How To Work Successfully With A Graphic Design Firm: Tips For Entrepreneurs And Business Leaders
A successful customer experience depends on multiple elements, from how you go about hiring employees to the your customer service training approach and curriculum to the deployment of appropriate technology both to engage your customers and to assist the employees who support them. [Resources in these areas: Here are my suggested approaches for hiring and talent management and customer service training.]
In addition, a much-overlooked aspect of the customer experience, and of overall business success, is graphic design. If you misuse fontography, imagery, color, or even blank space, you can unwittingly fail to convey what you were hoping to get across, whether to your customers or to the people who support them.
Although I am a customer experience designer and consultant, I am not a graphic designer, and I figured out some decades ago that this is an area where you definitely want to call in the pros. Beyond that, how you work with the pros you engage has a bearing on success as well. I recently asked Dan Schuman, Creative Director at Veer90, a graphic design and communications firm that’s been in business since 1991, to share his suggestions for getting the best results when working with graphic design professionals. After these four tips, he also shared three pointers for how to do your best on a DIY basis if you’re not ready to engage the pros.
How to get the most out of working with a graphic design and communications firm:
1. Allow your graphics professionals creative leeway rather than forcing them to paint by numbers. You won’t get your money’s worth if you require them to execute precisely what you have in mind, rather than letting them add their creativity to the equation, so take a leap of faith and find out what they can come up with. Be open-minded to fresh concepts that offer the possibility of making your message unique and memorable.
2. Don't let your emotional attachment to existing collateral get the best of you. You may feel attached to a particular snapshot you took on vacation and be convinced that it should be incorporated into a design, but if the pros tell you the lighting or resolution in the photo make it unusable,believe them.Likewise, although you may have grown attached to a particular font, if your designer says it's obsolete or has particular connotations you are not aware of (for example, Comic Sans or London Olympics 2012 or Papyrus) trust them. Part of a graphic professional’s job, and one of the reasons you’ve hired them, is to stay on top of these trends–whether it’s the latest Pantone color or what’s most likely to engage followers on Facebook.
3. Realize that digital media is a large part of marketing today–and involve your firm in this as well. Once your graphics firm has done the design work you engaged them for, see if they may also have something to add when it comes to your social media profile. A mistake some clients make is to engage us for the “hard stuff,” but not get us involved in bringing branding and consistency to social profiles and outreach efforts as well; the result of this lack of consistency can be a scattered or disjointed feel across their brand efforts.
4. Settle on a per-project rather than paying by the hour. Hourly rates can lead to excessive paperwork and delays due to constant estimating and re-estimating. When a design/marketing firm gives you a per project price, you’re generally getting the better, and lower-hassle, deal, and you don’t risk having your project come to screeching halt because your hourly quota has been met, and it can’t proceed without your okay.
If you aren’t ready to hire a pro, how to get the best results when going it alone:
1. Write out a plan of action. List your short- and long-term goals along with dates to accomplish each. Set aside a separate budget if you plan on having any promotional or printed material generated or want to run ads.
2. Avoid using clip art and other free and publicly available artwork. If an icon is available online, then chances are that millions of people have seen it and, more than likely, that some of them also thought it would be great for use in their materials. This threatens the perceived integrity and legitimacy of your business or brand.
3. Keep it simple. Too many graphics pieces suffer from a cluttered look that both looks cheesy and is hard to understand or navigate. Stay more focused on the content and keep the design clean and classy.
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Micah SolomonWhat use is a degree in fine art? Four graduates answer the question
Four graduates tell Siobhan Howe how their fine art degree has influenced their approach to their working life.
What use is a degree in fine art? It's a discussion that Trish Brennan, head of Fine Art & Applied Art at CIT Crawford College of Art & Design in Cork, has had many times.
She has made it her mission to change how we perceive art students and graduates. Brennan sees first-hand the wide range of careers that graduates of Crawford end up in, and how they contribute to society.
She has had to work hard to convince some career guidance counsellors of the wide-ranging benefits of a degree in fine art, some of whom feel the need to offer alternatives to students who are considering it.
With only 5% of fine art graduates managing to make a living from working as a full-time artist, are those guidance counsellors correct?
“An education in the creative arts pushes students to be brave, to question and to be ambitious with their ideas,” says Brennan.
This belief that a primary degree is about gaining the skills to jumpstart a career echoes the government’s National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030, which called for a changed approach to education where primary degrees are flexible, gateway educations that teach transferable skills.
