Or maybe you have a couple of projects under your belt and you’re looking for more detailed advice as to what path you should be taking to propel your career to the next level.

Today we’re going to go over some of the most important things inexperienced designers need to master, and what I wish I had paid more attention to when I was just starting out.

Proportion and Composition

You may think you have this down, but, if you’ve been working for less than 5 years, I’m pretty sure you don’t know as much as you think you do. Read up on composition fundamentals and practice them in your spare time.

Yes, that means cracking open those boring books you might have been assigned in school, or taking a trip down to the library and checking out some solid titles that will provide you with the information you need.

Color Theory

Same as above. Don’t just copy other people’s color schemes without understanding why and how they arrived at their color choices. Colors have a myriad of different meanings and associations attached to them, both by the designer and by the viewers. Just because you think a certain color scheme conveys ‘innovative technology’ doesn’t mean that everyone will feel that way.

Your client and users might see ‘kid’s dentist’ instead – which is why it’s a good idea to do as much research and testing as you can before choosing a color scheme. A signature color palette is as good as a brand for a designer. Choose yours wisely.

The Rules Of Typography

You need to have a solid understanding of type in order to succeed as a designer. This is non-negotiable. Don’t just leave typography up to professional type designers. Sometimes you will be asked to customize letterforms to suit a particular client’s brand image.

If you don’t know what type weight, spacing, or kerning mean, and if you can’t tell the difference between an x-height and a counter, it’s time to learn. Luckily, there are tons of free resources online that can help you learn the basics, and the more you practice, the more adept you can become at giving clients the type treatments they need.

Become a Photoshop/Illustrator Expert

I don’t mean just enough to get by or to finish the small projects you do for your clients. I mean knowing these programs (or whichever ones you use) like the back of your own hand. Even the weird, obscure stuff nobody knows about.

There are plenty of books and online courses to help you gain mastery of your tools. The more intimately you know your software, the more clients will come to trust you with more complex work, and the more they will recommend you to their colleagues who are looking for high-level designers.

Asset Libraries

Design takes time – at least if you’re doing it right. You need to develop your idea, and try variations of it in order to get to just the solution that works for you and your client. But that doesn’t mean you can’t speed up some parts of the process.

You can develop a backlog of fonts, vector images, and templates to make your work go by faster. This will take time as well, but the key is knowing what is worth curating and what should be discarded.

For example, if your font library has thousands of typefaces in it, and none of them are organized or grouped in a helpful way, it can be more detrimental to your productivity than not having enough typefaces. (And yes, I’m speaking from experience.)

I’m always a fan of learning the fundamentals, as the more solid your foundation in design, the more easily you can adapt to whatever new trend or demand comes along. Even if you’re an experienced designer, there are always new things to learn about design.

The post What Should New & Inexperienced Designers Be Learning? appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

The restaurant has been around, in some form or another, since ancient Rome, and its function – to bring people together over a conveniently cooked meal – has changed very little in all that time.

There’s another benefit of restaurants that specifically applies to designers and other creative people, and that is to stimulate your creativity. That’s right – it’s been proven that socializing improves your intelligence. Not just academic intelligence either – interacting with friends and peers actually helps to make you more creative.

When you go out with others, you’re exposing yourself to an influx of new ideas that can’t help but positively influence your creative process. And food is a natural bonding agent, which is why so many creative ideas are born around a lunch or dinner table with other designers, artists, musicians, writers, et cetera.

Today, I’m going to explore the idea generation process familiar to so many designers who eat out with friends: the “awesome idea scribbled on a restaurant napkin” process.

It’s very high-level stuff. No, really! The lowly napkin sketch (or scrap paper or ledger pad sketch) has been used by everyone from babysitters all the way up to top creative executives at Microsoft and Walmart to bring to life important ideas that change the world, or at least bring in more profits.

Some experts say that the business sector is too dependent on language to express ideas that really should be expressed using visuals (i.e., sketches). That’s good news for us designers, but how exactly do we adapt it to our working process to make things easier for ourselves and our clients?

We designers all know the advantages of sketching: it’s a way to sort out our preliminary ideas and eliminate the ones that aren’t right for the job.

Of course, you don’t have to sketch on a napkin, but any kind of sketch is more useful than just thinking about the idea, because it requires you to use a different part of your brain.

Image Source

When you think, or read, or write, you’re nurturing the connections your brain makes between the different thoughts you have (called ‘neural pathways‘), and increasing your brain’s “elasticity.” When you add drawing to that process, you’re exercising important motor skills that can actually feed your creativity.

Personally, I prefer to sketch on paper. Why? Because it allows me the opportunity to step away from the computer for a brief moment and collect my thoughts on something I can touch and hold in my hands.

That’s important to me, and to a lot of designers whose work almost always ends up on the computer one way or another.

We humans respond to things that are interactive, and that allows us to make a direct impact on something. Ever wonder why more and more vending machines are see-through, rather than opaque?

