Design Career

Jan

Design Competitions Made Easy

INTRODUCTION
These days there seems to be competitions and awards for just about everything: CBS Interactive, where I work, even won an Emmy in 2009 for ‘Outstanding new approaches – CBS Mobile NCAA March Madness’ – not something that gets televised on the Emmy awards show. Originally I thought there would be only a few design competitions to write about for this post but once I did the research I realized there was an enormous amount of them which I listed below with links and deadlines. Further below that is an interview with Matt Cooke, Creative Director at Iron Creative, about starting AIGA’s Cause/Affect competition for design projects aimed at social good.

WHO ORGANIZES COMPETITIONS
About half of the competitions below are organized and promoted by design magazines such as Print, GD, How, Communication Arts, CMYK and Graphis. It connects them with their readers, keeps them on the pulse of the industry and provides content all at the same time. Most of the other half are organized by an industry e.g. the advertising industry for the Clios, the interactive industry for the Webbys or the various AIGA competitions for the design industry.

WHY ENTER
For agencies, winning awards helps establish credibility with clients or potential clients. Most agencies don’t pursue awards but others have a policy of rigorously pursuing them. I remember being in the lobby of Goodby Silverstein & Partners years ago and stopped counting the awards at around the 250 point. Winning awards definitely sets the standard for a company to work to and shapes the group dynamic of the winning agency. And of course winning them will certainly boost anyone’s confidence.

JUDGING
What the judges are looking for will vary from by category and from competition to competition so it’s worth reading the small print just in case you need further material e.g. Direct Mail or Interactive often also require the submission of qualifiable metrics which are provided by the submitting agency. In general great ideas and design are always the key, whether for a competition or not. As an example the American Design Awards gives differing weights as follows:
Creativity 40%
Effectiveness 40%
Practical 30%
Ethics Pass/Fail

JUDGES
Looking at the criteria, Gary Finn, Creative Director at Expert Communications Inc had this to say about judging his first competition: “I was a bit demoralized at first, when it became clear that the judges were not making decisions based on the show’s stated criteria, but rather on their own ‘favorites.’ Art Director types preferred visually interesting pieces. Account types gravitated toward big brands or elaborate strategies. I found myself drawn to ‘clever.’”

Another Creative Director, Kathleen Turaski of Resonance Marketing, judge of the Appleton’s U360 competition, had this to say about the process “All competitions are looking to elevate the best, the most innovative design. It can be challenging to match what competitions are looking for with many projects. Budget and the realities of what a client will approve or what aligns with an organization’s brand can affect the final design outcome.”

FEES
The really big competitions such as the Webbys ($295) or Clios ($400-$1,000) are expensive to submit work for. However the vast majority of the competitions listed below have fees under $100 keeping them in the realm of the individual designer. If you want to go to the award ceremony itself that can set you back more e.g. tickets to the Clios are $125 plus travel and board.

DEADLINES
The busiest season for these competitions is the start of the year with many of the deadlines in January. The rest are scattered throughout the year. Where known I’ve listed the deadlines for 2012 below. Keep checking the links for updates. Also some competitions have last year’s page up so you may have to substitute ’2012′ where ’2011′ currently appears in the URL.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Core77 Design Awards
http://core77designawards.com
submissions from Jan 17th, 2012

AIGA: local design competitions
http://www.aiga.org/events/
various local competitions with different deadlines

AIGA: 365 | Design Effectiveness
http://www.aiga.org/about-365
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

AIGA: 50 Books/50 Covers
http://www.aiga.org/about-50-50
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

AIGA: Making the Case
http://www.aiga.org/making-the-case
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

AIGA: Justified
http://www.aiga.org/justified
deadline Mar 31st 2012

Art Directors Club Awards
http://www.adcawards.org
deadline Jan 27th, Feb 3rd & 10th 2012

CMYK: Top 100 New Creatives
http://www.cmykmag.com/contests
deadline Jan 9th 2012

COMMUNICATION ARTS: Design Competition
http://www.commarts.com/competitions/design
deadline May 25th 2012

PRINT: 2012 Regional Design Annual
http://www.printmag.com/article/regional-design-annual
deadline Feb 1st 2012

PRINT: Color in Design Awards
http://www.printmag.com/article/colorawards
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

HOW: Promotion Design Awards
http://www.howdesign.com/design-competitions/promotion-design-awards
deadline Mar 1st 2012

