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Ernest Dempsey — The Internet has aided art and design in a fundamentally important way: squashing the physical distance between the artist and the customer. Artists and designers have established themselves as independent professionals working online and dealing with customers directly, without dependency on a mediating company or agency to get work. No matter where they are based, they now need a computer with an Internet connection, and there they are—freelance professional at your service. Michal Splho is an example of such a professional, a cover/layout designer and painter. Based in Bratislava, Slovakia, Michal has established himself over the years as a freelance online designer and cover/layout artist, who gets projects from international customers, both individuals and companies. Currently working as a cover and layout artist for the Loving Healing Press and other publishers, Michal talks about his work in the following conversation.
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Ernest: Hello Michal! It’s a pleasure to have a conversation with you. Please tell a little about yourself and your work?
Michal: Hi, it’s a pleasure for me too. My life is as simple and as complicated as it only can be for an average person. I live in Bratislava, Slovakia. I studied to become an electrician in my small hometown. But at the end, I slightly changed my plans and decided to be a serious artist. Unfortunately, I never made it to the University of Fine Arts in Bratislava. This was the only choice at that time. As I could see that I have little perspective to be accepted by the university, I decided to educate myself. So I became typical prototype of a self-made man. I withdrew into a small wooden cottage more than 100 years old in a distant rural village. I was living there almost 3 years, living life of a bohemian self-made man, educating myself 15 hours a day. I learned to paint and draw there; I discovered the universe of literature, philosophy, and art there. I also vaguely remember long wild winter Saturday nights with friends there—in USA, they would call it ‘party’. Life had its course, and later on, I was pushed by circumstances to consider a different way of life. That’s how I became a graphic designer and for the last 9 years, I’ve been working in that field. But I did a lot of other jobs too: I was a postman, working in a moving company; I worked in an expedition of tanks in my hometown; I was selling rolls; and I worked, for a time, as an electrician too—that had almost tragic consequences for some people. I do not even attempt to change an electric bulb now. As an electrician, I am a very dangerous man.
Ernest: That’s pretty interesting! What drove you to choose designing as your profession and what kind of designing work have you been doing?
Michal: Well, life did it. Strange sequence of events. I tried to get an order from any Slovak publishing house as an illustrator. As a result, one old publisher called me once and offered me a little cooperation. He guided me to take interest into typesetting and cover design. So I learned the basics. Later on, he mediated for me a part-time job in a Slovak weekly magazine with a brilliant history. At that time, it was going down and after a year, I was laid off, and the magazine closed down. Later on, the old man’s publishing house closed down, too. Soon I got another job in a newly established weekly magazine Zurnal. It was a magazine of top rank and I was there from the beginning to the end as a typesetter; I also illustrated one column there. After 3 years, it closed down. Indeed, I have learned how to start a magazine, and how to close down one as well. Since then, I am full-time freelancer (I did freelancing besides my main jobs too) and I decided to work with foreign publishers. I love to design book covers, book layouts, magazines, and I love to illustrate them. I love to play with fonts and use their unique characteristics to create harmony in space and combine them with images and illustrations. I do not work from home. There are two little kids and a wife—you can imagine consequences. I have rented an office and work from there.
Ernest: That’s understandable. So what part of your work is most tedious and demanding the most attention? And how do you avoid distractions at work?
Michal: Well, once I settle to work, I do not sense any distractions. I am able to focus on my work with such intensity that nothing can really distract me. If there are more requests at the same time, I am able to work on 4 things at a time and it does not distract me either. I feel that once you deeply involve yourself into your work, everything receives your 100 percent attention. Everything I do is most demanding because I concentrate on each little thing with fullest energy and attention. Fundamentally, I can tell that actually quite often, the most demanding part of the job is dealing with customers.
Ernest: You’ve been working freelance for a long time. Is it your choice or necessity?
Michal: I’ll say it is my ‘choice of necessity’. I cannot get a job here in the area which would be rewarded as I demand it to be rewarded. Publishers or ad agencies here demand graphic designers who do what they are told to do. And they get equally rewarded. But I am the type of person who sets up his own goals. I like new challenges; I like to generate new ideas; experiment; try new ways; discover new horizons. I like to penetrate and fill the space and have my own vision. I do not wait for somebody to tell me what to do. I create problems for myself and I solve them too. And I expect the highest rank of reward. With this point of view, I remain unemployable here. Employing agencies have sets of people to handle all of that; I manage it all as a single person. My only choice is to have my own business. I started as a freelancer, and I continue to learn to develop and grow.