The working mechanisms of those machines are engaging to our brains – we love to put our money in the machine, and literally see our desire (to have a refreshing beverage or snack) being fulfilled right before our eyes. It’s fun.

And guess what? Your clients are the exact same way.

If you’re a designer or art director redesigning a company’s brand identity, how do you make sure everyone there understands the creative vision you have?

Well, you could tell them. But most people aren’t going to take notes and will end up misinterpreting what you said at some point or another.

You could show them a presentation, which might work for some people. But I think that printing out handouts of your sketches, and walking people through them is the best way to involve them in the decision-making process.

Sometimes, sketching can be used to effectively communicate ideas to people – designers or non-designers – in ways that far surpass, say, a PowerPoint presentation.

Think about what you’d rather have in a department meeting: a dry, preachy collection of slides, or a sketchbook to work out your ideas about the company’s creative direction?

Just like a clear-windowed vending machine allows us to see the effect our money has on it, involving people with live sketching gives them a democratic insight into how design decisions are made.

It can turn a lofty, complicated mess into something that’s easy for everyone to understand. And we all know that an informed client is a happy (and oftentimes repeat) client.

You don’t want to just talk at your clients and lecture them about things that are going to go over their heads. Your clients aren’t stupid (well, hopefully not).

They are running a company, after all. Clients like to feel creative, or at least like they’re contributing to something to the creativity of their businesses. And what better way to make grown adults feel powerful and in charge of something than by handing them some paper and making them draw like grade-schoolers?

All joking aside, people love that stuff. It creates a feeling of harmony and democracy in the company, as anyone, from the janitor to the CEO, can make a sketch.

As Lou Levit explains in his article, How Sketching Will Take Your Design Process to the Next Level, sketching allows you to “dig deeper” with your idea process, uncovering more design solutions that often work much better than the initial ideas you start out with.

Image Source

Another downside to simply absorbing information via presentation is that it tends to lead your client through the design process with minimal challenge to their own imagination.

Because of this, your client may not really understand your reasoning behind a more nuanced design solution, and may fight you on it. Presenting sketches is one way to quiet those feelings of misunderstanding. The more your client can see of your process, the more likely they are to trust your judgement.

The key to engaging your clients with sketching is to think of your design meeting more like a restaurant date with friends. Obviously, you should probably keep the celebrity gossip and alcohol consumption to a minimum, but the general feeling of creative camaraderie should be the same.

Engage your clients with spontaneous sketches, draw things out for them that you might otherwise just dryly explain, and observe the difference yourself in their level of understanding, engagement, and trust.

You don’t have to make them draw too, though, as I mentioned before, many people do love that. But just like passing around a napkin at the restaurant table to your friends can result in weird and wonderful new ideas, incorporating sketches in your meetings with clients can propel your projects to heights that you never would have expected.

The post The Idea Generation Process of Scribbling on a Napkin appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

The woman leaves the room for a moment, and when she comes back, she is dismayed to find that the children have all begun scribbling on the walls.

There are squiggly lines of color everywhere, ruining her pristine, white paint job. Imagine you are this woman. What do you do next? Do you praise the children’s artistic contribution to the decor? Or do you grab the nearest sponge and start scrubbing frantically before the company comes over?

If you’re like most moms, the answer is obviously the latter, but why? Is it because you want to tyrannize the kids? Infringe on their self-expression? Probably not.

More likely, you just want to maintain a sense of order in the house. Three toddlers running amok with crayons would quickly become chaotic. And in a world of chaos, no one is happy; neither you nor the children, even though they were the ones who started the madness.

Defending Design Simplicity

Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said that “perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” That’s a nice quote, but what does it mean in the practical sense?

Sure, it’s telling us that simple is better than complicated. Most of us know that instinctually. No one wants a pen that’s also a steam iron, a soap dispenser, and a toaster oven. But how do we avoid ending up with one? Here’s a secret: it doesn’t just happen.

Source: Quote – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Most people have an idea of the perfect simple, elegant solution to their design problem. The downside is, so does everyone else who has the same problem. Put them all in a room together, and you’ll have no consensus, but pandemonium.

Everyone will contradict each other, and sometimes even themselves, in pursuit of the “ultimate” solution that will be universally beneficial.

In one of the greatest paradoxes of human nature, when everyone has a say in what they think will make everyone happy, the result – invariably – is that no one is happy.

The underlying imperative of de Saint-Exupery’s words is that there must be someone in charge of a process who makes the single, final decision.

There must be one person – or a small, unified group of persons – who will ruthlessly prune the savage garden of the horde, creating a result that is not what anyone said they wanted, but what is truly needed.

They must be able to think globally rather than provincially. They must be willing and able to ignore what people say and focus on what is objectively best.

They must lead, and they must be vigilant about it. Any slack during this crucial moment, the final verdict will unravel the entire operation, resulting in a quagmire of confusion that will suck everyone under.

