“Everyone’s got their own journey, and you have to find your way. I would never discourage anyone from a journey in the applied arts or the creative arts if they have the drive and the will to do it. Because that’s the biggest part of it: just being disciplined.”
Marius Valdes is an artist, illustrator, and professor of Studio Art teaching graphic design and illustration at the University of South Carolina. Valdes received his BFA in graphic design from the University of Georgia (UGA) and his MFA in visual communication from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). Valdes is originally from Charleston and lives in Columbia.
Interview
Transcript
Marius Valdes
My name is Marius Valdes. I’m from Charleston, South Carolina. I currently live in Columbia, South Carolina. I’m a professor at the University of South Carolina. I teach graphic design and illustration. I’m also a practicing artist and illustrator.
Emma Plutnicki
Amazing. So can you just tell us what your official job title is? And how long you’ve been working as a professor there?
Marius Valdes
Yep, it’s Professor of Studio Art. And I’ve been here since 2007, so something like 17 years.
Emma Plutnicki
Yeah.
Marius Valdes
So long!
Emma Plutnicki
Yeah, that is a long time. So how did you end up as a professor, and I believe before you were a practicing professional in the field, so how did you kind of make that transition from practicing in the field to then to academia?
Marius Valdes
So I graduated from the University of Georgia in 1998. And I worked as a designer for about five years, four or five years. And I had got to a point where I was really exploring illustration, I was kind of enjoying that almost more than the design work I was doing. But one of the things I felt like was limiting me as a designer was, I didn’t feel like I was very good at talking about my work. So I thought going to graduate school would be kind of a good way to go and kind of expand my education, and kind of take what I’ve been doing for four or five years and kind of refocus and kind of just make myself more marketable. And while I was there, I had no intention of being a professor or teacher, I just, I mean, that, to me, just seems today still seems kind of crazy. They let me do that. But when I was there, part of my scholarship was to teach a class. And I just loved it. And it was really fun. And what I found was kind of like, even though some of the students I taught were, were, maybe in some ways, more talented than I was, as a designer, I just knew more than them, because I had been doing it as a professional. And so that, and I just kind of really enjoyed it.
Marius Valdes
When I originally started college, I wanted to be, I was going to be a psychology major, because I thought maybe I would be a counselor, or a shrink or something. I like talking to people. But then I realized there was science involved. So I feel like teaching has kind of given me, sort of that ability to do that sort of stuff, in addition to, you know, teaching. So.
Emma Plutnicki
Yeah, makes sense. So what background kind of led you to being a professor? So do you think like, specifically with you do studio design, how has your background within studio design helped you to teach it now?
Marius Valdes
Yeah, so I think what helped me was, and I always tell students who are thinking about going to grad school to work for a couple of years, because when you get out of college, and you start working, and this is this is also why internships are really important, it gives you a chance to kind of figure out what you like, and also what you don’t like. So for example, I was working in Charleston, and I was doing really well, I was working for companies were doing a lot of real estate, like brochure design and advertising for real estate companies. And it just got so boring. I mean, it was just sort of like, it paid okay, and it was a nice job. But it just wasn’t very interesting. And I started kind of painting on the side for fun. And I was literally finger painting on cardboard. And that started winning me awards. And I was, just, was like “what?” you know.
Marius Valdes
So it was kind of taking those things that were fun with the practical stuff I had kind of learned as a designer, and putting those together and then going to graduate school for two years, and working with a whole, a whole new group of professors who treated me more like a colleague and less like a student, and just learning to talk about work and look at my own work and kind of evaluate it, and look at other people’s work and be able to learn how to talk about it. All those things make me able to teach now, you know. Some semesters are easier than others, you know, some groups of students are easier to work with than others. But usually it just means it takes me a little longer to kind of get through to people. But once I do, you know, I can share with them what I’ve been through. And I think that helps.
Emma Plutnicki
Yeah, that’s great. So nowadays, can you walk us through like a typical workday, like what you have to do, what classes you teach, and just what’s expected from you on a daily basis?
Marius Valdes
Yeah, so I teach what they call two-two load, which means I teach two classes in the fall and two classes in the spring. I teach Mondays and Wednesdays, which is why I normally check my calendar first thing Monday morning. But the thing about teaching is my classes are two hours long. And I don’t always go the full time because a lot of times, the students, I give them something to do and they need get started and they’ve got to meet with me, and then once I’ve I met with them they need to go work. And that can be, they can stay in the classroom, they can go to a design lab, they can go to the library, they can go wherever they need to do their work. But for me on Mondays and Wednesdays, I’m teaching from eleven to four. Before the classes start, I’m usually checking email, getting caught up talking to students.
