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A graphic design student's guide to freelance : Practice makes perfect / Ben Hannam.

ISBN 978-1-118-34196-4 (pbk.); ISBN 978-1-118-39621-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-39623-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-39704-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-39705-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-39731-2 (ebk)

FourDesign is a faculty-led, student-run digital and print design agency at Virginia Tech, within the Visual Communication Design department in the School of Visual Arts. FourDesign specializes in corporate branding, print design, signage development, advertising, and basic web and interactive design. For more information visit www.wearefourdesign.com. Cover concept and illustration by Drew Ellis.

There are several business forms that you can access online and use to help protect yourself, manage your work flow, and prepare a budget. You are free to modify these documents to fit your needs. However, before using these documents you should consult with a business attorney to make sure they provide you with ample legal protection for your region. To access these forms, you must go to www.wiley.com/go/graphicdesignstudentguide

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For the last four years I've required the students entering my Introduction to Graphic Design class to work with a paying freelance client. I'm one of those annoying teachers who love seeing their students achieve more than they thought possible, and I'm okay with pushing my students beyond their comfort zones.

I was pushed hard at Virginia Commonwealth University, and while it was occasionally painful, it was a time when I experienced tremendous growth as a graphic designer. Sometimes we have to be reminded to work outside our comfort zones because it's easy to become complacent and only embrace the opportunities that are easy for us to complete. It doesn't matter if the change takes the form of writing your first book, experimenting with a new design methodology, or working for your first freelance client. These are all opportunities for growth.

In order to get outside of our comfort zones, we occasionally need a little nudge from behind or must gather our courage and take a running start. Just like entering a cold pool on a warm summer day, once we acclimate ourselves to the initial shock of entering the chilly water, we adjust quickly to our new conditions. As a student in a graphic design program, the question you need to answer is, “Are you ready to try something new, or do you want to maintain the status quo?”

This book is written for students who are willing to try something new and who are interested in learning more about working as a freelance designer. Throughout this book I have tried to strike a balance between encouraging you to work outside your comfort zones and helping you to minimize your chances of a less than successful outcome. The bottom line is that while I can help you lay out a strategy to work with clients, you have to provide the common sense, motivation, and work ethic. For many of you success will be determined by the amount of energy you are willing to put into your freelancing endeavor.

I asked my students how they felt when they learned that they were going to have to work with a client; 50 percent of the class said they felt nervous, 40 percent said they felt confident, and 10 percent said they were ambivalent about the idea. Strangely, it's the students who said they were ambivalent about the idea who worried me the most. Working with a client isn't something to be taken lightly, and a measured amount of fear is to be expected. Similarly, being confident in one's abilities can help a student power through indecision and lead to success. It's the “not caring” mentality that I believe is the biggest predictor of a less-than-successful outcome.

I can offer encouragement for those students who are intimidated by working with clients, and I can help those who are ready to hit the ground running understand why it's important to develop a plan before leaping into action, but I can't make someone who is ambivalent suddenly begin to care. No matter how hard I try, I can't push a rope. But I can certainly use one to rein in motivated students. Without self-motivation, you will be dead in the water.

Chances are good that working as a freelance designer isn't going to be as traumatic as one might think. When I polled my class to see if I should continue to require classes to work with a client over 90 percent of my students said “Yes, absolutely!” Not a single person replied “No.” It's clear by this response that my students valued the experience, but their response certainly didn't mean their experience was problem-free. In fact, 80 percent of my students described working with a clients as “problematic at times, but successful overall,” and I think this is indicative of the design profession as a whole. Rarely have I ever worked on a project where I did not run into some kind of snag. As students gain more work experience they realize that there are times when they will need to be firm, times when they need to be accommodating, times when they need to accept constraints, and times when they just need to break all the rules. Perhaps one of the most difficult lessons to learn is when to fight for something and when to give in.

It can be incredibly difficult, without actually working with a client, to develop the sensitivity to know when you should dig in your heels and when you should be flexible. The small nuances of the designer/client relationships simply can't be learned in the artificial reefs of academia. While academia provides students with the freedom to take risks and fail with minimal repercussions, there is a great deal you can learn through the firsthand experience of working with a client. Business is about relationships, and business relationships are difficult to fabricate in academia and remain authentic. It's important to realize that a school and a design agency have very different goals. While the school's goal might be to equip students with knowledge, an agency's goal is to make a profit. When organizations have different objectives, it is not uncommon for them to take different paths to reach their goals—which is why there is a gap between academia and professional practice.

