Jon Contino, New York, N.Y. @joncontino - Tumblr Blog

My friends at Skillshare sat with me for a day while I designed a new bandana for Past Lives. I talk about the concept, the production, and everything in between!

Speaking of which, you can get that bandana online here: “A Haunted Good Night Bandana” from Past Lives

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2014 from joncontino on 8tracks Radio.

Every week in 2014 I had one song that stood out for one reason or another. This mix is a collection of all 52 tracks for a total of 3 hours and 9 minutes. Tracklist is after the break. Enjoy!

Hi Jon – Been a long time fan of your work. I've been out of school for 2 years now and now working in a small mom and pop beauty distribution company. I've been here for almost a year now working mostly in packaging design, but not happy about the work I've been doing and have lost interest in design. What do you suggest doing to gain that passion back and do you think it would be difficult to go into a different industry such as designing for another industry? (i.e tv/film, logo, web design)

First and foremost, I’d say that what you’re dealing with right now is 100% normal. Most designers go through that. Unfortunately the internet makes everyone look like a superstar, but that just isn’t the case. Don’t let the job discourage you. Remember that you have to pay your dues before you really start getting the good stuff. Here’s what I would suggest for you going forward:

Start designing on the side. It doesn’t matter what it is, just do something. You need a creative outlet. Right now you’re being stifled and it’s getting frustrating. You need something to get excited about again.

If you’re too tired or annoyed to start some stuff on the side, then tell yourself to snap out of it. Now is the perfect time to start using your free hours in the day to experiment and find something that excites you again.

Maybe look for another job. Something a little more exciting, maybe?

Changing industries is tough. You basically need to start over. It’s not impossible, but you’ll be surprised how quickly you get knocked right back down to the bottom. Here’s a great example of how switching industries work: In 9th grade you’re new and unsure. By 12th grade, you’re the king of the school and no one can tell you who to be. In your freshman year of college, you’re immediately knocked back down a peg because no one gives a shit about your high school. Now you start over again and the process continues until you find your place.

With all that being said, I think it’s important to try out a lot of things and see what sticks. You’re young enough where you can try a bunch of different things and still have plenty of time to settle down with something you love doing.

If nothing else, remember this: You’re a rookie. Rookies don’t get in the Hall of Fame two years into their career. Keep working. Find useful bits of information from the current place you’re at and use it to take extra steps in your next position. Being a professional designer sucks for the first few years until you’re able to figure out how to do bigger and better work. Hang in there and keep at it. You’ll be fine. Just make sure you don’t pass up opportunities because they’re not safe.

Take chances and shoot for the stars. Now is the perfect time.

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OK. What WERE your go to inspiration books?

Ha! Good question. I have a lot of old baseball books I found in antique stores that I’ve never seen anywhere else. They have a ton of great stuff in them. There’s also a lot of great lettering and showcard books that I’ve found out there that have been out of print for quite some time. If you just google any of those keywords, you’ll find a bunch on ebay I’m pretty sure. I also love a my tattoo flash book library and my Craphound library.

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How fun was the High Life project and how much creative freedom did you have?

It was a great project. I did two sketches and they picked the first one. It was pretty wide open actually. Anything I wanted to do was ok’d and I don’t remember there being any restrictions on anything. Pretty awesome for a big company like that. There are plenty of huge corporations that I’ve worked with that get so caught up in their own bureaucracy, that the design ends up falling flat on its face. Glad the Miller project didn’t turn out that way.

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Hi! I am one of those people who have been following your work silently, so this is pretty cool. Being 20 year old and freshly graduated from design school, I kinda wanna learn everything about everything. I am working on setting up my own wedding invitation boutique to pursue hand-lettering as a career. As a designer and entrepreneur, what do you think is more important - the ability to sell something or the craft itself? Thanks so much.

The first thing I can tell you is that your age is definitely going to show once you start moving with the business. I was in the same boat as you and the inexperience is going to put you in a lot of awkward and tough positions. I think it’s incredibly important to learn the business side of things as quickly as possible. The craft is something you should always be working on, but now is the time to start soaking it in and learning what to do and what not to do. It might even be good if you could find a small design shop similar to what you want to do and maybe even spend one day a week there. Just watch them talk on the phone, email clients, handle budgets and scheduling…all that stuff is insanely important. The craft is the easy part. As designers, we’re not really built for business, so it’s going to be a lot harder to learn that side of it as opposed to learning how to do a few different swashes at the end of a letter R.

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what are some of your go to books when searching for some inspiration?

I actually kind of wore out my go-to books. I feel like everything I used to find inspirational is something I’ve gone to a thousand times before. It doesn’t really scratch the itch like it used to. I’m in the process of trying to find a new world to break into. There’s so much out there, I hate just keeping my nose buried in the same stuff over and over again.

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Hey Jon. For career purposes I've kept this anonymous. I just took a look/listen at the talk you gave at WMC fest last year, and I sort of feel like I'm at a place that you might understand. I've gained a following on twitter and dribbble, but I'm still doing shit work for a shit client for shit pay. I lack the motivation and inspiration to do personal projects, and fear if I do, it will be bad/uninspired/unoriginal. Do you have any advice or saving grace for me? Thanks in advance, man.

Honestly, you just gotta keep on going. You need to dig deep down and find a spark to do something more personal, because in this day and age, it’s a lot harder to get by on just being a good designer. You have to show that you’re capable of concepting, creating, directing, and managing for people to understand how much you’re truly worth. If you can create something unique to you, even if it’s bad, you’ll at least learn why the reaction isn’t what you want and make it better the next time around. I think I literally started ten clothing companies before CXXVI took off, and each one of those was a train wreck.

