The Prepared Mind Discussion about designing human interaction.

I figured with the certification talk going on in various GD forums, I’d “reprint” this article written by Bill Johnston titled “A Designer’s Journey Toward Certification”.

Whether one is for certification or against it, it’s a fantastic read. Bill chronicles his observations over his 40 year career and details the changes in the industry over the last 4 decades which have led up to where we are today. Here are some snippets for the link-lazy among us:

In the 70’s things began to change. Hot type was dying, cold type was the wave of the future. Designers had to deal with ugly type spit out of IBM strike-on machines. They no longer had master compositor’s to lead them by the hand, they had to become expert at splicing & dicing as well as designing and drawing. Those that didn’t, didn’t make the cut.

In the 80’s there was more change still. Dedicated type setting systems were all the rage. Companies could save a ton of money by bringing typesetting inhouse. The trouble was the trained typesetter had gone the way of the Dodo bird, who was going to set type? Why typists of course, trouble was they knew nothing about the letters themselves, just the keyboards. Designers had to step into the breech and specify how and what to set. They began to be system integrators, cobbling early software together in an effort to set type faster, incorporate basic design elements, and rudimentary layout. The call went out to do more and faster. Those that couldn’t adapt to the new paradigm were invited to seek employment elsewhere.

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I recently read an interesting article on the Core77 website. Apparently, folks in the business community are starting to “get it” when it comes to the business benefits of design!

Increased competition in the industry, improvements in the global technology infrastructure, relentless pressure to lower costs in every industry are just a few of the forces leading a major shift in the field of design. Where earlier, design was the department brought in after marketing or sales or the advertising agency decided that a “new and improved” product or brand extension was required to penetrate a target market or increase profits for a brand. This usually resulted in incremental improvements in product and profits. Notes Sharon Reier in her article When looks count the most, companies are now increasingly seeking to integrate design as a strategic tool for creating shareholder value. These companies understand that the real value in design is using it to improve the entire user experience, where advertising specialists and marketing managers focus more on the buying decision alone.

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An ad hoc committee has been formed as the result of many conversations on the About.com Graphic Design forum. The goal of this committee will be (a) to form a working draft that outlines a unified code of ethics for professional graphic designers and (b) attempt to gain some measure of popular support as well as uniform adoption by the various leading GD organizations.

Currently, the GAG, AIGA and other GD organizations in the U.S. have their own standards of professional practice. There should be only one set.

We will, of course, be using this space to help promote awareness of whatever the result of the unified standards ends up being. Hopefully this will launch a discussion that leads to an industry-wide set of professional standards. Of course, this is a moving target but perhaps this first step toward unifying standards is, as Churchill would say, “the end of the beginning”.

.chris{}

In a recent discussion on the About.com Graphic Design discussion board, we were discussing the current state of GD education, it was mentioned that part of the problem with injecting more business knowledge into the GD curriculum in design schools is that GD curricula are ALL over the place. There is no standard as to what graphic design students should know after 4 years and tens of thousands of dollars.

What constitutes a professional graphic designer?
Part of the reason for this is the fact that there is no standard as to what constitutes a professional graphic designer. What’s the minimum level of knowledge or competency that a professional graphic designer should have before being able to reasonably call themselves a professional graphic designer? (more…)

The other day I was talking to a couple of designers and we brought up as a topic of conversation the existing GD business model.

Now I’m no MBA and certainly am not qualified to design new business models but I think it’s a fair question, for which there may or may not be an answer, as to whether or not the GD business model should be revised or changed?

The old GD business models were as follows:

The old print GD business model:
Before the computer came along and turned it on it’s ear, this model was a very profitable one for graphic designers. Trained graphic designers were the only people who had the expertise to prepare ideas and designs for the arcane and complex offset printing process. Once ideas were finalized, they would create mechanicals which made the artwork “camera-ready” and marked those mechanicals with very specific printing instructions. Designers retained mechanicals from design projects unless clients paid large sums of money (I’ve seen as much as $5,000 for a set of mechanicals) to purchase them. (more…)

Change is always tough and the Graphic Design Industry has a tougher time dealing with change than perhaps most professions.

Our industry’s history of slow reaction to change
The desktop publishing revolution was particularly painful for our industry. We failed to see the writing on the wall, reacted to late, and many design professionals found themselves unemployable because they lacked even the most basic computer skills. Typesetters, comp artists, production people and a whole host of other professionals related to the industry went completely the way of the Dodo bird over night. (more…)

Ask a dozen designers, “What is branding?” and you’ll undoubtedly get twelve completely different answers. It’s a buzzword that we use (or overuse?) when we argue how valuable we are to the business world. Afterall, how can a company establish, modify or reinforce their brand without design? We talk about how design shapes customer attitudes - but do we really understand the full meaning of brand?

