Dont make it hard for yourself

You know what I find hilarious? It's the amount of people with outdated methods that are vehemently defending them to the detrement of anyone who might have found an easier way to do whatever it is that they do. Like for example all the coding purists of the Web development community who are so absolutely against anyone getting creative with code and stepping outside the web standards to make things work. Seems a bit silly to me as people's experimentation is what drives creativity and innovation forward. There are always going to be places in which standards and best practices are kept to, but come on now lets be honest we need those folks who don't want to follow the rules because it is those guys that will be opening doors. This seems to happen all over the place in every profession. You need to prove that you are a hard worker. If your not a hard worker then you cant possibly be a team player, and if your not a team player then you must be a selfish person, and if your a selfish person then you don't deserve the benefits that the hard working folk of the world generated in the first place, and so the spurious claims continue. The thing about any kind of traditionalism though, is that whether it be in work, study, or culture, is that it doesn't allow for much deviation from the plan. It doesn't actually allow anyone who may have found a better, more efficient, or just easier way to do something to adapt the tradition. This is why it is a problem. It's another one of those things that just slows the process of change down. But that is not really the point here, its is more about people actively road blocking the change makers and then bundling it up in a negative, like saying "you are lazy and this is the way it has to stay because its the right way".

I get it really I do, why would anyone work so hard to have some undeserving person jump on the bandwagon at the last minute and reap the benefits of all your work. It's infuriating to say the least, so obviously this kind of emotive response is going to lead to certain conclusions on the part of the hard working individual. So what does one do about such a thing? Do we stamp out all lazy and worthless individuals until there is nothing left but an army of obedient and productive people left to take on the worlds work and toil. The answer to that should be pretty obvious and it is most definitely a no. We are not machines and nor should we try and emulate them in any way shape or form. If anything we should take a lesson or two from the "lazy" people of the world. People seem to forget that this set up of if you work hard you will be rewarded was invented in the best interests of industry, which in turn was invented in the best interests of capitalism. Capitalism is just one giant self serving set of equations that aid monetary growth. It's not for your benefit and it never has been. It is for its own benefit and it has gotten out of hand. Your endlessly working hard does not actually help you at all. I mean it helps you to generate money for yourself and the company for which you work obviously but it also takes so much more from you then you realize at first glance. It takes away from you things like liberty autonomy and choice, and as we all know in most professions you are not even allowed your own genuine reaction to people or scenarios you must act as a "professional" at all times which in my mind is just a zombie. (Yes I am being pessimistic about this). Did you know that the amount of people taking time off work due to stress and anxiety related issues has risen to 58%. That is basically the majority, and it says a lot of the rising expectations of the employer. What it also says is that it isn't healthy, and continuing to try and meet impossible standards is the very thing pushing the bar up endlessly in the first place. You are indirectly, by trying to work as hard as you are asked just making your life more difficult.

Bill Gates our favorite innovator once said. "I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because they will find an easy way to do it". He wasn't the only to have cottoned onto this notion as some of the biggest and most successful tech and design companies of the age have raised the productivity rates of their staff considerably, by actually lowering the expectation on the employee. For example Steven Sagmeister who runs an award winning design studio in New York, (check that out here http://www.sagmeister.com/welcome ) closes it completely every seven years and gives all his staff a whole year off fully paid and free to do what they want in their lives. He goes into great detail about the benefits of time away from work and how interesting and engaged people actually become, and how produce better work,  (you can check that out here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNuOmTQdFjA). Another company to utilize this flexible working pattern is Google, who have a kind of get it done when your ready approach. There are many more like them too that make fun office spaces and day trips etc to try and get the best out of their people. Facebook, Apple, Sony, to name a few. So as you can see giving people freedom is paramount to their productivity.


