FIELD NOTES 002

A referral from the regional DJ brought the designer into midtown Manhattan (close enough to a famous adult entertainment landmark to brag about the address) under the impression that this was the moment the field opened up and formal education became optional. The man who made the offer had energy but not infrastructure, promises but not payroll, and the kind of hustle that looks like momentum from the outside and looks like chaos from inside the office. What was supposed to be a launchpad turned out to be a dead end with a paycheck that never fully arrived. The designer left angry enough to do something irreversible to the man's equipment on the way out the door — a reaction that was honest, costly, and, as they'd later describe it, precisely the kind of lesson that doesn't need to be repeated.