HOW’s Your Best Work Design Awards
http://www.howdesign.com/design-competitions/your-best-work-design-awards
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

PRINT: Creativity + Commerce Awards
http://www.printmag.com/article/creativity-and-commerce
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

PRINT: New Visual Artists
http://www.printmag.com/article/new-visual-artists
deadline late August 2012 – must be under the age of 30

PRINT: in Motion
http://www.printmag.com/article/print-in-motion
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

Quayside Publishing Competition
http://www.quaysidepub.com/entries.php
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

GRAPHIS Design Annual
http://www.graphis.com/cfe/online/designannual2012

GRAPHIS: New Talent Annual
http://www.graphis.com/cfe/online/newtalentannual2012/

Visual Media Alliance Print Design Excellence Showcase
http://vma.bz/Default.aspx?pageid=203
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

GD: American Graphic Design Awards
http://www.gdusa.com/contests/agda11/index.php
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

GD: Cover Design
http://www.gdusa.com/issue_2011/september/winner.php
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

D&AD: Professional Awards
http://www.dandad.org/awards/professional/2012
deadline Feb 1st 2012

European Design Awards
http://www.europeandesign.org/
deadline Feb 29th 2012

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INTERACTIVE

The Webby Awards
http://www.webbyawards.com
deadline Jan 27th 2012

HOW’s: Annual Interactive Design Awards
http://www.howdesign.com/design-competitions/interactive-design-awards
deadline July 2nd 2012

COMMUNICATION ARTS: Interactive Competition
http://www.commarts.com/competitions/interactive
submission dates in 2012 not released yet

American Design Awards
monthly competitions:
http://www.americandesignawards.com/monthly.html

semi annual competition:
http://www.americandesignawards.com/annual.html
deadline Feb 15th and Aug 15th

CLIO’s: Interactive Awards
http://www.clioawards.com/login/login.cfm?redirect=/entries/forms/interactive_form.cfm
deadline Jan 20th 2012

HOW: Creativity International Awards: Media & Interactive
http://www.creativityawards.com/Categories_Media_and_Interactive.php
submissions start Jan 2012

MEDIA MAGAZINE: Creative Media Awards
http://www.mediapost.com/creativemediaawards/
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

SXSW Interactive Awards
http://sxsw.com/interactive/awards
Entry for 2012 awards is closed
submission dates in 2013 not yet released

Interaction Design Awards
http://www.ixda.org/awards
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

W3 Awards
http://www.w3award.com/
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

Horizon Interactive Awards
https://www.horizoninteractiveawards.com/about
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

GD: American Web Design Awards
http://www.gdusa.com/contests/awda11/index.php
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

________________________

PRINT & PACKAGING

HOW: Dieline Package Design Awards
http://packagedesignawards.com
deadline Apr 2nd 2012

HOW: Creativity International Awards: Print & Packaging
http://www.creativityawards.com/Categories_Print_and_Packaging.php
submissions start Jan 2012

CLIO’s: Print
http://www.clioawards.com/login/login.cfm?redirect=/entries/forms/print_form.cfm
deadline Jan 20th 2012

GD: American Package Design Awards
http://www.gdusa.com/apda2011/index.php
deadline Jan 10th 2012

GD: American Printing Awards
http://www.gdusa.com/contests/apa11/index.php
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

Appleton paper: U360
http://appletoncoated.com/index.php?GroupID=45
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

Mowhawk paper: Mowhawk Show 12
http://news.mohawkpaper.com/2011/05/23/mohawk-re-frames-design-competitions
deadline May 31st 2012

Neenah paper:
http://www.neenahpaper.com/InspiredDesign/PaperworksContest
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

HOW: Neenah Un Show Competition
http://www.howdesign.com/design-competitions/neenah-unshow-competition
deadline Mar 12th 2012

________________________

POSTERS

GRAPHIS: Poster Annual
http://www.graphis.com/cfe/online/posterannual2012
deadline March 31st 2012

GRAPHIS: Social & Political Posters
http://www.graphis.com/cfe/online/socialandpolitical
deadline Jan 31st 2012

Poster Heroes
http://www.posterheroes.org/?lang=en
deadline Feb 15th 2012

Reggae Poster Contest 2012
http://www.reggaepostercontest.com
deadline March 30th 2012

Poster For Tomorrow
http://www.posterfortomorrow.org/pages/view/rte_call_for_entries
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