In other words, they have to act like Moms.

Don’t Make a Mess

People like to believe they’re an important part of a decision making process. And they are – just not quite in the way they think.

A consumer’s role in the design process is both less and more important than it often appears. It’s less important because what people tell you they want is almost always irrelevant.

That might sound harsh, but it’s actually a good thing. Recall the earlier example of the multi-purpose pen. Everyone you question will tell you something slightly different about what they “really” want in a pen.

Some people will want a pen that can light up. Others will want a pen that does arithmetic. Still, others will want one that can write underwater, or that is made out of living plant fibers, or that will give off a heavenly aroma of freshly baked cookies.

If you’re a reasonable sort, you’ll want to take everyone’s ideas equally seriously. It’s only fair – the customer is always right.

Plus, you might think all those ideas sound equally as cool – who wouldn’t want a pen that can do all of those things? In magical unicorn land, it would be perfect, a must-have item. But here’s the thing about the real world: when you add features, you get mass, and mass equals mess. Let me repeat that: features = mass = mess.

And a mess is completely at odds with de Saint-Exupery’s words of wisdom above. Nobody likes a mess. That perfect pen dreamed up by your well-meaning consumer test group would be the size of a wine bottle and weigh as much as a brick.

Sure, it would have all the features everyone asked for, but who do you think is actually going to use it? What people say is irrelevant.

As a designer, you must be prepared, like a good, caring mom, to give them what they need.

A consumer’s big, important role to play in a design process – their time to shine – is in demonstrating what they really, truly need in a product. Contrary to the things people say, what they need is extremely important. It is only through solving a need that any designer can hope to have a career. But how do you tell the difference?

If you can’t trust people to tell you what they need (and you can’t), how can you possibly figure it out? Should you guess? Do you simply create things arbitrarily, assuming you instinctually know what everyone’s needs are?

Of course not. That’s just as careless as adding too much mass. Do you embrace your inner creep and watch them intently, observing their habits and formulating an ideal solution based on what you see?

Well… yes.

People love to tell you how iconoclastic they are. Everyone else is one way, but they are different because (fill in the blank).

The truth is, the majority of human beings on this planet are remarkably similar in behavior, even people who might superficially be categorized as “different.”

True deviations from the norm are often frightening – sociopaths and murderers – or patently obvious mental or personality disorders. The rest of us – natives and immigrants, extroverts and introverts, liberals and conservatives, iOS users and Android – we’re all more alike than we typically care to admit.

And when we come together to form a market for a product, our actions as a unit usually prove it. We demonstrate what we really want, what we need, by how we behave; what we buy, when we buy it, how we pay for it, or even if we pay for it.

This is the meat of good design, the thing that makes it revolutionary. You must indulge your inner creep, or your inner mom, and let your market speak to you not with what they say, but with what they do.

The post Avoiding Design by Committee appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Your viewer’s first impression of your content does not need to result in a sale. It’s nice if it does, but your client and even you may not know what your design is actually doing. What your main goal is as a designer is to make a memorable impression. Your design should stop your viewer in their tracks and compel them to go on to the next page, image, or piece of copy.

Basically, your design has to seize your viewer’s eyeballs, and hold them for long enough that they move on to the next visual cue. Like a street patrol officer waving a flag that directs traffic, your design must be eye-catching and invite curiosity about what is going on.

In this article I’m going to talk about what you’re really supposed to be doing as a designer, and just what role your designs play in your client’s sales funnel.

Stop, Look, and Listen

It’s a common piece of conventional wisdom in copywriting that the purpose of your first sentence is to get someone to read the next sentence, and so on until they get to the end and you’ve made a sale.

Design is the same way, and works alongside copywriting to achieve the same effect. Selling is a process that usually doesn’t happen immediately.

People have to get to know your brand and whether or not it’s relevant to them specifically. You can only do that through telling a compelling story that’s written in their language. To start the process, they have to be willing to listen to what you’re saying.

Don’t Ruin The Story

As a business owner, your client has a story to tell their customers. That story is probably longer than a logo or a banner ad. To be compelling enough for customers to want to buy, the story must be told gradually. Any other method cheapens the whole experience and sours your prospect against any potential sale.

Think about the last time you went to the movies. What if, rather than letting the film play for the audience, the filmmaker simply popped up on the screen and told you a quick summary of what happens. You’d be furious. You came to see a story, not some random guy telling you a bunch of spoilers.

Your prospective viewers are the same way. They don’t want to be inundated with the quick and dirty details of the story before they’ve had a chance to experience the entire thing unfold organically.

Let Them See Themselves

As consumers, we like to see ourselves reflected in any marketing materials directed toward us.

This means that, if I’m a 30-year-old mother of 2 looking for a fun game I can buy for my kids, I do not want to see images that aren’t relevant to my exact situation. I don’t want to see 20-year-old college students, or 70-year-old seniors, or dogs, or babies or zebras or teddy bears.

