How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul

Chapters 5 + 6 + 7

Down the road, you are going to need them.

Setting up a studio and working with clients is like a marriage or having a child. You have to be sure the people you are dealing with are in it for the long haul. You need to be sure that you can work with them well to produce something beautiful. Coming up with the right name for your studio can be hard, just like naming a child. You will need to base your decisions on some sort of philosophy that you share with those around you.

Have a philosophy. This one is from Peter Fischli and David Weiss.

Getting new work and keeping those clients isn’t any different. Like a marriage, you have to stay on top of it and stick with it when the going gets tough.

There are lots of fish in the sea. Having the right bait can help. Network and put yourself out there. Shameless self promotion is a must. Awards and publications are a great way to expose yourself, but a strong portfolio is your best ally. Good designers are never satisfied with their portfolios, until they get them a new client.

How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul

Chapters 2 + 3 + 4

In all of these chapters, Shaugnessy asks us to vary our expectations. Wether it is making the full profits we foresee, working normal hours, or expecting that the famous design studio down the street is willing to hire us straight outta school. One thing is sure, its not just going to fall into place without some adjustments to ourselves.

Not every interview is worth your time. You don't just go for a job, it is a chance to make some connections and learn to make improvements along the way.

The most helpful chapter so far was Chapter 2, which gives specific advice on how find and prepare for an interview. (Not a job. An interview.) Selling yourself is probably the hardest job we face, and this chapter tells us exactly how to conduct ourselves so that we increase our chances of getting that job. Even if it isn’t the job (or interview) of our dreams, it is good experience.

However, there is more than one route to take when becoming a paid designer. Chapter 3 and 4 cover the basics of going freelance and setting up your own studio. For many, this is going to be far easier with the help of others and their special skills.

Better find someone who can count the beans for you, unless you have some experience in accounting. You will also need a lawyer, some IT help, and someone to find new business, etc. It will be way easier than doing everything yourself.

How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul

Intro + Fwd and Chapter One
by Adrian Shaughnessy, forward by Stefan Sagmeister

“This book doesn’t tell you what sort of designer you should be.”
“Nor does this book tell you how to file your tax returns.”

It does offer us suggestions and gives us examples of design issues, but it is up to us to make our own decisions and designs.

Can you do meaningful design without losing your shirt?

Most importantly, it teaches us to listen. Listen to hearts, our clients, and the world around us. If we can do that, we will have a much better chance of holding onto our soles in a field where money and mainstream monotony are as common as Helvetica. According to Shaunghnessy, this will also help keep us standing on the soles of our shoes as well. Just don’t expect that you will be making enough money to afford really fancy imported shoes.

Personas: Practice and Theory

“A subset of perticipants in the usability study had problems with that search tool.”

Let’s try that again.

“Abby cannot use the search tool on your web page.”

That’s better.

Personas are similar to fictional characters because they don't really exist, but they are based on real-life qualitative and quantitative data.

Designers have trouble designing for people outside of their own realm. We can use personas to help guide our decisions when trying to design for a specific audience. This allows us to connect to this personna much like we would an actual person, while serving the characteristics of a large chunk of the audience.

Is it possible to touch somebody’s heart with graphic design?

Totally. But there is an art to it.

Stefan Sagmeister’s how to list:
1. new perspective
2. trigger memories
3. passion and guts
4. surprise
5. virtousity
6. beauty

Well, it takes more than just following a list, otherwise we would see more of it. What does it really take? You have to put your own heart into it.



Virtousity: This 100 Swiss Franc note features a unique printing dot that is measured to 1/25,000 of an inch. It shows how obsessed the swiss are with detail.

“Audience as Co-designer: Participatory Design of HIV/AIDS Awareness and Prevention Posters in Kenya”

“Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.”
-African Proverb

David Berlo’s model that “clear transmission of information occurs when the encoder shares the same culture as the decoder,” is proven true in this HIV/AIDS awareness poster campaign. “As Kenyans designed prevention campaigns for their own peers, they were far more effective in knowing the cultural codes, symbolism, narrative strategies, and other means of visual rhetoric.” (pg. 190)

Proof that this transmission of information can occur even on a world-wide scale. Guess that means it should be easy to have it happen within our own campus, right?

Design Methodologies

Not a linear process. I swear.

A Linear Methodology

Although this chart implies a linear route, it often cycles back to previous accounts in order to clearly understand all the steps as a whole. Basically, humans are not robots, we are organic thinkers and should remember that when creating a method of research, it should reflect this. (This should couple nicely with the research suggested in the previous post:)

“Sharpening One’s Axe: A Case for a Comprehensive Approach to Research in the Graphic Design Process”

A great resource for understanding the importance of audience research for our term-long project.

This text describes the process of researching the user/audience experience through a series of projects done by students at Ohio State University. In one project (fig.12) we see the development of a cook book intended for use with mentally disabled individuals. As with all of the projects, feedback from the audience is recorded and observed in order to clarify visual understanding. The designer of the cook book found that people tended to skip past horizontal instructions when presented all on one page. The solution was to list a maximum of two directions per page, forcing users not to miss steps while not being overwhelmed by information. Beautiful.

Situationist International

This movement took place between 1957 and 1972. The group’s main goal was to deter the overwhelming capitalism spreading through the mass media. They believed that capitalism was tricking people into living immoral lives. One of the main leaders of this movement was a frenchman named Guy Debord, who wrote a book called “The Society of the Spectacle” which explains that society is creating a variety of spectacles which make us believe that we need to consume objects, which disconnects us from the actual process and production.

Today, we continue to see this same problem with products that are harmful to ourselves and our planet. In a similar movement against such things, there are environmentalists who are pushing for sustainability and greener practices. The situationists sought to save us from ourselves as well, but wanted to create situations that we actually desire for human experience.

Reading #1: Harrel Fletcher

On “Loving Laura More” by Andrea Gover

Laura Lark's adult size children's outfit on LTLYM

Laura Lark is an example. There are many just like her. She is special because she is a courageous pioneer of social practice.

She is a pioneer in a new world of communication and connectivity, with the help of Harrel Fletcher as captain, their ship has sailed across oceans and back. By contributing her treacherous life story to Fletcher’s blog Learning To Love You More (LTLYM), she has reached out and touched the hearts of many people stretching from Houston to Tokyo.

It is with her example, that people can now imagine themselves in a world not-so-far-apart. A world in which relations are art, painted by up-and-coming designers right here at our own school. This, and other excersizes which can be found on LTLYM, are going to become more relevant as the internet and social networking become a more concrete part of our lives. These activities allow people to express themselves, and become a part of an important community which would otherwise not occur while sitting alone in front of a computer.