Enter the Designer

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

Designers live in a world of challenges requiring unprecedented solutions, fostering the sort of individuals who want to lecture on or write about the details of their quests to teach those who will listen. These individuals who share their hard-earned secrets are, to other designers, what the Kung Fu master is to a student in a martial arts movie. Deke McClelland is known to practitioners of Illustrator and Chris Georgenes holds down the Flash animation dojo. Terry White is omnipresent in many areas of digital photography while digital painters follow Serge Birault.

This spring, AIGA Baltimore brought local design masters to the Ink & Pixels event at Towson University so they might impart their sage advice. Since the attendees reported hearing some very Zen-like wisdom that day, we couldn’t resist comparing their mastery to Kung Fu movies.

Our Design Masters were:

(For the sake of consistency, we’ll stick with the time-honored, generic title of “Kung Fu”, though the martial arts styles themselves vary according to the story being told.)

Your Style is Your Legend

“Your reputation precedes you,” says the lord to the old man, “You are said to be the Master of the Five-Element Fist. You believe you can defeat my oppressor?”

The old man’s style is what makes him worthy of the lord’s attention and has gotten him in for an interview. Were he not known for his mastery of the Five-Element Fist, a style explained to be an influence of the Ancestor System of Wuzuquan, the lord’s guards might have just locked down the fortress and lobbed fireballs at the old man until he went away.

Why do you design? Knowing the answer defines where you stand among other designers: understanding why you design is paramount to understanding how you design. Does your attitude towards what you do read like a technical manual, coldly stating, “I am a graphic designer”? Having a vague mantra represents a vague style, a style that is easily defeated by professionals who have a well-defined service to offer. Instead, consider  what it is you do, such as “I’m a print designer because I’m obsessed with color and its effect on everything” or “It’s 2013! Why do websites still look like this? That’s why I became a web designer: to make some decent sites”.  It’s the difference between saying “I know how to fight” or “I’m devoted to the Way of  the Thundering Mantis and will emerge victorious because of it”.

Presenting Worthiness

Before each Kung Fu movie challenge, the participants each give a preliminary demonstration, a quick succession of impressive moves which acts as a display of their respective knowledge of the art.

Demonstrating who you are and what you can do is vital to finding jobs. Effective networking is the ability to make meaningful connections with strangers combined with an online presence for your new connection to reference. Make yourself look good by creating a designer’s resume, using your tools of the trade instead of a Word template to create something that looks like experience. Have people look at it and give specific feedback. Choose appropriate typefaces and stay away from those free fonts: the measurements on those are often not professionally calculated. Bad type is the Egg Fist of the design world, a sure sign of an amateur.

In the movies, the Kung Fu student will face opponents possessing abilities the student is unaccustomed to. Upon defeating the opponent, an understanding of how to defeat a future adversary, through gain of skill, is achieved. In other words, the student learns something.

Apply for every job with an intention to learn a valuable lesson. Whether that lesson is a how to calculate web layout grids or why you should thoroughly explain your contract agreements, these experiences are necessary for achieving Design Mastery: no job is without merit. It’s important to step outside of known abilities in order to discover unknown ones, the ones that can only be resolved through battles fought with CTRL+Z and Google search dead-ends. Without accepting possibilities of conflict, there can be no understanding of resolution. And without an understanding of resolution, you will end up with disastrous image enlargement results.

The Non-Photo Blue Pencil is Mightier than the Sword

“Your weapons,” said Yoda with grim certainty, “you will not need them.”

Not heeding this advice, Luke hung onto them out of fear of being without. His weapons were a crutch. He didn’t need them to face his future that day (in fact, he freaked out a little), they didn’t help him later in Cloud City (when he got his hand cut off), and it wasn’t weapons that finally turned his father on the Emperor (that was the result of Vader’s heart growing three sizes that day).

Star Wars isn’t a Kung Fu movie proper, understood, but the point is similarly illustrated.

Build the use of tools into your workflow. Opt to draw out ideas on paper instead of in Sketchbook Pro. Choose to carefully light, arrange, and frame an image instead of spending time in Photoshop to achieve a similar effect. Sketch out or identify in writing the sort of typeface you would like to work with before searching your library. Spend as much of the process as possible without turning on your workstation, writing notes theorizing how something can be achieved, the steps involved, and exactly where to go for help.

Best Offense = Good Defense

The first thing Mr. Miyagi taught Danny was how to wash the car, paint the house, and sand the floor. These seemingly nonsense tasks turned out to be defensive maneuvers that kept Danny out of harm long enough to successfully execute the Crane Kick.

Creatively, to know why you are doing something prepares a defense for it. Reasons why you choose a typeface should be clear, concise, and straightforward, like an elevator pitch. The more words it takes to explain something in a disagreement, the more it sounds like an excuse.