Ernest: Tell me, how do you weigh working for customers in your homeland against those who send you work from abroad?
Michal: Well, Slovakia is a young country and it does not have developed a business culture yet. People here were never used to developing business relationships, options, and possibilities. They never had to learn customer relations. It all came with the fall of communism in 1989. But you cannot build this business culture in one day. As I can see, 20 years are not enough. It will take a few more generations. From that point of view, I prefer to cooperate with foreign customers. There are certain rules which proved to be always valid abroad. In Slovakia, it is not always so. But generally, I had a good experience here too. The typical example of a Slovak businessman shows in an ad I read online recently: “I will employ a graphic designer with highest quality of work, long work experience, excellent references, and smallest demands on salary.” The man dared to speak so openly. I wrote about it an article on my blog. The concept here is: “Yes, this is my dream employer. My whole life, I collected the skill, the best information, I studied late through the nights, and work against sleep to improve myself and offer the best to my employer, just for that one purpose: to demand the lowest reward for my effort. I hope nobody will get that job before me.” Do they expect really that? Unfortunately, yes.
Ernest: Indeed a sad fact! I’m interested in learning from you that working online as a designer for international customers, proficiency in English sounds like a requisite. Please tell us a little about how you developed your English skills and if you had any special effort in whetting your English according to the nature of your work?
Michal: Well, I learned English a long time ago. I spent one year in London in 1997. And I made effort daily to learn more and improve. I decided for a time to read only English texts, watch only English movies, listen to only English radio. My grammar and accent falter a lot. But I collected quite a large vocabulary. I actually never had a big problem to understand a project. Now I decided to learn German language and I dream of some others too.
Ernest: What are some of the most exciting projects you did, something you will remember always for the creativity and interest you enjoyed in doing?
Michal: My favorite projects were illustrating two children books for Seven Arches Publishing and redesigning and typesetting of Recovering The Self published by the Loving Healing Press. Those were great opportunities to apply my experience, skill, and creative imagination.
Ernest: As a painter, what inspires you most and what places have you traveled so far?
Michal: People inspire me most. I was always attracted by figurative paintings. I remember I used to sit in a pub for hours and draw people drinking, chatting; I drew waitresses walking around. The drawings were very simple, quick; I did not have a time to focus on details, just to catch the essence. I drew hundreds of sheets like that. They looked like comics pages sometimes—the movement of one person in sequences all over the sheet. I enjoyed it tremendously. Regarding travelling, I am not a traveler type of person. I did it to UK, a little around Europe. My lifelong dream is to drift across USA.
Ernest: The recent political crisis in Slovakia drew world attention. Did it affect your work in any way?
Michal: It did not affect my work. But I got very disappointed. I am not an expert on politics and I can offer only my personal point of view. I see it this way: politicians in the government are the reflection of the nation. Maturity and quality of the nation is indeed reflected in the government, in what kind of people occupy the seats there. So I do not complain that we have a bad situation here because of the bad quality of people in politics. I am pretty aware that we got the best regarding what we, as citizens, represent. If the level of the quality of the nation develops and goes up, it will be impossible for such people to get seats in the government. So that is our personal task to improve.
To be a designer in Slovakia is hard to describe. I can speak for myself only. There are plenty of others, who are more successful, more productive, more developed, and may have a different opinion. I can sum it up this way: Slovakia is a small market. It is more like a village environment than a state. It works mostly on personal connections and relationships. The quality of work is not always crucial to employers. Everybody knows everybody. The strongest dominate the little yard. You are in or out.
Ernest: Beside Loving Healing Press and Recovering the Self, what are some of your current engagements as a graphic designer?
Michal: Well, I cooperate with AEG Publishing Group. I design book covers for them. Quite interesting work! I typeset one monthly city magazine here as well. Also, I expect one new children book project with my illustrations soon coming about. And I constantly search for more.
Ernest: Thank you so much Michal! We hope to see more good work coming from you in the future.
Michal: Indeed thank you for being interested in the little story of a self-made man.
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Interested readers can visit Michal Splho's website to learn more about him and his work. His Facebook portfolio is also worth seeing.