I want to see women in my age range with children around the same age as mine, enjoying the product I’m looking for. If I don’t see this exact combination, I’m out of there.

We all look for stories that we can relate to – those stories that closely mirror our own and provide a solution that would be appropriate for us.

The bigger the purchase, the more important this becomes. You would never purchase a luxury car from an ad that was aimed at a completely different demographic from your own.

Targeting a niche is especially important in this day and age, when there are so many choices out there. If I don’t find what I’m looking for in one place, I can go to 50 others just like it.

As a designer, it’s your job to make sure I know that those fifty other businesses are not just like your clients. Your client’s business is different. It’s just for me. Your job is to tell me why.

In Conclusion

It’s worth mentioning that, while the purpose of your design may not be to directly make a sale, it still plays a vital role in the overall sales process.

Without your design, no one would bother looking at your client’s product or service offering at all. Just like you’d be less likely to want to go see a movie based on a text-only description, rather than a full-color poster or trailer, your viewers are dying to see what story you can entice them to want to listen to.

How do your designs help draw in your client’s target audience? Have any ideas for how to enrich the storytelling process we as designers engage in with our work?

The post The Role Design Plays in Your Client’s Sales Funnel appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Technically, creativity and commerciality can’t exist without each other – you need funding to continue designing, and there would be nothing to design for pay without creativity.

Is there a difference between so-called “commercial” work and work that’s done purely for the joy of creating? Should they be separated?

A Jumble of Confusion?

Should you risk confusing potential clients with a mish-mash of work, or should there be a clear separation of commercial work and weird, creative stuff that is less commercial?

Personally, I think that the best potential clients for you would benefit from seeing the full extent of your creativity. It allows them to more accurately judge whether you’d be a good fit, not just for a one-time project, but also for future work, and any fun opportunities you might miss out on if they only see you as a one-dimensional designer.

But what will it do to your personal brand to mix styles? As I said, it can be a good thing to be weird and creative, because clients may take notice of your creativity. Personal projects are very important to maintain as a designer.

They can help you open up new avenues of creative inspiration that you may never have discovered had you only stuck to your client work. I’ve heard many stories of people being hired for amazing freelance and in-house jobs simply on the basis of a great personal project that got a lot of traction.

Too Weird To Appeal?

On the flip side, you may feel that your personal projects are really, really out there in terms of appeal, and might do more harm than good if you combined them with your professional work. The question becomes: can your personal work actually be too weird to associate with your commercial projects?

Well, yes, it can.

There is such a thing as too much disparity between what you do for clients and what you do for yourself. If that’s the case, just keep them separate. You can make a new brand for your weird stuff, and keep the commercial stuff in its own space.

Analytics & Tracking

Keeping things separate makes it easier to track what’s working to gain you clients, and what’s not. Every piece of work you publish online, personal or professional, is going to contribute in some way to people finding out more about who you are as a designer.

You want to always make sure you’re sending the message you want to send to anyone who is watching. If there’s non-commercial work mixed in with commercial work, it can confuse things as far as tracking and analytics goes.

This goes for any kind of work that you don’t want associated with the work you present to potential clients. Say you did a piece that you’re really not proud of, maybe just for the money or for some other reason. You can’t stand to look at it, but you’re afraid to remove it from your portfolio for some reason. Time to get rid of that thing!

If a potential client sees it and wants to hire you to do the exact same thing, what are you going to say to them?

Never include work that you hated doing in your portfolio, because you’ll often find that that is the exact thing clients will want to hire you for the most.

Don’t believe me? Just do a few more crappy projects and you’ll see for yourself.

Be Like A Mullet

You may have heard of the joking description of the mullet haircut popular in rural areas in the US: business in the front, party in the back. Sometimes, it’s good to organize your design work like a mullet. Yes, I’m serious.

Put your professional work that’s relevant to meeting the needs of your clients front and center, and place your “fun” projects that you work on simply for your own enjoyment on the back burner, to be shared with your friends and other designers who are interested in seeing it.

Even publishing work under two different names can help make the separation clearer to everyone.

The post Separating Your Personal & Commercial Design Work appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

I have a confession to make: when I started writing this article, I was stumped at how to best phrase my main idea. I had something important I needed to tell you wonderful readers, but I just wasn’t sure how to do it.

Then it hit me that I wasn’t approaching it in a writing voice I recognized as being “mine.” I was attempting to get too lofty with my idea (since it’s so important and all), and missing the point of my own message. How’s that for irony? In your face, Alanis Morissette.

I eventually decided to scrap what I was originally going to write about, and start over in my own personal style. I love telling stories, and I think that’s where I shine as a writer. Plus, I’m incredibly modest, as you can tell.

