From American Idol to the New York Times – a Designer story

By day, Omar Lee collaborates with the other members of the Design and Web Development team to make the LinkedIn experience a rewarding one for our users. The rest of the time, he's busy designing for news outlets like the New York Times to American Idol finalists! Here's his story...

Something that few people know about me (well, until now) is that I have a secondary career outside of my primary one as a visual designer for the web -- I'm a freelance illustrator. The sort of work I do runs the gamut from editorial (New York Times, Newsweek, Business Week) to commercial (Sprint, Volkswagen, McDonald's). Aside from the simple thrill that comes with getting paid to draw stuff, I like to think that the rapid concepting and quick execution required in illustration, particularly the editorial variety, keeps my skills sharp and makes me a better visual designer.

This strange part-time job of mine makes for some absurd career moments. The friendly-but-heated debate with an art director over the merits of using dinosaurs as a metaphor for obsolescence. Would it be too obvious? Too jokey? Too scary-looking? Bleary-eyed, late-night Google image searches for reference photos of the second actor who played Darren on Bewitched. The weekend call from an advertising agency asking me if I would be willing to air-draw in a darkened room with an assortment of colored flashlights.

To date, though, my oddest experience as an illustrator was the evening I received no fewer than 36 overly excited e-mails and text messages, littered with exclamation points: "OMG! I just saw Blake wearing your shirt!!!"DOOD! UR SHIRT ON TV! XLNT!" To the chagrin of my American Idol-addicted friends, my initial reaction was: "Um, who's Blake?" But once I realized that they were talking about THAT show -- you know, the one with the mean guy who tells people that they have no business singing -- I got sort of excited. The t-shirt in question was one that I had designed for Poketo, a small Los Angeles-based company, a couple of years ago and it seemed that Blake Lewis, an American Idol hopeful from Seattle, was wearing it. I'd seen a random person or two wearing one on MUNI (San Francisco's version of public transportation) but this was national television! So surreal! So exciting! Chris Saccheri, our Director of Web Development, was thoughtful enough to get some screen captures from the show, which I promptly posted on Flickr.

(American Idol Blake Lewis wearing the Poketo shirt on the show | Source: Omar Lee)