Preparing for defense is also important on the business side for when an explanation is required as to why you will not be doing a complete revision for free. The design process shouldn’t be treated any different than any other journey: if there’s preventable backtracking involved, someone’s got to account for the resources used. Knowing the contract, discussing the process, and identifying the design stages are ways to keep both parties informed and attentive.

Most Honorable

We’re grateful to our Design Masters for sharing their wisdom. Also, many thanks to the legion of portfolio reviewers who came out to give the students an honest look at what worked and what they needed to improve.

After all, without a review, one is just breaking wooden boards and, as Bruce Lee will tell you, “Boards don’t hit back.”

Greg Jericho spends an awfully lot of time designing for clients that do not exist at his equally fake company, Myopic! Studio. Kate Lawless strategizes content for the web, develops e-learning, and designs digital signage by day. By night, she’s a freelance designer and socializer-extraordinaire.

Letter from the Incoming Co-Presidents

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

This spring Jennifer Marin and Stacey Fatica begin their first term as Co-Presidents of AIGA Baltimore, replacing the outgoing leadership of Alissa Jones and Brian Ghiloni.

Both Stacey and Jennifer joined the chapter last Spring. As Education Director Jennifer is inspired by Baltimore’s community of artists, designers, and web developers. Stacey, as Social Design Director is motivated by her connections with the local design community. Both believe that individuals are drawn to AIGA because of a need to belong to something bigger than themselves, to learn from both freelancers and business owners while sharing their own unique knowledge with an unusual city of diverse backgrounds, interests, and talent.

As the incoming Co-Presidents prepare to invest themselves into their challenging roles, they are aware that they are expected to build upon the legacy started 25 years ago with AIGA Baltimore’s first president, Bob Shelly. Under Alissa and Brian’s leadership, the board launched Baltimore’s very first Design Week, executed a large-scale student design conference, Ink & Pixels, and in 2012 alone, held 45 other events geared towards professional development.

The goal of the new presidency is, put simply, to continue and strengthen the legacy of the chapter as set by its predecessors. Providing relevant, memorable events to foster actionable conversation appropriate to the impact that design has on society and the lives of individuals, both personally and professionally.

Assisting Jennifer and Stacey in achieving their goal is a board powered entirely by volunteers, each of whom have a specific focus that is added to their respective teams. The Programming Team, led by Courtney Glancy, pioneered AIGA Baltimore’s first Design Week in 2012 and is currently working on the next, this October 2013. Converse, the well-attended monthly design conversation event, continues to be executed by Lauren Zuber. And our communications team Greg Jericho, Kate Lawless, and Vanessa Vichayakul have combined their efforts to create a powerful social media following and are developing an increased online presence.

Maintaining the foundation of volunteers as set by the outgoing presidency of Alissa and Brian is, itself, a primary focus for the incoming leadership. The Co-President’s message is clear:

“We are here for you. This is your AIGA. This year AIGA Baltimore celebrates our 25th anniversary and it is impossible to name the many individuals who have shaped our chapter throughout the years. Stepping into our roles, we know that our time on the board will be short and that we cannot succeed in this alone.”

“Whether you’ve offered your space for an event, volunteered to speak, reviewed a portfolio, or simply attended one of our events, you are the reason we continue to thrive. So thank you, Baltimore: we couldn’t do it without your support. We look forward to the next two years and hope that we provide the leadership that AIGA Baltimore deserves.”

Does Great Design Equal Great Success?

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

At varying points in a career, the question of success rises to the top of a list of concerns. If a designer is not finding it, they might diversify an existing skill set to better qualify for different types of assignments, or possible begin work in an unfamiliar style in order to develop a relevance in a contemporary design market. Sometimes, though, it’s worth considering that there’s something other than a portfolio holding us back, something that keeps us from competing with other designers besides the work itself.

At AIGA Baltimore’s most recent Converse, our open talk on a specified design-related topic, we asked our group this question: Is the success of a designer dependent solely on the finished product? Are we all missing that ‘something’ and are we even aware of it? The suggestions we heard were interesting, and the conversations, inspiring.

Be Prepared

Being prepared is necessary. Unfortunately, parents, teachers, and co-workers have been telling us to ‘be prepared’ so much, that it comes off as just a cliché. A filler. Words said to bridge the gap between receiving the assignment and agreeing to the deadline. To dismiss research, development, and practice by intending to go into a project with an overconfident, self-perceived cleverness to win over a client is not only going to fail, it’s going to give the appearance that any design experience comes solely from watching all five seasons of Mad Men.

We heard from well-prepared individuals who suggested including quantifiable data to back up logic in a presentation. By doing market research and reading case studies, a designer can show returns on investment, giving little room for logical disagreement. By using online analytics to measure the impact of interactive products and by using social media to configure metrics regarding the successful exposure of printed materials, there is a clear emphasis made that we understand how to make this thing work. Being clear means being prepared.