It’s a useful exercise to consider what I am about to tell you, so please do your best to suspend disbelief.

There is more to branding than design. And realizing this might just help your own brand.
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It’s very interesting that a huge debate is brewing in the field of web design right now. Design vs. usability. Creative freedom vs. guidelines and standards. Flash vs. HTML. Graphics vs. text. Of course, there is nothing really new about this debate. Most of us who studied design had the Bauhaus philosophy of “Form Follows Function” thoroughly drummed into our heads. What does it matter how wonderful a design is if it fails at the goals for which it was created?

Enter the usability specialists. There is nothing wrong, and everything right, with conducting some sort of user testing depending on the site being built. Designers/developers are often too close to projects and therefore things that are obvious to us may not be obvious to our intended audience. However, too many usability specialists seem to be crossing the line from consulting about practices that help overall site usability to trying to dictate style and design. (more…)

As a freelance creative, one of the things that I do on an ongoing basis is promote my services. This is done in many ways and one of them involves having my website address and company name listed on several industry sites, such as this one. Because of this, I receive resumes from graduating students and designers looking for work on a regular basis. In fact, in April (when school lets out) I receive a ton of them. Now, I’m no authority on this subject but I can honestly tell you that most of the CVs I encounter have at least one major problem and if I was in fact hiring they would immediately be placed in the recycling bin I keep under my desk. I’m sure that most of you have noticed that when you send out your resume to an agency/studio it is incredibly rare to receive feedback, therefore I feel it is my duty to share with you some of the problems I’ve encountered with resumes that come my way. (more…)

I saw this article posted in the About.com GD forum and thought it would make for a FANTASTIC entry on TPM.

Written by Sally Hogshead, it’s half tough love speech and half career pep talk. What it is 100% is required reading for any graphic designer!

.chris{}

I read a VERY interesting article on The Graphic Design Forum entitled “What To Expect out of a Design Career.” It’s a very sobering yet ultimately upbeat take on the extremely high expecatations that most design students and juniors have for their careers when first starting out. The article interviews Pentagram’s Michael Beruit and Christina Hagopian of hagopian ink.

Heady ideals
I’ll go on record as being one of the legions of kids who, while in design school, was certain that my talent and portfolio would power me to design stardom, riches and prestige. To some degree, I think that kind of idealism is healthy and NEEDED amongst our young. Reality will knock soon enough for them, in the meantime their energy is infectuous.

Of course some of the issues pointed out in the article go right back to my earlier two entries regarding the GD Industry eating its young (entry 1, entry 2). Michael Beruit’s account of his early years in the industry are both inspirational and impossible to believe:

“While I was in school [University of Cincinnati], I interned once at an old-school ‘commercial art studio’ that I found very depressing; I was lucky afterwards to do other internships with Chris Pullman at WGBH in Boston and Dan Bittman in Cincinnati, two guys that I found very inspiring.

“My first real job out of school was working as the lowest-level design assistant at Vignelli Associates - mixing solvent into rubber cement, making photostats for other designers, taping tissues on the top of mechanical boards, stuff like that. My first real ‘design project’ was a price list.

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“Boooonnnnnnng!!!!”

That was the sound my computer made on Saturday evening after I finished installing Macintosh OS X 4, better known as Tiger, onto my computer. Due to no fault of Apple, the process wasn’t as smooth as it could have been. My first few attempts were greeted with error messages, due to my apparently poorly-formatted hard drive. So I ended up doing what I knew I should have done in the first place — make a completely new installation. No biggie.

I’m not going to use this space to gush over Tiger’s fantastic new features like “Dashboard” or “Spotlight.” You can read just about any review from just about any computer magazine and read that. The OS rocks! What I will do is state the obvious…. Apple is leading the corporate world in taking design to new heights.

Great design from top to bottom
Apple has always had a special place in the hearts and minds of graphic designers and so to state that it is a company that is taking design to new heights is hardly news. No need to stop the presses on that observation. But one would have to admit that it would be hard to find another corporate giant who shows the level of attention to design and branding like Apple does. Especially when one considers that this attention spans across both print, web, interior and industrial design.

From Powerbooks to iPods to iWork to Apple stores to Tiger. Design is an integral part of the way Apple thinks. Perhaps they….. think different?

Way to go Apple! LOVE Tiger!!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

.chris{}