Self-Promotions and process

The purpose of self-promotion is to get yourself and your work out there to create a buzz about yourself and your studio. As mentioned in the reading there is a difference between admiration and respect and celebrity. It is easy to confuse the two and desire the “celebrity” of design, but this can me a tricky path as celebrity is fleeting. What is more important is gaining the respect of your fellow designers and future clients. This means that you are respected on the bases of your work and not on what is hip at the time. A designer cannot work within a bubble. We need to have your eyes on the cultural pulse to understand the current trends in media and advertising. It is also important to have an understanding of the past, as there is nothing new in design. Design is all about taking something that is known and giving it a new look, purpose or level of meaning.

There are a few ways to keep your work and name out in the design collective. Keeping contact with design schools, joining design oriented organizations, attending lectures and conferences and maintaining an updated portfolio can help to achieve this.

The creative process is something we have been exploring throughout our educational career. Creating and working with design briefs have been the bane of our existence and will continue to be so. Without a proper comprehensive creative brief, the design process will grind to a halt. Sometimes through dissection and research, a designer can get to the heart of the project. But sometimes it is necessary to create your own design brief adapting it to the project, as the client needs. What is important is making sure the client is happy, the job is profitable and the project is newsworthy. Achieving these three important things makes our work valuable and, for lack of a better word, good.

The people that you need in your studio

The first section of the reading deals with running a studio and the people you would need to hire to keep the studio running smoothly. There is a great importance placed on the kind of people you hire, creative’s and non-creative’s. First and foremost these need to be people that can work well together as a team. It was interesting the amount of importance placed on hiring forward thinking creative’s that can bring something to the team that you yourself cannot do. This allows for a well-rounded team that is able to face any challenge a client can produce.

The next part of the reading concerns how to win new work. Business people, websites, portfolios and promotional materials can aid in bringing in new clients. The most important thing to remember is that clients are everywhere and it takes a constant eye to be on the lookout for new business.

The last section looks at the clients themselves. There are a few suggestions that are laid out when dealing with clients. First, treat them like your friends. Each one is different with different emotional and professional needs. Second, don’t be afraid to challenge your clients when it is needed. A strong working relationship can help to keep the progress of a project in check without creating problems down the line. Lastly, continue to evolve your working process with your clients to keep the relationship from growing stale and complacent.

Flicker Me!

I posted some color tests on flicker. Please check out this set and send your feedback.

color test set

The reading for this week broke down how to find work / where to work after graduation. The first section discusses how to find a job in an in-house studio, independent studio or a design studio. Suggestions are given on how to conduct your self and how to do follow-ups.

Freelancing is also discussed in this section, more importantly how to find clients. I think this is the most difficult part of working freelance. As mentioned in the reading, you are always searching for that next project. Not only are you selling your skills but yourself. If everything goes well you can move on to creating a studio. Once a business plan has been outlined, professional advisors hired and the basics have been created (office space, studio name, studio identity and studio system) the business is ready to take off.

Graphic Design: Warts and All

In the intro to the book How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul the author makes a connection between the use of personal voice in fashion design and in architecture and in graphic design. A case is made that the former artists are allowed to use their personal voice more within their designs, more so then graphic designers. I disagree; there are “artists” in fashion design and architecture who make clothes for a small group of people and houses for few. But to be a great fashion designer or architect, it has to be great design for most.

David Carson is a respected artist, and while he may be innovative and experimental with his designs, they are not appealing to everyone. This innovativeness also removed him from the mainstream of culture and placed him along the fringe.

Paul Rand on the other hand is also a respected artist who is innovative and experimental, but his designs are approachable to the mainstream. As graphic designers it is our job to find that balance between using our own personal creative voice and remaining accessible by the largest audience possible.

There are some attributes that should be found within graphic designers that were mentioned in the reading that I feel are worth mentioning.

Cultural Awareness: Designers can’t live in a bubble. We are designing in an ever-changing world. Knowledge of the world around us makes us more “in-tune” designers.

Understanding

Openness

Receptivity: These skills are important when dealing with clients, co-workers and critique of our own works.

Skilled Communication: As said in the readings, graphic design is a non-verbal medium. Good communication skills are important to verbalize our projects and increase our powers of persuasion.

Integrity: This is something that should be found in all areas of business. We can’t expect honesty and decency unless we are willing to give it ourselves.

(I appoligise. I posted this last week, but apparently it did not work.)

Emotional Personas

Conveying Emotion through Design

As graphic designers it is our job to develop designs with a “call to action” This means that the design engages with its viewer and forces them to react, act and or feel a certain way. Sometimes it might be positive and sometimes it might be negative. Whatever the response, it is our job to evoke it.

In the Sagmeister article six items are laid-out focusing on the qualities in a design that can “move” a person.

1. New Perspective
2. Trigger of Memories
3. Passion and Guts
4. Surprise
5. Virtuosity
6. Beauty

These are not set in stone items that will defiantly generate emotion within the audience, but they are a road map to helping designers reach that goal.

Personas: Practice and Theory

“Personas are a medium for communication; a conduit for information about users and work settings”

This article is relating the experience of one team working with personas. Persons are the creation of fake but plausible people that would either be part of the audience. Anti-personas (or the people within the audience that the project is not designed for) are sometimes created too.

As graphic designers it is our job to create for an audience. If we do not do this we are basically creating “art” for ourselves. Audience directed art is graphic design. We develop audience research and data gathering. We analyze the data and use that information to help guide our projects. The development of personas allows us to further narrow our audience into a singe person.

Term Long Update

I have been working on my term long project... As a reminder I am working on a Family Narrative/Recipe Book.

I have slowly been getting responses back from my audience. Although the information is a little thin, I am hoping to either gather more information or conduct telephone interviews.

I have posted some of my rough concepts for the design of the books on flicker. You can access them here.

Flicker Images

I also have been working on a family tree, but as some of my Uncles and Aunts have decided to have litters of children I am going to have to re-think the design of the piece, possibly with a fold out design.

more to come.....