Explain Yourself

While we were on the topic of being clear, we identified at Converse that designers aren’t particularly strong when it comes to communicating verbally, and it’s a common misconception that it’s not a necessary skill, that the work should speak for itself. In truth, all the aforementioned research and development that was done to assure a project’s success needs a knowledgeable speaker to explain it in terms of goals, direction, and purpose. A creative brief of this sort can become a preemptive explanation to the client, an education in design process, that can prevent confusion and unrealistic expectations, especially in later stages where their seemingly minor change means a complete conceptual reworking for the designer. One Converse attendee so believes in the power of a verbally-skilled designer, that she took an acting class not only to present herself and her work, but also how to react to clients’ comments. That decision scores points for being prepared as well.

Trust Me

Being prepared and well-spoken are absolutely paramount in creating a trustworthy image of a designer. The Converse group found that there were many clients who had never met their designer or even talked to them. In a society that believes that it’s called ‘Dreamweaver’ because you dream up a website, click a button, and it weaves one up for you, it’s important to become separate from our software.

As designers, our clients should understand that we chose our career because there’s a collaborative effort, a critical process that we require to do our best work. If we didn’t want input, criticism, or revisions, we’d have gone into Fine Art and insisted upon our sole vision. We are people who have a unique talent to visualize the solution even better after we’ve broken the last one, whether by accident or knowledgeable rejection. For this sort of partnership to work, we have to trust each other and, because the client is the financier, it’s up to us to gain that trust first. By explaining early and often why they should believe we’ll succeed and how they can help keep it that way throughout the process, the client feels assured that we are able to control the project without micro-input. Being mindful that both parties specialize in different areas and shouldn’t be expected to guess how the other does their job is a welcome transparency and should also prevent some unwelcome surprises.

Success is How You Work

Our Converse attendees gave us lots of valuable insight on success with clients but they also suggested some tips to help productivity while working to increase the value of time spent designing. Planning ahead for what will be the most productive time of the day allows an opportunity to clear out distractions. Check email a limited number of times a day, for a limited length of time. Most agreed three times a day for thirty minutes each was the maximum.

Some of the most difficult distractions are often mental, the pressure of conjuring an idea that’s worth exploring or that spurs a creative work session. Non-computer related activities such as sketching or flipping through a coffee table book are two ways of refreshing inspiration, the added benefit being less time spent troubleshooting a software tool or becoming distracted while connected to email or other types of e-communication. The stress of administrative tasks is as detrimental to creativity as regular writer’s block, so it’s important to remove the availability of tasking reminders during the previously scheduled productive times. Otherwise, the guilty, inner voice insists on responding to everything before allowing a relaxed mind. Creativity works well under pressure because there’s not any time to worry about anything else.

Join Us Next Time

Interested in some more about creativity and where it comes from? Be sure to join us for our next Converse on April 18 at The Windup Space and tell us how you come up with those ideas. Or tell us that you’re not: maybe we can help. It’ll be like designer group therapy.

Here’s some links suggested during the Converse:

Viewing: Designing a Stop Sign

Reading: Be Excellent at Anything

Greg Jericho spends an awfully lot of time designing for clients that do not exist at his equally fake company, Myopic! Studio. Kate Lawless strategizes content for the web, develops e-learning, and designs digital signage by day. By night, she’s a freelance designer and socializer-extraordinaire.

Did you know?

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

Last summer, AIGA launched a new model for membership. Instead of membership being based on your career level, you now have the choice. The new model gives you the ability to choose how much you want to contribute to be an AIGA member.

Become a part of the Baltimore design community and join the greater conversation of design.

Learn more and join today!

Together, we are OneAIGA. Have questions? Email info@baltimore.aiga.org

 

Clarvit Design Lecture Series keynote

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

The University of Maryland’s Department of Art  is delighted to announce that James Victore will be this year’s Clarvit Design Lecture Series keynote. His lecture will be 6 p.m., Thursday, February 28 in the Art-Sociology Building, room 2203 on the College Park campus.

To say that James Victore is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill designer is akin to saying that the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is no ordinary architectural structure. James Victore is a self-taught, independent artist, graphic designer, design educator and speaker. His work is infused with passion, conviction, and a no-holds-barred attitude. He designs on his own terms and eschews technological gadgetry and clients when appropriate.

Victore’s clients include Moet & Chandon, Aveda, Bobbi Brown cosmetics, Esquire, TIME and The New York Times. HIs work has been Emmy nominations and Gold and Silver Medals from the New York Art Director’s Club. His posters have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and are in the permanent collections of the Palais du Louvre, Paris, the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, the Design Museum in Zurich and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. His book Victore or, Who Died and Made You Boss? was released by Abrams in 2010.