{"id":728,"date":"2017-04-20T14:56:27","date_gmt":"2017-04-20T14:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/career.adobeawards.com\/?p=728"},"modified":"2017-04-27T13:14:13","modified_gmt":"2017-04-27T13:14:13","slug":"conversation-with-adaa-finalist-martin-hoang-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/career.adobeawards.com\/?p=728","title":{"rendered":"Conversation with ADAA Finalist Martin Hoang: Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve been catching up with ADAA 2016 <\/em>Commercial Photography Finalist Martin Hoang<\/em><\/a> at the Adobe San Francisco offices. This is the last article <\/em>in a series<\/em><\/a> about the launch of Martin\u2019s career.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nMartin Hoang and Johnson Fung at work at Adobe\u2019s San Francisco offices.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

ADOBE:<\/strong> Alright. You\u2019ve been at work at Adobe<\/a> for a while now. Catch us up, now that you\u2019ve got a little perspective on it all.<\/p>\n

MARTIN HOANG:<\/strong> It\u2019s been a rollercoaster. A lot of ups and a lot of downs. I\u2019ve grown so much. I\u2019m still learning a lot<\/em>. It\u2019s absolutely ridiculous the amount of information I\u2019m processing every day. And a lot of it isn\u2019t technical; it\u2019s on the psychological and emotional side of work.<\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>Tell us more about that difference \u2013 between the technical and the emotional sides of work?<\/p>\n

MH: <\/strong>Well, I\u2019ve made some incremental technical<\/em> improvement as a designer, sure, but I\u2019m still more or less doing what I was doing as a student. The skills I\u2019m using on a daily basis and the tasks I\u2019m executing are pretty similar.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all the other<\/em> stuff that comes along with working in the real world that\u2019s really forced me to grow. Deadlines are real <\/em>now. I had a pretty good work ethic before, but I\u2019ve had to work myself even harder to meet all the expectations. And I\u2019m not just cruising out of class at the end of the day and going home; those expectations go with me.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t let my personal life get in the way of my focus at work, but I also don\u2019t want my work to get in the way of my personal life. There\u2019s a balance I have to be thinking about all the time, and that, in and of itself, is work.<\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>Sometimes learning that lesson can be a little painful. How did you first realize the need for work \/ life balance?<\/p>\n

MH: <\/strong>Right away I had a hard time keeping the balance. I think it\u2019s probably a struggle for most designers, since doing work we love \u2013 it\u2019s in our nature, as creative people. But I let it get to the point that I didn\u2019t have a personal life any more, and I let it happen way too fast. I was concentrating entirely on work and staying hyper-focused on succeeding, and when you do that, you burn out.<\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>Sounds like you didn\u2019t burn all <\/em>the way out\u2026<\/p>\n

MH: <\/strong>Actually, no \u2013 you\u2019re right. I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>What saved you?<\/p>\n

MH: <\/strong>My coworker, Emily. She gave me some really great advice, as a fellow creative. She told me I needed to find something to do in my personal time to replenish my creative juices \u2013 something not <\/em>related to my work. Those of us who turn our hobbies into our day jobs need to consistently replenish the passion that hobby brought us before it was work.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Martin\u2019s portrait of his Adobe teammate, copywriter Emily Brady.<\/em><\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>Great advice from Emily. Who is she?<\/p>\n

MH: <\/strong>Emily is the copywriter for the project I\u2019m working on. I deal with the visual side of things, and she deals with the technical\/instructional side. All of the text you see in our project is her creative output.<\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>What was that like, making a personal relationship in the workplace?<\/p>\n

MH: <\/strong>It\u2019s hard to do \u2013 with anyone in any setting, really. We all have barriers, we don\u2019t like feeling vulnerable. It\u2019s scary, putting your trust in people, especially in an environment where you already feel intimidated. Emily just put off this really caring, protective, older sister vibe. I\u2019m an older sibling myself, and to see her take that on \u2013 it made me open up and trust her. It also really cemented our team; trust is how you get great work done.<\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>Tell us about some great work you\u2019ve gotten done. What are you proud of?<\/p>\n

MH: <\/strong>I still can\u2019t spill too <\/em>much about our project, but I can say it\u2019s low-budget; we had to be scrappy and leverage our connections a lot. Emily was a huge help; she has an amazing network and we\u2019ve made a lot happen with it that we\u2019re both really proud of.<\/p>\n

