I’ve written about using LinkedIn to find design jobs here and here, but I’ve yet to suggest ways to use Twitter or Facebook as part of a design career search.

Needless to say, it is an obligation today that during the application process for a new job you take a moment to see if the company offering a position to which you might apply maintains a Facebook page or Twitter account. If so, Fan and Follow them, read some of their social media content, and then tailor your application / cover letter based upon the insights you have gained by doing this little bit of homework on the company. I know all seems obvious, but it is still worth illustrating because each experience using social media for this purpose is different.

For example, I’ll go look at Coroflot’s Twitter feed right now and check the most recent job announcement to see if this whole application process using social media works… Read the rest of this entry »

BNE Was Here sticker -- Photo taken in Sukhumvit, Bangkok by Nat Wein

Thanks to Mother I recently interviewed, via email, a graffiti artist known as BNE.

Mother is big ad agency with big clients (like Coca-Cola and Stella Artois), that does interesting and creative work. They are opening a huge New York office (36,250 sq. ft.) at 11th avenue and 44th street in Hell’s Kitchen and across the street from Ogilvy. I was there last Thursday to attend a party they threw in celebration of their new office that was also promoted / co-sponsored by New York culture magazine ANIMAL. The guest of honor was BNE, but he/she/they was not present…as far as I know.

BNE has a secret identity and is prolific in the sense that the stickers and painted stencils that say “BNE” are in major cities all over the world. Enough to get print, tv, and web media coverage by major and minor outlets including a recent New York Times article. Coverage garnered, I suspect, thanks to a little help from trend / cool hunters representing agencies that tell the media what is cool and news worthy. There is no other logical explanation, because prolific tagging is not new.

BNE at Mother -- Photo courtesy of Mother, New York

The party was also billed as BNE’s first art show. The art at the opening included the big BNE initials/acronym that have provided the attention to date, and then some pieces where the BNE acronym were placed on top of brand icons like Bart Simpson and Spiderman obscuring the iconic characters as though the brand of BNE is so large, and aggressive, that it is stealing the exposure, the real estate, the consumers’ attention from the long established brands that play by the old rules of branding.
Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever seen a beautiful design and been curious who created it? Would you like to not only learn who the designer is but also interview them? Me too. And so, I thought I’d try something new and invite NoD readers to site beautiful designs that they have seen, past or present. And then NoD editors (or perhaps other NoD readers) will help us find the designers behind the designs we love. A great ad, an amazing animation, a beautiful package design, a perfect font…anything goes.

So, post a comment to this entry below and we’ll start investigating. When we find out who the designer is we’ll share their name with you and may even try to get a Q&A published with them, and YOU can be the interviewer. Also, feel free to suggest designers whose names you know and whom you would like to interview.

Scott

Indigo Painting with a Stencil

Shallom Johnson is an urban artist, dancer, and fashion/arts writer currently based in Vancouver who has been painting under the alias Indigo since 2008. She paints beautiful, layered, and emotional pieces using meticulously cut stencils, spray paint and house paint. She’s moving fast, literally and figuratively, making her mark in the art world in just 1.5 years of professional painting. Consider that she just left a live painting event in Brooklyn, is now painting with C215 in Paris, then is off to Brittany to paint with artist Liliwenn and then more events and collaborations in Berlin, Moscow, Dresden, London, New York City again (in late November), LA, and then home to Vancouver. And despite this frenetic schedule, when you speak with her you sense the patience and quiet that is required to create the works that you can view below. I met her in Brooklyn, and we have since had an interesting email exchange over the past three days:

NoD: Where are you from?

Indigo: I’m currently based in Vancouver (have been living there for 10 years now) but I grew up in a log house in the middle of a forest in Northern BC.

NoD:You just painted at Mark Batty Publishing’s Urban Arts Festival in Brooklyn. How did that come about? How did it go for you?

Indigo: My involvement with MBP came about via facebook. I was going to be in NYC anyways, because it is so much cheaper to fly to Europe from there than it is if you go straight from Vancouver. I saw the event listing online, noticed that they hadn’t announced all the artists yet, and messaged Adri (one of the festival’s directors) to ask if they had space for me to get involved.

Indigo painting after the rain stopped (Photo by Vincent Cornelli.)