________________________

TYPOGRAPHY

The Conqueror Typographic Games
http://www.conqueror.com/typographicgames/
deadline Apr 30th 2012

COMMUNICATION ARTS:Typography Competition
http://www.commarts.com/competitions/typography
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

All About Type Call For Entries
http://www.allabouttype.com/
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

________________________

ILLUSTRATION

COMMUNICATION ARTS: Illustration Competition
http://www.commarts.com/competitions/illustration
deadline Jan 6th 2012

PRINT: Hand Drawn
http://www.printmag.com/Article/Hand-Drawn
submission dates in 2012 not released yet

________________________

PHOTOGRAPHY

COMMUNICATION ARTS: Photography Competition
http://www.commarts.com/competitions/photography
deadline Mar 16th 2012

GRAPHIS: Photography Annual
http://www.graphis.com/cfe/online/photographyannual2012

Pano Awards
http://www.thepanoawards.com
deadline Apr 20th 2012

________________________

ADVERTISING

CLIO AWARDS
http://www.clioawards.com
deadline Jan 20th 2012

Cannes Lions
http://www.canneslions.com
submissions open Jan 26th 2012

The One Show
http://enter.oneclub.org
deadline Jan 31st 2012

COMMUNICATION ARTS: Advertising Competition
http://www.commarts.com/competitions/advertising
deadline May 11th 2012

The Addy Awards
http://www.aaf.org/default.asp?id=27
deadline varies per region

________________________

LOGOS

HOW: Logo Design Awards
http://www.howdesign.com/design-competitions/logo-design-awards
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

GRAPHIS: Logo Design
http://www.graphis.com/cfe/online/logodesign8/

________________________

T-SHIRTS

Graniph Design Award
http://www.graniph.com/award
submission dates Feb 1st-Mar 31st 2012
________________________

BRANDING

GRAPHIS: Branding 6 Call for Entries
http://www.graphis.com/cfe/online/branding6
deadline Jan 16th 2012

________________________

SOCIAL CHANGE

Sappi: Ideas that Matter
http://www.na.sappi.com/ideasthatmatter/callforentry
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

AIGA: Cause Effect
http://www.cause-affect.org
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

Poster Heroes
http://www.posterheroes.org/?lang=en
deadline Feb15th 2012

Society for Environmental Graphic Design Awards
http://www.segd.org/design-awards/index.html
deadline Feb 14th 2012

Posters For Tomorrow
http://www.posterfortomorrow.org/pages/view/rte_call_for_entries
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

Graphis Call For Entries
http://www.graphis.com/cfe/online/socialandpolitical/
deadline Jan 31st 2012

D&AD White Pencil Award
http://www.dandad.org/dandad/white-pencil/the-2012-brief
deadline October 24th 2012

________________________

IN HOUSE

HOW: In-House Design Awards
http://www.howdesign.com/design-competitions/in-howse-design-awards
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

GD: American Inhouse Design Awards
http://www.gdusa.com/contests/aida11/
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

________________________

DIRECT MAIL

US Post Office’s M.A.I.L. Awards
http://www.delivermagazine.com/awards
deadline Jan 27th 2012

CLIO’s: Direct Mail
http://www.clioawards.com/login/login.cfm?redirect=/entries/forms/direct_form.cfm
deadline Jan 20th 2012

DMA Echo Awards
http://www.newdma.org/conferences-events/awards
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

John Caples International Awards
http://www.caples.org
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

________________________

STUDENT

ARCHIVE: Student Contest
http://www.luerzersarchive.net/studentscontest2011.asp
submission dates in 2012 not yet released

CLIO’s: Student Awards
http://www.clioawards.com/login/login.cfm?redirect=/entries/forms/student.cfm
deadline Jan 20th 2012

D&AD: Student Awards
http://www.dandad.org/awards/student/2012/about
deadline Mar 9th 2012

Adobe Design Achievement Awards
http://www.adobeawards.com/us/
deadline June 22nd 2012

________________________

MISC.