Many graphic design programs try and bridge this gap by requiring you to complete an internship or by offering a Professional Practices class. These are fantastic opportunities that you should take advantage of, but when you freelance, you are working as a professional, and you must weigh the risk versus reward scenarios before you act. There is no safety net, no umbrella of academic protection, and no Command + Z to press if you get in over your head—your successes and failures are yours alone. While there may be plenty of people you can turn to for advice, the decisions are yours to make. If you make good decisions, then you will reap the rewards, but if you make bad decisions, then you will feel the consequences. It's extremely difficult to create this type of experience within the walls of academia.

I've worked as a consultant, a creative director, a graphic designer, a small-business owner, and an educator. I've hired and fired interns, graphic designers, illustrators, writers, photographers, and computer programmers, and I've learned that there is a big difference between my expectations as a teacher and my expectations as a business owner. By choosing to freelance, you help close the gap between your academic experiences and your professional experiences, learn more about the disconnect between academia and the design profession, and make yourself a better designer in the process.

I want you to succeed in both your academic and freelance endeavors because both will help you understand the design profession better. I tried to write the type of book I wish I had read when I was still a student in college, one that is encouraging, and yet realistic with its goals. I remember how proud I felt when I walked around town and saw my freelance work in restaurants and local businesses. I hope you get to experience this feeling of accomplishment for yourself.

I tell my students that if they can work with a client once, then they can do it again. Every time they work with a client (even if they fail), they'll learn a bit more about the design profession—and a bit more about themselves. I have no doubt that this experience can yield the same results for you. Good luck!

I would like to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to the many individuals who have made this book possible. Many of my views about graphic design and life have been shaped by my conversations with friends, family, colleagues, and students, and I am deeply grateful for your hard work, kind words, constructive criticism, and encouragement.

I owe Michele Domenech a debt of gratitude for convincing me that I should write this book, and for coaching me through the process—thank you for your help.

I count myself very lucky to have such awesome colleagues to work with. Dr. Troy Abel and Meaghan Dee have become extended family and sources of encouragement and inspiration. I would also like to thank Somiah Muslimani and Darin Hagerman for their friendship, contributions, and support. You guys kept me laughing, and I hope to work with you again soon.

There would be no book without the help of Margaret Cummins, Amanda Miller, Mike New, David Sassian, and the entire team at John Wiley & Sons. Thank you for your hard work and support of this project.

I would like to take a moment and thank the Radford Small-business Development Group, John Wallace, Cole Harven, Greg Justice, Anne Graves, Jack Davis, Virginia Tech, the School of Visual Arts, and all of the students who submitted examples of their freelance work. I appreciate your contributions and kind words.

Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank my beautiful wife Julie, daughter Ruby, and son Beckett for their love, patience, and support—I am most grateful for you. My family has always encouraged and supported me through both my successes and failures and have given me the courage to “Go big, fail big.” Mom, Dad, Matt, Whitney, and Sarah, I appreciate and love you all immensely. Thank you for your love and support.

My first job after graduating college was at a local printing company. They hired me to prepare files for printing and to do some graphic design work when it was needed. I remember being nervous, but feeling confident that I'd do well. In fact, I felt so confident in my graphic design abilities that I was already calculating ways I could approach my boss to talk to him about giving me a raise. I hadn't even made it through my first day, and I was already thinking about strategies to convince my boss that I was worth a lot more money.

My job was simple enough. People sent in their files to get printed, and my job was to open the files on the computer and print out color separations on a special printer, which printed on film instead of paper. As film came out of the special printer, it spooled into a light safe canister, and it was my job to take the canister of film to a darkroom and run it through a processor to develop the film. After the film had been developed, I gave the film negatives to a person called a “stripper,” who registered the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black separations to make an impression on a metal plate that was treated with a light-sensitive coating. After the metal plate had been “burned,” it would get delivered to the printing press operator, who would prepare the printing press.

