to provide another studio for you to contact.