CLIO’s: Facebook Integration
http://www.clioawards.com/login/login.cfm?redirect=/entries/forms/facebook_form.cfm
deadline Jan 20th 2012

CLIO’s: Innovative Media
http://www.clioawards.com/login/login.cfm?redirect=/entries/forms/innovative_media_form.cfm
deadline Jan 20th 2012

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STARTING A COMPETITION
Matt Cooke, co-owner of Iron Creative helped devise AIGA’s Cause/Affect competition focusing on design for social good. First launched in 2007 it has run successfully every 2 years since then. The Call For Entries poster itself (pictured above) won design awards so who better to talk to about the process:

Why did you devise Cause/Affect?
Alice Bybee and I met at an open board meeting for the San Francisco Chapter of the AIGA. We asked a simple question: what was the organization doing in the field of social good? The board members looked around the table and in unison said “Nothing. Why don’t you do something?”. So we established the social impact committee and launched the Cause/Affect competition. We wanted to the competition to act as a barometer and a catalyst. We wanted to know if the design community was committed to design for social good. And if it was, we wanted to get as many talented do-gooders together as we could. And so the competition was born, with a scheduled awards ceremony, that would act as much as a venue for recognition as for networking and collaboration.

How many submissions did that first year get?
Over 300 entries from all around the world.

How many submissions did last year’s competition get?
Roughly the same, but there was a surprising increase in the quality of the work.

What are the criteria for judging the submissions to Cause/Affect?
This is a question that vexes judges. They are tasked with assessing the work both from a traditional graphic design perspective, as well as from the more subjective standpoint of efficacy. What good is a beautifully designed piece of work if it fails to convey the message of the organization it represents, and fails to move the recipients of the communication to action?

Who put up the prize money for Cause/Affect?
For the first two iterations of the competition, the prize money was generated from the entrance fees to the competition itself – which was entirely financially self-sufficient. Last year Sappi donated $5,000 in prize money. It should be noted that the prize money goes to a non-profit organization of the winners choosing, not to the designers themselves.

Had there been anything like it before and has it’s success been repeated in other chapters?
I don’t think there had ever been a dedicated design competition for social good in general. And yes, the competition has been replicated, to varying degrees, by some other chapters.

Did winning awards for the Cause/Affect promotional material lead to more projects?
Not directly. But none of the competitions we have won has to my knowledge ever led directly to a new client. We typically enter competitions to boost the morale of the team, and to establish the company in the eyes of our peers.

Had you entered a design competition before becoming a judge yourself?
I actually didn’t judge the competition. We felt that might be a conflict of interest. But yes, I had entered competitions before co-founding the competition.

Did being a judge in a design competition provide any insights into your own work?
Being associated with the competition, and being present for the judging process, was certainly illuminating. More than anything, it drove home the notion Alice and I had formed prior to establishing the competition: and that is that there are a great many talented, hard working designers committing a colossal number of hours to projects that have limited budgets but that provide valuable, intangible rewards of their own.

How did you find the experience overall and would you do it again?
The experience was incredibly valuable and is something that I remain very proud of. But I have put on the competition twice, and felt it was time to hand over the reigns.

Dec

Is crowdsourcing the future of design?

WHAT IS CROWDSOURCING?
First named in a 2006 Wired article simply put crowdsourcing is the sourcing of a task usually done by an individual to a community of people through an open competition. Usually only one person gets paid for their chosen design submission and the rest essentially have done the work for free. Due to the speculative (‘spec’) nature of the work the design profession is having a highly visceral reaction to crowdsourcing. As an experiment I decided to look at it in depth by both setting my own brief and responding to someone else’s brief.

HOW CROWDSOURCING WORKS
You post a brief for a design project with a fee on one of the crowdsourcing sites listed in the appendix. Types of projects include the design of logos, websites, brochures, posters, T-shirts etc. Various designers around the world see the brief, evaluate the effort it would take to respond versus the fee offered (frequently a few hundred dollars) and decide to either decline or start working. By way of an example one logo project for $650 on designcrowd.com received 256 submissions.

Crowdsourcing is a two way street. A small business owner or small charity could probably never afford a design house or ad agency. Designers responding to the brief could be design students, unemployed or live in a part of the world where a few hundred dollars could be a week or a month’s salary. The internet being the great leveler, people from the first group (those posting design briefs) have their needs met by people from the second group (those submitting designs).

WHY SUCH A VISCERAL REACTION TO CROWDSOURCING?
If you Google “Crowdsourcing design” or click this link (http://www.no-spec.com/articles/) you will turn up many entries from the design profession that have a negative view of the process. The emphasis in these discussions is the devaluing of design by spec work/working for free. Various analogies are used along the lines of eating in 5 restaurants but only paying for the meal you like the most.