Brennan describes how students at Crawford are given the freedom to create and consider their art. This blank canvas or blank wall can be incredibly daunting, and represents a markedly different approach from a more conventional third level education.
Students are encouraged to get involved, to comment, to make things and to make things happen — this makes for graduates who are ambitious and do not wait for opportunities to present themselves; they will initiate projects that they are passionate about.
Below, four graduates from the Crawford discuss how their fine art degree has influenced their approach to their working life.
'Elevate the ordinary into the extraordinary'
Jack Hickey graduated in 2011 and has been a practising artist ever since.
Most artists find it very difficult to be financially self-sufficient through their artwork, but in 2017 Hickey won the Hennessy Portrait Prize (now the Zurich Portrait Prize), with the award of €15,000, and the subsequent commissions helping him to continue working as a full time artist.
The Cobh-born artist practically sold out his degree show and had his first solo show shortly afterwards. His portrait of state pathologist Marie Cassidy hangs in the National Gallery.
Hickey's style is photo-realism. From a technical perspective it looks perfect, but that’s not what draws you in. It is the subject, the concept and the focus of the piece that takes it from a painting to art. Being a photographer provides the raw material for his work.
“Other artists carry sketch pads but I document my life and travel through images,” he explains. He uses these images to create his artworks and “elevate the ordinary into the extraordinary”.
Hickey's incredible drive flies in the face of many people’s perceptions of the more easy-going approach to life of artists. He credits Crawford with instilling this work ethic and providing the facilities to hone his skills. He realises his career is just beginning but he can still take stock of his success to date. “No matter what happens and where my art career goes I have a painting in the National Gallery,” he says.
Jack and his portrait of state pathologist Marie Cassidy.
International success is the next step for Hickey, and his ambitions include having a painting in a gallery in London, Paris or New York. He is currently preparing work for an exhibition in New York in March, but his sights are set beyond that. As well as a residency abroad, he says he would love to represent Ireland at the Venice Biennale.
“As an artist you need to be on it all the time, while you’re not working 24/7 you are constantly thinking about your next project,” he says.
A curatorial route
2016 Crawford graduate Enid Conway originally thought she would become a film-maker, but soon found she was more interested in taking a curatorial route. On the back of her degree show she was awarded two exhibitions and two residencies – securing her position in the ‘one to watch’ category of graduates.
She is currently undertaking an MA in curating at the prestigious Goldsmiths University in London (alumni include Damien Hirst and Lucian Freud), but she has also founded and is editing bi-annual arts magazine, Bloomers. 
“It is an independent publication that discusses the work of emerging female artists based in Ireland,” she explains.
Bloomers recently launched its fourth edition, and Conway says the magazine is evolving as she gains greater understanding of what artists need from the publication and the collective it has created.
In fact, artists supporting artists is a regular theme that comes up in discussions with graduates of Crawford.
So what’s next for Conway?
I want to continue to develop Bloomers and keep a connection with the rich arts scene in Cork but I also want to learn how to interact with larger cultural organisations and understand how they work – this may involve working with them directly or in cultural consultancy capacity.
As to what advice she would give someone considering a career in creative arts she says: “Stimulate curiosity and follow your 3am rabbit holes that may bring you to 14 hours of experimental film; go to as many exhibitions as you can, and always have a self-initiated project on the go.”
'Learning how to be creative on my own terms'
Mike Hannon graduated in 2005 with an BA in Fine Art and completed a Masters in 2015. Even when he began in Crawford, Hannon knew he didn’t want to be a full-time artist, but what he did want was “the creative experience of coming up with my own ideas and learning how to be creative on my own terms”.
After graduation Hannon immediately took his new skills into the working world, as a graphic designer in an architect’s office. When that company ceased training in the recession Hannon was relatively unphased, and decided to go the freelance route.
“That spirit of independence that is fostered in art college really suits the freelance approach of working and coming up with your own rules of how to work,” he says.
In 2009 he set up his own freelance business, Mike Hannon Media. Freelancing felt like a much better fit for him. Hannon has been working as a freelance film-maker ever since.
He credits his education in Crawford with much of his success.
“You learn to think independently and rely on yourself as it’s a relatively unstructured academic environment in terms of your studio time... the rules are imposed by yourself; you decide the parameters around what you’re creating. You become self-reliant and trust your own judgement’.
Hannon keeps more than a foot in the door of creativity. He has made a number of short documentaries and in 2018, his cinematic documentary, The Cloud of Unknowing, was nominated for the Best British & Irish Short Film Award at the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards.
