Building Your Portfolio Website: Six Things to Always Do

April 17, 2008 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

photo: vanessa kennedy

So by now perhaps you've read through last week's advice column on how to keep from making the most common mistakes when creating your online portfolio (and perhaps you've written in to say how horrified you are that coroflot would suggest using a template, rather than building the whole thing from scratch -- that's fair, there are some good arguments on both sides). Assuming you've decided to make the leap and start publishing your work, whether through a template, a custom-designed site, a hacked blog, or something else of your own (hopefully low-Flash) design, there are a few additional suggestions that have cropped up since then from an array of sources.

Besides last week's expert adviser (Miles Begin of Pollen Design), I was lucky enough to attend a talk at Portland-area stationery store and designer's mecca Office on the subject of...portfolios. Representatives from a number of local creative employers were there, including Nike, Nemo, and UNKL, and although the discussion was more broadly focused on both physical and digital portfolios, some excellent tips came out; some confirming last week's caveats, and others building on them.

1. Make sure you are in there somewhere.

One point that all of last week's presenters agreed upon, and Begin reinforced, is that the world is full of good portfolios, physical and otherwise. The ideal candidate, from the point of view of many creative employers, is someone who combines talent and obvious passion, and communicates both simultaneously. So in addition to showing projects from school, freelance gigs, and assorted other "official" projects, it can be surprisingly effective to post work that you got excited about.

Continue reading "Building Your Portfolio Website: Six Things to Always Do" »

Building Your Portfolio Website: Six Things to Never Do

April 09, 2008 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

photo: pandoro

So, you've got a corefolio posted; you've put together a nice PDF sampler; you've printed out a gorgeous little book to take to interviews. You're working your networks, both real and virtual, and so far...not much. Potential employers are looking over your work, and maybe they like what they see, but somehow this isn't translating into more gigs, or that one crucial interview.

One possible answer to these woes is a personal portfolio website. They've been around for a while now, and emails from colleagues in the creative professions are increasingly signed with a short list of URLs in addition to a Yours Truly--with good reason.

Group sites like Coroflot, AIGA and others offer instant visibility and searchability, and for that reason they are indispensable. Many recruiters and working designers will tell you, however, that such postings by themselves aren't quite enough to make a hiring call, and given the option, they'll move on to someone with additional sources of information. A portfolio website can be the perfect next source, and given the relative ease of creating one these days, they're rapidly becoming an expected part of any designer's self-marketing plan.

The problem is, they're so easy to get wrong. After listening to years of complaints about some of the visual garbage recruiters and seniors have had to sort through, I decided to seek some specific answers about what separates a job-winning portfolio site from a confusing mess.

Miles Begin is a staff designer at Pollen Design, a small product consultancy in New York City (full disclosure: I freelanced for Pollen a few years back, before Miles hired on), and as the designated portfolio reviewer, he looks through around 15 PDF portfolios a week from hopeful applicants and aspiring interns.

Speaking over the phone last week, Miles was able to immediately confirm a few suspicions: that the fraction of applicants with web portfolios is large and growing (about 40% of applicants have them now, by his estimation); that he, and many in his situation, prefer websites to PDFs alone, because of the clearer picture they paint of a designer's personality and process; and that many of these sites are horrific, but in easily avoidable ways.

As with so many things in design, and real life, getting a portfolio website right seems to be less a matter of what you do than what you don't. Compiling Miles' observations together with other comments I've heard over the years, a few clear prohibitions seem like a good place to start. Here are six of them.

1. Don't think you're a web designer unless you actually are.

This is the Achilles heel of many creative professionals: the belief that being competent in one creative capacity qualifies you for another. Most of us recognize that a great cinematographer probably won't be such a great architect, but a huge number of industrial, graphic, interior, and other designers seem to forget this rule, and try to build a great website from scratch.

I know I did: my first go around a few years back, I holed up in my room for about a month, teaching myself Dreamweaver, calling up friends to ask them what exactly a Style Sheet was, and learning a lot in the process. It was fun, and engaging, and taught me plenty of useful skills, but the resulting website was utter crap.

"There's a difference between showing you're a good designer and making a bold statement that you don't really have the tools to make," says Begin. The problem with building a site from scratch, unless you're already skilled at web design, is the powerful desire to do too much, and do it poorly. Given the endless potential and flexibility of the web, it's easy to muck up an otherwise compelling body of work with animated graphics, complicated interfaces, soundtracks, easter eggs, pop-ups, Flash intros and all other manner of puffery, when all the visitor wants is to see some images with text. Few situations better merit the guideline "Less is more" than building your first portfolio site.

Continue reading "Building Your Portfolio Website: Six Things to Never Do" »

Eight Things They Never Taught You About Networking

March 17, 2008 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

photo: Marie Richie

"Networking," as a verb, occupies a strange location in the creative professional landscape. It's an activity that practically everyone agrees is desperately important, and a clear delineator between the successful and the merely talented but frustrated. On the other hand, it's a maddeningly nebulous term; a kind of Emperor's New Clothes that folks agree on, but are hard pressed to accurately describe. Every now and then, a bold student will ask a teacher or presenter to please define this strange verb, and in my experience, the response is usually akin to "You'll know it when you see it..."

The most likely explanation for this haziness is that networking is a form of relationship building, and like all human relationships, professional networks defy clear definition. There is no definitive handbook on what makes a healthy marriage, for example (though many books have tried), or for that matter a sturdy parent-child bond, and so the best advice tends to focus on specific examples.

With that approach in mind, I've compiled a short list of specifics that aim to shed a little more light on this crucial but undefinable skill, with special attention paid to the ways it resembles the personal relationship-building that traditionally receives more attention. So here you are: a random sampling of eight incomplete answers to the question "What does good networking look like, anyway?"

1. It's not about the first impression, it's about the third.
You know what they say about the Third Date, right? There's a reason the number three has so much meaning attached to it in relationships, and it's true in professional networking as well.