By contrast in the current marketplace publishers and agencies are constantly asked to submit RFPs (Request For Proposals) for large corporate clients. On average 14 companies will put their responses in for every RFP. Only one or two will get the business. The money involved can be anywhere from $100k to a few million dollars so everyone focuses on winning and not on the loss of time it takes to answer every RFP.

Yet when the same concept is applied to the lower end of the market the design community is up in arms with a very visceral reaction which seems to be rooted in the undermining of the value of one’s own career, education and/or self worth. It’s understandable and it must be how doctors feel when patients say “it must be X, I know this because I read about it online”. Yet at the same time we as designers are happy to use work from other creatives for free such as iStockphoto.com or dafont.com.

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR
Often these emotional reactions to crowdsourcing obscure three factors that form the real substance of the process. Firstly small business owners like the guys above (from a diner near where I live) need logos, a micro site and other promotional material. What they can actually afford is far smaller than what a design agency would charge. As it is agencies work on long term relationships and would never touch these kinds of micro-projects. Thanks to crowdsourcing the small business owners will get something better than a logo created by themselves in Word.

Secondly the designers responding to crowdsourced briefs need the money otherwise they wouldn’t bother: the higher the fee the better the responses as more people take the time-vs-payoff gamble. While crowdsourcing is unlikely to pay the bills if a designer is out of work it is also a great way to keep designing.

Thirdly these competitions best suit logos or similar small design projects as they are more finite. Long term projects that make up the bulk of agency work and may not work out so well for crowdsourcing e.g. maintaining a website can be more difficult than building one in the first place. In fact Emily Howman from DesignCrowd had this to say about longer term projects: “The percentage has dropped dramatically since we started only running contests for web design and not web coding. Web design/development projects tend to be the longest running and the most involved. The building of a website can take many months.”

MY RESPONSE TO A BRIEF
I thought that the best way to objectively look at crowdsourcing was to reply to somebody else’s brief. The project I chose was to create a logo for Peer Analytics, a company that sifts through cell phone data to find the right time to upgrade or send offers to cell phone users rather than have them go to another network provider. The full brief can be found by clicking here. I chose this project as it intellectually challenged me more than many of the other briefs available at the time which were mostly for hotels, cafés or pubs. Their brief also asked for something modern and up market.

I noticed the last line of the brief asked for “Nice to Have: – Clever user of Negative Space. But not critical.” so I figured they know a bit about design and I had a chance to do something different. Since the bounty on this project was $900 I thought that there would be a lot of submissions, many portraying cell phones, people talking on phones and key pads. If I was going to spend the time I wanted to submit something different and clever to even have a chance of being picked.

I spent 45 minutes with pen in hand toying with the idea of hidden meanings in the data and without realizing it was influenced by the TV show Fringe (which I was watching at the time). I hit upon the idea of using numbers to make up the letters in the logo. Tossing it around for another 45 minutes I hit upon using ’7999′ reflected to make the name ‘Peer’. A further hour in illustrator produced the final polished logo below. I did two more logos, neither of which were chosen, bringing the total time spent on this project to about 5 hours.

The first design was eliminated soon after with the following feedback:
“Thanks for your submission but this is not what I’m after. Please try again. Clever use of 733t speak! But our audience has too much to think about in a glance and most won’t understand.” I had to look up ’733t’ and found this on Urban dictionary: “Common form of writing used by online gamers in which letters are replaced with numbers – such as ’3′ for ‘e’, and ’4′ for ‘a’. Pronounced ‘leet’, the name is short for ‘elite’ – a highly sought-after status in the gaming world.” I had no idea.

The second logo (P33R) wasn’t eliminated for a week so must have been closer to what they were looking for. In theory I got nothing for my efforts but I liked what I did so I might just put it in my portfolio. Peers Analytics must have a hard time deciding from the submissions as the deadline was extended. When the competition was closed there were 307 submissions. I didn’t get to see the logo that was finally chosen but here is their website, which might up on their site soon: www.peeranalytics.com.au

POSTING MY OWN BRIEF
I chose the Australia based site DesignCrowd.com as I found their site was well laid out and nicely designed so as a designer my hopes were high. As a private individual I only had a budget of $350 ($300 prize, $50 to Design Crowd) and somewhere in the world there were people who would be willing to gamble the time needed to respond to a brief for that amount. I just needed to find them. I thought I would really put things to the test and have the competition’s focus on my own logo. What if the crowdsourced designers could do a much better job than I did? Here’s how DesignCrowd break down their packages and below that I’ve added my logo as it currently is:

And here’s my brief to redesign the logo with the Look and Feel slider below (full details can be found by clicking here):
I am a designer writing about crowdsourcing for my blog (http://designcareer.wordpress.com/) and I’m putting my money where my mouth is in order to write about the whole process.

