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.

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.

After I fumbled through my presentation, my teacher pulled me aside and said that I’d had the best ideas out of everyone in the class, but gave the worst presentation. I was too shy, and I didn’t inspire any confidence in my audience. My presentation had no “pop,” and thus it was boring and forgettable. I earned a disappointing grade as a result.

As a professional designer, I’ve since had it reinforced again and again that, when it comes to ideas, it’s all about how you present them. A good presentation can force people to take your ideas more seriously and assign more value to them.

Dress Your Ideas For Success

Here’s a sad but true fact: people are much more likely to be interested in your work if you “dress it up” nicely. If something is presented poorly, it will be perceived that way, regardless of its actual value. If you’re uncomfortable presenting your ideas and selling a client on them, take classes and read books on presentation and public speaking.

It might be awkward, but the effort you put into presenting your ideas and making a genuine connection with people is going to make the difference between an obscure designer and a breakout superstar.

Technical craftsmanship counts as well. Don’t cut corners. Spend the extra time to make your design as crisp and perfect as possible. I know people say that the perfect is the enemy of the good. But I say that the sloppy is the enemy of the great. When you were younger, your parents probably told you to “dress for success.” That’s true not just for your appearance, but for anything you create which represents you professionally.

Anything that has your name attached to it also carries the strength of your reputation on its back. Don’t unknowingly develop a reputation for shoddy, third-rate work.

Gotta Have A Gimmick

There’s a classic musical number in the 1962 film Gypsy, about burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee, in which young Rose is educated about the key to burlesque success by her fellow strippers.

It’s obviously meant to be funny (and it is), but there’s a powerful marketing tactic embedded in the song: whatever you do, make sure it gets people’s attention, because if it doesn’t, you’ll never make the sale.

Theatrics and flair count for a lot. We are visual creatures and we respond to the pretty, the flashy, and the attention grabbing. For example, a color photograph is going to get more attention than a black and white one (unless the black and white photo is the only one among a bunch of color photos), and a video is always going to get more attention than a still image.

This is even more true nowadays, when we’ve all been inundated with showy, blinking ads and fast-moving media offerings. It takes even more to catch people’s attention these days, but that’s where your problem-solving design skills come in handy.

Using Your Sixth Sense

The more senses you can engage for your viewers, the better your response will be. Visual, sound, motion, color – whatever you can incorporate that will create a holistic experience and engages your audience as much as possible.

Obviously, this needs to be calibrated according to the specific niche you’re designing for, but basic human psychology doesn’t change. People will certainly retain more information about your content the more experiential and interactive it is.

Make It Count

Everything – and I mean everything – about your design project should tell a story, from the colors to the photography to every single word in your copy. If there’s anything that isn’t contributing to the story you want to tell, take it out immediately.

Again, it’s important to make sure your clients understand why a design choice is the right one or the wrong one. The closer you are to the money, the easier this will be. It’s quite easy to convince a client that your solution will help them get more customers, and thus make more money.

Customer Service Counts

Excellent customer service can take a restaurant from mediocre to amazing. In the culinary world, they say that presentation is three-quarters of a meal. That means that you are 75% more likely to enjoy a plate of food if it looks nice.

That sounds like a lot, but think about it: would you walk into a restaurant that had greasy, spoiled-looking food sitting out on its counters, and be filled with confidence about whatever they were about to serve you? Or maybe the food looks fine, but the waitstaff is surly and inattentive, ignoring your questions or calls for service. Would that whet your appetite? I didn’t think so.

As a designer, “service” should be at the forefront of your mind at all times, even if you don’t think it’s part of your job description. You’re performing a service for your clients, and that includes the little details that make you stand out from your competition.

Thank you notes, extras and freebies, offers to help out whenever you’re needed and add value to your client will all help keep you at the top of your client’s mind when they’re thinking about hiring or referring someone.

The post Design Ideas is All About Presentation appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

It doesn’t matter what the unethical thing is or your reason for not wanting to do it – it’s always a pain to deal with and handle in a professional and courteous manner.

Luckily, there is a reliable process many freelancers can use to stop these types of clients from getting out of control, and often prevent ethical issues from coming up in the first place.

Opting Out

First, it’s important to remember that the best option in situations like these is to simply have more options and avoid these types of projects altogether. Clients who are shady are almost always more trouble than they’re worth, and if the unethical activity can be traced back to you in any way, you’ll find yourself with more trouble on your hands than you ever wanted.

If you have other potential clients you can work with, you can simply fire these bad apples and send them (politely) on their way things start to get moldy. But how do you determine who’s on the level before you take on a project?

Spotting The Red Flags

Many times, you can use your natural intuition to determine whether or not a client will present ethical dilemmas before you begin working with them. It can be as simple as a “vibe” – just a weird feeling you get when talking to them, or the dodgy way in which they answer your questions.

I’ve turned down work from clients before who just had an oddness about them that I couldn’t explain. I didn’t know why they made me uncomfortable; simply that they did, and I wanted nothing to do with their project. In more than one case, I found out later that they were, in fact, up to no good. Freelancer: 1, disaster: 0.

Other times, it can be the type of work a client asks you to do that sets off the alarm bells. Reputation management, radical brand redesigns, or conflict de-escalation with third parties like angry customers or threatening competitors, while not unethical by themselves, can be signs that your client might want to handle these problems in ways that aren’t entirely above board.