It went really well, on all fronts – but during the days leading up to it, it seemed like everything that could go wrong, went wrong! First the paint shipment from MTN never showed up, then they got a little bit of paint but it was the wrong kind for me to use with stencils…finally got to the venue the day before to get my background done, and the space I was given was up on a narrow ledge with no available ladder to reach the top…then someone ran over two gallons of my housepaint with his car Read the rest of this entry »

Agnieszka Gasparska at her KMIP storefront HQ
(Photo: Andrea Brizzi – www.andreabrizzi.com)

Agnieszka Gasparska is the Creative Director and founder of design firm Kiss Me I’m Polish. Her clients include GOOD, Thrillist, Refinery29, Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame and many others that you have heard of. She is speaking at AIGA’s MAKE / THINK conference in Memphis this October on the topic of Art Direction on the web.

I approached Agnieszka after seeing that she designed the Deitch site, a gallery of which I’m a fan. A few email exchanges and chats later and I’ve met a sincere, smart and accomplished designer with good ideas and the creativity and savvy to sell them. Out of her East Village storefront studio in New York she has built an impressive client list, but she is really just getting started as a firm so it is exciting to imagine what is still to come. Our exchanges follow:

NoD: What gig was a turning point for you as a professional designer?

Agnieszka Gasparska: Coming out of school [ at Cooper Union ] and starting out at a place like Funny Garbage (where I stayed for 5 years) taught me invaluable things about working as a designer in the real world. I could have never started my own business without that sort of professional experience. But at the same time, I feel that my career would never have taken the trajectory it has if it wasn’t for the freelance opportunities I had during that time, which were ultimately the reason I decided to strike out on my own. My collaborations with Fischerspooner for example, allowed me to experiment Read the rest of this entry »

As a follow to my post on Using LinkedIn to Find Design Jobs, here is a slightly different technique to go after the design business that you want.

If you decide that your ideal client type is a travel-oriented company because your aesthetic is a match or because you already have some experience in that space, then search for travel companies within LinkedIn. You search companies using the search feature in the upper right-hand corner of the page, pulling down the menu to change the search from “people” to “companies.” I just did a search for “travel” and got 4772 results. Now you have an idea of the volume of possible new client contacts on LinkedIn, but that’s a global and really broad search so let’s narrow it using better search techniques.

Follow this link:
http://www.linkedin.com/companies

The page at the link above also lets you browse by industries. Here I have started browsing “Philanthropies”:
http://www.linkedin.com/companyDir?results=&sik=1251911248496

…where I can then focus the results by country, zip, company size and even if they are hiring by using the search features on the right of the page. Read the rest of this entry »

In my last post about Using LinkedIn to Get Design Jobs I introduced the idea of “Client Types” and that a designer’s natural aesthetic helps determine their ideal client, or the type most likely to hire them.

I thought I’d pursue this idea further and invite you, the NoD readers, to submit your portfolio for review. I’ll pass your portfolio by a selected group of NoD authors and they will provide feedback and recommend what industries might include your most ideal clients to target for jobs, and why. I’ll publish it all here on NoD.

So please email me [ scott (at) notesondesign.net ] a link to your portfolio and we’ll share our opinion on your ideal clients. We’ll do this first come first served since I can’t predict volume of submissions. Thanks!

UPDATE TO THIS POST: DUE TO HEAVY RESPONSE WE ARE NO LONGER TAKING PORTFOLIO SUBMISSIONS. WE’LL POST RESULTS ASAP.

What is your design aesthetic? It’s hard to be objective, but important to know. It helps determine who you are likely to land as a client. And who you are likely to land as a client are your “Client Types.”

So with your aesthetic in mind, what are your “Client Types”, and do you know any / have connections to any of them? To connect with your Client Types use your network — or start building one — and find them.

Join LinkedIn Groups comprised of those types of clients and do the soft-sell. Position yourself as a specialist. Suggest that you are doing contextual research Read the rest of this entry »

As a follow to an earlier post on Coroflot’s Design Salary Survey here is a design salary calculator published by AIGA this year. It only covers the US but is comprehensive in terms of covering fields of design as well as organization size and sector.

I will now open a can of worms.

Having run a design agency in the past I’ve been guilty of doing work on spec, or work that you do in hopes that a formal — and paying — agreement will come about. There is not only the risk that your work will be used even if you have not been paid, spec work is also usually disrespectful of your time. Often the “client” in these situations undervalues design work and, therefore, does not understand or appreciate the amount of time involved with doing quality work. Therefore, even if they don’t use your work without paying you, work on spec increases the likelihood that Read the rest of this entry »