Eager to make a good impression, I tried to work quickly, but within minutes I was informed that I had done the job incorrectly. The stripper told me that I had forgotten to include “traps” and that I would have to fix my error and reprint the job correctly. I blushed as I confessed to the stripper that I didn't know what a “trap” was. She sighed loudly and stared at me indignantly.

“Trapping,” the stripper explained, “is an overlap that prevents the appearance of tiny gaps of white space, which are caused by small misalignments on the printing press.” I had never heard of this term before and asked the stripper to explain it again slowly. The stripper sighed and said, “You have to set your traps in your computer document before your print them out. There is a window in QuarkXPress that lets you set them, but I don't know where to find this window. Didn't they teach you this in school?”

I spent the next several hours with my nose buried in a QuarkXPress manual trying to learn about traps. I felt humiliated that I had dropped the ball. Production came to a halt as everyone waited for me to figure out what I was doing, and I felt like crawling under a rock! The stripper's comment “didn't they teach you this in school?” kept going through my mind.

When 5:00 p.m. finally arrived, I walked out to my car and began to replay the day over again in my mind. “So much for asking for a raise,” I thought to myself, and I was angry that my teachers hadn't covered something as fundamental as trapping color in any of my graphic design classes. I began to wonder what else they hadn't told me and hoped that this was an isolated incident. The feelings of confidence that I felt on the drive into work were gone, and I thought long and hard about quitting and never returning. If my bank account hadn't been dangerously low, I probably would have quit that day. But there's nothing like desperation to keep you motivated.

Sometime later that evening, I decided that I was going to stick with the job and learn from the experience. Even if I got fired, at least I'd learn something new about the printing process.

Filling in the Gaps in Your Education

The truth is, no matter how hard your teachers try, they aren't going to be able to cover everything you need to know about graphic design in four years of school. Now that I'm a professor, I can see firsthand how difficult it is to prepare my students for the many challenges they will face as graphic designers. There is a Chinese proverb that states, “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for the rest of his life.” That's why I'm writing this book. I want to help you create your own freelance graphic design business, so you can use this experience to fill in the gaps in your education. I'm going to show you how to find clients and earn a little extra money while you're in school. It's my hope that through this process you'll continue to learn about the graphic design profession and help you identify your personal goals.

Before you get freaked out or too fired up about the idea of starting a freelance business, you need to do a little planning to make sure that you don't get in over your head. Starting a business can be risky, and I am going to try to help you minimize your chances of a less-than-successful outcome. It's important to strategize and understand your role as a business owner and freelance graphic designer and to get a feel for the business environment you're planning to enter.

I hope you're a tiny bit uncomfortable with starting your own freelance business, because it's not something to be taken lightly. But with planning, discipline and patience, you can do it! Let's face it. You're going to have to do some “outside the classroom” learning anyway, so why not dictate the pace of these lessons and make a little money on the side?

Most graphic design programs seem to either try to cover the most important aspects of graphic design and then touch upon specialties that might interest you, or they focus on a particular aspect of graphic design and help you become extremely proficient in this one area (e.g., website design, print design, advertising design, typography). In either case, you're going to have to tackle some self-initiated projects to deepen your graphic design skills. You might be thinking to yourself, “How do I fill in the gaps in my education when I'm not really sure what they are?”

Reading books and magazines about graphic design can be helpful in determining which techniques and skills you might want to hone. Internships can be a great way for you to bridge the gap between academics and real world experience. Professional organizations like the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the Graphic Artists Guild (GAG), and the Art Directors Club (ADC) can also be great resources for information, trends, and inspiration. Both internships and professional organizations give you an opportunity to meet professionals in the graphic design community and can provide a variety of learning experiences that you can add to your résumé. However, I've always learned the most by rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands dirty. While I recommend that you secure an internship sometime during your college career and become active in a professional design organization, I think it's important for you to freelance as well.

Freelancing is a great way for you to test the waters for a career in graphic design, to make a little money, and to fill in the gaps in your education. The key is to keep it simple, start slowly, and build momentum over time. By starting your own business, you'll gain experience and begin to understand how the projects you're working on in school have been designed to prepare you for problems you are likely to encounter in the profession. It's my hope that you will bring your freelance experiences back into the classroom and share them with your professor and peers in order to enrich everyone's academic experience.

