The Prepared Mind Discussion about designing human interaction.

In the aftermath of the stolen logos scandal, Robert Wurth and I discussed the commoditization of design and how designers can strive to improve designer/client relationships. We went a little long today but it was a great conversation with a lot of value.

Listen to the podcast
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Well it has been quite a busy week so far for LogoWorks and its employees. Particularly the last 24 hours. At some point, we may know the reason for LogoWorks recent flurry of activity. As for now, I took the opportunity to speak with two current LogoWorks freelancers whom I met on the HOW Magazine discussion forum.

Molly
The first person I spoke to is a pleasant woman whom we’ll refer to as “Molly”. Molly is married with children and lives in the Salt Lake City area. She spoke very positively about LogoWorks and lept to their defense in the hostile waters at the HOW forum. Admittedly, I was skeptical. There are quite a few new users with accounts not even one day old who have mobilized in the defense of LogoWorks of late. (more…)

Well it looks like Jeff Kearl, LogoWorks/Arteis Chief Marketing Officer, has had his hands full. He has issued several official responses to the raging controversy over LogoWorks and the stolen/copied logos. Here is the response he left as a comment to one of the posts on this very blog. We’ll be speaking with Jeff via podcast interview this Friday. I’ll try and get the podcast up as quickly on Friday as possible. Stay tuned! (more…)

Some very interesting insights in an article I recently read on the Communication Arts website entitled The Architect and the Bricklayer Confronting Choices for Creative Firms. The author, David Miller, references the recent, upbeat findings of a report on the GD industry conducted by the Association of Professional Design Firms.

While the report found increases in money spent and overall economic conditions in 2004 compared with 2003 or 2002 (which were pretty lousy years), it also reported that there appears to be two clear “edges” forming in the industry. (more…)

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”.

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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…)

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…)

Graphic designer is already a strange term but that’s a topic for another entry. I don’t design graphics. I also don’t design webs either. Maybe “web interactivity designer” or ”interactive communication designer” might more accurately describe what I do on a daily basis but now I’m getting ahead of myself.

Junior Designer. Designer. Senior Designer. Art Director. Senior Art Director. Associate Creative Director. Creative Director.

I’ve held many of these titles at one point in my career. What’s amazing is the level of overlap between them. Now I get that a Senior Designer at a big huge agency could probably be the equivalent of an Art Director with a 3 person firm. But there has to be a little bit more cohesion and clarity in these titles. Aren’t we the folks who try to bring clarity to our clients’ communications? (more…)

As a child I remember waiting for my mother to leave the house and then sneaking into her album collection. One of my favorites was an old Bill Cosby album where he did an hilarious exchange between a wise-cracking Noah and God.

God told Noah to build an Ark and went through pains to give Noah very exact measurements as to the dimensions of the Ark. “I want you to build it 40 cubits by 60 cubits by 80 cubits” said God. “Do you understand this?” God asked, to which Noah replied “Riiiiggghhht! What’s a cubit? Har-har-har-har!” An irritated God replied “NOAH! How long can you tread water?”

Years later, during my first week of sophomore year in college, one of my graphic design instructors tried to explain to us an assignment. He told us the parameters of the project and explained that the exact requirements were that the assignment had to be contained in a square so many picas high and so many picas wide and so many picas from the top, bottom and sides.

“Riiiigggght! What’s a pica?” I cracked, thinking surely my instructor would catch my Cosby allusion and see the humor in the situation. He didn’t. (more…)