Chp 5 - Running a Studio. I’m definitely nowhere in the realm of running my own studio and hiring designers to work for me but there are some interesting grabs from this section. Something Adrian made a big deal of was hiring people better than you. This might be tough but I think he’s right in the sense that these people will allow you to focus on what you do and in turn boost your confidence and improve the skills you have. Another thing that grabbed my attention was to not be afraid of hiring people who may potentially leave to start their own studio. Everyone has to start somewhere and why not work and establish a good relationship with people who are making beautiful things? It’s like the illuminati except with craft and making things look nice.

Setting up a studio. There clearly is a shit ton of work involved in setting up a studio. Some tricky things to consider that the reading mentions are shareholdings. Sometime there is an unequal distribution of this which can easily lead to high tension. The author also mentions dividing up the work amongst partners. There are many logistics in regards to setting up a studio. It is definitely running a business and having a background in running one would definitely help. Similarly, I used to be a pre-dental student and when shadowing dentists they wished they had at least a minor in business to help them have the understanding in running their own practices. I think the more fun parts are creating a name and an identity as given in the book. I mean its names like “omfg co” that really stand out and no I’m not sucking up. That name is just great.

Freelance. I know some of my peers are already freelancing for certain clients. I think one important thing from freelancing is the contract. I’ve done only one freelance job for a “friend of a friend” and dude never paid me for making his artist myspace page look legit. I kept asking for the money and he kept saying “yeah i’ll get it to you” but i never saw a penny. I just ended up taking down the source files and til this day his page is still broken. Just goes to show how serious he was in the first place. This touches on the reading about making meaningful work with meaningful clients. It’s important to establish a good relationship with your client instead of keeping everything just on paper.

Freelance. I know some of my peers are already freelancing for certain clients. I think one important thing from freelancing is the contract. I’ve done only one freelance job for a “friend of a friend” and dude never paid me for making his artist myspace page look legit. I kept asking for the money and he kept saying “yeah i’ll get it to you” but i never saw a penny. I just ended up taking down the source files and til this day his page is still broken. Just goes to show how serious he was in the first place. This touches on the reading about making meaningful work with meaningful clients. It’s important to establish a good relationship with your client instead of keeping everything just on paper.

This section was about finding a job. I will be in this boat pretty soon and unfortunately not all design firms or studios are the same. The section regarding the apprenticeship sounds more prestigious than internship. Internships sounds like a group of grunt workers that have no personal relationships with their mentors. I think an apprenticeship sounds more personable and its negative connotations of poverty so the author puts it has been relieved by “unpaid internships” that are ever so prevalent nowadays which reminds me of the following NY Times article on unpaid internships and its legality (shout out to Oregon in this article)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html

Highlighting attributes that are needed by designers:

The text sets up the chapter by introducing what a graphic designer is and the emotional side of us. The first attribute touched upon is Communication. Something that stood out was the verbal side of communication. At first it is mentioned that graphic design is non-verbal communication but delves into how spoken communication is a vital component. I do understand that this is how you deal with clients and pitch them ideas and such. Following up in this category is listening of course. Integrity in design? Like Kate said, use your design powers for good and not for evil: 

Also to conclude the chapter, Neville Brody says “…you will need talent to be a successful graphic designer, but a little talent can be made to go a long way if its supported by the attributes listed above.” I personally think that talent is half learned though. It is through practice and refinement can one achieve a talent. Some are naturally gifted but talent can always be acquired. I like to think of people who lost their right arm and have written with their right hand their whole lives. Now they are forced to use their left hand and this skill is only acquired through repeated practice. Grim example, I know.

Sagmeister breaks down what it means to create design that is emotional. He opened up with an example of a swag bag he got at an AIGA conference in New Orleans (I’ll refer to it as Na’lins for the rest of this post). Inside the bag was all well designed stuff with no emotional content. He put it into perspective by saying that it was all predictable. Jazz, crawfish, strippers and steamboats. Same shit different day, on that Dreamcatcher tip. He then goes onto examples have touched him. What’s really cool is that one of those examples, I’ve actually got to experience myself. I was visiting NYC with a friend half a decade ago and we traveled via subway the entire time. I remember seeing on one of the carts True’s work and I remember I was kicking myself for leaving my camera back in the hotel. All those examples of not holding grudges and what not were excellent examples of interrupting a business man’s subway ride and the very least would get him to possibly examine his own life. Sagmeister suggests there are six core steps in creating emotionally moving work and they must: give new perspective, trigger memories, expose passion and guts, surprise the viewer, demonstrate virtuosity and beauty. He recognizes that all these are highly subjective but in the end reminds himself that if he finds an emotional connection with his work that this is the best way to create work that will resonate with others.