First meetings happen by the thousands. In both professional and personal life, we're understandably wary of first impressions, both because they're so frequent, and so influenced by circumstances. A second meeting implies more common ground; in the professional arena this elevates your relationship from "We met once" to "We're acquainted." Meeting someone a third time is a different story though. It implies that you're inhabiting some of the same circles, and know some of the same people.

Continue reading "Eight Things They Never Taught You About Networking" »

The Pen is Mightier than the Pen: Why Writing Matters for Designers

March 07, 2008 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

photo: stack

The CS post from Feb. 15 ("Questioning the Cult of the Sketch") happened to coincide with a lengthy thread on Core77's discussion boards about the necessity of sketching. It's always gratifying when coincidences like that occur, allowing us to entertain the idea that we've tapped into some universal subconscious of the creative professions.

This time, though, I'm simply cribbing what's already out there. A thread started last week asking whether a cover letter was really necessary when applying for a design job. The answer is that of course it is, and responders quickly concurred on this point, offering some excellent advice on why it's important and what to say; readers seeking tips on cover letters would do well to give it a look. What's curious about the exchange is the assumption that prompted it, or rather the lack thereof; it's hard to imagine such a question even being asked in most other professional fields.

Continue reading "The Pen is Mightier than the Pen: Why Writing Matters for Designers" »

Exploit Me! : A Designer's Guide to Surviving Design Competitions

February 25, 2008 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

photo: John Haslam

If contests are so bad for the profession, why do we keep entering them?

An article by Jeff Fisher in Fast Company this month discusses, as others have before, how bad a deal design contests can be for those who enter them. They require enormous effort, the chances of winning are slight, and even the grand prize doesn't usually compensate for the time invested. Worse than all of this, participants stand to lose rights to their own work; Fisher's example of a book cover competition for graphic designers includes this snippet of text from the entry rules:

All entries become the property of Sponsors. By entering the Contest, the winner agrees to assign all of his or her rights, title and interest in the entry (including all copyrights, trademarks, design rights, moral rights and all other intellectual property rights) to the Sponsors or their designee(s).

What all these articles are pointing out is that there's great potential for exploitation here, and I'm inclined to agree with them. Yet most of us know about it, and we continue to enter, despite the downsides. Shortly out of school, I designed a piece of flat pack furniture for Designboom.com, and got a Shortlisted Entry out of it. No money, not a lot of notoriety, but I didn't feel cheated, and I'd do it again--in fact I'm working on an entry for Dell's Re-Generation competition at this moment.

Continue reading "Exploit Me! : A Designer's Guide to Surviving Design Competitions" »

Questioning the Cult of the Sketch

February 15, 2008 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

Designers must draw. We pretty much all agree on that one. Regardless of whether we're designing buildings, products, clothes or even web pages, a good number of us are judged--and judge each other--on our ability to snag a sheet of paper from the printer and quickly draft something beautiful and compelling.

This makes sense if you examine the history of these professions. Until the advent of desktop CAD, being a designer or architect meant being a draftsman too, for some or all of your career. The daily impression of pen on paper lent itself to the building of visual eloquence, and more importantly a lasting professional culture of valuing that eloquence.

In light of this culture, it's surprising to look back on the work of great designers of the early and mid 20th century and realize that what's usually depicted is the product itself: Russel Wright's teapot, the Eames' chaise lounge, Dieter Rams' phonograph. With few exceptions, when a book or exhibit highlights great product design, for example, the sketches associated with them are brought out only sparingly. This is partly because the design has passed into the realm of general public awareness, and plenty of non-designers are looking at them. It's also because a lot of them aren't that good.

Continue reading "Questioning the Cult of the Sketch" »

To Score The Perfect Job, HR Professionals Suggest Geeking Out Online

February 07, 2008 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

The Black Hole. The Fortress. The Bottomless Pit (of despair). When recounting their last job search, friends and colleagues in the creative professions are prone to using terms like this to describe their most desired employers' HR departments. Most of us can probably recall a time when we felt the same way; as if every studio and firm we really wanted to get into had an army of technicians cleverly sealing off every point of access, and perhaps enfolding all the good jobs in a cloaking field of some sort. There are ads out there, of course, encouraging us to spend weeks tuning our portfolios and resumes, and so we hop through the HR hoops, then fling everything into that hole, never to be heard from again.

And a nagging voice inside says "You know nobody really gets a good job this way, right? You need a network."

And the nagging voice is right, especially about the creative professions. Creative careers, more than just about any others except for maybe acting and politics, are all about maintaining a professional network: while you're in school, looking for work, while employed, looking for work again. 80% of career-building jobs are found through means other than listings, so networking isn't just a corollary task, it's central to your professional livelihood.

One crucial way in which the networking process is changing is with the growing importance of internet communities, and social networking sites in particular. No longer just ways to keep in touch with that DJ you met at Burning Man, these sites have matured a great deal in the past couple of years. They are, among other things, serious business tools. BusinessWeek writes about them incessantly, the Wall Street Journal just added a FaceBook widget, and the monetary value of MySpace appears to have no upper limit.

As networking aids, they have a lot to recommend them:

-They're well organized.
-They offer a level of preparation that makes keeping in touch less daunting for the socially awkward.
-They allow you to show your best side to people while maintaining a calm detachment.
-They're searchable.

Continue reading "To Score The Perfect Job, HR Professionals Suggest Geeking Out Online" »

Small Pond, Smart Fish: Why Young Designers Should Avoid "Design Capitals"

January 25, 2008 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

Automakers have Detroit, investment bankers have New York, and film actors have Hollywood: the bright shining centers of their respective industries. For those seeking a career in one of these fields, going to the Capital City is often a given, whether to get a foot in the door, or build an existing career. The creative professions have their Meccas too, and the gravity they exert on designers and other creatives is strong indeed; perhaps too strong.

