Professional Practice
I’m teaching the Professional Practice class this term at City College of San Francisco and would like to get some input from my graphic design and digital media production friends and colleagues on how you run your businesses. Please share your input here on the blog. The textbook is the Graphic Artists Guild’s Pricing & Ethical Guidelines handbook and the course is 2 months long (8 sessions). The course starts 9/1/15. Registration ends this Friday, 8/14/15.
The course overview states: “This course will prepare graphic design and production students to skillfully manage freelancing and small business issues such as charging appropriate fees and sales tax, using contracts, understanding copyright and usage regulations.”
What I would like to know is:
– How have you structured business: Freelance/Contractor or Studio/Office?
– Do you submit proposals?
– What are some of the legal issues with which you deal, and how do you deal with them?
– How does Sales Tax factor in; or does it?
– How do you deal with Work-for-Hire situations?
– How do you quote a job: hourly or project? Why?
I would like to get an understanding of real world practices. Please do not feel you have to go into great detail or spend a lot of time.
Please review the course outline here to see the breakdown of content.
Thanking you all in advance for your time.
Looking at process in User Experience
In my last post, I talked about my quest into the world of User Experience (UX). Process is at the core of any endeavor, and most certainly UX. As a graphic designer, I’ve been intrigued to see how process looks in this area. As users, when we encounter interfaces, we often are left to our own devices in determining how to engage with them. UX helps refine the process for the user with clear, specific steps. User Experience addresses how a product, system or service behaves or performs, and what expectations users have in engaging with it. Users past experiences are key.
Below is a basic outline of three preliminary steps I’ve seen noted and have used that are important to this process.
• Define the users
• Identify the core expectations users have
• Look at how these expectations will play in the process
Learning UX
I’m finally learning the world of User Experience (UX), an area of the design field that is critical today, especially in the San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley areas. I’ve audited a wonderful UX class taught by City College of San Francisco colleague Beth Cataldo. These are the two books I will be using as a venture into this field on so many people’s radar.
Thanking Mary Thorsby and Nikki May
Thanking the wonderful content strategist and writer Mary Thorsby and great graphic designer and creative Nikki May for their incredible talk with the Portfolio class today on how to present oneself professionally online and offline.
They covered writing the critical content for the portfolio and resume well and distinctively, and presenting ones best work. In addition, they encouraged students to let the clients and emloyers be “your” best advocates for your work. Really great advice.
Thank you so much Mary Thorsby and Nikki May!
Updated Post: Film On Charles and Ray Eames and the Eames Office
Charles and Ray Eames are clearly two of the most influential designers of the previous century. This film looks not only at their pivotal work, but also looks at their personal relationship and how they collaborated on some the most important designs of the 20th Century.
It can be seen in theaters and on PBS.
[via Fast Company: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665403/the-eames-studios-inspiring-history-and-unknown-dark-side]
Nice pre-#w2e talk with Maria Giudice (@mgiudice) and Kaitlin Pike (@kcpike), sharing an overview of Maria’s 3/29 Web 2.0 Expo session.
It’s my second day at the Web 2.0 Expo here is San Francisco, and while on break, I listened to a pre-Web 2.0 Expo interview by Web 2.0’s K. C. Pike of Hot Studio’s CEO and founder, Maria Giudice who is talking about her Web 2.0 Expo session called: Don’t Go It Alone: Using Collaboration to Solve Creative Design Problems. Her session will focus on building a creative culture in your organization.
Some gems from her insight:
Be a good listener and facilitator.
Build fun into your organization and a bit of spontaneity.
Treat everyone as a contributor
Make sure your company is iterating and evolving on a regular basis and that your employees are part of that evolution.
You want to turn your naysayers into your strongest advocates.
You can catch the full interview here: http://bit.ly/h6RlYG
Starbucks looks beyond coffee w/new logo design (via @fastcodesign) #in
Full article here: With Eyes on World Expansion, Starbucks Drops Its Name From New Logo | Co.Design.
And a message from Starbucks. via erik spierkermann.
The faces behind the fonts
Nice article: great designers, good insight and inspiration. Where are the women and designers of color who, too are designing great fonts?
Read full article here: The faces behind the fonts: idsgn (a design blog).
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