This book is written to serve as a guide on your graphic design journey, but you need to realize that there are many paths to success. Running a freelance company can be anything but formulaic. The best advice I can give you is to keep an open mind, to be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses, and to seek the advice of people you trust along the way. Ultimately, the decisions are yours to make. But taking the time to look at your business through the eyes of people whose opinions you respect can be invaluable.

What Is Freelance?

A freelance graphic designer is someone who is self-employed and not committed to an employer for the long term. A freelancer designer sells his or her services and generally enjoys a greater variety of projects than the typical company employee, although a freelancer's income may fluctuate more than a company employee's does. The uncertainty of your income is perhaps the biggest drawback of working as a freelance designer, but having the ability to choose when you work, the projects you work on, and the rates you charge your clients are perks that many designers appreciate and take advantage of when possible.

Don't Wait until You Graduate

While it might be tempting to wait until you graduate before you begin to freelance, there is no reason why you can't start now. In fact, starting a freelance business while you're in school will help you develop your business skills and establish a few industry contacts. If you start freelancing now, then by the time you graduate college, you'll potentially have less debt, an established client base, and a more thorough understanding of the graphic design profession. Freelancing isn't suited for everyone, so reading this book might be able to give you an idea about what you can expect and help you make a more informed decision about whether freelancing might be a good option for you.

Having a diploma in your hand and four years of college under your belt isn't a magic formula for success, so don't be afraid of getting started sooner rather than later—the risks are virtually identical no matter when you start. Business is essentially about relationships, and you're going to be ahead of the game if you begin to build these relationships while you're still in school. Having a degree and training in graphic design does have its advantages, but the strongest relationships are forged over time. Don't wait for the perfect moment before you jump in and get started—you might find yourself waiting a really long time before you feel ready.

The truth is, I can't recall a time where I felt that I had it all figured out. Part of your role as a graphic designer is to problem-solve and figure out solutions to a variety of problems. There are no shortage of problems that will stump, frustrate, confuse, and terrify you, but they can be solved through creativity, ingenuity, and perseverance. Overcoming these problems (and your fears) is part of the adventure and are reasons why I think it's so much fun to be a graphic designer. I am always exploring ways to be more efficient with my time, to communicate my ideas more clearly, to become more creative with my solutions, and to grow as an individual.

Businesses want to work with people who will help make them be more successful, so it's important to know your strengths and weaknesses. It's a good idea to make sure you focus in areas where you are strong, while working to improve your self-identified weaknesses. Basically, you are going to start simple, do a great job with a small project, and add in complexity only when you feel comfortable doing so. As the jobs you get become more complex, the amount of money you make will increase, but it's extremely important to start slowly and make good decisions along the way. It's important to not agree to work on jobs that are too big, have deadlines that are too tight, or have clients who are difficult to work with—it's not just about the money you can make. Keep in mind that each business endeavor is a marathon, not a sprint. You're going to want to underpromise and overdeliver instead of the other way around.

A few years ago I brought a client into my classroom to work with my class. The client described his needs, and each student developed several concepts as a potential solution. One by one each student presented their concepts to the client, and the client shared his feelings about the designer's direction. Two weeks later we met with the client again, but I gave the next round of presentations an interesting twist—I gave the client permission to fire the student designers.

If the student designer had ignored the client's feedback or did not produce enough work between Round One to Round Two, then the client had the option to fire the designer and the student would have to write a research paper instead. After announcing this change to my students, I noticed that they seemed more worried than usual about the critique. I wondered out loud if it was because they didn't want to write a research paper or if they hadn't given the project their full attention and were about to be called out on their lack of effort.

Almost half of my class was fired by the client, and my students suddenly felt the gravity of being ill-prepared for this particular meeting. One of my students who had been fired by the client wrote in her paper, “Throughout this whole process, the designer should guide the client in decision making. Designers have the upper-hand in the visual world and should offer the client advice on what is visually appropriate and what design will be the most effective. This diminishes the chances of a disastrous outcome and helps the process run smoothly.”

As I read through my student's papers, I discovered that the common theme from students who had been fired was regret. My students regretted not being prepared and didn't want to make the same mistake again. I didn't want my students to get fired by the client, but I wanted them to understand that if they didn't do their job correctly, they would have to deal with undesirable consequences.