The cities to which I'm referring are probably obvious to most readers: San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Boston and Chicago, domestically; London, Berlin, Copenhagen, Milan and Barcelona in Europe. While it's true that a lot of design work goes on in these places, a lot more of it does not, and plenty of young careers are hobbled by failing to acknowledge this. We're all complicit, of course: creative professionals seem to have an enormous capacity for self-deception regarding how necessary living in a Design Capital is to finding work.

Graduating from design school in Brooklyn a few years back, I assumed a challenging but workable identity: young, well-trained, and looking for a job in New York. Unfortunately, so did literally thousands of other recent graduates, from all over the U.S. and all over the world, and we all seemed to want the same few junior positions. The competitive landscape that resulted is familiar to young creatives starting out in any of the above cities, where top consultancies and corporate studios are bombarded by dozens of portfolios a day, many from recent arrivals from far afield. They often respond by establishing two, three or even more temporary internships or contract positions for the lucky few, rotating them out every few months. Their recipients go deeper into debt, grateful for the opportunity of adding something useful to their resume while taking low-paying freelance jobs to pay the rent.

Continue reading "Small Pond, Smart Fish: Why Young Designers Should Avoid "Design Capitals"" »

Sidestep: Interaction Designers, and How They Got That Way

January 14, 2008 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

"Hot, hot, hot" reads the caption under Interaction Design on the Core77 discussion boards, and with good reason. Anyone who's been following the creative job market at any point in the last few years is probably aware of the feeding frenzy currently going on, as companies large and small seek interaction designers to do...well...whatever it is that they do. For those of us not in the field, and without much exposure to the IxD (for that's how it gets abbreviated) process, it can seem a bit of an esoteric, shadowy art, attracting the attention of media and employers, but without knowing quite why. We know they work with information (usually), and computers (sometimes), and pay close attention to the users of technology (pretty much always, right?), but that's a vague enough description that it could be applied to web design, graphic design, industrial design, and a number of other disciplines. Determining how one actually becomes an Interaction Designer is an even tougher challenge.

Asking a few working designers about their jobs, the first question that gets answered is why the rest of the questions are so hard. It's a difficult to define field because it's both extremely broad and relatively young--though not as young as you might think: the term dates to the 1980's, meaning there are in fact seasoned interaction designers out there with 15 and 20 years of experience under their belt, in addition to the young cubs we might imagine negotiating six-figure salaries. This puts IxD in an identity-seeking mode that is, if anything, more profound than the one ID has been going through (blog posts and discussion threads asking "What is 'design' anyway?" are approaching mosquito swarm levels of abundance and annoyance), and certainly more frenetic than the academic queries that surface periodically among graphic designers.

What also makes the questions hard is the feeling that Interaction Design is something that happens anyway, with or without the input of Interaction Designers. As an Industrial Designer, the parallel is obvious: many of us are fond of pointing out that every product in the world gets designed by someone, whether or not they know what they're doing. Similarly, every time a user interacts with a piece of technology (there's that broad-ness problem again), someone designs that interaction, and frequently they screw it up. Hence the discipline. Interaction Designers, more than any other group of creative professionals I know, are keenly aware of their own usefulness and their own dispensability.

Continue reading "Sidestep: Interaction Designers, and How They Got That Way" »

For a Long-Awaited Design Program, a Uniquely Composite Approach

January 07, 2008 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

Responding to a long-standing need for more qualified designers in the Pacific Northwest, the University of Oregon will be opening the doors of its new Product Design program this coming June. In an energetic phone interview last week, Zara Logue, the Portland representative for the program, described a uniquely hybrid program combining faculty and strategic guidance from U of O's vibrant architecture and art programs with active involvement from major companies in Oregon's burgeoning creative economy.

"It really is kind of like Voltron," she wryly observed, noting that all three elements--art, architecture and business--have been heavily involved since the idea for the program began germinating nearly five years ago. And like any compound battle mecha worth its mega-thrusters, the new major takes several institutions that have already shown success on their own, and builds a new entity that attempts to take advantage of all of them.

The most unusual part of the program's story may indicate a growing trend in design education: a curriculum derived largely from the needs of the industry, rather than a legacy of theoretical guidelines. The imbalance between design education and design employment in the Pacific Northwest, and the Portland area in particular, has been discussed and commented on for years. Oregon's largest employer and its largest locally-headquartered company--Intel and Nike, respectively--both rely heavily on creative professionals of various stripes, but have long looked to distant schools to supply them.

Continue reading "For a Long-Awaited Design Program, a Uniquely Composite Approach" »

Your Dream Office is Just Over There: Co-Working and the Instant Creative Community

January 02, 2008 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

When we start out in a creative career, most of us have a certain idealized image of what our work day will look like: there will be high ceilings and large windows, hiply dressed 30-somethings having insightful conversations about aesthetic minutiae, and a charming mixture of bleeding-edge technology and old-school architectural details. There will probably be drawings or printouts pinned to the wall by the dozen, and some obscure objects scattered artfully about, to add visual spice.

To be sure, some design offices are like this, and some advertising and architecture firms too, but for most of us, reality is decidedly less fabulous. For the freelancer or contractor--and that's a category that's growing at breakneck speed--the options are even scarcer. A temporary on-site cubicle, a cobbled-together home office, and a jovial but ultimately isolating coffee shop are the three most common options, and all of them lack the most important quality of the ideal creative workspace: other creative workers with whom to interact. It's well understood that good ideas and good creative work flow almost never flourish in a vacuum, and yet increasingly we are asked to make them do so. And we're not alone. New media professionals have been dealing with this issue since day one, sometime back in the 90s, and writers have been dealing for far longer. Some of them have solved the problem in the most obvious way, by starting their own company or publication and filling it with good collaborators, but in this time of high rents and unstable work loads, it's a tricky option at best.

A less orthodox and perhaps more appropriate solution to this dilemma has been proposed in recent years, and goes by the slightly touchy-feely name of Coworking. Like a laborer's equivalent of cohousing, coworking got its conceptual start in the artists' and writers' collectives that started appearing in big cities as early as the beginning of last century, though they didn't achieve a freelancer-appropriate configuration until recently. The structure of a modern co-working group is fairly simple: grab a bunch of freelance or contract workers who find their productivity flagging in the absence of a peer group, and gather them together in a single dedicated space.