I’m looking for a logo that best sums up me as an art director. For me the most unique aspect of art direction is the ability to problem solve. I do so either through coming up with clever ideas and/or unique styles that match the solution. My portfolio can be found here: http://byrnecommunications.com/

Here’s a SWF I did a few year’s ago which shows the thinking behind the current logo: http://cbsiideagroup.com/blog_header/1321910668.html
You don’t have to use anything at all from this SWF but it may provide insight into how I think.

I like blue in various shades but I think this is preventing me seeing other better color palettes and so I am open to suggestions.

RESPONSES TO THE BRIEF
I guaranteed that there would be a payment on the project even if I was unhappy with the responses which meant waiving the right to a refund. I felt it was the ethical thing to do when someone is responding to my brief for free. Next I clicked the button that would send a link for this project to the top 20 recommended designers who frequently respond to DesignCrowd. I saw that they were located in the UK, Philippines, Australia, France, Brazil, Romania, Bulgaria, India, UAE, Venezuela, Peru and one in the USA. Mentioning that I was going to write about the whole process on my blog may have helped getting some of these designers to respond. A higher fee would have probably helped get them all to respond.

2 hours and 15 minutes later the first response came in. Another response followed 30 minutes later. In 72 hours I had 21 logos from 8 designers, however I felt the majority of submissions were repurposed from previous logo competitions and had little to do with me. In the end there were 35 logo submissions from 13 designers. Here’s a selection:

AND THE WINNER IS…
Henno is an art director living in South Africa who was new to DesignCrowd. His design resonated with me straight away. It was clear he had read the brief and understood what I was looking for. Here’s his creative rationale: “The logo I designed for you gives you a sense of order in chaos but comes together at the end, Much like art direction with 2 sides and you having to accommodate both and come to a mutual agreement, I used 2 strong colors not one more intimidating than the other to balance the message behind the logo.”

I would never have chosen black and red as colors for me but it looks sexy. I asked him to do a version in blue for better continuity with my existing logo. Henno gave me four color options and two entirely new designs. Here are some of his options:

This was the logo I chose as the new ByrneCommunication.com logo (watch out for a future rebranding of my website, blog, résumé, business cards etc.):

And for his $300 here’s what it is worth in South Africa where he lives: “Well lets see for $300/R2500 you could go to dinner with your girlfriend, nothing expensive that would be R1000 and petrol would be R500. To go to a fun park with rides, roller coasters and that would be another R1000 but no food 2 drinks and parking that is it,”

CONCLUSION
The internet is already crowdsourcing on a vast scale: somebody with a need can find someone able to fulfill that need no matter where they are in the world. The only difference is doing free/spec work. As for design projects, the whole process works best if the person posting the brief lives in a first world economy and the designer is in a country where the competitions prize is comparatively a lot of money. It’s simple economics.

Looking at the types of people/organizations posting these briefs I can say the design industry is not under threat from crowdsourcing. Most briefers included hotels, cafés, construction contractors, a sorority, a mom, a cabinetmaker, a beauty salon, a watch shop, a summer school etc. These are not the types of organizations that would be taking work away from the average agency or design firm. These are the types of small jobs that designers usually get asked to do for friends or friends-of-friends. The project usually ends badly and either they don’t pay anything or pay very little but the expectations are are extremely high. Now I can send these friends or friends-of-friends to crowdsourcing sites and point out that they will get many more designs than I could ever provide.

The crowdsourcing process works best for projects with limited needs like logos. DesignCrowd clearly recognized this and since I first published this post they launched their own logo only site: BrandCrowd. However I wouldn’t want to respond to a crowdsourced brief to create a brochure or website which can be a long and drawn out process even in a agency. As for the future I can foresee clients thinking crowdsourcing is a great idea. The proof will be getting a large, ongoing and continually changing project from start to finish through crowdsourcing. This is the area where having a dynamic and ongoing relationship with a designer or agency is critical to the whole process, something that crowdsourcing cannot provide.