The experiences you gain through freelancing will help you understand the graphic design profession better, challenge you to work more efficiently, and help you realize how important it is to establish boundaries. Just like my student who was fired and suddenly realized that she had a few areas that she could improve, you will undoubtedly know your strengths and weaknesses much better by having worked as a freelance designer. You shouldn't be afraid of failing, you should be afraid of “not trying.” I hope that you have discovered a profession that will be rewarding, fulfilling, and challenging to you—as well as respect.

About This Book

The information in this book is divided into four different sections. Each section is color coded, so that you can find the information that is most relevant to you quickly and easily. Information that is helpful to all levels of students is red, information for Beginner designers is green, information for Intermediate designers is blue, and information for Advanced designers is purple. These color bars are located on the outside margins of this book.

Since this book is written for students, it makes sense to divide the book into sections that correspond to particular skill levels. The goals and expectations at the Beginner level are easier than those at the Advanced level because you must first establish a foundation and develop a healthy work ethic and good habits that you can build upon later. As you build upon this foundation you will begin to add in complexity as you feel comfortable doing so. Work within your comfort zones at first and mix in more complex projects slowly over time.

Foundations are important. If the foundation of a building is laid incorrectly, there is a good chance that when the building is completed it will be plagued by problems. Similarly, it would be easy to skip over the Beginner sections of this book and begin with a chapter that has a more rewards. But don't do it! What you skip in the pages of this book are the curve balls that your clients will throw at you later on. Everyone's freelance graphic design business experience will be different, so don't try to keep up with your peers. Execute your own game plan instead.

There are several great books available to help you set up a freelance business, but there aren't many books that have been written to help students navigate the freelance experience. I've seen students get taken advantage of by clients because they wanted to freelance but weren't sure how to protect themselves, so I wrote this book in order to assist you and make your freelance design experience go a little more smoothly.

I receive many e-mails that say “I need a designer. Can you recommend someone? This would a great project for a student portfolio.” My past experiences have led me to believe that this roughly translates to “I need a designer, and I don't want to pay for their services.” My response to these types of requests are always “What's your budget? Because my students get paid for their graphic design services,” and it becomes apparent which of these requests are legitimate and which are simply from people looking for someone to work for free.

The skills you are learning in school are valuable, but you may not be sure what they are worth yet. In fact, you may be pleasantly surprised to discover what people are willing to pay for your services. In the Beginner through Advanced chapters, I've included some examples of freelance work that other students have completed. You will be able to see from these examples how much they charged their clients and hear about their freelancing successes and frustrations. I hope that you can use this information to your advantage. Learning from the successes and failures of students in your situation may help you make informed decisions when it comes to freelancing.

“You can pick your clients as well as the projects you work on. Don't overcommit yourself or let your academic work suffer.”

I tend to be relatively conservative when it comes to financial and business matters, so I try to minimize my risk and avoid promising a client more than I can realistically deliver. Fear is one of the biggest enemies of the creative mind, and fear is extremely hard to compartmentalize.

If freelancing begins to stress you out, then these feelings may also creep in and effect your academic work. Instead of creating a situation in which there is no place you can turn, slow down and work at a slower pace until you feel more comfortable. Another way to alleviate feelings of stress are to work on smaller, more manageable projects.

The point is that you can pick your clients as well as the projects you work on. Don't overcommit yourself or let your academic work suffer. If you use common sense and try to keep your academic and freelance commitments in balance, you're going to have a great experience. You'll look back and be amazed how far you've come.

Balancing Creativity and Commerce

Getting paid and bartering for your services is great, but there are also other reasons why freelancing is a good idea. Learning to balance creativity and commerce is a skill that is valuable, but one that can be difficult to learn outside of a business setting. Learning to work creatively while accepting certain financial constraints is a way in which you can stand out in a sea of designers who are vying for an employment opportunity.