So, what is voice? What is personal style, and how can we creatives develop it? One thing’s for sure – it’s not just something for writers to think about. Creative professionals of all stripes struggle with developing their own unique way to express their ideas, especially with so many amazing people out there doing things we admire and are inspired by.

It can be hard sometimes to separate what you admire from who you are, but it’s certainly doable. The key is knowing how to interpret the feedback you get from others.

Translating The Conversation

It’s entirely possible to say one thing dozens, and sometimes even hundreds of different ways. Typography is the best way to illustrate this point. A poster that doesn’t hold back with the chunky slab serifs is going to have a completely different emotional impact than one that uses a delicate, understated script – even if the message is exactly the same.

The design language you use will be different depending on who it is you’re trying to reach. I say language quite deliberately because I compare what we do for our clients as designers to what an interpreter does for two people who speak different languages.

Interpreters create commonality and facilitate conversation between two opposite forces, much the same way that a designer facilitates a communication between their client and their client’s audience. You take what your client has to say and tell it to their audience in a way that’s clear for both parties to understand.

When you develop your own personal design voice, you are effectively alienating those people who don’t care for your style, just like a baby’s brain closes itself off to all of the potential sounds a human being can make in favor of the particular set it learns from its parents.

When you’re born, you can effectively speak every language. But the more you learn and listen, the more certain words and sounds take precedence over the others.

By the time you can talk, you’re communicating in whatever your first language is, excluding all the others you could have learned instead. It’s impossible to try to learn every single language in the world, so why should you try to earn the approval of every single person with your design work? The best way you can use your own voice is to reach people who want to hear your specific message.

The world in general wants you to be bland and inoffensive, easy to understand and digest. But your niche audience wants the compelling visual narrative that only you can give them.

When Inspiration Becomes Copying

Without a doubt, the best way you can expand your own design fluency is by learning from others. Like I said, there’s a ton of exciting, creative work out there that inspires us all, and the argument has certainly been made many times that there’s “nothing new under the sun” in terms of ideas. But there comes a time when design inspiration can go too far and veer off into plain old copyright infringement.

In 2010, copyright representatives for Dutch author Dick Bruna successfully sued Japanese heavyweight Sanrio for copyright infringement over Sanrio’s white bunny character, Cathy.

Bruna, who created the white bunny character Miffy in 1955, said explicitly that Cathy was “a copy” of his famous children’s book bunny, who was very popular in Japan several decades before Sanrio began licensing their character designs. But Sanrio’s Cathy was pretty obviously done in Sanrio’s own style – the bunny character looks very much like their iconic Hello Kitty.

Was Sanrio merely designing in their signature style, or was it in fact a deliberate infringement on Bruna’s copyright? There are plenty of incidences of simultaneous design, when more than one person comes up with the exact same or a series of very similar ideas at around the same time. But as a general rule, unless you can prove in court that you were the original holder of a copyright, it’s not really a good idea to fall victim to that kind of unknowing.

Doing your research, involving yourself in the creative community, and making sure you know who your competition is are vital steps to maintaining your reputation as an original designer with an original voice.

As Albert Einstein said, “the secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” Being inspired means not being ignorant of what your peers are doing.

Remember, your main goal as a freelancer is getting repeat customers who respond well to your unique voice. If you’re telling your own stories and drawing from your own personal experiences, it’s virtually impossible to create designs that look just like everyone else’s.

You can’t help but be original when you’re being authentic.

The post Finding & Using Your Own Design Voice appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

I happen to think that whatever users find ‘trendy’ or cool, even though it may be fleeting, is part of the service a designer provides. It’s part of what clients are paying for. If you’re offering classic, outdated solutions that nobody wants, you are only hurting your own career.

Yes, it might be annoying to feel you must bend to the whims of the ‘masses,’ but if those masses are looking for something you can’t give them, they aren’t going to pay you.

Adopting visual trends is simply a part of providing a commercial service. The only way you can really subvert a design trend is by creating one of your own, which allows you to be the thought leader and influence other designers to follow your lead instead. This is extremely difficult to do, however, and the vast majority of designers are followers rather than leaders.

Don’t believe me? Just look at the designs for tablets and smartphones both before and after the release of the iPad and iPhone. Those designs were so influential that they virtually eliminated any design possibility other than sleek, thin, and black (or white).

Mobile Phones Before the iPhone [Image Source]

The Nature Of The Beast

Yes, people are quick to jump all over a new trend, causing it to look dated in a matter of months. But, like it or not, that’s the nature of the industry these days. Ideas spread much faster than they used to, thanks to the internet. Which means that designers and clients alike are exposed to new trends constantly.

But how do you stay abreast of new trends while not running around like a headless chicken, trying to adapt to every new trend you think might get you more clients? There are three ways you can go about it, which I will explain.

1. The Puzzle Piece Approach

You can use the constant influx of new trends to your advantage as a designer, adjusting your personal style to fit the range of what clients may be looking for depending on which corner of the web they approach you from. I call this the ‘puzzle piece’ approach – you have the missing piece of the puzzle for every design project you take on.