The thing to remember is that most of the innovations that have come to pass since the industrial revolution have been in order to make things easier for us in our everyday lives. That was always the point, so why do we continue to punish people for their doing things the easy way. We are all being sold a bit of a lie here and probably should get a little bit angrier about it.it seems to work for the Buddhist's, they never get angry. There's probably an answer in their somewhere maybe we shouldn't be getting angry about it all and just try to take the path of least resistance. All I am really suggesting here is that you change your perspective a little and point that blame finger in another direction. Your feeling bad about someone doing less work than you only really stems from your feeling cheated because you just realized you didn't have to work so hard in the first place. It sucks I know, but once you have to come to this realization then you are well and truly on the way to enlightenment. I remember this feeling very well in relation to my university coursework. For those of you out there who have done or are doing an arts related course then you will know that you are marked not really on the final outcome per se but the process in which you got there. Usually in the form of a sketchbook. I know I am not the only one out there who finds this to be a ridiculous concept. The build up to the final piece of work is what you are being judged on and I understand that there needs to be some point of reference but if you are trying to hone your skills as a painter what you want to do is paint not research other peoples paintings. The learning as often is with most things is in the doing, and the back up just feels like extra work for nothing. It is no coincidence that most students will tell you that they found it easier to work backwards from the final product in there sketchbooks and that is because they all know that they are only doing the sketchbook thing because they have to. Nobody wants to do work that they don't need to it just isn't natural. So the long and the short of it really is you should'nt stress yourself out by working your self to the bone, and you should'nt srtess other people out who choose not to. You should just learn how to be relaxed and soon enough and you will naturally become happier more productive and more innovative as a result. Which was actually the original aim of all the hard work. How ironic.

When all your friends are designers too.

The unavoidable part of becoming a designer or a politician or bricklayer even, is that your peer group will eventually be made up mostly of other designers, bricklayers, or politicians. Why am I insinuating that's a bad thing you might ask? Well I would have thought the answer obvious, but that doesn't make for a very good read!

Politicians are probably the best example of this line of argument because this is something that the majority of people have witnessed with their own eyes. Politicians on the whole, get accused of the same thing over and over again, and it is that of being self interested and out of touch with the people that they actually govern. They are purely in the business of making the country a better place for themselves and others like them. That is of course the generalized public opinion and not everybody shares this view but maybe there is some truth in it. Maybe the politicians have become so accustomed to the interests of their party and the company of other politicians that they have no idea what the people are really like. This happens in a number of instances when you think about it.  It has done throughout history. for instance in revolutions and civil wars across the globe. Stereotyping after all is not entirely fictional, or indeed fixed. The generalization must to true to an extent of most people within the named group, that's how it works. The problem is that the job is so all consuming. It is more than just a job that you do for money, it is a role within society that affects people and there livelihoods and it carries with it responsibility, and expected behavior, and so forth, it just so happens that it carries a pay check. What most people fail to notice is that all jobs are like this. Your Job isn't just a job, it is far more than that.

I think a great interlude to this line of thought would be for you to check out this site which elaborates on my point in a wonderful way. http://workisnotajob.com/en/about.

Now coming back to what you do, it is going to affect affect quite a few things in your life and not only that but it is going to affect things for your close and even quite distantly connected peer group. You might be thinking don't be silly, I can see how a politicians decisions are affecting the wider population, but how is me designing holiday cards for "Clinton Cards" going to make a difference to anything. I feel this one is best illustrated with a little story.

Lets say for example you are in fact a freelance graphic designer. This allows you to work from home or from your clients office and at your own pace within reason. It also allows you to charge whatever rates you feel are appropriate, and generally avoid the day in day out monotony of the nine to five. Overall you are happy with your choice to do this but it does have its down sides. Some of your clients are not very nice people and they don't understand or respect what it is that you do. They call you up at all hours of the day expecting you to be fine with this because you are a freelancer, and they try to get away with not paying you wherever possible. Not only this but you often have periods without any work and you are in charge of supplying, maintaining, and updating, the very expensive equipment and software that is required to be a graphic designer. These are all things that affect you personally.

Now of course these things do have a bit of a knock on effect and bleed into your personal life. For example, your boyfriend/ girlfriend often complains that you don't spend the weekend with them as often as they would like because your projects sometimes run over and the deadline is the most important to you than quality time with your partner. You know all about computers and a little bit about programming and markup languages because its part of your job so naturally sometimes you just cant switch off and end up talking about these subjects to your friends. They know nothing about what you are talking about and have no interest in listening to it either, as it has no effect on there situation and subsequently avoid you when that's what you are talking about. In there eyes you are becoming more and more boring and they would like there less geeky friend back. On a more positive front though it also means that you can help with otherwise technical and daunting tasks that your friends may not be able to handle on there own so most people, (your mum especially) now assume that you are there own personal technician and treat you accordingly. Great news for a number of people in your immediate circle and perhaps a few friends of theirs that could sling you some work.

