My Story
The quick version:
hi I’m Jen Leheny and I freelance under the business name, Red Instead. I’ve been doing graphic and web design for over ten years now. I was blogging before the word was even coined and I’ve seen some changes! I have worked in the web and graphic design industry in Sydney previously, but I am now based in Canberra. Up until now, I have been self-taught, though I am currently doing a Bachelor of Graphic Design at Uni to formalise my skills. It’s important to me to get a qualification and to learn everything I can, and the time is right for me now.
The longer version:
I started in the design field many years ago as a Forms Designer and then a Typesetter in the Public Service. After taking a voluntary redundancy, I studied at Canberra’s NRS School and received top of the class in my course, Media Production and Communication. I worked in video editing and then radio for about a year before going back to my first love, design.
With a series of websites to my name but no formal qualifications, I approached a young designer called Justin Fox and arranged to move to Sydney to work for free for his design company for six months, learning on the job while living on the public service redundancy payout. Along the way I was involved in the founding of design community Australian INfront with Justin and a small group of other designers, presented at the National Young Writers Festival in Newcastle on writing for the web and setting up your own website, started up a (now defunct) Sydney chapter of Webgrrls International, co-hosted a girl technology radio show on public radio and was nominated (and came second) for Best Personal Website in the Telstra Web Awards.
An offer to work at SPIKE, one of Sydney’s biggest and brashest web companies, followed but it was all cut short when I happily fell pregnant! Setting up a home-based web design business while pregnant proved to be a bit ambitious as there was no time for anything else once the baby came along, so I had to put it on hold. A couple of years later, my family and I moved back to Canberra and I decided to enrol at Canberra’s School of Art to train as a professional photographer. While I was preparing my portfolio for entry, I found that I was pregnant again! Once the second baby was a little older, I got itchy fingers and decided to set up a home business designing and sewing clothing, handbags and other accessories. I worked from home when I could (often late into the night) and sold at local markets and online as this could easily fit around my responsibilities as a mum. This continued along for six years, juggling a young family and fitting the business in where I could.
Eventually I needed to find some part-time work outside of the house (while still running my own business on the side) and I quickly found a job as Print Manager at a small design and printing studio. I then moved into the web area and was responsible for some design as well as content loading and web maintenance. That job finished up due to the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) and so I took an Office Manager position where I was responsible for minor graphic design and website maintenance as well as admin and financial duties.
In 2009, I took stock of my life and career and knew it was time for some big changes. I thought back over the last ten years or so and saw that design was in everything I loved and wanted to be a part of. Oftentimes, the best part of my handmade business was the web design and maintenance, online marketing and graphic design that went along with it. I realised the kids were now a lot older and happily settled at school, and finally it was my turn again! In 2010, I enrolled at University of Canberra to get my qualifications for Bachelor of Graphic Design. I wound up the handmade business and launched a new design business to earn some money and slowly build up a client base while studying. With the business doing very well, I have decided to drop my study load back to part-time so that I can have the best of both worlds, studying to fill in the gaps and formalise my knowledge while doing client work and building my business on a strong foundation.
Designing for web and print is what I love the most and this is the new direction for Red Instead.
