Cultural awareness
'Graphic design is a visual language uniting harmony and balance, colour and light scale and tension, form and content. But it is also an idiomatic language, a language of cues and puns and symbols and allusions, of cultural references that challenge the intellect and the eye.'
- Design alludes the power to evoke emotion and generate an intellectual response.
- Without constantly scanning, scrutinising and absorbing everything that goes on around us we can't hope to become successful and effective designers.
- Communication is important - the ability to speak about our work to clients and non-designers in a coherent, convincing and objective way. Good communication is essential to persuade clients our ideas are good.
Time management
- Time management is essential to not only be most productive as a designer but also to meet deadlines.
Research
- In specific ways the practical, active process of design whose product is an artefact...' In other words, it's research that leads to a design outcome.
- Some of this research can be described as problem solving and design solutions.
Strategy
- A poor designer is left to try and produce a creative response from a suffocatingly narrow list of possibilities.
- In the commercial realm we have to combine our designer's intuition with business pragmatism.
- Strategy in design means combining research with market or audience intelligence; combining knowledge of technological developments with current patterns and behaviour; evaluating expenditure in relation to effectiveness; having a grasp of human psychology and behaviour and familiarity with trends, fashions and customs.
Presentation skills
- Presentation is the most fundamental aspect of what it means to be a designer, many ideas are rejected not because they are bad ideas but because they are badly presented.
- Think about how and when we physically show our work; what we say and when we say it; and how we allow clients to think and respond. These are simple procedural techniques that are fundamental to the success or failure of a presentation.
Writing skills
Things to create credible texts:
- After completing a piece of writing , change the font, column measure and point size and then re-read everything.
- Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite
- Allow time to finish and review.
Working in-house
- Working in house means that we often get a chance to learn about the world of business, we familiarise ourselves with the conventions of the workplace gaining an education to stand in good stead in later life if we choose to set up our own studio.
- May earn more money than in an independent studio.
- More civilised working hours
- Better work to life balance
- A disadvantage can include often being located away from urban design hubs that can have stigma's attached.
Working for an independent design studio
- Long hours not much pay and little recognition.
- Designers are privileged: we get to make something and we get paid for having smart ideas that affect many people.
Apprenticeships
- They tend to be work placements, experience and internships.
- An energising charge of learning from more experienced designers.
- Contact with experienced designers is inspirational and provides timely impetus for personal development.
Internships
- Increasingly the only way into full-time employment is through an internship.
- Being a successful intern can often lead to job offers.
Going freelance
- People in this field need self-discipline to start projects on their own, budget their time, meet deadlines and production schedules.
- Finding work on your own is tough
- Can you make your own schedules
- Are you disciplined enough?
- Need to consider financial planning
Why clients use freelancers, for the same reasons they are attracted to studios or design firms:
Creative reasons: Does this person do the sort of work I want?
Personal reasons: Do I get along with this person?
Financial reasons: Will this be cheaper than hiring a studio?
Starting up a studio
Setting up a studio in a partnership with like-minded individuals and staffing it with like minded designers and non-designers is one of the great adventures open to a designer. It is rare a designer hasn't contemplated doing it. Intriguingly, among those who take the plunge, very few go back to paid employment after tasting the freedom; and despite the late nights, the disappointment, the extra pressure and added responsibility.
How clients choose designers:
- Portfolio
- Website
- Track record
- Reputation
- Fees
- Resources
- Location
- Existing/past clients
The Brief
- All design jobs start with a brief; designers need briefs like newsreaders need news.
- Briefs can be verbal or written and sometimes briefs can be a discussion.
- Some designers see a brief as problems waiting to be solved; others see them as a springboard to produce highly individualistic response.
- For graphic designers the need to interrogate a brief is paramount otherwise we run the risk of being compliant and submissive.
- There's always something missing, usually the key to unlocking the brief. This is good as otherwise there would be no room for creative thought.
The creative process
- Search for a mood or atmosphere : serious, playful, nostalgic or pragmatic
- Inhabit emotional or aesthetic location
- Look at work from a distance or different angles
- Sometimes you have to dump everything and start again to move forward.
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