You, Too, Could be a Commercial Artist

How do you define success?

Re-nourish | Design Sustainably

Re-nourish is dedicated to helping the graphic design community grow into a more sustainable industry. Whatever your experience level, you can use our tools and information to expand your knowledge and build a more sustainable practice.

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Four Things Leaned about Designers

This essay is from AIGA.org, and written by Warren Berger.

For the last two years, I’ve been doing to designers what they usually do unto others. Which is to say, I’ve been observing and studying them, asking a lot of questions and trying to discern patterns. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.

1. Designers question

To be more specific, they ask what Bruce Mau calls “the stupid questions”—the kind that are actually profound, but can make you look stupid because they address fundamental issues. When designers ask the powers that be, “Why are you doing things this way?” or “What are we really trying to accomplish here?” or “Does it have to have four wheels?” it can seem as if they’re bogging down the business meeting. But they are actually cracking open the door to real innovation and progress.

It’s a gift designers have that I’m not sure they fully appreciate: the ability to recognize that the present reality is a temporary and changeable condition. (To the rest of us, reality looks like reality, something to be accepted with a shrug.) I think all of this is captured nicely in the joke some designers tell about themselves. How many designers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Does it have to be a light bulb?

In these times, with so much in need of reinvention, we need people who know how to ask stupid questions. And who are actually willing to ask them—because it does take a certain amount of courage to question the fundamentals. Or, to put it in the pithy words of George Lois, “You gotta have guts to be the person in the room who’s asking ‘why’ while everybody else is nodding their heads.”

2. Designers connect

When I first began visiting designers’ studios and workshops, I noticed a lot of hoarding going on: five-year-old magazines, sketches on the wall from long-ago projects, lateral drawers filled with hunks of plastic and scraps of leftover cloth. I have relatives who engage in this kind of behavior for no good reason, but designers actually have a reason: They are master “recombinators.” They can take a bit of this and a piece of that to form something completely new.

Designers can do this because—as you probably know, and as RISD professor Charlie Cannon informed me—they are born and trained to synthesize, to take existing elements or ideas and bring them together in creative and coherent ways. The beauty of this, from the standpoint of anyone who happens to be involved in creative endeavors of any kind, is that it shows you don’t always have to invent entirely from scratch. To quote the designer John Thackara (who coined the wonderful term “smart recombinations”), most of us who are out there trying to create or innovate “are needlessly constrained by the myth that everything [we] do has to be a unique and creative act.” But the good news is, somebody already invented the wheel—all the rest of us need do is design new ways to combine it with other stuff that already exists. (Example: Put wheels on an alarm clock, as designer Gauri Nanda did, and you’ve created the Clocky—guaranteed to rouse you in the morning because you must chase after it to turn off the alarm.)

3. Designers commit

When it comes to ideas, most of us humans are all talk. But something I learned about designers is that they very quickly give form to their ideas. Ask a designer about a notion he/she has and immediately that designer starts sketching it out for you on any scrap of paper that’s handy. At that point the idea exists, even if only on a napkin. Whatever form a rough prototype may take—a carved piece of foam rubber, a cut-and-paste collage or a digital mock-up—it represents a level of commitment that most people aren’t willing or able to make when it comes to bringing a young idea into the world. Here again, the designer is showing guts—because when you commit to an idea early, sharing it while it’s still tender and imperfect, you open yourself up to criticism. You hand people something that is tangible enough to be torn apart.

But you also give them something to pass around, and to build upon, and rally around. The designer Brian Collins has a wonderful phrase he uses: “Design is hope made visible.” Designers can show us a better future, can present us with all kinds of new possibilities so that we can decide: Is this what we want? Before any of that can happen, though, the designer must first commit—by taking what is just a faint glimmer in the mind’s eye and giving it shape and life.

4. Designers care

This is not always a good thing, and can, in fact, be annoying. Designers obsess so much about their work that it’s a wonder they ever let any finished project out the door. And they’re just as tough on everyone else’s work. As I discovered, if you let designers read what you’ve written about them in advance, they will try to finesse every word. They can’t help but notice all the imperfections in the world around them, even when they ought to have other things on their minds. (Once, when Michael Graves was in the midst of a medical crisis, he reportedly said from his hospital gurney, “I don’t want to die here—it’s too ugly!”)

