Emily Pilloton

I’ve seen some designs come out of the poorest villages in Africa that trump anything coming out of any design firm in the US. — Emily Pilloton

Recent Colbert Report guest and Bay Area native and designer Emily Pilloton was underwhelmed with the home product decision-making that made up much of her working life when she started Project H, an organization of volunteer designers who work to connect design with communities most in need. Her work encouraging local Project H chapters to bring better products to schools, hospitals and shelters led to the book “Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower
People.”

In February she’ll kick off the Design Revolution Road Show, a traveling exhibition and lecture series that will visit 25 high schools and university design programs nationwide across the nation via an Airstream trailer that highlights 40 humanitarian design solutions highlighted in the book. You can follow the cross-country tour, which will take Pilloton and partner Matthew Miller to schools from Austin to Baltimore, on the site’s itinerary and @DesRevRoadShow. Emily Pilliton is interviewed here by Emily Goligoski.

Notes On Design: What your initial motivation for starting Project H?

Emily Pilloton: I started Project H mostly out of frustration, but the kind of frustration that is laced with optimism: where you wake up one day and realize that you don’t like the way things are, but you think you know how to fix it.

I’m trained as an architect and a product designer, and grew up always taking things apart and putting things together, and came to design believing that it would be a great skill set for solving problems in a physical, creative, and critical manner.

A few years out of graduate school, when I found myself working as the store architect for a retail clothing company, where design was synonymous with choosing doorknobs and other such minutiae, I had had enough. Design had, in my own career (mostly because I had huge student loan bills), become so far removed from why I originally became a designer: to solve problems. I quit the doorknob job the next day, started writing and making up my own rules, and eventually started Project H as an avenue to apply design to the things that mattered.

The Design Revolution Roadshow Airstream

NoD: How did the idea for such a non-traditional book tour come about?

Emily Pilloton: As a natural contrarian, I tend to find the expected and the usual very boring. This was particularly true when I wrote “Design Revolution” and the time came to think about what kind of book tour I would embark on. The usual book signings and library talks seemed valuable, but not in keeping with the tone of the book, which is so much about a grassroots, bottom-up, “just do it” approach to design that really belongs at the doorsteps of designers who care, not in Barnes & Nobles. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Timoni Grone is the senior visual designer at Scribd where she creates websites that blend responsible web practices with classic design & typographical philosophies. She also co-founded the monthly design MeetUp and work session Chromatic where Bay area designers meet to network share ideas and design challenges. It’s part of her effort to expand the reach of user-centric design and make your web experience just a little bit better. Timoni is interviewed here by Emily Goligoski.

Notes on Design: How did you get your start?

Timoni Grone: I was an English major in college but talked about art and design enough that a friend encouraged me to take an art class, and I’ve been making sites and designing for friends since 1999. I’m largely self-taught—I looked at course syllabi and taught myself design fundamentals.

My second job was as a web editor for the State Department creating mockups for sites to expand dialogue with the Arabic world. I didn’t expect that I’d ever work on security and public diplomacy, and it was eye-opening.

NoD: Wow! Not your typical design gig. Where did you go from there?

Timoni Grone: I ultimately left to work at a DC branding agency in the research sphere before moving to San Francisco, where I’d wanted to be since I was using early social media tools in Nebraska while still in college.

NoD: And in San Francisco you began working at Scribd where you are now the Senior Visual Designer and have been largely responsible for their redesign effort. What other sites that you frequent are you itching to redesign?

Timoni Grone: Twitter, no doubt about it, so that people wouldn’t have to use third party applications to have a good experience. I’d improve the leading on Facebook, but on Tumblr I wouldn’t change much beyond the implementation.

NoD: Can you expand on your comment regarding third party apps and how Twitter could improve if it did not require them? Isn’t Twitter improving because of third party apps..and is that built-in flexibility not what makes it, in part, so hugely popular? 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 »

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 »

They have been doing it since 2001, and Coroflot’s Design Salary Surveys continue to illustrate why design is actually a pretty practical career choice, regardless of what Mom and Dad said. Despite our recession — or the euphemistic “super recession” I’ve read it labeled as of late (That’s just a Depression, no?) — design salaries are growing, as are job opportunities. By the way, I want to know who the Interaction Designer is that is making a cool $Million. Check all of the design salary surveys here.

Design-related legal, copyright, trademark, or intellectual property rights confusion? NoD guest author and legal expert Jean S. Perwin is taking questions. If you have questions for Jean, email them to us using editor (at) notesondesign.net. Jean will reply to questions frequently here under the “Intellectual Property” category of NoD.

NoD reader Shannon says:

I have a friend that was contacted by another party who has trademarked the same production company name my friend uses. Unfortunately, my friend never trademarked the name but does hold the longer dba (since 2001; opposing party since 2006). The email indicated that my friend may have to discontinue using the name. My friend’s company is for Graphic Design; the other company has a trademark for video and film production only.
My questions are as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

Design-related legal, copyright, trademark, or intellectual property rights confusion? NoD guest author and legal expert Jean S. Perwin is taking questions. If you have questions for Jean, email them to us using editor (at) notesondesign.net. Jean will reply to questions frequently here under the “Intellectual Property” category of NoD.

NoD reader Rochelle says:

Hi Jean,

I’ve been asked to write for a character in a series of comic books. Should the publisher and I do a licensing agreement or writer-for-hire? When I decide to spin-off from that character to the character of my own creation what type of agreement should I obtain under those conditions?
-Rochelle

Hi Rochelle:

I would be very surprised if the Publisher did not give you a work for hire agreement to sign. If you are considering spin offs they have to be specifically exempted from your work for hire agreement otherwise you will not have the rights to do anything related to the original character. All rights will belong to the Publisher. Do not sign anything until you have an attorney review it for you.

- Jean