The biggest high for me personally so far has been the fact that I\u2019ve never missed a deadline. Not yet \u2013 no matter how tight they\u2019ve been. In fact, I just turned in some Photoshop assets yesterday to the product team at 3:00 PM sharp. That was the big <\/em>deadline we\u2019ve had for the past two months. We have another big one in June and I\u2019m gonna make that one, too.<\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>How\u2019s your relationship with your supervisor?<\/p>\n

MH: <\/strong>Johnson, my boss, has been nothing but supportive from the very beginning. He\u2019s helped me evolve as a person and as a leader. He\u2019s pushed me to take initiative. He\u2019s taught me to always have a \u201cPlan A\u201d and a \u201cPlan B\u201d \u2013 that was a big one for me. I used to think of myself as a one-hit wonder: someone who could nail it on the first attempt. In the real world, I\u2019ve learned that rarely works. I always have multiple plans now: multiple ways of persuading my stakeholders. It helps me feel confident I can hit the ground running after a pitch.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Martin\u2019s portrait of his supervisor, Johnson Fung, Senior Product Manager at Adobe.<\/em><\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>You\u2019ve obviously already learned a number of valuable career lessons; what advice would you like to give yourself, back in December, when you just found out you got this job?<\/p>\n

MH: <\/strong>I think I would tell myself to think good and hard about how I ride the wave of stress. Do I fall off and crash? Or do I coast on it gracefully, all the way to the shore. It\u2019s a great metaphor, because work \u2013 and life \u2013 continuously give you waves. You can\u2019t avoid them. It\u2019s about how you ride them that defines you in your career.<\/p>\n

I learned that from my mentor, Theresa Whitehill<\/a>, actually.<\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>That\u2019s an amazing piece of advice \u2013 something you really only learn once you\u2019ve been dunked in the shark tank. Tell us about Theresa.<\/p>\n

MH: <\/strong>Theresa is my professional mentor. I was paired with her through the Adobe ico-D Mentorship Program<\/a>. I\u2019ve been meeting with her outside of work. It\u2019s great, because she provides this totally different perspective on my work and my growth, separate from the workplace.<\/p>\n

Overall, I feel super lucky that I have so many sources of support right now, helping me grow and improve.<\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>What are you and Theresa working on together?<\/p>\n

MH: <\/strong>We\u2019re working on a high-end packaging concept for tea tins. The tins are wrapped in red leather, I\u2019m sculpting designs in them\u2026 It combines a lot of my creative passions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>Martin\u2019s professional mentor, <\/em>Colored Horse Studios<\/em><\/a> co-founder Theresa Whitehill.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/em>Martin at work on his packaging project with Theresa.<\/em><\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>Sounds a lot like your Sojourn <\/em>project<\/a>. You\u2019re pushing all those boundaries again\u2026<\/p>\n

MH: <\/strong>Yes! And it\u2019s really keeping me sane right now. Photography and graphic design have been my passion for so long, but doing them every day for work \u2013 I need something outside of that to bring me back down to earth and remind me why I love <\/em>being a creative.<\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>Okay. Boil all this wisdom down for those students getting ready to graduate. They\u2019re nervous about launching their careers. They\u2019re getting their portfolios together. They\u2019re exactly where you were not long ago. What\u2019s your message to them?<\/p>\n

MH: <\/strong>Your technical skills can only take you so far. When people look to hire, they want to hire who you <\/em>are, as a person. That\u2019s the biggest part of all of it: how you fit in with the team. Outside of being a great creative, you have to be a great person \u2013 and a great team member. Be kind to all, and most importantly be genuine.<\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>Recipe for success! It\u2019s great to have you on the team, Martin.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve been catching up with ADAA 2016 Commercial Photography Finalist Martin Hoang at the Adobe San Francisco offices. This is the last article in a series about the launch of Martin\u2019s career. Martin Hoang and Johnson Fung at work at Adobe\u2019s San Francisco offices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[44,30,41,45,46,47,48,43,42],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/career.adobeawards.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/career.adobeawards.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/career.adobeawards.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/career.adobeawards.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/career.adobeawards.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/career.adobeawards.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":741,"href":"https:\/\/career.adobeawards.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions\/741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/career.adobeawards.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/career.adobeawards.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/career.adobeawards.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/career.adobeawards.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}