Creativity often ebbs and flows. Commerce gets right to the point and often focuses on the bottom line. Absolutely every company I've worked for has its own formula for the amount of time spent on creative pursuits versus maintaining a profit margin. Graphic designers act as problem solvers in many cases and need the freedom to experiment and fail. Failure can be difficult to bill a client for (they tend to want results), but it is a critically important component of the designer's creative process. Generally speaking, creativity doesn't follow a direct path to a solution. Finding good solutions requires a designer to experiment, play, engage, question, challenge conventions, and sometimes fail. Many business models are highly structured, time-tested, and financially sound, but they have been known to stifle creativity. I'm convinced that the key to success is to strike a balance between being a creative designer and a shrewd business person. A great way to learn to achieve this balance is by running your own freelance design business.

When you work as a freelance designer, it won't take long before you begin to develop your own recipe for creativity and financial stability. You'll discover that you need to be both left- and right-brained in order to be successful. When you are able to integrate business concepts like Return On Investment (ROI) and time management with conditions of graphic design like creativity, cleverness and innovation there will be no limit to your business' potential. Clients will hire you because of your ability to generate creative solutions, and you will probably want to be compensated for your time and efforts. Therefore, it's up to you to determine where your priorities lie and to develop your own formula for blending creativity and commerce.

Many design programs try to integrate business principles into their curriculum by offering a Professional Practices class. These classes can be extremely helpful in teaching you more about the business side of graphic design and can also help you familiarize yourself with the local design scene. In these classes you'll usually learn to read and write contracts, discuss ethical issues, learn about copyright and trademark law, and other common business practices.

When you are already freelancing, Professional Practices classes become more lively and fun because the discussion is no longer purely academic in nature, and you can bring the sticky situations that you encounter while freelancing to class to discuss with your teacher and peers. You'll quickly discover that sometimes there are no black and white answers, but shades of gray that are influenced by your morals, ethics, and personal beliefs. Sometimes there isn't a “right” answer to your question, and it can be helpful to look at your question from many angles. Being able to talk about scenarios and tactics with your peers can be helpful because you might discover viewpoints that you hadn't previously considered.

Employers want designers who can make creative and financial decisions that will improve the company's profit margin. When you're showing your portfolio to a prospective employer they may ask you a question like “Why did you choose this paper for your letterhead?” If you reply, “Well, I really liked the matte paper from Mohawk, but I found a paper that was very similar and cost 30 percent less,” you are subtly communicating that you can balance creativity and commerce. It's rare that young designers demonstrate that they have awareness about the business side of graphic design; many portfolios are only focused on the work and not the process one takes to get to a solution. Demonstrating that you can work within constraints can be a great way to capture an art director's attention.

Escaping the Project Mode Mentality

You may still be in the process of discovering your visual voice, not to mention learning about what will be involved with making a living as a graphic designer. More than likely, you don't have much professional experience at this point, which is part of the reason why you're in school—to gain more experience. School allows you to test the waters, practice, and hone the skills you will need to begin your career as a graphic designer.

“School allows you to test the waters, practice, and hone the skills you will need to begin your career as a graphic designer.”

It's easy to lose focus when you're in school, and occasionally students have been known to take the path of least resistance to finding a solution for a project. After a lecture, I am sometimes asked, “Is this going to be on the test?” Hearing that, I get a little worried because I'm afraid the student is missing the point. The test is designed purely to gauge understanding of a particular concept or idea; the real trick is being able to recall that information when you need it. Grades are simply a by-product of your work rather than being the point of your education.

Every semester I receive a few e-mails from alumni who remember a lecture I gave, but can't recall the specifics. For example: “Do you remember when you told us about nondisclosure agreements, and you told us to find out if we could use the work we did for our clients in our portfolios ahead of time? Well, I just received a letter from their lawyer because I posted the work I did for them on my website. What do I do?” I try to answer these questions as best I can, but once you graduate, you may not have full access to all the support structures you enjoyed as a student. It's important that you learn the lessons you are taught in school and know where you can go to find answers on your own.

What teachers sometimes forget is that students are looking to them to create projects in an academic environment that will help them prepare for scenarios that they are likely to encounter in the profession. Lists of do's and don'ts can be good to learn, but sometimes they are easily forgotten because they lack the context of when you are likely to face these types of situations in your professional work. Without some sort of context for the lessons you are learning, it is likely that you will forget how to react when a similar situation presents itself.