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It is said that design is to communicate some sort of meaning to an audience. Meaning-making for designers is visual story telling. In the reading the author talks about ethnography which by definition is qualitative research method often used in the social sciences, particularly in anthropology and in sociology (wikapedia.org). In order to successfully create meaning, one must conduct solid research or have great intuition and personal experience in regards to the meaning they are trying to convey. Directed storytelling essentially is collectively listening to an experience from a group of people all together and finding common patterns between these stories.

In directed story telling there must be three types of people: the person sharing their experience as a storyteller, a facilitator of discussion in order to guide the storyteller in the right direction in giving pertinent information and the final person is the recorder documenting the story. Although, the more people documenting the more comprehensive the collection of data can be and thus yield higher success rates in meaning-making. The documenter will write down ideas in summation and of course these ideas will be subjective to the documenter.

I wasn’t too fond of the Blackboard section of this reading as it can be easily summed up to be the site was poorly designed. The students thought it was designed for teachers and teachers thought it was designed for students. The designers found out the needs of both the students and teachers and then implemented these needed changes.

Gift giving was more interesting as the results from the survey given in Europe and America were near identical in the sense that when one person wants to give a gift to someone else, it takes them a while as they must put thought into whether or not the gift is a good “fit” for the recipient. After the decision is made, the person giving felt good about their decision. The reading says “recurring storylines included descriptions of personality, timeliness and emotion.” From this they concluded the designers needed a store “more sensitive to people’s feelings about gift-giving.” Although this wasn’t a surprise, it put further into scope the importance of this concept for the designers.

It should be noted that directed story telling is useful only for time-bounded experiences such as “when was the last time you went camping?” and not useful for the opposite. I think the reading was just like the gift-giving example where I always knew it was important to hear it directly from an audience and use this as a way to communicate to them but it’s a good reiteration of just really how important it is.

Cultural Probes

This reading was written in a journalistic giving into account the process behind the research these designers conducted in getting to know an area of which they had little knowledge about. I really appreciated their unorthodox and informal approach to the subject matter. Essentially, they surveyed an elderly community  from various geographical regions. They enclosed various items used for collecting data from each participant. I think something that was effective was that they gave each participant to record their results in a personalized manner. Also, these instruments for recording information were designed to be easy to use and friendly. For instance, a disposable camera was included. However, it was no generic corporate branded disposable camera rather it was re-designed to fit the other items in the envelope as well as include instructions in regards to what is requested from the use of the camera.

Each probe included a disposable camera,repackaged to separate it from its commercialorigins and to integrate it with the other probematerials.

Overall the problem of collecting all the data was a design problem in itself. I think reduction and simplifying kept the aesthetics open ended especially to interpretation allowing the participant to truly own their own work thus encouraging the users to complete the research although some did not fully completed the requests made.

Audience as Co-Designer

Here a group of designers are set out to design an awareness campaign amongst the citizens of Kenya. It is said that having the audience participate in the design process will help maximizing cultural sensitivity. This makes absolute sense in that the designers may have little or no experiences living in this geographical region and there may be specific nuances that only “locals” would understand. I think what’s important and what is emphasized is research. The example given in the reading about the flies in Naples shows an example of a shortcoming on research where the locals of Naples did not understand the large poster designed by the American students. I do find it odd that the primary methodology of the AIDS awareness would be simply a poster. The overall goal of both the readings is user feedback is just as important as literary research done by the designers. Involvement in feedback is equally as crucial as the viewer dictates what is most effective for themselves.

I also really enjoyed this diagram of modes of communication. I feel like it may not be they end say all of communication design but covers the basic bases of what it means to convey an idea from designer to viewer.