APPENDIX

Crowdsourcing sites:
http://99designs.com
http://www.adhack.com
http://blur-designs.com
http://www.crowdspring.com
http://www.designcrowd.com
http://brandcrowd.com
http://www.hatchwise.com
http://www.ideabounty.com
http://www.shopfordesigns.com
http://zooppa.com/corporate/learn_more
https://www.victorsandspoils.com

Ethically against Crowdsourcing:
http://www.aiga.org/position-spec-work
http://www.no-spec.com/articles
http://www.ownbeat.co.uk/blog/ethical-graphic-design-in-york

Articles:
http://www.no-spec.com/articles/
http://mashable.com/2011/03/30/crowdsourcing-logo-design/
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/03/is-crowdsourcin/

Jul

Off The Shelf Portfolios

With Flash, Dreamweaver and HTML’s capabilities always improving you would think that there was no need for off-the-shelf portfolio sites anymore. However the prospect of changing a portfolio has become an increasingly daunting task that gets put off repeatedly. Using an off-the-shelf portfolio (henceforth known as OSPs) gets something up fast that can be easily and constantly updated/amended. For most of the OSPs once you pay a monthly fee they’re all on a par with each other. As a result I tried to get right into the nitty gritty in comparing the top 5 off-the-shelf portfolios.

CRITERIA

When it came to deciding which of the various OSPs I should use I first had to decide what was important to me. I then used these criteria for judging all the OSP the same way. So here are my mandatory criteria:

1. Completely custom URL
2. Custom look – so it didn’t look too ‘off-the-shelf
3. Capacity to look good
4. Custom masthead
5. Display work well
6. Able to handle Flash SWFs
7. Universally accessible
8. Simple to use and easily editable
9. Size of pieces had to be big enough.
10. Low number of clicks for the end user.
11. Individual URL for specific projects/pieces.
12. Looks good on Mobile devices.
.

BEHANCE.net
Overall: Behance presents work well and provides the opportunity to add a great deal of information per project (however there are lots of steps to get pieces up). Disappointingly Behance has ads on the site but these can be removed if you pay the monthly ‘ProSite’ subscription of $11. The upgrade gets you:

Behance is orientated towards building a community and is vocal about crowdsourcing. The Behance approach uses crowdsourcing to help the best content and the best designs rise to the top in a design competition, but without any entries or work being submitted on a speculative basis. The idea isn’t to create work specifically for the competition, but to showcase your existing work. Here’s an example: http://www.behance.net/Competitions/Identity-Design-Showdown/1383698

Continuing the theme of community Behance allows users to share your portfolio directly through Facebook, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon. If you find another designer/photographer/artist you like you can ‘follow’ them to be notified if when the add new work to their portfolio.

STATS:
Free:
• all images will be resized to 600 px wide

Paid:
• $11 a month
• custom formats (with no coding needed)
• custom URL
• Behance branding removed,
• no ads

Criteria:
1. Custom URL: available with paid subscription
2. Custom look: available if you can play with simple CSS/HTML
3. Looking good: many examples provided on site
4. Custom masthead:
5. Display: a variety of formats are available
6. Flash SWFs: need to be hosted on the another site
7. Accessible: yes
8. Ease of use: lots of steps
9. Size of pieces: all images max 600 px wide, 3MB (audio 20MB, video 50MB)
10. Few steps: quite a few steps to upload projects
11. Individual URL: no
12. Mobile: good size for mobile

Summary:
Behance’s WYSIWYG format makes it very easy to build a custom website quickly however Flash units have to hosted elsewhere though.
.

CARGO COLLECTIVE.com
Overall: Since Cargo Collective was recommended to me by several people I started with this one. Like most of OSPs you need to pay a monthly fee to use the best features. I built mine in a week of doing about 4 hours a day – that included getting all the images together and sizing them.

Since there are numerous questions already asked on the Cargo Collective forums it was easy to navigate any problems including trying to find how to become a member (through ‘contact’). It has a nice use of thumbnails to navigate the work and was the easiest to use. Finally a word on branding: a small mention of Cargo Collective appears on the page, even on the paid version. While I couldn’t get rid of it in HTML I was able to move to a point outside the browser window.

STATS:
Free:
• 3 project pages with max 12 pieces per page.