But if it’s true that designers sometimes care about things that don’t matter, it’s also true they care about things that do: sustainability, homeless shelters, better hospital rooms, better voting ballots, mortgages that can be understood, prisons that actually might be livable, social services that actually might work. Designers are tackling all of these challenges and more, and they’re not doing it for the money—because the money is in making the next iPhone. They’re doing it, I think, because they can’t help noticing that things around them are more imperfect than ever these days. And because they can’t stop themselves from stupidly asking, “Why?” and “What if?”

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Innovation Principles from metacool

1: Experience the world instead of talking about experiencing the world
2: See and hear with the mind of a child
3: Always ask: "How do we want people to feel after they experience this?"
4: Prototype as if you are right. Listen as if you are wrong.
5: Anything can be prototyped. You can prototype with anything.
6: Live life at the intersection
7: Develop a taste for the many flavors of innovation
8: Most new ideas aren't
9: Killing good ideas is a good idea
10: Baby steps often lead to big leaps
11: Everyone needs time to innovate
12: Instead of managing, try cultivating
13: Do everything right, and you'll still fail
14: Failure sucks, but instructs
15: Celebrate errors of commission. Stamp out errors of omission.
16: Grok the gestalt of teams
17. It's not the years, it's the mileage

Cool Stuff

Interesting, inspiring and other cool stuff that I have found while looking for something else:

Thirty Conversations on Design

Fellisimo's 500 Colored Pencils

Design Altruism Project

Tips for Better Writing from the OED

Free Drawing Books

7 New Year's Resolutions for A+GD Students

Each new year, and new semester, is a symbolic opportunity to start fresh, to begin again. Here are 7 resolutions that you should consider making as we begin the Spring 2010 semester.

Think. Design. Repeat.
Great design is about solving problems, not making things pretty. Take time to investigate, ponder and evaluate a lot of possibilities before you jump to a design solution.

Be courageous.
Don't just think outside the box--reinvent the box!

Believe in your ideas.
But, be willing to discard them when a better idea comes along.

Build your portfolio everyday.
Always do work that requires no apologies.

Learn to be a learner.
The classroom is a great place to start, but the world is too big to know in a few semesters.

Be responsible for your own success.
Your instructors are here to help, but your success is largely dependent on what you invest in it.

Get in involved.
Do something else. Volunteer in the community, join AIGA, tutor ESL students. Find a place to practice your leadership skills.

See you in January!

A+GD Presentation to County Commission

During the Fall 2009 semester, two classes from Advertising + Graphic Design collaborated on a project about the brand identity for Mecklenburg County. The project involved an investigation into the existing identity system and an exploration of possible solutions. Last night, two students (Becky Kobsik and Mike Calitri) from those classes, accompanied by their instructors (Jenna MacFarlane and Dimeji Onawafu), presented a book to the Mecklenburg County commissioners, bringing closure to the project.

The book features graphic explorations of a hypothetical new brand identity for the county departments, based upon the official county seal. Students also provided essays about what it means to them to be a Mecklenburg County resident. As part of their research, students interviewed each commissioner to get their impressions of what made Mecklenburg County special.

The commissioners response was very enthusiastic.

Comments included:

"an amazing piece of work"

"terrific"

"A+"

Several of the commissioners were also very complimentary of CPCC and the college's efforts in workforce training.

One commissioner remarked that the students had done something that no one else had done that night--bring bipartisanship to the room.

Afterward, we were able to meet Mr. Harvey Boyd, a CPCC graduate from the 60s, and the designer of the Official Seal of Mecklenburg County. The students presented him with a copy of the book, since his work formed the foundation for their project. (He is also the designer of the Official Seal of CPCC, which can be seen on exterior campus signage.) Mr. Boyd has had a long and storied career as one the few African-Americans in the advertising field during the 60s and 70s. We plan to invite him to speak to a larger group of design students during the Spring 2010 semester.

Only a small quantity of the books were printed, using program self-supporting funds. Belk Printing and Xpedx Paper also helped make this possible through donations of goods and price reductions. As we left City Hall last night, a couple of citizens who saw the presentation asked where they could purchase copies. The book may have been seen on tv, but it is not available in stores.

A+GD student project makes the evening news

Check it out here: http://bit.ly/296WBz