Continue reading "Your Dream Office is Just Over There: Co-Working and the Instant Creative Community" »

Design Your Work Day: Five Questions for the Home Office Worker

December 12, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

Searching the web for suggestions on how to improve productivity in your home office, you find a lot of conflicting advice. Some writers would suggest you maintain a rigid schedule and work nowhere but a dedicated office that emulates a corporate cubicle as closely as possible. Others spend most of their time celebrating the conveniences and flexibility inherent in the situation, urging you to stay in your PJs all morning, only throwing on a pair of sweats when you're ready to hop down to the post office to enjoy the short lines of mid-morning. It's a confusing topic, made all the more so by the large fraction of workers who are new to the whole working-from-home thing, whether through recent induction into the growing ranks of telecommuters, or a shifting professional climate that encourages freelancing.

On further thought, this lack of consensus is reasonable: we're talking about millions of people, after all, working in all kinds of different capacities, with different needs, habits, and levels of self-discipline. Most advice-givers are essentially writing about what works for them, not what works for everyone...because honestly, what could?

Considering a more specific breed of worker--creative professionals--allows for more generalization. In a normal workplace, we typically like a well-designed, varied environment. We like interesting, competent co-workers, and bosses who are good at managing us (whatever that may be). We want a little bit of structure, but not too much. We like good coffee, daylight, getting out of the office for lunch.

It's remarkable how rarely any of these rules get applied to home offices though. I have seen the environments and work schedules of plenty of freelancing and telecommuting friends, and they are dreadful, almost all of them. Smart, creative people, in dark, airless rooms, staring at a screen for 12 hours a day, but only getting 5 billable hours in. This makes sense when you ponder it objectively though: if you worked in an office like that, your productivity would suffer there too.

Continue reading "Design Your Work Day: Five Questions for the Home Office Worker" »

The Bemused Optimism of the Dispensable

December 04, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

All of Portland got laid off last week. That's how it seemed, anyway, last Wednesday evening, as a group of designers gathered around a pair of tables in a bar in the southeastern quarter of town. Once a month, for nearly a year now, a clutch of workers from across Portland's creative economy--15 to 30 of them--have been getting together after work to gripe about clients, enthuse about projects, drink IPA and and generally behave the way any other group of like-minded professionals might during happy hour. It's a remarkable group for its diversity within the field: there are interaction, product and graphic designers, students and educators, researchers, even the odd engineer or project manager, working in companies as big as Intel and Nike, and as small as a solo consultancy. On this particular evening, though, it felt more like a support group, with fully one-third of the regulars in attendance finding themselves out of work within the past few weeks. The culprit was a major technology corporation that had employed dozens of designers in the Portland area, and had recently cut creative staff as a cost-saving measure.

I knew about this before getting to the bar that evening, having corresponded with a few colleagues in the previous few days, and arrived expecting slack faces and morose dialog. I was disappointed, though. The overall mood wasn't just acceptance, but something like bemused optimism. "I'm actually fine with it," several of them explained, shrugging and chatting about where they were thinking of going next. And it occurred to me that this is the same reaction I've seen in pretty much every creative professional I've known who's lost a job, myself included. It's remarkable how surprised we act upon realizing our relative lack of anguish, given that it seems to be the rule and not the exception. True, we could all be putting a sunny face on a difficult situation, but comparing it to the reactions of laid-off friends and relatives in other professions, there's a noticeable lack of worry amongst designers and their kin.

This brings attention to one of the most crucial traits a successful creative professional needs to have these days that hardly anyone talks about: resilience. The creative field is a brutal one, in which jobs are lost frequently, often without any correlation to competence. There's a crucial truth to creative employment that makes this happen; a truth that very few of us are comfortable acknowledging: our jobs are dispensable.

Continue reading "The Bemused Optimism of the Dispensable" »

Stop Stealing Sheep and Learn How to be a Font Geek

November 30, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

So, I finally saw Helvetica this week. Yes, very lame to have waited so long, but I'm always wary of films with such niche appeal, susceptible as they are to The Dancing Bear Effect: It's not so much that the bear dances well, as that it dances at all. So it is with films about obscure, obsessive topics; just about anyone could do a documentary about typography, and they would be guaranteed a small, but reliable and passionate, audience. Typographers and font geeks are a passionate bunch, and if you didn't know this already, Helvetica would rapidly set you straight.

It's a pretty good movie, especially considering the two very different audiences to which it's playing: the aforementioned font geeks, and the general public looking for an entertaining and perhaps educational 80 minutes. The drama that the filmmakers try to build out of the feud between the Modernists and the Post-Modernists is interesting for about four minutes, and then becomes dull and repetitive to the uninitiated. The majority of the film, though, concerns itself with convincing the non-geek that this is meaningful stuff, and it largely succeeds.

To the average person who claims "I don't really care about typography," the average typographer might remark, "Yes, you do. You just don't realize it." Type, like cinematography, product design, web page layouts and interior design, affects everyone that experiences it, frequently without making itself known. In this way creative professionals of many stripes are in the same boat, spending their days and energies creating things that are hidden in plain sight.

Continue reading "Stop Stealing Sheep and Learn How to be a Font Geek" »

Dude, Your CAD's Showing

November 19, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

AutoCAD turned 25 last week. That's an awful lot of legacy to shoulder, especially for a product so bound to change as a software package. The fact that it's still around (how many other 25-year-old programs still exist with their original name?) is a testament to a few things: being first to the party, being very good at doing something a lot of people needed, and being really hard to learn. Architecture and engineering firms are full of experienced AutoCAD drivers who once suffered through an interface that's excruciatingly pedantic by current standards, and built a career on having done so. The only alternative was the even more laborious and mistake-intolerant science of hand drafting.