This isn’t a bad way to do business as a freelancer if you don’t mind the constant switching and adapting. You probably won’t gain the venerable reputation of someone who sticks to their guns, but if you can continue to ride the wave and know just when and how to adapt, you’ll have a long career ahead of you.

2. The True Blue Approach

On the other hand, you may wish to develop a reputation for creating work that always bears your personal mark or style. You buck any and all new trends, and only serve clients who are looking for exactly the type of design work you specialize in.

This is a great way to build a solid, loyal client base and following, but there can be dangers here as well. You may find your base getting smaller and smaller as people’s attention is drawn to newer, more exciting trends.

Saul Bass Quote, Designed by Brittany Appel

3. The Goldilocks Approach

Personally, I think the ideal approach lies somewhere in the middle. If you’re too much of a trend hopper, you’ll have no credibility as a designer. However, if you’re too absorbed in your personal style preferences, you’ll alienate too large a portion of your potential market.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m the biggest believer in niching down your potential pool of clients. But you don’t want to go so niche that you’re unable to grow and expand your career.

The post Do We Really Need to Follow Design Trends? appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

I had no experience with working at a firm, nor was I technical enough to get deeply involved in the backend work. But my cover letter told them that I would be able to communicate clearly and effectively with their customers, while at the same time putting them at ease and perhaps making them laugh a little. I am pretty funny, after all.

The stories we tell prospective employers have a dramatic impact on whether or not we will be successful at what we do. They can literally make or break your career, so it’s important to choose and develop them wisely.

What is Storytelling?

You may be thinking to yourself, ‘I’m a designer – why do I need to worry about telling stories?‘ But storytelling is more than literally sitting down and writing a tale of heroics or romance or wizards who speak Latin.

We encounter storytelling in everyday aspects of our lives, like when we see a man pull a dog out of a busy intersection, or when we watch a group of protesters march by, carrying hand-painted signs for a cause they believe in. All of these things are stories; they’re tiny moments of people taking action and affecting the world around them. Because at the heart of it, that’s all a story really is.

I’ll bet that every movie you’ve ever seen goes something like this: there’s a person who does something in reaction to something that happened around them, which in turn causes another thing to happen that the person also has to do something about, and so on.

See? Story isn’t that complicated after all. Everyone already knows the basics. The key is incorporating them effectively in the way you communicate with your clients and your viewers.

Articulate the Vision For Your Clients

A few years ago, story artist Emma Coats tweeted a series of essential “story basics,” guidelines that she used at Pixar to create gripping narratives. Much of her advice had to do with simplifying and focusing on essentials that had a universal application. One of my favorites was #14:

“Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.“

What’s the essential thing you are trying to convey to your audience? When you walk into a client meeting, what do you want them to take away the most? You aren’t selling them on a website, or a branding campaign. You’re selling them on a story, an idea, a dream.

Your client dreams of something bigger than just “website” or “brand.” They dream of loyal customers who say glowing things about them. They dream of changing the world through the work they do. They dream of some story that, as the designer, it’s your job to uncover.

Words or Images?

As designers, visuals are highly important in our work. We use pictures to tell stories all the time – from the smiling mother pushing a shopping cart in a print ad to a sun-kissed row of crops on a site about sustainable farming. But what about words? You may think writing is the job of the writers, and it is, but that’s not the end of it.

Working with type means working with words – arranging them in a way that will reach out and grab the reader’s attention. Just like images, words can tell a different story depending on the way they look. Typography is a much more expressive medium than most people give it credit for. Traditional print designers typically have a good handle on this idea, but for web designers, the merits of a strong background in type can sometimes be overlooked a bit.

But what about the actual words themselves? Just because you’re not a professional author doesn’t mean your words aren’t valuable. Plenty of designers and artists have catapulted to tremendous success simply because they wrote or blogged about something that other people found valuable.

Austin Kleon’s bestselling book, Steal Like An Artist, is a great example of this. Kleon wrote the original blog post as an illustrated transcription of a talk he gave at Broome Community College in New York. Soon, it went viral, and within just a couple of years, the print version was selling like crazy.

Kleon had a story to tell that resonated with many people – not because he was paid to tell it, but because it was a simple truth that he had to share.

In Conclusion

The most important thing you can do as a creative professional is capture your audience’s imagination. A true visionary has a narrative, and tells the story of the work in whatever way he or she can.

Remember, nobody buys your skills – they buy an idea, a vision, a dream of how they can reach their business and personal goals with your help. They buy the story that tells the why, not the what, of what you do. Use the personality, passion, and drama of your stories to inform your designs. The more specific your stories, the more in-demand you will be as a designer.

The post The Importance of Storytelling in Design appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Or perhaps you’re the online type of networker – stalking people on Twitter and LinkedIn, carpet bombing potential clients with form letters and links to your portfolio, sitting by the inbox waiting for it to fill up. Any of this sounding familiar?