Marius Valdes
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I do office hours, and that might be coming into my office and actually meeting with people, it might be doing a Zoom call, it might just be looking at work that’s been posted online and making comments on it. And then, and then I’m also doing emails with, you know, colleagues and trying to figure out how to keep the design program going. It might be service at the university where I have to go to, like, for example, I was a faculty senator for a bunch of years. And that was a thing where we, every once a month, for two or three hours, you go a really long meeting and talk about all the things going on at the university.
Marius Valdes
So and then, Fridays are usually research days where it’s supposed to be a day where you have kind of an uninterrupted time to just work on your work. Although I will say this year, it’s been a lot of meetings on Fridays, because there’s so much going on all the time. At the university level, I’m at what they call research one university. So that mean the emphasis is 40% teaching, 40% research, and then 20% service, which is doing things like being a faculty senator, for example. Other schools, like I taught at USC Upstate for for two years. That’s what they call a teaching school where you’re teaching more classes and there’s less expectation of you doing research. So and research for me, is doing design work, doing illustration work making art putting the other shows and stuff like that. Going to conferences presenting my work.
Emma Plutnicki
Cool. Yeah, so, you just mentioned like putting together projects and things like that. Do you have one project that stands out in your career as being, like, exceptionally motivating toward you or something that just had a significant impact on your life?
Marius Valdes
Oh, yeah. You know, the past couple of years, I’ve been working with the medical universities, Carolina’s Children’s Hospital in Charleston. And I got a couple of grants through the school to work with them and created several murals for them. I’ve created some kid’s activities, books for the therapists to use. I would say that’s been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done, because it’s weird, I mean, I’m not kidding you, about an hour ago, a guy I work with here was like, “Hey, man, I’m at MUSC right now in the children’s hospital with my kid and my kid is like obsessed with your frog, you know, the mural, and it’s, you know, it’s been really nice, like, it’s really made a difference on this visit, you know,” and I get, I get emails like that occasionally from people. And it’s always kind of sad, because like, the only way to really see those things is if you have a sick kid, but I really enjoy that.
Marius Valdes
And then I have other projects, I’ve done things that are more self initiated, where I’ve kind of created little casts of characters. Some of them are called The Secret Species, and they’re these little clay figures, and I kind of would make art about them and leave them places and stuff. And I got a lot of mileage out of those, like that was kind of part of my thesis for my grad school. And I just kept kind of working on it. I got some really good kind of attention for that work that was meaningful to me, for people to say like, “wow, this is a really creative idea,” you know. I kept hoping, like, a toy company would come and offer me a couple million dollars for it. But that never happened. So.
Emma Plutnicki
No, that’s so cool. And just like, overall, has it been challenging in your career, both as a professor and as, just, like, a practicing creative?
Marius Valdes
Yeah, I mean, you know, I’ll be honest with you, I think like being a professional creative is not for the weak of heart. But what I will tell you is that when I was probably a little bit, like, your age, or even a year or two younger, I remember driving with my dad, and telling him like, “I think I’m gonna be an art major.” You know? I was just waiting for him to like, say, “What are you doing?” you know, and he just said to me, he’s like, “Well, if you do something like that, that you love, you’ll never really work.” And I kind of feel like that. I mean, now, I do feel like I work. But, I mean, I work on things I care about. And I think that to me, is sort of one of the main things is like, you know, on my worst day, I might be, I might be struggling with a painting, you know, or an illustration for a client. But what I’m sitting here doing is drawing, you know. And I’m married to, my wife is a paralegal. she has a very normal nine to five job. And, you know, her job is answering to five attorneys all, you know, screaming, like, “I need this now I need this now.” And I can’t really complain too much, right?
Marius Valdes
The other thing is, I think that like, if you go into design or advertising, you are a little bit subject to your clients, and where you’re working and who your clients are, versus academia, which is much more steady, it’s a little bit more of a routine, you know, you kind of get into a groove. And I feel like whenever it gets too stressful, oh, spring break! Oh, Christmas time, here’s a month off! Here’s summertime, you can go paint for a month. And you kind of get all the stress of all the things you have to do, kind of out of your system, and then you reset. So I feel like I’ve done a little bit of everything in the creative world. And I think like, sometimes the grass is greener, you know, sometimes you’re doing, you know, I’m doing academia, and I’m here teaching a bunch of kids, or students, and I think like, “man, I’d really like to just be in like an office setting right now, working on a project all day, sitting in front of it not worrying about this person or this person or this person.” But then you go into have a critique, and your students bring in a bunch of amazing work. And you’re like, “oh, man, I am a good teacher!” you know. I mean, I joke around them all the time, and when they do something good. I always say, “Oh, I do know what I’m doing.” You know? So there’s, there’s little rewards everywhere.