They worked on through the 80s and 90s, confident that they were using the state-of-the-art, and glad to have been freed from the unforgiving world of Maylines and powered erasers that their seniors knew. And then 3D CAD showed up, expanding software's role from a drafting-board replacement to a studio necessity. From the mid-90s to present day, we were presented a bewildering assortment of options, similar enough to make choosing the right one a chore, but different enough to inspire deep-seated assumptions in their users.

Although there's a common saying in the Industrial Design community that "CAD is just another tool," and a truly skilled designer uses whatever tool is necessary and appropriate, it's quietly understood by many that your CAD package speaks forcefully about what kind of designer you are. Anyone familiar with the field will already be aware of a sort of crude continuum of "real ID": parametric solid modelers (Pro/E, SolidWorks, CATIA, Unigraphics) are for engineers, and by extension, designers who are really just engineers that don't do math; surface modelers (Alias and Rhino) are for "creatives" who can't be bothered with manufacturability; and if you're a Real Designer, you can do everything that needs doing with a bin of pens and markers. It's an invented hierarchy that leads to endless pissing contests about sketching skills, but considerably fewer about modeling skills: the stereotypical hot Alias jockey is still more self-effacing technician than rock star, and Pro/E and SolidWorks don't even really have "jockeys," just users.

Certain industries have long associations that lead to these perceptions, like Alias for the competitive, art-driven auto and cellphone industries, and CATIA for the wonkier world of aerospace. The visceral nature of hand sketching probably deserves some of the blame too. Watching someone sketch, after all, is fascinating. Pulling CVs in a surface model is somewhat less so, but still has a kind of sci-fi demigod quality to it. Parametric solid modeling, by contrast, with its pop-up dimension boxes and methodical ordering of features has little appeal to the non-user. It's a bit like watching a flower grow: an amazing process that will probably produce something beautiful...but couldn't I just come back and see it when it's done?

Continue reading "Dude, Your CAD's Showing" »

Sidestep: When the Artist Turns Illustrator, Challenges Come From Both Sides

November 13, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

Illustration, like many creative professions, is a hybrid discipline. Balancing the fire of creative expression with the boundaries of client-imposed constraints, successful illustrators often encounter a range of challenges--and opportunities--that their counterparts in the realm of fine art never see.

Rachel Salomon is, by all accounts, a success of this sort: her yearning, comfortingly melancholy images have illustrated articles for Spin, The New Yorker, and LA Weekly, among others, and she's created work for campaigns by Target, CD cases for Blue Note, and book covers for Penguin. More to the point, she makes a solid living doing something she loves. While a majority of illustrators go directly into the field, either through art school or through practice, though, Rachel got there on a more roundabout path through art school: prior to entering Illustration she earned a BFA at Brown University, never contemplating that the faster-paced, client-centered job she currently holds would eventually prove more satisfying.

Speaking with Rachel as she waits for a Boston-bound train at New York's Penn Station, several hard realities about this type of creative shift become clear. First off, it's harder than you think.

Continue reading "Sidestep: When the Artist Turns Illustrator, Challenges Come From Both Sides" »

Junior Rockstars to the Rescue: Making an Internship Program that Works

November 08, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

Work is piling up, staffers are stressing out, and there's nowhere near enough slack in the budget to hire another full-timer. Bringing in a freelancer is a possibility, but the constant in and out of short term workers is making it tough to build a fluid team dynamic. What this studio needs is an intern: energetic, creative, full of new perspectives and skills, committed to a whole summer's worth of 50 hour weeks. And cheap. Maybe free.

At first glance, an internship program seems like a godsend for a small, overworked studio, and with the right preparation and management, it can be. A good intern can bring all the advantages mentioned above and then some, but a bad one is a drain on time and resources with little to show for it. Getting the right one and keeping him or her productive is a tricky skill that plenty of employers have had to learn by hard experience. Those who've never handled interns before will want to take stock of their own needs and capabilities before diving in; finding and managing one is significantly different from finding a staff designer or other permanent creative employee.

For starters, interviewing for an internship is a skill unto itself. These are kids mostly, with enthusiasm, talent and fresh perspectives, but less professionalism than an experienced creative. Extra perspective is necessary when reviewing their portfolios and resumes: a little less weight should be placed on proper layout, finish and adherence to convention, and a bit more on seeing through to the potential underneath. Unlike a staff employee, a good intern is defined less by a polished skill set than by ample stores of confidence and a boundless capacity for learning.

Continue reading "Junior Rockstars to the Rescue: Making an Internship Program that Works" »

Sidestep: For the Engineer Who's Really a Designer, What to do Next

November 06, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

Smart, creative, mechanically-inclined. Likes to take things apart, modify them, put them back together. Had to be forcibly removed from the Lego pile at dinner time as a child. Has to be forcibly removed from the Lego pile as an adult. Watches construction sites the way fans watch football games. These are the hallmarks of a natural-born engineer, right?

Possibly. The combination of interests and abilities described above is not uncommon in kids and teenagers, and though they might indicate a predilection for engineering, they could just as easily describe a latent artist, architect, programmer or industrial designer. Distinguishing between them is a difficult task for parents, counselors or confused students, and this can end up producing a working engineer or recent graduate with the dull, sinking feeling that they've spent the best years of their life struggling up the wrong professional ladder.

Engineering is an exacting, rewarding field with a strong creative element and a deep awareness of the utility and usefulness of physical objects in human society; in these ways it resembles Industrial Design. It is also fundamentally wary of emotional and aesthetic considerations, and often eschews novelty in favor of predictability and repeatability; in these ways it can prove frustrating to those who yearn for a more directly expressive act. Shifting to Industrial Design is one way in which some misplaced engineers have found resolution.

Continue reading "Sidestep: For the Engineer Who's Really a Designer, What to do Next" »

First Year of Work = Last Year of School: 9 ways to get the most out of your first job, by Carl Alviani

October 12, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: Carl Alviani | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

Your first job! Nice work kid, we always knew you had it in you. Getting a staff position or even a steady freelance gig in the creative world is no easy feat, especially for someone right out of school. If your school is like most, there are probably three or four former fellow students from your class still hustling for work or who've given up and slunk back to whatever they were doing before. So this is testament to your skills and perseverance.

