For this inauguration day, I was going to write a post regarding the branding of Barak Obama. I can’t ever recall a more cohesive look and feel of a presidential campaign.
Kudos go out to the design firm, Sender, LLC — they really knocked it out of the park.
Anyway, back to the post I was going to write – somebody else did a knockout job on that too.
Most of my friends know that I can be a bit of a pack-rat. It’s a trait I got from my family – so I got it honest. But as of late, I’ve been purging around here – cleaning out closets, going through boxes and just simplifying in general around here. I filled 3 laundry baskets of with clothes, separated computer cords to take to the Goodwill – hopefully someone can use those, and about 87 cosmetic bags from the freebies from Clinique. I even found a Syquest drive from 1997 – the discs are only good for use as coasters at this point – Remember when 280 MB was a huge amount of storage?
Anyway, in a box in the back of my closet, I found a box with stuff from college. Inside, I found slides and photo negatives of stuff I’d done in Drawing I & II and Design I & II. Somehow, back then I had a wise professor that had the foresight to have us take our artwork to have it photographed for posterity. I gasped when I found this stuff. Immediately I began scanning the photos to put them in my archives of work.
I don’t know how stuff is done now – that is, if having work photographed is still the norm as I’ve been out of school for a little over ten years. But, to all design students out there, take your stuff and have photos taken. Or do it yourself. Don’t just rely on a hard drive or a disc to store your stuff. Have hard copies – slides or negatives – of your stuff. You never know when a hard drive will die on you – or fires or natural disasters – I have a friend who lost all her photos in Katrina, for example.
I am so thankful someone told me “Take it & have it photographed” – who knew?
If you’re a designer, especially freelance, go read this now
Every once in a while, I’ll peck around on job listings (cough, Craigslist) and see what’s going on out there. And every once in a while, when things get slow and a project sounds like it has some potential to warrant my time and energy, I’ll even send a response.
This week, I sent a reply to a job listing. It’s for a publication. I attached my resume’ and other information to an email and hoped for the best. I heard nothing, until last night.
I got a reply from the job poster around 7 pm. He apologized for not getting back to me sooner and expressed interest in the type of design I do. Then, here’s the kicker, he asked me to go to the MySpace page for his publication (cough, myspace is dead), view some existing mock ups and create a mock up of my own with supplied photos – so he could see “what my style is.” He even asked “could you throw something together?”
I decided not to reply at that moment. I was a little too hot under the collar. I needed to sleep on it.
This morning, I crafted my reply in a text edit document, tweaked the wording to tone things down, and when it was just right, I hit “send.”
In a nutshell, I told him this:
– I don’t conduct my business in this manner.
– what is being proposed is “spec work” – often disguised as a design contest
– I have over 10 years of experience as a graphic designer, listed the reputable clients I’ve done work for, and told him I would be happy to provide samples of my work so he could “see what my style is”
– what he is asking for is unprofessional as well as unethical
I also linked this website for further reading and education and threw in this for good measure
As designers, not just in my area, but everywhere, we need to put a stop to this. I don’t care what level of the career one is at. Spec work is not only bad for one designer, it is detrimental to all. Do not do it. And educate the client on why this is unacceptable.
A person wouldn’t go to Kroger, Whole Foods and Publix, buy a steak at each and tell the cashier “I’m going to take this steak home, cook it – and if I like your’s best, I’ll come back and pay you for it.”
Design is no different.
There’s a new movie coming out by Gary Hustwit – he’s the guy that did “Helvetica” – the new film is titled “Objectified” and the trailer was sent to me this week. Looks great, can’t wait to see it. Click here for the trailer.
I was en route somewhere the other day, with my friend the Film Producer* in the car, and we found ourselves beside a PT Cruiser in traffic. The Producer started this complete diatribe about what a piece of crap car the thing is. I’ve never driven one – never even been in one for that matter – but a few months back, The Producer & her significant other, The Austrian*, had car issues – days dragged on and they found themselves in the possession of a rental PT Cruiser. But not just any PT Cruiser – this was a turquoise blue PT Cruiser. And not only was the outside turquoise blue, the interior was as well. It burned my eyes. I was ashamed to have it parked in my driveway. The color is not found in nature, UNLESS there is some undiscovered bird somewhere in the Amazon that has this particular shade of metallic speckled clear-coat somewhere on it’s body.
At that moment, sitting in traffic, en route to I forget where, the theory of the design of the PT Cruiser was born:
Whoever designed the thing is a ZZ Top fan — Like the #1 fan of ZZ Top – the President of the Fan Club. I imagine “Legs” was blaring as the sketches and clay forms were made, his crazy ZZ Top-esque beard flying in all directions.
Remember the ZZ Top videos from the ’80s? They all involve what I dubbed the “ZZ Top Mobile” – some lady in a miniskirt (leopard print was involved as well as pleather) was in distress at her job selling shoes and viola! The men of ZZ Top appeared in their ZZ Top Mobile – it rolls up, cue the close ups of the side, front and rims of the thing – the details of the car were always highlighted in the videos. Then, they tossed some schmo the keys as they got out, and the keychain – in the shape of the “ZZ” blinged in another close up. And by the end of the video, all was right in the world. They were like rock n’ roll Texas superheros – perhaps their beards and keyring were their superpowers? And, of course, they got the girl, a blonde in the leopard print and miniskirt in the end – after a makeover, of course.
Long story short, the PT Cruiser is the poor man’s ZZ Top mobile.
That is precisely what the guy that designed the PT Cruiser was going for. Except, he didn’t realize two things:
1) men won’t drive it – too girly (even gay men won’t even drive it!)
2) women would drive it – and what this designer failed to realize is this: the women of the ’80s had grown up and they were now middle aged moms driving his version of the ZZ Top Mobile – taking their kids to soccer practice. Not very rock n’ roll at all.
Since MTV won’t let you truly imbed a video, I’m not linking to their website. Seek out their videos on other sites if you haven’t seen them and need a refresher course.
* the neighbors
Design Drama 