Marius Valdes
And I think there’s all levels of like, I look at some people who have careers, you know, in the arts, and they are just doing amazing things. And they’re making gobs of money. And they have tons of exposure and fame and fortune. And I looked at people who were totally content just to be in their studio painting all day and illustrating and never seeing anybody and that makes them happy too. So you kind of, it’s like anything in life, you kind of have to everyone’s got kind of their own little journey. And you kind of have to find your own way. But I would never discourage anyone from a career in the applied arts or creative arts, if they have the drive and the will to do it. Because I really think that’s the biggest part of it is just being disciplined, you know?
Emma Plutnicki
And along with being disciplined, are there any physical skills that you think are beneficial for people trying to break into a world of design? Like any specific skills that maybe you possess, that help you in your day to day life, or just if you saw, if you were like hiring for a design job, and you saw, “Oh, this applicant has this skill,” what kind of things like that are beneficial to have?
Marius Valdes
Yeah, I think anytime you can get better and faster at learning the software, that just like becomes like a tool in your tool belt that will help you get your ideas out faster. The one thing I preach to my students about a lot, and I always tell them this story that I graduated on Friday, and I started the following Monday freelancing at Cartoon Network, which at the time, back then that would have been my dream job, to work there and work, you know, with animation stuff. And what happened was, I was at this, I was at Turner network, which is in Atlanta, and they were using a brand new version of Adobe Illustrator that was different than what we had in my undergrad at Georgia. And I just could not teach myself how to figure out the new software, because I was used to like having a professor always come over my shoulder and say, “All right, push that button, push this button.” And back then there was no, there was no Skillshare there was no LinkedIn learning, it was called Adobe Classroom in a book, and it was a book like this thick, and you had to flip through and follow the steps, and it was really unintuitive. So I always kind of preach, I think one skill students can really do is teach themselves how to learn, and learn how to learn, and be open, you know, because technology is changing so quickly, that if you can’t keep up with it, it’s gonna really, it’s gonna really hinder your growth, I think.
Marius Valdes
And the other thing is to be a design sponge or art sponge. And I mean that in the sense of like, don’t just look at Pinterest. And don’t just look at Google. It’s like, go to the library, look at design books, find stuff that’s been curated and edited, and it’s got the really good stuff in it, because the stuff you see on the internet, while some of it’s really cool, a lot of it is just a copy of a copy of a copy, you know. It’s good to go back and go to the original stuff. And I think also just being a decent person, a nice person, nice to people. That goes a really long way. You know. And not everybody is gonna be nice to you, but I think, you know, I think I’m in this job because I’m a good, I’m a decent person. And I think that like as I make connections and network and you start meeting people, I think people are like, “Oh, that’s someone I would want to work with,” you know?
Emma Plutnicki
Yeah. That makes sense. So, for networking, are there any events or programs or organizations within South Carolina to meet people like that? Like design specific events or anything that you know of that someone who’s looking to get into that field could go to and kind of meet people that have similar minds?
Marius Valdes
Yeah, well, for design, AIGA [The Professional Association for Design] has always been kind of the big national organization, and they have chapters throughout. Some chapters are better than others. We used to have one in Columbia that was amazing, and it’s almost, I mean, it’s basically dead now. But you could go to Charlotte, or depending on where you live, you could go to Atlanta, or maybe another place that has a little bit more thriving AIGA chapter.
Marius Valdes
The other thing we’re seeing is like, here at the university we’ve got a group of students who just kind of took it upon, amongst themselves to start a new chapter of a design club. And they’ve been doing, I mean, they’ve been doing amazing things they’ve been bringing guest speakers and doing workshops for students that are younger than them. And it’s just kind of been, it’s been really cool to see them kind of take a mentorship role. And some of the speakers they’ve got in, I’m just like, “how did you get that person for free?” I mean, you know, I think if there’s not something for you to use, then you can always start your own thing, and get like minded people together. And then there’s also, for advertising, there’s the Advertising Federation, there’s usually chapters of that. So for example, there’s Midlands Federation here, and they have things every year called The Addy Awards. So those are competitions you can put your student work in and try and get feedback on. But those are kind of probably the main ones I would think about, you know?
Emma Plutnicki
Okay, yeah, amazing. And then just as we wrap up, do you have any advice for either a college student who’s trying to, after graduating, get into design or academia, or just somebody who wants to get into a creative field? Any advice?