Hang on though, you're not done yet. Have you ever heard the saying "The first year of work is the last year of school"? If not, it's probably worth committing to memory, because plenty of recent grads think the hard part is over, and so they stumble. The next few years will do more to determine the course of your career than anything you did in art or design school, and in some ways demand even more attention than you're used to giving. The working world is like school in some important ways--there are deadlines to meet, egos to appease, and plenty of late nights--but there are some crucial differences, and a successful career largely depends on your ability to adjust to this new structure without losing passion and focus, and without ever letting the learning process end.

All those new skills you're picking up are going to be not-so-hot at first. You'll be tempted to stick with the same tools you've spent years sharpening, and rightly so: you're getting paid to be awesome, not flail around with something you just learned. There's a balance to be struck, though, because if you never practice your new skills, you'll never grow, and growing is what you came here for.

What follows are some broad guidelines on how to make the working world more like the academic one, squeezing as much toolbox-building into that first year as possible. And if you're already into your second year, it's never too late to start.

1. Be humble.

However hard it was to make it this far, remember that everyone else in the office made it too. Most creative disciplines are highly competitive fields, so chances are good that your co-workers were really hot in their school days, and on top of that, they've been doing it in the real world for a while: under deadlines, answering to demanding clients, busting their butts to produce the great work that made you want to work there in the first place.

It's easy to come out of school thinking you're done learning, since you just spent the last two to five years struggling to the top of the heap, but there is plenty they didn't teach you there too. Five years from now, your most useful skills are probably going to be those learned on the job, while the slick, bizarre projects you took such pride in senior year sit wrinkling in the closet. You'll get the most out of your job by adhering to Socratic adage: "The beginning of true knowledge comes from accepting that we know nothing."

2. Make friends with people who know how to do things you don't.

The specific application of Guideline #1 starts with actively seeking new things to learn, and lucky for you, you're surrounded by people who want to help. Creative professionals are generally a vain lot when it comes to their abilities--I know I am--and tend to be pretty indulgent to small requests from admiring compatriots. So find someone who's good at something you're not, and tell them so. If there's a formal training system set up at your workplace, so much the better, but you can learn an awful lot just by opening up a new software package and asking a couple of quick questions every day after lunch. One of the most valuable perks of my first staff job was getting to learn Pro/Engineer from an extremely talented and experienced designer, for free--you know how much that's worth?

Continue reading "First Year of Work = Last Year of School: 9 ways to get the most out of your first job, by Carl Alviani" »

9 Tips for giving "a presentation that kills", by Carl Alviani

October 01, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: core jr | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

The jury's still out on whether creative professionals inherently love attention or despise it. Creating art, design or product for a living implies a desire to make something people will notice, and while there are those who never show their creations to anyone, they rarely make a career out of it. On the other hand, an artist, designer or illustrator is not the same as a performer: it's your work that's out there on display, not you, much as it might sometimes feel that way. This level of separation is attractive to many creative professionals, while others would rather be be right out there with their creation, describing it, talking it up, doing whatever it takes to make their willing audience love it with the same ardor they do.

It might be comforting to know that loving presenting doesn't necessarily make you good at it, nor does being ambivalent about it. Being a good designer is no sure indicator either: the brilliant creative who makes an ass of himself when put on the spot is practically a cliché. But whether you love the spotlight with all your heart or cower in the corner at the slightest hint of attention, chances are good you'll have to do some presenting in your creative career. And like most worthwhile skills, presenting is something that can be learned.

As creative professionals, we're often called on to show the results of our work in visual form. The mistake many of us make is assuming that a well executed visual can take the place of a well thought out presentation. It can't. When you're planning your presentation, think about it as a narrative arc: what story are you trying to tell, what's the beginning, middle and end, and why should anyone care?

"Presentation" is a pretty broad term. In the creative world, it often means pitching a concept to a client or another department in your own company, with the intention of winning a job, making a case for a specific creative decision, or informing them of a project's status. It can also mean a more general explanation of your own capabilities as a freelancer, consultancy or team. In both cases, you'll probably be showing some work, and you'll probably be talking to non-designers. With that in mind, we've put together a short list of tips to get you started on the right path. Most of them are pretty common sense, and revolve around a few basic themes: being prepared, telling a story, not being afraid to run the show. So here you are: 9 tips that can make the difference between crashing and burning, and soaring gracefully through one of life's more nervous situations.

1. You give the presentation, not your stuff.
Drawings, models, prototypes, movies, Powerpoint decks, sketches, renderings, and anything else you might bring to the table isn't what your audience really came to see. They came to see you; if they wanted to just look at sketches, they could have stayed at their desks and scrolled through a PDF. One of the fundamental rules of presenting is that people pay more attention to people than to things; that's why the ability to tell a story is so important.

As creative professionals, we're often called on to show the results of our work in visual form. The mistake many of us make is assuming that a well executed visual can take the place of a well thought out presentation. It can't. When you're planning your presentation, think about it as a narrative arc: what story are you trying to tell, what's the beginning, middle and end, and why should anyone care? Once you've got the story laid out, build a presentation to express it. The assets you assemble should support the story, so that when you get to that gorgeous rendering you spent 4 days on, your audience knows exactly why it's so great. You wouldn't create a design without solidifying the concept behind it first...why would you do that with a presentation?

2. Know who you're talking to.
Talking to marketers is different from talking to engineers. Talking to executives is different still. Before you commit time to creating a presentation, figure out what your audience wants to know. An ounce of empathy is worth about a ton of misplaced effort in this case. When the meeting is being set up, take 2 minutes to ask who will be in attendance, what their jobs are and how they're involved in the project. Then think about what you'd want to know if you were them, tailor your talk to address those concerns, and emphasize what you have to offer them.