By going to school and running a freelance business, you will be grounded in reality, and you help create a context for the lessons you are learning. Freelancing helps you prioritize information and validate the wisdom that your teachers are trying to share with you. Having a little street smarts will help you determine which lessons and principles are the most applicable to your situation.

I love it when students bring their experiences to a discussion in the classroom. It makes teaching so much more fun because the discussion is relevant to my students' success and not just a theory without an application. These types of interactions help me connect with my students in a meaningful way and are helpful in evaluating their trajectory toward success. A small correction or adjustment at the early stage can have a significant impact on them down the road as they develop their visual voice, design methodology, and graphic design skills.

In my experience, there are three areas in particular that seem to snare young designers. These three areas are superficial research, a resistance to sketching, and a lack of attention to detail. Your teachers know you are trying to balance your time and energy throughout your classes and hopefully leave some time for fun. But it's important that you don't get caught in a “project mode mentality.”

Project mode is a term I use to describe a mentality that you sometimes adopt where you begin to think of me (your teacher) as the client and try to reverse engineer a graphic design solution that you think I will like. At first glance you might think working this way is more efficient and will save you time. But what you are really doing is establishing a personality-dependent method of problem-solving rather than stretching your wings as a designer. To contrast this, when students work with real clients (especially clients they don't already have a relationship with), they are less likely to cut corners because they are getting paid for their services.

I'd like to share a few examples of the traps that students sometimes fall into. But before I do, I want to be clear that my purpose in doing so isn't to embarrass former students. I simply want to analyze a situation, after the fact, and identify where things might have gone wrong—in the hopes that you (the current student) will learn from their mistakes. Hopefully, these examples will give you a set of filters to use to look at your own problem-solving and research methods and to show you how important it is to stay engaged and pay attention to the details. After all, there are no dead ends in the creative process, only new possibilities for you to explore.

As you read through the following examples, think about the amount of effort that you put into your own research. How much time do you put into identifying what's important to your client and their audience? Do you throw out everything you know about your audience or do you assume that everyone holds the same opinions as you? Sometimes, taking all the information you know about your client and throwing it all out is the best way to start because it helps you to identify the issues without bias. Remember that your goal as a designer is to identify and solve problems, not simply to recontextualize the information that your teacher or client has already provided. If you don't understand what the problem you're being asked to solve is, how can you come up with ideas about how to solve it?

Superficial Research

Brief: Choose three companies that you like or feel particularly inclined to work with. Research the companies (go beyond just going to their website) and write an analysis of what these companies do or sell. Determine what kind of message they are trying to deliver to their audience. How has this message been received? Who are their competitors, and what strategies do these companies take to differentiate themselves from the competition?

Once you have finished your analysis, pick one of these companies and make their logo move and sound in a way that reinforces the myth that the company is trying to project. Companies often try to project an image (i.e., myth) to distinguish themselves from their competition. Apple Computer's myth is that it is one of the most creative and innovative companies in the world, while FedEx is a company that is dependable and can be trusted for all your shipping needs. What criteria does one use to determine who is the most dependable company? Is CNN really your most dependable source for news? These and many other companies have shrouded themselves in myth in order to stand out in the consumer's mind. The goal of this project is for you to identify the myth about the company and reinforce it by making their logo behave in a certain way. Your goal isn't to redesign their logo but to translate it in a time-sensitive format.

In order to successfully complete this project, you have to actually know something about the company you chose to work with. Let's pretend that you chose BMW as one of your companies to research. You are excited because you like their cars, and you go to Google and type in “BMW” and learn that the blue and white parts of their logo refer to a time in World War I when BMW made fighter plane engines. “Huh? I didn't know they made planes,” you think to yourself. “I've only seen their cool looking cars and motorcycles.”

After a little more digging, you learn that fighter planes had their propellers painted blue and white, so the pilots could see through them more clearly, and this is part of the reason why BMW's logo has the blue and white checker pattern on it.

“Ta-da!,” you think. “My research phase is over! Now it's time to make the blue and white areas of their logo spin like an airplane propeller and play an aircraft engine sound and collect my good grade.” In truth, you've only scratched the surface of what you could learn about BMW before attempting to start working on your solution, and you have completely missed the myth the company is trying to communicate to its clients.