Marius Valdes
Yeah, I mean, so one of the things I’ll tell you is, you know, and again, it’s something I tell my students all the time is, you’re going to graduate with a portfolio that you made. And if you have a good teacher, it should be a good portfolio, right, should be a pretty solid portfolio. But the day you graduate, you could take that portfolio, you can throw in the garbage, and make one that you really like, you know? Or you can have several, you could have a portfolio that’s aimed at a very conservative company, you could have one that sort of, like, aimed at like your dream company, you could have one that is more about your illustration than your design, or one that’s all about your lettering. And the main thing is like you want to go after the kind of work you’re interested in doing, because if you put a bunch of calligraphy or hand, you know, handwritten stuff in your portfolio, and you hate doing it, that’s usually what you end up getting hired to do. And you’ll be like, “oh, man, why’d I do this?” So, I think part of it is kind of, again, figuring out what you’re interested in, but also what you’re not interested in. So you can be more targeted yourself.
Marius Valdes
I also feel like when you’re in college, and you’re graduating, if you’re young, and you don’t have any, if you can try and come out of college without any credit card debt or student loans, and you have nothing, like, no baggage, go to a big city and work if you can, because it’s a bigger market, you’ll have more opportunity, it’s faster paced, it’ll make you better, because you’ll be competing against a lot of other people and you’ll be working a lot harder. So that if you are from a town like Charleston, or Columbia, when you come back, you’ll be heads and shoulders better than everybody else, because you’re used to working in those bigger markets. And I also tell students to like, if you’re sending out emails and cold calling people with email, sometimes it helps to have a really nice piece that you can mail, because people love getting cool things in the mail. If you’re looking at a very specific city, you can always email art directors and tell them you’re coming to visit that city for a week, and you would love to meet with them while you’re in town. And sometimes just stopping by place and letting people see you in person and see that you’re a normal, nice person. Or maybe you’re an abnormal person, they like that too, you know? I mean, sometimes just going and introducing yourself, the person sits behind that front desk, they have a lot of power, because they can reach back to the creative director and say, “hey, you know, this guy Marius came by here today. And he was, he was so polite and so nice. He would be a good fit here.” You know? Sometimes that can be the thing that makes a difference, versus just sending a PDF to someone saying, “Hey, here’s my stuff. I just graduated, let me know,” you know.
Marius Valdes
And lastly, once you graduate, you have your student portfolio. You should be working immediately to try and replace student work with real work. So if you’re doing if you find an organization, or nonprofits that you’re really interested in, maybe it’s like maybe you’re someone who’s really into cats and dogs, well maybe go to your local SPCA and offer to do a poster for them. If they’ll print it, you’ll trade design services for them doing that, then you can replace one of your student projects with a real project. And I think the more you start building that up, the better it is.
Marius Valdes
And then the last thing I’ll say, this is the advice I would tell myself, if I could go back in time: be patient, finding a job is, sometimes it’s the market, sometimes its timing, is just like, you know, you just never know what the elements of finding that right job are at the moment. It could be someone is going on maternity leave, and they need someone to fill in for six months. And you just happen to, they just happen to get your resume that day, you know that that literally happened to me. So it’s it’s about being patient and not looking at your classmates or your friends and seeing “Oh, man, so-and-so is going to work for Google and so-and-so’s going to work for this agency, and I’m, I just can’t find a job.” It’s going to take a little time for some people. And you just have to be persistent, and again, disciplined. Maybe you get a job waiting tables at night so you have your days open so you can go interview or do freelance work. Or maybe you just get your dream job right out of college that happens too you know?
Emma Plutnicki
That’s great advice, thank you. And just overall, is there anything else you’d like to add?
Marius Valdes
I mean, I think college and working is the same thing. It’s you get what you kind of put into it. So I think, I think you just got to get started. Like, that’s really something someone told me is just like, I remember, like, I got off for my first job out of college. The Cartoon Network thing didn’t work out, so I moved to Charlotte. And the girl I was dating at the time, she got this amazing job making really good money and doing awesome, like, client work. And I got offered this really boring job making like, you know, almost half what she was making. I remember one of my teachers just saying, “dude, just get started.” And it’s so true. Once you just kind of get into the field, that first job is kind of like a fifth year of college. You learn more, you kind of, you start to get better at things. And once you’re in a job, it’s easy to find another job, you know? And you will be amazed and students will be amazed what life is like when you don’t have homework. You have so much more time, like spare time, that you won’t know what to do with yourself. My first year out of college, I was like the healthiest I ever was in my life, because I would get home from work and be so bored. I would just go for like a two hour walk with my dog, you know, and then come home and like read, and like paint, and like, I mean, I had so much spare time outside of the nine to five thing and it was great, you know, it was really, really nice. So I guess that’d be my last little bit of advice.
Emma Plutnicki
Yeah. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining us today.