Think of personal projects this way: What would you love to create for no reason? Forget about the internet and people looking at things and tapping on a heart icon. Just make something because you love it. That’s it. If it’s unoriginal or uninspired, then don’t share it. Sit on it for a while before you put it out into the world and see how you feel about it first. It shouldn’t take long for you to call out your own bullshit or realize that you’re onto something good. Is there something you can create that has some kind of chronological backbone? Something that can get better as time goes on? Or maybe something you can add to once a week or even once a day? One way or another, compiling work into some sort of collection is always a good way to look at it.

The bottom line is this though: Get your head out of the ground and stop worrying what people will think. Build a car out of Legos or something. Draw faces on your neighbors front door with ketchup squirt bottles and photograph them. Sometimes the dumbest thing can become a really fun outlet for your work and will maybe even let you open up a little bit to your own head. People will catch onto the fact that you’re not afraid of boundaries and start respecting you as a commercial artist much more than they already do.

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Madball or Cro Mags?

Gotta go with Madball. “Set it Off” will always be in the top 10 for me.

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Is a sandwich a type of hamburger?

Don’t be ridiculous. A hamburger MAY be a type of sandwich, but NEVER the other way around.

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Hey Contino, awhile back you gave me some words of wisdom and I thank you for that. Keep on inspiring others, your work is truly remarkable. My question is—How long did it take you to finally reach that point in which you decided to do what you do now? Your handwritten, distressed typography and illustrations are done so well and I can imagine that it may have taken you time to develop these skills on your own. Have you ever considered about other design mediums aside from what you do now?

So happy to hear I’ve helped out in the past! My general style has been the same forever. I can look at old drawings from elementary school and see what is basically the same method of production, the same thought process, and the same general vibe. What I’ve done over the years is just find a way to make it work for who I am as a person, or basically just making it more efficient. I’m constantly considering new ways of doing things, but the tough thing about being a professional designer is that a lot of people want you to do what they know and tend to not want to be the “experiment” client. Doing personal projects always helps with that though and by the time you turn it into something worth while, it’s a lot easier to sell. Hopefully my work has a similar personality in 10 years, but I’d love it to look totally different.

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CXXVI is back! Now at cxxvi.com and ready with a whole new line!

Hey Jon, do you have any advice or tips for somebody who's trying to get into the whole design world. Unfortunately I don't really have the money for schooling, so I've been trying to teach myself a few things here and there. But it seams like I haven't gotten very far. Thank you.

You don’t need schooling to be a designer, plain and simple. Don’t let that be a hurdle. I taught myself how to design in middle school and haven’t stopped since then. I drew everything I wanted to design with pencils and Sharpie markers in my early days and then got a copy of Photoshop 3.0 from a friend and taught myself how to use that as well. The only thing you really need to be a designer is the passion to want to do it. That’s it. Everything else is easy.

The great thing about being a designer is that most of the tools you need are in your head. The rest is just production.

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Hey Jon, do you have any tips about finding a job at a design studio? I have been cold emailing studios and also replying to job postings and I haven't gotten much of a response. Is there something you did to help get noticed when first starting out?

Now’s the perfect time to start building your online presence. Luckily these days all you really need to do is be VERY persistent on social media and people will start paying attention whether they like it or not. The days of cold calls are long gone unfortunately (and fortunately) so I’m not surprised you’re not getting much of a response.

Honestly, your best bet these days is to create a personal project or two and promote the hell out of it. People want to see what you’re capable of and if you’re able to come up with something really unique, or at the very least executed well, then it will be a great way to start turning some heads. Show the world that you’re a one-stop shop for doing great work and then they’ll start emailing you.

The whole process will take more work, but in the long run it will not only garner more attention, but it will make you a stronger designer and project manager as well.

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I'm proud to announce the launch of Contino Brand, my latest personal menswear project. Throughout the years, I've worked with all different kinds of companies, big and small, and I never quite got the opportunity to do some of the stuff I was dying to do. About a year ago I decided I shouldn't wait anymore and just went for it.

Think of Contino Brand more as a curation of great craftspeople working together to make some really unique and fun stuff. I cut out the middle man with these and went straight to the source. No client is involved or anything like that, we're building stuff between designer and manufacturer and we're doing it the way we want to do it. Each collaboration will have a short story attached to it and the reason why I chose to work the particular manufacturer. The pieces will be limited to small numbers so we can continually make beautiful, interesting products and not have our hands tied to the retail/wholesale world. This is a showcase of what creative people can do if you let them run with it.

I hope you enjoy it! Visit the shop at continobrand.com

Late last year, my good friends over at American Icon almost lost one of their own. Master printer Jimmy "Bones" was in a devastating car accident that he barely survived. Thankfully he is now awake, however he is dealing with a long road to recovery and, unfortunately, an astronomical amount of medical costs.

I designed this t-shirt in hopes that we could sell a ton and raise some money for Jimmy so he can try to put this horrific incident behind him and get back on his feet at the best printing company I've ever worked with. There aren't many guys like Jimmy that know printing as well as he does these days, and not only that, but he's a great guy and a brother in our NYHC roots.

American Icon is also a friend and printer to many of my clients as well, including the Art Directors Club and Rome Snowboards just to name a few.

Anyway...BUY THE SHIRT! It's $15 and super soft, discharge process. Can't ask for a better deal for such a good cause. Thank you!!!

I've got a new Skillshare class going up soon! This one deals with the foundations of page/screen composition and how to apply custom lettering and illustration to create unique layouts.

The class covers a brief history of design and layout composition as well as the various steps I use to go from client copy to final product. It does not deal with how to draw letters, rather it covers how to use lettering to help enhance your layout design.

I tried to cover things that would be great for rookies as well as pros, so that even the most experienced designer can get out of his/her head for a minute and take a different look at composition.

SIGN UP NOW!!!

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Jon Contino, New York, N.Y.