Now you can see where I am going with this but the last one is the more important aspect, and it is how you have affected the company, the employees, and the consumers, of the products via your actual work. Now lets not forget what you do as a graphic designer. You are a conveyor of visual information and a maker a visual reality that may or may not exist for someone other than yourself. In essence, you sell things to people using pictures and words. So where does all this affectation come in? I'm glad you asked! Lets say the Job you just did was a set of labels for a new cosmetic range that wanted to draw in a new younger audience as the company weren't meeting there profit target by only appealing to the over 25's. So you made some funky fresh design touting young faces Photoshopped to look as though they were wearing the cosmetics themselves and beaming with confidence about it. You have just given the company a much need facelift and they have therefore made a huge 23% increase in sales as a result of the new packaging, allowing them to take on more staff and produce more products. This has indirectly created jobs for some lucky people who were looking for work but it has also increased the workload of the lab staff who were already overworked. Because its such a specialist role the company could not afford to hire more lab technicians and just decided that the current staff members could handle it. A young girl who normally doesn't wear makeup passes this new product in the shops and has heard that its all the rage and growing in popularity among her friends so she asks her mother to buy it for her. Her mother who is against makeup refuses and this indirectly contributes to mean comments from those who do wear the product. I could go on but I feel that I may have got my point across with this one.

This story is of course all fictional and purely fabricated to make a point but the point is in how this chain forms from what you do. Your work has a myriad of unexpected chain reactions regardless of what it is you actually think you do, so it is important to remain rounded and aware of the wider audience and affectee's. This is why I think that it is bad to have only friends who are graphic designers. It blinkers your thinking into a mold of the political, ideological, and social, conscious of the design world. It just so happens that graphic designers and other creators can be quite progressive, but even though this is true it becomes easy to forget that there is a whole world out there who know nothing of what you do or why you do it. These people are still very much a part of your world. And there voice and point of view is still just as valid as anyone else's. The minute you stop listening to those voices you become the out of touch politician, and honestly nobody likes that person. So by all means have friends who are designers and do cool designery type stuff with them. We all need people with whom we share a passion because it gives us someone to bounce off of and spark creativity. Just try and make sure that you have a life outside of the design world with people that have nothing to do with it. You know what they say after all, "Variety is the spice of life".

The specific vs the broad portfolio

This is one of my favourite subjects to talk about, honestly. Its like creationism vs evolution. Okay so its not quite as politically charged as all that but it is pretty difficult to get anyone to agree on it. If you are a graphic designer of any description it goes without saying that you are going to have to have a portfolio that shows people exactly what it is that you do. You are supposed to be a visualiser of information so technically by that premice alone it should be pretty self explanatory what your skills are after having taken a look at your portfolio. Except for the fact that this is often not the case. There are many a pixel perfect portfolio out there that fails to communicate the essence of what exactly the designer specialises in, and this is kind of how the debate opens up. The question is less about how you go about making your portfolio visually interesting etc than it is about do you have or do you in fact need to have an easilly discernable specialism. I am going to go with NO, personally I believe that you do not need a specialism to be noticed because your "specialism" will stand out a mile from the rest of your work anyway. But it is good always to know from the perspective of a client or employer, that you are capable of stretching the remit a little if needs be. After all we have that little thing called the free market to worry about now too so you can bet your bottom dollar that the competition are doing everything under the sun to stop you from getting the work they could realistically handle by themselves.

Personally my portfolio is quite broad in that it stretches from interface and web design to logos, brochures, posters and even illustration. I do this because I tend to work on a project by project basis. I don't like the idea of somebody telling me that purely because I haven't done something before that I am going to be terrible at it. There is of course a possibility that this is the case but most of the skills in the field of graphic design are transferable. e.g.. If you have done something remotely similar to the proposed project you will probably have a good idea before you've even started where your strengths and weaknesses are going to lie. So it is really about using your discretion (and being honest with yourself) about what you can reasonably achieve. If I thought for example that I was capable of coding an entire e-commerce from scratch but had never done it before then what I would do before pitching for the project is do my research! I would find out all the extra resources that were involved how long it takes your average experienced e-commercer and factor in learning time for any thing that I don't already know how to do. If this then seemed like an unreasonable assertion on reflection I wouldn't bother to pitch for the project. But, if I still felt confident after all this then I would pitch for the project and go about putting together the bare bones of the project to send out as an example or sort of insurance for the potential client. Now in a position like that you have not only gained knowledge of a new potential avenue you have also gained albeit a small amount, but some form of experience in the field and a little something to put in your portfolio, and this is all even if you don't win the client. So for me this is a worth while endeavour. I know most of you creatives out there are generally talented little buggers who will thrive in any environment given the right incentives so whats wrong with a little dabbling??

