“I've always wanted to see my work on TV and online. I like the feeling of having a lot of people look at it,” Miguel Arucan, a 2017 Reynolds School of Journalism alumnus, said.
Arucan is a graphic designer at Eclipse Advertising in Los Angeles. He creates display artwork, thumbnails used to promote films and shows on Netflix and other streaming platforms. In fall 2020, he began designing thumbnails for Ariana Grande’s Netflix documentary, “excuse me, i love you.”
“How it works is that we give Netflix hundreds of designs,” he said. “Then Netflix comes to us and says, ‘Hey, this is what Ariana's team likes.’ And then you look down the list and see which ones have your initials."
When Arucan learned that several of his thumbnails were selected for use on Netflix, he said the experience felt surreal.
“I always try to look back and see where I've come from, you know like just a regular student in a very small town,” he said. “Having one of the biggest pop stars look over my work and having that big of an audience, it's just unbelievable.”
A Reno native, Arucan started at the University of ÁùºÏ±¦µä, Reno in 2015. Initially, he considered majoring in graphic design in the College of Liberal Arts but chose journalism instead.
“[The Reynolds School] had the visual communications track,” he said. “They mentioned making YouTube videos, making podcasts, making short snippets of videos to tell a story. That is what I wanted to do…I wanted to make art but also be in the media realm as well.”
While studying at the University, Arucan took courses in visual communication, public relations and broadcasting. He worked as a graphic designer for Inkblot Promotions, and in the summer of 2017, he participated in the Reynolds School’s NPR Next Generation Radio program.
A few months later and one semester away from graduation, he accepted his first full-time job as a news photographer at KTVN Channel 2.
"I loved that experience. It was both scary and rewarding at the same time,” he said. “I was the first person on-scene. It could be a burglary, robbery, shootings, car accidents, stand-offs.”
After a little more than a year with the station and some deep reflection about his career path, Arucan decided to leave KTVN. He became a graphic designer at ZLINE Kitchen and Bath. In that role, he realized that while he loved graphic design, he wanted to design for the entertainment industry.
“My dad used to work for Hanna-Barbera, the studios that made the Flintstones…And I said, ‘I want to be in that field. I don't know how to get there, but I want to be in that field.’”
He applied for a position at Eclipse Advertising in fall 2019, not expecting to hear back. Yet, they called and asked him to come to Los Angeles for an interview.
“I did the interview, and I clarified to them [that I didn’t] have a lot of entertainment experience, but I [was] willing to work through it,” Arucan said.
The agency saw his inexperience as an opportunity for him to grow into the position, and Arucan was hired in December 2019 to design artwork for Disney+. When the pandemic happened, he shifted to work for Netflix.
“We did a few feature films…We did ‘History 101.’ We did ‘The Social Dilemma,’ and the latest one is Ariana Grande’s.”
Arucan’s job includes making adjustments to film screenshots, superimposing various images onto each other and creating multiple versions of the same thumbnail for different screen sizes. While the work can be tedious, he said seeing the final product on television or online makes his effort worthwhile.
“It's really rewarding because it's there forever,” he said. “You can look back at it the next year. You can ask your friends to look at it, and it is still going to be there.”
The support of his family, friends and mentors and peers at the Reynolds School helped help Arucan get to the position he holds today. He said he also took a chance on himself and encouraged Reynolds School students to do the same.
“Throw yourself out there…Today’s the time to just apply for any other job that you really want to get into…You never know what they might offer you.”