When I was still freelancing in New York, I once flew out West to meet with the client--a metal detector company--of a studio I was working for. Knowing that all of the project engineers would be in attendance, and that several of them were working feverishly to develop an improved detection scheme, I made sure to mention my background as a physics teacher, and my deep interest in the science behind the project (which was true). Not only did the meeting go well, but I established a positive rapport with the engineers that lasted the entire 2-year duration of the project.

Continue reading "9 Tips for giving "a presentation that kills", by Carl Alviani" »

Living La Vida Freelance - Keep on Keepin' On

September 26, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: co-pilot | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

THE $$$ SITUATION (OR LACK THEREOF)

A huge part of freelance life is the financial precariousness that makes nine-to-fivers shudder. So, here's a couple of tips:

- Figure out your expenses. Your bathroom mirror or the moths living in your wallet can probably speak at greater length that I can about what you specifically need to survive and keep the loansharks at bay, which will better inform you as to the type of work you may need to seek out.

- Stay on top of your taxes. For freelancers, taxes surpass death in importance in that taxes occur with annual frequency. Most freelance work entails being paid without having the taxes taken out; the danger in this is that, come April 15, you owe the government a hell of a lot of money (four digits) and feel a bizarre kinship with Leona Helmsley. Something I recommend is to go to a tax service and have someone do them. Don't be intimidated by fees; the accountant I saw charged me $200, but saved me over $1000 in legitimate write-offs. Another good idea is to pay your taxes quarterly, which softens the blow of parting with that many dead presidents. A tax service can explain how this works and set you up.

Continue reading "Living La Vida Freelance - Keep on Keepin' On" »

Living La Vida Freelance - Let's Get It On!

September 24, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: administrator | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

This collection is a series of opinions put forth by one person who has found success by working in the manner prescribed below. It is not intended to be universal advice, but rather a look at how one individual is "making it" as an Industrial Design freelancer in New York City. Hope it helps.

The Freelance Life requires a strong stomach, a tight belt, and a high degree of confidence. It requires the multiplicity of a chameleon and the flexibility of Mary Lou Retton. As an anonymous, highly successful one-man design firm once said of the freelance life, "I love it. But I would never recommend trying it to anyone."

However, for those of you with the stomachs and the belts and the gymnastic tights and all that, there are a lot of reasons why the freelance life is worth the trouble. Read on.


THE MERITS OF THE FREELANCE LIFE

Self-Determination
If your cash situation is stable or you've succeeded in eluding the loan sharks/officers for another month, you can pick and choose projects that you'd like to pursue, gaining experience in the specific aspects of design that you're into. To me, doing the kind of work that you like to do is its own reward; getting paid for it is akin to receiving a bonus prize, like the toaster the banks used to give you.

Turning the Daily Grind Into the Occasional Blast
The School of Visual Arts in Manhattan has a series of ads featuring an MTV-like conception of the prototypical office worker; grey-skinned, hunch-shouldered and shackled to his desk. If this is what you feel like in a lifelong routine, if the nine-to-five feels more like ten-to-fifteen with good behavior, then my friend, the freelance life is for you. Changing environments and projects with shifting foci and skill demands is both exciting and a good test of mettle. Different projects week-to-week! New faces, new places! Varied experience! The thrill of living hand-to-mouth, struggling to keep bread on the table, and straight-faced lying to creditors!

Continue reading "Living La Vida Freelance - Let's Get It On!" »

Freelancing 101: The 3 things you need to know, by Jesse Huffman

September 10, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: core jr | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

If there were a job posting for freelancing, it would read like a classified ad for a pyramid scam: "Work from the comfort of your own home! Set your own hours, pick your jobs, and build your creative empire as you see fit!" But unlike mailing away $200 to a dodgy offshore address, going to work for yourself has become a legitimate form of modern employment, especially for creatives.

According to a 2006 U.S. Government Accountability study, independent workers (freelancers, consultants, independent contractors, temps, part-timers, contingent employees and the self-employed) count for more than 30 percent of America's workforce today. And for many freelancers, the exclamatory promises of that newspaper solicitation ring true--the graphic designers, animators and illustrators we interviewed for this article ranked a "flexible work schedule" and "avoiding office politics" the top reasons for perusing an independent work path.

If there were a job posting for freelancing, it would read like a classified ad for a pyramid scam: "Work from the comfort of your own home! Set your own hours, pick your jobs, and build your creative empire as you see fit!"

Still, there remains a price to be paid for the word "free" in freelance. Freelancing is a business, and running that business can be costly and complicated. Below, we'll discuss the issues of billing, insurance and taxes, and intellectual property rights, and look at how some freelancers around the U.S. deal with them.

1. Billing: Fees and the art of diplomacy
It starts with the first job you land--what to charge, and how? You want to be equitable, you want to make the client happy, and you want to be able to pay the rent. In her widely-cited essay "Getting Your Clients to Pay Up," creative business consultant Emily Cohen advises using a payment schedule, and lays out 12 "proactive measures and precautions" for freelancers who want to get paid on time and avoid the dreaded problem of a non-payment. It's a daunting list of business considerations, including schedules, invoices, change management strategies and termination policies--all of which make good sense. But do all designers need to go that far?

Aaron Draplin is a graphic designer working in Portland, Oregon, and has more than a decade of experience working in the snowboard industry. He feels that the measures encouraged by Cohen would be foreign to his model of a typical client-designer relationship.

"Some of these businesses are so homegrown that contracts have a tendency to be threatening," said Draplin. "If you're working with a buddy you used to snowboard with, you don't have to worry about that stuff." With close friends as clients, he doesn't bill the typical "50%" up front. His business revolves around several retainer clients whom he works with on an annual basis and bills quarterly--he estimates all the projects involved in the contract, and pads on top of that figure for changes or overages. On short-term projects, Draplin would rather pay the cost of mid-design changes instead of charging for every minute over the clock; adding that this always guarantees him additional work, and more than makes up for the lost time. As far as non-payments, Draplin cites the insular world of the snowboard industry as his recourse--in such a tight-knit community, word of mouth is enough to sink a brand's reputation.