Now the reason I defend the broad portfolio so much is because it opens doors. If you have only ever worked in web then it is likely that you will only ever work in web. The work you do leads you to other similar work and that is a fact. There is s always nothing stopping you from doing self set projects in the other specialisms that you would like to try or move into, but this of course takes time to build up and says nothing of your ability to apply it in a commercial environment. The only problem with this proposed approach is that generally it makes you seem like a bit of a wild card. The testimonial is your friend in this instance. If you have previous clients with whom you have been bunged a challenge and succeeded then by all means go about getting that recommendation because it will be what sways your new client or employer into believing in you. You don't want to be in a scenario where it is just your word against theres and back up never hurts you. There is also another point to having a broad portfolio and it is because it shows your potential employer or client (I know I have used that sentence already no need to be pedantic) that you are capable of growing and adapting with the times. This is a massive bonus. Technology as we all know is changing, expanding, evolving, whatever you want to call it, at a ridiculously fast rate these days and people have barley time to figure out how to use it before the next thing comes out. With the exception of the intuitive design model thats gaining popularity across the board and was largely introduced by apple products, this is not going to change any time soon. So basically what I am getting at is that wether you like it or not you are going to have to re-skill in this business a lot and having that broad portfolio showcases your ability and willingness to do so.

There is of course a down side to having a broad portfolio and this one comes up for the more project by project basis. If you are trying to win over a freelance client as an example for lets say a packaging design on a new shaving product. You as the broadly skilled designer will likely have some good examples of similar packaging work. They may have even been for some major blue chip clients but if you are in direct competition with another designer who solely works in packaging! then the chances are you are going to lose this battle. They simply have a far better arsenal of project specific work and the years of experience to back it up than you do, which is all fairly obvious stuff but worth mentioning anyway. This is not me by any means suggesting that you shouldn't bother trying to get projects that are highly specific just a word to the wise. So all in all I am confident that benefits to having a broad spectrum of work far outweigh the negatives and give you as a designer a much better sense of your abilities in that you have stepped out of your comfort zones regularly. I can at this point therefore only advocate the same for all aspiring designers. Do everything try everything make it good. That is all.

Who am I to tell you?

This is not the only blog on the web that talks about graphic design at all. Of course you know that because you stumbled across this more than likely completely by accident whilst searching for something vaguely related, that's just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes, but your curiosity has lead you to read on! congratulations and hello reader. 

The answer to the question posed in the title is actually pretty obvious. I am no-one and will continue to be no-one in the world of design until someone who is deemed as "someone" tells you that I am someone too. Name dropping however is a little too easy for my liking and a little too lacking in substance, so I am writing from a place much more humble. I am, (probably just like you), starting out in the world. I am a lowly post-grad who has stumbled on through university, intern-ships and the recession over the last five years. And no I didn't always know that I wanted to be a designer or live, eat, sleep, and breathe design like you get told to while you are at art school. however a skill is a skill is a skill, and if you do something well you should never do it for free! In reality I made a logical decision based on what skills I had, and what chances I had of achieving said goals, and which ones I would most enjoy throughout my lifetime, and landed at a career in design. It did not come to me in a dream and I think it is a very small group of people that this happens for. What I will be doing here therefore, is giving you a realistic and honest account of my experiences and successes and failures so far, that you can hopefully take something from and use in your own career as a graphic designer or similar. Think of me like a pace runner in a race that is just in front and plodding on so that you don't lose momentum. 

If that doesn't sound like what you wanted to hear then don't worry! there are plenty of other blogs and articles out there that will give you the perspective of a seasoned pro. I am sure they can point you in the direction of some great advice, and I don't doubt that they will tell you things that I cant, but they have probably forgotten what is like to be you or I (just some food for thought there). So I think it is only fair that I tell you the things that I did up to this point in relation to my career as a designer. This way you can see how I ended up at this point and which career related decisions affected my journey.