That Which Drives Us (Motivation)

• February 17, 2008
  Nil Comments // Creativity

To be the best you can be, to be the best there is, to eat, to eat the finest. To grow your talents, to be highly regarded and to be respected. For the love of your craft.

Motivation is what drives us. Motivation to be the best you can be, to be the best there is, to eat, to eat the finest. To grow your talents, to be highly regarded and to be respected. For the love of your craft. Unfortunately, you can run out of fuel from time to time and this is a resource that’s a lot harder to come by than the stuff that gets your car moving. Even worse – it can be debilitation if the engine that is your creativity goes boom. So how do you avoid and get out of the slump that this can cause?

The first and easiest solution is pretty simple – just let it happen. Ride it out. There isn’t always a quick fix solution if you find yourself in the middle of a slump. In my, albeit, rather short thus far, creative life, I’ve had two major slumps worth remembering. These things would last a week or two and I’d have no interesting in doing my work, didn’t worry about what the results might be and simply – just didn’t care. Luckily i was studying both times, so it didn’t really affect things a great deal. The reason they lasted so long was because I kept trying to break through it. I thought that if I kept doing my assignments, that eventually I would just explode and be flooded with amazing ideas. Turns out, this isn’t quite how it works.

Ideas have to be nurtured and loved

Style & Voice

• February 14, 2008
  Nil Comments // Creativity

As we grow and develop as creatives, certain traits in our work become our trademarks. Our personal tastes become badges and identifiers. These visual footprints can develop in
two different ways—one is organic and the other is almost artificial. One is voice, the other style.

Both of these help push along a career in different ways. A designer who works at the forefront of style, relies on what’s currently in.This can be a more versatile way of working as you’d adapt to your environment whenever it changes, which means you could almost always deliver what might be considered cutting edge at the time. On the other hand, the designer who doesn’t rely on a style, which is focused by the changing of the winds, develops a folio of work which is morep ersonal—a folio in which they can see themselves.

What you are delivering is good, quality design,
because that is what the environment is saying

The beauty of working with style is that it’s a lot easier to make work look good. Because your font of choice is currently in vogue, your end product’s quality goes up a couple of notches in your clients mind. A client might feel that what you are delivering is good, quality design,because that is what their environment is telling them through print ads, media ads, the internet and all other mediums they are hit with on a daily basis. All a designer has to do is look at all of these things for a period of time and they will develop an eye for what is moving out of fashion (because it’s being used by many) and where things are moving (because it’s successfully being used by a few). As long as they can stay within that small group of designers employing the latest thing, they will continue to look good, in the lifespan of the finished product. Not a bad deal, huh? Keep your eyes open, adapt, cash the cheques. Before you know it you won’t even have to consciously keep an eye out, it’ll become natural.

The In-House

• February 6, 2008
  Nil Comments // Working Life

It doesn’t seem that long ago that my biggest worry wasn’t making sure a job was finished on-time, under-budget and looking good. My biggest worry was that I had enough change for a coffee and a pencil to sketch with. Then I began to work at an in-house studio and things changed a little.

The turn off the luscious path that is study and onto the straight and narrow road of full-time work was a sharp one for me. A very sharp one. It was a Friday night when my fellow recent graduates and I gathered to salute farewell to the end of our (then) current course of study and hello to the next step in our lives. While we ate, drank, talked and laughed, we spoke about what was on our horizons with joyful flee at the idea of doing what we’d been enjoying for the last couple of years and actually getting paid for it. The following Monday I nervously stepping onto a whole new platform. A platform, I quickly realised, I might not be ready for. Welcome to the world of the in-house studio.

For most of you reading this, the words that follow is going to hold no new truths. But for a lot of you, the working world is still on the other side of a piece of paper, and the in-house is probably something you haven’t given a lot of thought to. Before I proceed, however, let me just get this out – I don’t mind where I work. In fact, I quite like it, so lets not think I’m a bitter man, ok? Ok.

Factor in the extra layer of the business that we
are part of and the swamp gets a little thicker

The first thing that was a real shock was the systems. Chances are, most of the studios you’ll work in will have different ways of organising everything and a different process of working through a job. Factor in the extra layer of the business that we are part of and the swamp gets a little thicker. Work requests/time sheets are interesting things the first time you lay your eyes on one. Really interesting things when you’re in-house. Do you charge the client A-Rate or B-Rate? Oh, C-Rate, ok. Is it for TREST or ROM? Both? What do you mean? They changed their names? Merged? Rearranged their resources? When? The job is now twice as long? Since when? Oh, after the merge, got ya, so now it’s C-Rate for sure? They didn’t get approval from their supervisor for the finances? Ok, ok, I got it, we’re all good … We no longer charge for internal jobs? Unless they have external funding?