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.
Learning to Design a Cherokee Syllabary with Mark Jamra
I just caught this very interesting talk on TypeCulture’s Facebook page on designing an indigenous American syllabary via the Cherokee language whose written language is almost 200 years old. Fascinated as my mother’s maternal grandfather was Cherokee.
I love looking at writing systems outside of the Western cultures. For this talk, Mark Jamra references the book The Cherokee Syllabary: Writing the People’s Perseverance by Ellen Cushman.
Also check out Afrikan Alphabets, The Story of Writing in Afrika by Mwalimu Saki Mafundikwa.
Check out TypeCulture on Facebook here: https://goo.gl/fISww4
Image: Courtesy Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_language
Video runtime: 59:42
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!
Rise of Graphics for Social Justice Issues in the US
Though the production of graphics for social justice issues, primarily as posters or street art has not diminished much in Europe, Latin America, and Africa, it has lost its prominence in the US.
Given this fact, it was nice to read today’s The Daily Heller: Triggering Concern About Guns.
by Juana Medina
To see a full array of the posters, go here: The Gun Show: A Collection Of Posters Against Guns
Nice Talk by Khoi Vinh at TYPOSF 2012
My MM Content + Form students and I were lucky enough to catch the 5 April 2012 livestream of Khoi Vinh’s talk at TYPOSF 2012.
He shared some valuable insight into the business of design and where it stands today. Quite interesting. Below are some captured “slides: of his talk. (Please note, they’re in the order I best remember.)
Thanking Fontshop for making this possible.
Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes – The Joy of Stats – BBC Four
This is an incredible talk by Hans Rosling illustrating statistical data on the increase of the human lifespan from 1810 forward. Enjoy. (A teaching colleague, Marcia Beales brought this to my attention.)
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]
Design is About Solving Problems | Design Informer
One of my Twitter colleagues, Jan Jursa of Information Architecture Television (@IATV on Twitter) shared this interesting post by James Young on Design Informer (See link below) and I thought I would share it.
It is always good to step back and reassess where one is in respect to the design process. This is a good post followed by good comments. Enjoy.
Recently, a couple of things happened in my design career that have made me sit down and reflect a bit on where I’m at and how I can improve what I deliver to my clients and their users. I’d noticed that my source of inspiration had changed and that I was being inspired more by clever solutions and ideas than by visual flourish.
Like many designers, my RSS feed of inspirational websites is full of great work and posts. I’m also active on Twitter, and I meet up with other designers regularly at local events. But I find that at a basic level, I actually don’t draw that much inspiration directly from these things anymore.
The full article can be read here or via the link below.
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
leave a comment