I love networking. But not because I do any of the above. Many designers assume that there’s only one way to network, but the truth is that’s just not the case.

Today, I’m going to show you a much easier and more effective way to go about making networking connections as a freelancer, and also tell you why you should never, ever approach networking in the manner described above.

Not Working Out

Why is it bad to network in the “traditional” way? Well, you tell me. How effective have your networking efforts been in relation to the work you’ve gotten? Are potential clients beating down your door, standing with their hearts in their throats with exciting, challenging, high-paying work tailor-made just for you? If you’re reading this article, the chances are good that they’re not.

The reason that it’s bad to network the traditional way is because everyone networks that way. Contacts get bombarded with offers from freelancers just like you at every event, and in every email, mailer, and flyer. If you simply fall in line and do what everyone else is doing, chances are you’re going to get what everyone else is getting: ignored.

The main problem with traditional networking is the mindset most people have when going into it. What’s the number one reason you network? To get more clients.

When you’re running out of leads and you need more work soon, you pull out the business cards, dust off your best business-casual wear, and head out to try and drum up some business. That’s the mentality with which most people approach networking – something to be done when you need work.

However, there’s another way to look at networking, which will work out much better for you in the long run. That way involves seeing networking as something to be done before you need work. Yep, that’s what I said.

Networking is all about building relationships. It’s about a back and forth, constant communication with a person with whom you have a mutually beneficial relationship.

Most people don’t provide valuable information to strangers who contact them once a year when they need something. That would be a waste of effort on their part because there’s no way for them to receive any kind of positive reciprocation from that person.

Put yourself in their shoes – if you were contacted once by some freelancer looking for a job and took the time to respond, then you never hear from them again, how would you feel? It can be frustrating to deal with those types of networkers because it’s obvious that they’re simply using you for what you can provide to them.

To stand out, you need to become the kind of networker who doesn’t ask for anything from your contact and who actually only seeks to provide them with value of some kind.

A congratulatory email, a link to content they might find interesting or relevant. Keeping in contact with people in your network doesn’t have to take much effort, but it is important to make sure they know your primary objective is not to suck them dry and then vanish.

Top of Mind

Staying at the top of people’s minds is another vital aspect to effective networking. If you meet with someone in person and don’t follow up by phone or email, you’re missing the opportunity to form a genuine connection.

Your contact will merely assume you were one of ‘the masses,’ and when you do contact them again (maybe several months to a year later), they’ll not only not remember who you were, but they may also be irritated by your sudden intrusion into their busy schedule. That’s not what you want.

Instead, try following up immediately with someone after an in-person meeting. Email them in intervals – not enough to spam them, but enough to notify them that you still exist and appreciate the time they took to speak with you and provide you with any help you may have received.

A great way to stay at the forefront of people’s minds is through your work. Many designers don’t think to notify prospective clients of new projects, but this can be one of the most effective ways you can advertise your awesomeness without coming off like a pest.

Everyone wants to know about cool new creative projects; this is your chance to show off your newest personal work and establish yourself as a forward-thinking creative professional.

I’ve already written an article about why it’s important for designers to make time for personal work, so for now, I’ll merely say that a monthly email to potential clients about some new project you’re involved in that shows off your critical thinking skills and originality is, to many people, far more intriguing than a formulaic resume and cover letter.

Practice Makes Perfect

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. The vast majority of the time, you want to ask questions and take notes, allowing the other person to speak freely. But if you slip up and say the wrong thing, it’s not a big deal.

You should probably refrain from insulting their family members or anything like that, but people are generally gracious when they know you’re genuinely interested in making a meaningful connection with them.

As the saying goes, the more mistakes you make, the fewer of them you’ll make. The more you practice, the better you’ll become. Again, sincerity is the goal here, not perfection.

Be sensitive to the other person’s time. If you contact someone to request a meeting, make sure you time it properly so that your request is neither disregarded nor an annoyance.

Don’t email someone on a Sunday morning – their emails could be received through their phone, which might sound an alarm, and if they’re asleep, your email might come as an obnoxious wake-up call. Not good.

The post Networking For Designers 101 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

David gets his pots and pans out, pulls what he needs from the fridge as it’s needed, and dives hands first into the cooking. He likes to follow his gut, and make the magic happen spontaneously. In the other room, his guests are talking and making quick work of the wine and the asparagus dip, and David is in the zone.

Pan over to Jenny. Jenny is a more methodical cook – she opens up her recipe book and starts pulling out everything she needs to complete the meal. No cooking yet – just preparation. It takes her a while, but she manages to arrange all of her utensils and ingredients in neat groups. Everything is pre-measured; not even a speck of flour is spilled on the countertop. Her guests are just as rowdy and are drinking just as copiously, but Jenny will not begin until she’s certain that everything is in its proper place. Finally, she begins to cook, following a rigid schedule, almost like a surgeon.

