Today we’d like to introduce you to Jude Alhusseini.
Jude, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I’ve always been artistic as a child, with heavy influence from my parents who were artistic in their own ways. I grew up being scolded at school for doodling all over my pages. When it came around time to choose which college to go to, I was lost, I could pursue a sensible career, like a lawyer, or doctor like my foreign parents would’ve wanted. I’m sure many can relate to hearing that. But I had to stay true to myself and set down my path of being a designer.
I was in my last semester of my bachelor’s degree program at the Art Institute of Dallas. It was around week five portfolio review when I was approached by my career counselor. He told me that he received a job offer that he thought I would be perfect for and made a point to tell me and me only. I reached out, interviewed, and got the job. It’s been almost two amazing years since I’ve joined the company, there are so many opportunities that I was able to have because of the wonderful opportunity that I was able to receive.
It is now two years since graduation and I’m still going strong knowing some people support me and my work. I wouldn’t be me if it wasn’t for the people in my life keeping me on track and helping me pursue my goals.
Has it been a smooth road?
Although it was great, it wasn’t always easy. When you’re creating for a living you tend to run out of ideas or you hit an art block. Those times were never great, you get into a slump of creating things that you yourself aren’t proud of and it shows. Whenever I get into those slumps I have my siblings to thank. My older brother, who won too many prestigious advertising awards for me to count always brought me back onto my path and my younger sister who loves drawing as much as I do, would always spark my creativity when we would draw together.
Struggles are part of the art path. Everyone has heard of the term “starving artist” but many never stop to think that the thing the artist is starving for isn’t always food. It could very well be validation, attention, and concepts.
Being paid to be creative defiantly has a toll. In the first year of me being in my job, I never worked on my personal projects; I didn’t have any creative flow inside of me to use for myself. The very thing that I loved doing was becoming a chore for a certain point in my career.
It takes time to find a balance between yourself and your job, some people are able to find it in a short amount of time, others take longer and no matter how long you take, the most important thing is for you to find your equilibrium.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
The Arion Group is a lot of things. It’s a family, it’s a community, and most of all it’s growing. To summarize, we are a highly-personalized consulting agency. We manage the creative, financial, and strategic work that enables individuals and businesses to grow and differentiate their brands. I deal with the creative aspect of the company, being as I am the creative director, I take part and overlook all of the graphic design, web design, advertising, marketing, photography, and videography that our clients are receiving. I sit in on meetings with the clients and discuss how we can help them reach their goals and build their empire for them.
The thing I’m most proud of as a company is that although we are young in retrospect of the competing companies in our field, we have done so much and have amazing clients. It’s never a boring day at the company when you have the clientele that you do. They make all the ups and downs worth it.
I’d say the main thing that sets us apart from others is the fact that we’re not in it for the money, there’s a lot of people that claim that they’re not but we’ve taken on many clients that we don’t necessarily see “paychecks” from, a lot of our work is done for free, only because we believe in their story, their product and we want to help. I don’t think many companies would take time out of their day to help others if they don’t get immediate monetary value in return. Many people think that this isn’t something that would set us apart in a positive light but when you’re in the creative field you’re often fed same jobs that bring no joy to your life whether you do it or not, I’m proud to say that I wake up and enjoy my job as opposed to others that are simply doing it just to do it.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
The creative and financial agency, much like the medical and law fields are never going to stop. They will be ever expanding and people will rely on them more and more especially in this day and age of media take over. With the boom of technology, that’s how my career really got its place in this world. As technology changes, my job will too. Trends are happening all the time in my field and it’s up to me to stay on top of them. I remember how going through college, my teachers, in the beginning, preached about using gradients and loved them, then towards the end of my education, you would get your pieces thrown out if they weren’t in flat color design.
Trends help the industry move forward and it also helps you learn new styles and ways of thinking in regards to design. I can’t wait to see what lies ahead of me in the upcoming years.
Contact Info:
- Address: 3625 North Hall Street.
Dallas, TX 75219 - Website: https://www.theariongroup.com
- Phone: 9739013434
- Email: jude@theariongroup.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theariongroup/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/arionagency/
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