Art as an outlet
Ciara Wall has an BA and a Masters in Education from Crawford (2008), and she now works as the head of the Art Department in Midleton College, Co Cork. From a young age Wall says she used art as an outlet, and even now she finds expressions for her creativity in many areas.
We meet for coffee in Monty’s Cafe in Midleton, Co Cork, where Wall does the menu design and also created their murals.
She talks about how she initially struggled with the studio time at Crawford, but as she progressed she learned how to use it more effectively. Wall also believes her years in Crawford gave her great confidence.
After initially thinking she would work as a full-time artist, Wall made the decision to go into teaching.
She describes the importance of the art room in a school for giving students the space to create but also the space to experiment with art and make mistakes.
“You often learn more when things don’t work out,” says Wall who, as well as teaching, also keeps her hand in with her own artwork.
Currently on maternity leave, when she's in the classroom, she encourages her students to document the journey of their artwork.
Given that the motivation for creating art can be incredibly personal, it is often emotive for both the artist and the audience, and she strives to create an atmosphere where everyone will listen to each other in the room.
Wall also talks about the importance of linking into a creative community, and maintains a WhatsApp group for fellow Crawford graduates who are based in classrooms across the country.
Crowdfunding Without A Graphic Designer
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. Crowdfunding without a Graphic Designer
I’ve been a graphic designer for many prominent Kickstarter projects. I’ve spent hundreds of hours carefully designing frames, reward icons and going through many many rounds of approvals. But why spend hours fine-tuning the details, when it can be spent reaching out to press or working on prototypes? Let’s look at what role graphics play in a crowdfunding campaign, and what you need to know to create them without busting your budget or even hiring a designer.
Let’s address the big question first.
Why hire a graphic designer for a crowdfunding campaign?
Are you a graphic designer? No? Then chances are you don’t know what good design looks like. Now this is not to say you don’t have taste. Your taste is unique to you. Crowdfunding graphics however, need to have mass appeal.
A graphic designer increases your chances to create mass appeal. No one can guarantee it to you, no matter how much money you spend, but everything you do just increases that chance. A person who spent a few years creating commercial art, knows a thing or two about what works best. They know the basics and have the necessary skill. Your goal is to tell them what you need and want as best you can.
Do complex graphics and visual strategy help get more pledges?
If no one knows about your campaign and is not there to see it, then no. You have to get eyes on your page. The graphics are there to: create excitement, sell your idea to others, convince them to pledge as much as they can.
Graphics can sway people either way. Display blurry images and confusing illustrations — you loose trust and funds. Impress people and create intrigue and you get a boost. It’s better to display simple and straightforward images if you’re on a budget — less reward, but also less risk.
How to create winning campaign images?
The following will be helpful both if you have a dedicated person for your art, and if you’re doing things yourself.
Start with a vague idea of the whole campaign. What is your main theme, what is the feel? That is what should guide your creative decisions. Remember — you’re creating a feeling, an association. All the elements contribute to what you want people to feel.
A few tips on graphics:
· Have as much of the product and reward images ready as you can. People fall in love with images much faster than vague promises and concepts.
· Your main project image doesn’t have to be of the product. You can also go for a mood or action your product is associated with.
· Make sure your images are technically fit for the page. A project image is 1024x576 pixels (16:9 ratio) in size; your campaign page images are no more than 680px wide.
· Test images on the page to see if they are blurry or the wrong size. Avoid placing text on images — it will look blurry.
· Start your page with the most attractive image. Resist the temptation to display every image you have.
· Get a few samples of art done and post them to social media to get people’s reactions. This can be used as your social media content and as marketing material.
How much does visual presentation really matter?
Here’s a small add for a Kickstarter. The mistake? It gives me no reason to care. There are definitely images in here, but there is no story, it doesn’t spark interest, raise questions and intrigue me. It’s easy to ignore and so I will.
Two different campaigns with two very different outcomes:
Great professional visuals, but the interest is just not there:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1754086425/the-martian-globe
Weak visuals, but successfully funded:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1591542039/isotelus-trilobite-a-new-paleozoic-pal
The campaign page is where you need to sell your product. All your external marketing will bring people to the page, but you ultimately still need to sell the product itself. Many factors can contribute to your ultimate success or failure. As long as you keep the basics in mind, you raise your chances to make it a success.
Want to boost your chances more? Read this short article on the 10 top crowdfunding hacks from an expert.
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