So, who do you think made the better meal? I dunno – you’d have to ask the guests! But that’s not the question our little story was intended to ask. The question is: who served their guests faster?

If you guessed Jenny, you’re absolutely right. All other things being equal, Jenny was the one who would have been able to produce a large quantity of food in record time, all to the exact same quality standards, so that her hungry, hungry guests would be satisfied.

Why? Because she did something that all professional chefs do every single day. We’ll get to what that is in a minute. David may have been able to pull it off with his more lackadaisical approach, but with a dozen starving guests all waiting to eat ASAP, who wants to take that kind of risk?

Breaking It Down

Let’s look at what made Jenny come out ahead of David in the time management department. Obviously, she was careful in her approach, but there’s more to it than that. Jenny used what’s known in the culinary industry as “mise en place.” Mise en place is a fancy French term that simply means “everything in its place.” Feel free to blurt it out the next time you’re eating out with your friends. You’ll either look like a super sophisticated foodie, or a total pretentious dork.

Anyway, all professional cooks use mise en place to help them get organized. When you’re working in a commercial kitchen, you don’t have time to guess or estimate how much of this ingredient you need, or how much time that dish will take to cook. You have to know beforehand – otherwise, you fall behind and you won’t be able to produce the hundreds of plates that pass through the average restaurant kitchen each night.

Just as a pro never starts cooking before setting up all of their ingredients and cooking utensils, a designer should never just jump into designing without everything being “in its place” first. This means setting up obvious things, like your tools, hardware, materials, reference, wireframes, et cetera – but it also includes stuff you might not think to finalize before you get started.

Like your client contract, which details specifically when you expect to get paid, how much, and what your ETA is for getting work done. Or your client survey or questionnaire, in which you get down to the nitty-gritty of what your clients are looking for, not just for your current project, but in general. This gives you a framework for determining what your clients are expecting to get, and will help you figure out how to give it to them.

Other things, like standards checklists, bookkeeping, revision planning, and, my favorite: a plan to properly present and sell your ideas to your client, are massively important to making sure everything runs smoothly. These might not be the most exciting things to check off your to-do list, but they are some of the areas in which designers most frequently run into trouble when not done properly.

How many times have you heard of freelancers who failed to communicate a brilliant idea to their client, all because they never prepared or rehearsed what they were going to say in the meeting? Or a designer who got so caught up in tiny little scope creeps that didn’t seem so bad until suddenly they realized they’d done thousands of dollars of work for a client who had no intention of ever paying them for it?

We’ve all heard of these unfortunate case; perhaps we’ve even been there ourselves. But so much of what constitutes “client burn” is preventable with steady and persistent attention to detail, to making sure every piece of the puzzle is accounted for before the work begins.

Right Brain Or Left Brain?

There’s a philosophy among some designers and artists that the creative process, being, well, creative, should be less restrained and more intuitive. “Going with your gut” and engaging your “right-brain” are the most important things, so the argument goes, to harnessing maximum creativity.

Which is great, if you’re a more free-spirited creative who shines through relentless experimentation and abstract investigating. I’m not too sure I buy into the idea that people use one side of their brains more than the other, but the general idea of certain people being more suited to certain work styles is pretty valid.

Right brained freedom is fine and all, if that’s who you are as a designer. But if, like me, you consider yourself more methodical in your approach (in case you couldn’t tell, I’m much more a “Jenny” type of cook – and designer – than a “David”) that’s perfectly fine as well.

Left brain dominant people are no less creative than right-brained ones, and there’s even plenty of evidence to suggest that control and limitations actually help boost your creativity in many cases. If you’ve ever been to design school or taken a class in any creative discipline, you’ll know that instructors rarely tell you to “do whatever you want.” They give you guidelines and limitations to work inside of, which at first might seem to be limiting your creativity. But a wise instructor knows that the opposite is actually true.

The creative process usually goes faster if you plan ahead and work inside of limits. Simply jumping in is not only confusing to many people, but it’s also more likely to be non-productive if you don’t have the right temperament for it. If you find yourself struggling with conventional creative wisdom that tells you to “just dive in,” try doing the opposite of that instead.

Indulge your inner accountant or engineer, and meticulously plan out a creative project the same way you might plan a wedding ceremony or a major travel itinerary. You might just discover a powerful set of creative muscles that have been hiding in plain sight.

Living the Mise en Place Life

Mise en place is more than simply physically preparing to do something complex or challenging. It is a state of mind. Think of it as almost like a meditation ritual or a personal philosophy that guides your ethical judgment.

When you incorporate the mise en place idea into your business and creative process, it provides your brain with lubrication, just like putting oil in your car. You prepare yourself to power through your work with less stress and fewer headaches, which means you can take on more work and get paid more for the value you provide to your clients.

The post How a Culinary Technique Could Make You a Better Freelancer appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.