Continue reading "Freelancing 101: The 3 things you need to know, by Jesse Huffman" »

The 3 Things You Need to Do in a Job Interview, by Dan Buchner

August 22, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: core jr | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

When it comes to preparing graduates for the portfolio process, design schools are falling down on the job. I have seen hundreds of portfolios--most of them looking (and sounding) pretty much the same. Most people focus on the work--for obvious reasons--but your behavior during the interview is perhaps the best tool you have for making a great impression.

There are three things to focus on here:

1. Differentiating yourself from your peers and other applicants
2. Communicating your value to your potential employer
3. Exhibiting an inclination toward business savvy and client relations

Most design firms receive hundreds of portfolios a month. The best firms get even more. To avoid being clumped (and possibly overlooked) with similar applicants (with similar capabilities), think deeply about what it is that differentiates you as a designer--and as a person--from others in the portfolio pile. But standing out does not mean sending a portfolio that's molded into the shape of an origami swan or delivered by carrier pigeon. It means contextualizing your work as part of a larger process, and describing the process of your work in the form of a narrative.

More on these in a second, but first, you're not going to get into that interview unless you avoid these pitfalls:

There can be no typos in your cover letter or email correspondence; spell people's names correctly, and spell the company name correctly. Double-check these. And, of course, there can absolutely be no typos on your resume--this needs to be a flawless document. Your portfolio and your resume are literally the first impressions you present to a prospective employer, so read and reread for typos and errors, then have someone else read and reread for typos.

Also, you are applying for a job as a designer--an expert in imagery, form and aesthetics. Make certain that your portfolio is clean and legible. This sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised what people walk in the door with.

Continue reading "The 3 Things You Need to Do in a Job Interview, by Dan Buchner" »

Taking Credit: What can creatives, studios and clients claim for the work they do? By Petrula Vrontikis

August 09, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: core jr | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

Who gets credit for a design? What can you show in your portfolio, and what should you say about it? Who owns the work that you completed while working for an agency? Is this about ethics, or about law? And what are your obligations as a client, having completed a project with a design studio? Well, when it comes to credit, things can seem like a custody battle. Here are a few words of advice on the topic:

Presenting work this way clearly implied that these were her clients. I felt this was unethical and demanded she make it clear what she did and where. She was confused about my request. She had no idea why this would be a problem: in her view the work was "hers"--she designed it, and it represented her creative capabilities.

The Stakeholders
In the CREATOR'S mind, design work is their recipe, their cooking, and they want to take credit for it at the dinner table. Clear enough.

But CLIENTS see themselves as the owners of the restaurant. Through branding and advertising, they want a direct association from the consumer to their company, without any information distracting them from this path. Clients feel that they are the ones making the dollar investment in the brand, and so they want the ability to control and manage that investment. After all, they paid for it! And that purchase includes the right to say anything they want to, or nothing at all, about the process and people it took to get it done.

The STUDIO/AGENCY's position is holistic; that they provided the client, the contract, the concept, and the means to get it all created, approved, and out into the world. In their mind, that's the real battle. It's an honor for the CREATOR to have an opportunity to participate, and if she wants more work from the studio in the future, she shouldn't make too much of her "supporting" role.

In the 90s, I saw four different people present the famous "Got Milk" television ads at various conferences. The campaign originated at the San Francisco agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. I saw Rich Silverstein present it, two guys who left the agency present it, the director Michael Bay present it, and a writer from I don't know where--present it. Success has many relatives, but none of them said anything about others who worked on the campaign, nor mentioned any specifics of who did what and how. All of the presenters were convincing by the way, and left us with the impression that they were the sole genius behind the campaign's success.

Oh, and let's not forget the CLIENT: The Milk Board's website lists over 70 awards--from Clios to Cannes. No agency, or any of the campaign's specific creators, are mentioned.

What's the problem here? Not giving credit, or taking exclusive credit?

Continue reading "Taking Credit: What can creatives, studios and clients claim for the work they do? By Petrula Vrontikis" »

6 Ways to Make Your Interview Attire as Slick as Your Design Portfolio, by Robert Blinn

August 03, 2007 | Articles
Posted by: core jr | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0) [Permalink]

Pantsuit? Distressed jeans and penny loafers? Chuck Taylors? What is acceptable attire for a design interview?

Sales adages have long held that the best way to judge the spending power of a potential client is to look at their watch and shoes. So showing up at Saks with a t-shirt and khakis might actually attract hordes of obsequious salespeople...if you're wearing a Patek Phillipe. Likewise, attention to detail in accessories or details in attire can have a profound impact on the way an applicant is perceived. The shine of your shoes says a lot more about the character of your personality than your brand of jeans, but designers don't require military polish to pass muster. Designers are usually meant to break the rules, to establish new trends, and to innovate--both professionally and sartorially. The following are a few simple rules for how to make a good impression in a paradoxical business where "any publicity is good publicity."

The only people who can start fashion trends are the ones whose positions in society are assured regardless of convention. Designers are supposed to be experts in cool, and your clothing is the first signal that others see about how culturally aware you are.

1. It is OK to "fit in," especially as a junior employee.
Ultimately corporate culture is predominantly about being a team player. Society has very strong pressures for "fitting in," and business is no different. A good interview benchmark for fashion is to look to the other employees. As a designer, it is your burden to act creatively within someone else's parameters.

2. Your attire (and grooming) is an extension of your portfolio.
Your bosses will at some time (ok, most of the time), ask you to create things that go against your personal taste. To do so, you'll need to become adept at calibrating other people's desires and expectations. Your design interview is no different. So supplying a portfolio that fits your potential employer's design ethos is more important than creating the "perfect" portfolio for you. Your attire is an extension of your portfolio and of your image and should follow the same rules.

Continue reading "6 Ways to Make Your Interview Attire as Slick as Your Design Portfolio, by Robert Blinn" »