Use your judgment and listen to your gut when deciding which projects to take on. It might seem silly to turn away a client just from a feeling, but it can save you potentially years of headaches and legal problems. Plus, word to the wise: it’s often these kinds of clients who provide the biggest issues when it comes to payment as well.

Remember You’re The Expert

Sometimes, a request for something unethical can truly come out of nowhere. Everything is going fine, then suddenly your client springs a rotten request on you that you’re not sure how to handle.

In these situations, it’s likely that your client is less likely to be a crook, and more likely to simply be misguided on the direction they should be taking with the project. They see what’s working for their competitors, and they decide it’s not worth tampering with what’s clearly a winning formula. In other words, they have the right general idea, but need some help executing it in an original way.

It’s important to remind these types of clients – and yourself – that you were hired to apply your professional expertise to solve their business problems. Don’t be afraid to challenge your client’s assumptions as to what will be truly effective and why.

Point them to results you’ve achieved in the past that will show them that there are many ways to approach the dilemma that won’t violate anyone else’s intellectual property rights. Don’t just send them a new round of comps or revisions – take the time to explain what works, what doesn’t, and what will help them avoid a lawsuit.

Saying ‘I Told You So’

Ah, yes. Gloating. It’s not just for school children anymore. If you’ve done everything you can to convince a client to do the right thing, and they still refuse to see reason, it’s essential to be able to release yourself from liability if and when something goes horribly wrong. Here’s where having a record of all communication comes in handy.

Even if most of your exchange with the client happens in person and over the phone, always make transcribed copies of your recommendations, requests, and warnings, and ask the client to sign off or verify them via email.

Keep records of all the advice you provide and send a copy to your client, even if they end up completely ignoring you. That way, when their idea fails miserably, you can whip out your notes and show them that you warned them. Besides being satisfying to get a little revenge on a stubborn client, it makes it impossible for the client to hold you responsible for their poor behavior.

Hopefully, this will convince them that it’s always better to do things the right way rather than treading on someone else’s rights, but if not, at least you can walk away with a clean conscience and warn other freelancers you know to avoid that client at all costs.

The post How to Handle Ethical Disagreements With Your Design Clients appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

To many designers, this is the kiss of death, but I’m here today to tell you that it doesn’t have to be. We’re going to explore some unusual but very effective ways to get those creative juices flowing again so that you can get back in the flow of things and continue to wow your clients.

Creativity in Routine?

Here’s a fact about the human brain that you may not know: every single decision you make throughout your day will have a negative effect on your ability to successfully complete a task. That’s right – whether it’s choosing which color to make that dropdown menu, or whether you should wear that green shirt or the blue one, every time you’re forced to make a decision, you lose just a bit more mental energy.

This is why you may find yourself burnt out by lunchtime if you begin your day by answering emails or answering silly questions from dense clients. Those small decisions have used up a huge amount of your energy for the day. Sure, you can recover some of it by eating a nutritious lunch or having a quick nap, but you won’t be quite as productive after noon as you were before.

Adopting systems and routines that automate a lot of your daily decisions can help tremendously in recovering some of that creativity you thought was lost forever.

Consider taking a full day to plan the little things you know you will have to do for the week, even down to what color shirt you’ll wear. Try to batch your email responses if you can – it’s not a crime to cut and paste responses if they’re relevant and get the point across.

The more things you can automate, the more you can turn your focus to the work that truly matters.

Getting a Jolt of Energy

Starting a new project can be very intimidating. And yes, I’m about to use yet another of my famous food analogies, so get ready.

Have you ever been to a restaurant, and the waiter hands you a menu that’s absolutely terrifying? I don’t mean it has teeth or it growls at you or anything like that. I mean, there are so many items on the menu, and the descriptions are so lengthy that you almost lose your appetite and want to run back out the front door?

Too much choice can do more than confuse us – it can just about ruin our experience and make us want to hide while we try to process everything in front of us.

For me, it seems like the more freedom I have with a design project, the scarier, more confusing, and more impossible it becomes to get started.

Of course, freedom in my design work is something I’ve strived very hard to achieve, and I’m very fortunate to have it. But sometimes, with a big, hairy project deadline looming over my head, I almost wish I was a student again, with rigid assignments and a limited scope as to what I could work on.

What’s the solution to this problem? I’ve found that doing something spontaneous to get my blood pumping and my creative energy flowing helps tremendously. Exercise is the most obvious choice here, and I don’t need to tell you how many ills it can help cure besides creative block.

However, there are other options, such as spending quality time with friends or loved ones, working on something else, like a personal project, or, my personal favorite, cooking.

Calm Those Jitters

Sometimes, your problem isn’t that you’re frightened into submission by your project. Rather, you’re inundated with too much energy, which can manifest as nervous fidgeting, hair-pulling, or procrastinating by doing meaningless busy work.

This can be just as maddening because you’re not exactly sure where to begin, and you know you should be doing something productive, but you just can’t figure out what.

You may not realize it, but your brain is like clay. Whatever approach you decide to take for your work will leave an impression on your brain for next time. So, if you react to a challenging project with stress, nerves, or excessive anxiety, you’re saving a copy of that reaction in your brain’s hard drive, which will automatically pull up every time you’re faced with a similar dilemma.

In this case, you need a solution that will burn off or diminish some of that excess energy. A calming activity, such as meditation, walking, journaling, or reading, will help soothe your brain and help it focus on the task at hand.

The post How to Get Those Creative Juices Flowing Again appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.