Paid:
• $66 a year or $9 a month
• custom URL
• custom look through CSS/HTML

Criteria:
1. Custom URL: available with paid subscription
2. Custom look: available with paid subscription/with simple CSS/HTML
3. Looking good: many examples provided on site
4. Custom masthead: available with some tinkering
5. Display: a variety of formats are available
6. Flash SWFs: very complicated process to add them
7. Accessible: yes
8. Ease of use: very, WYSIWYG to change order of pieces.
9. Size of pieces: customizable to any size you want
10. Few steps: yes
11. Individual URL: each project automatically has one
12. Mobile: good size for mobile

Summary:
Cargo is very good for static images but not so good for Flash which has to be hosted elsewhere. The ability to customize your portfolio through CSS/HTML is fantastic. The questions forum answers a lot of questions.
.

COROFLOT.com
Overall: Coroflot was one of the earliest OPS out there which may explain why it is the least customizable. Interestingly several recruiters have contacted me through Coroflot, possibly because it is easier to search through the various Tags, SEO and custom search images. Coroflot has it’s own branded header on every page and there’s no getting around that – something that I feel makes it look less professional. After that there are a few other small things like not having custom thumbnails or a separate bio page but these are only minor points.

What Coroflot has that the other OSPs doesn’t is stats of image views, profile views and even how often you appear in other people’s searches, a great way to get an objective view of what’s good (or not) in your portfolio. Seven weeks after updated my portfolio in late May (see above) I could see that there was a huge leap in it’s viewers (1014 views in the first 7 weeks).

Surprisingly my Coroflot profile from 2004 seemed to generate phone calls from recruiters so it must be searched more regularly than I imagined, possibly because an interested party can email you directly. Add to this the employer directory and daily/weekly job postings round-up email and you have a portfolio site that is linked directly to the process of finding a job too.

STATS:
Free – no paid version
Unlimited uploads.
Max file size: 700x1000px

Criteria:
1. Custom URL: no, only a Coroflot based URL
2. Custom look: no
3. Looking good: very set format
4. Custom masthead: no
5. Display: no variation in layout allowed
6. Flash SWFs: just set the size and go (much easier than other OSPs)
7. Accessible: yes, search images and tags help search optimization
8. Ease of use: yes but you load up into ‘portfolios’ but cannot move pieces around from there
9. Size of pieces: pieces can be large in size and vast in quantity
10. Few steps: yes
11. Individual URL: specific URLs per individual images and set of images
12. Mobile: good size for Mobile

Summary:
While Coroflot has no ability to edit its format it handles Flash very well. Also seeing the stats of pageviews/clicks gives you very good feedback for your individual pieces.
.

KROP.com
Overall: With substantial job postings and your résumé being formatted alongside your portfolio Krop is primarily intended to help you get a job. However with the free version limiting you to 10 images and Krop’s inability to host Flash units (use Photobucket or similar site) it is harder to get your best work up. Differing styles/formats are only available with the paid version which severely limits what you can do. Luckily the basic layout is clean, minimal and has a light feel to it.

The format you choose in the paid version can’t be converted to a custom layout and there isn’t even a way to search the existing portfolios, the assumption being that you would search for someone via their résumé. One of the unique aspects of Krop is the ability to download your résumé as a pdf, however it ends up being 5 pages of very large type. You can also add your own RSS feed and clickable links in your header for the paid version but does not allow unique mastheads.

STATS:
Free:
• 10 image limit

Paid:
• $9.99 a month
• unlimited images
• style gallery access
• custom URL
• video embedding through Vimeo

How it meets the criteria:
1. Custom URL: available with paid subscription
2. Custom look: available with paid subscription
3. Looking good: generally yes
4. Custom masthead: no
5. Display: clean and minimal
6. Flash SWFs: no
7. Accessible: yes
8. Ease of use: yes
9. Size of pieces:
10. Few steps: yes
11. Individual URL: available with paid subscription
12. Mobile: good size for Mobile

Summary:
Quick to fill out for the free version as your options are quite limited. The paid version offers few unique features which cannot compete with the other subscription based Off-The-Shelf portfolios.
.

CARBONMADE.com
Overall: Elegant.

While the language and imagery on the CarbonMade site is playful throughout, the free version of CarbonMade has limited choices such as the background being only black or white, serif or sans serif fonts; and the chance to have larger images or a personal logo are only available on the paid version. The CarbonMade website even refers to the free version as “Meh” and the paid version as “Whoo!”

On the positive side the thumbnails have 3 formats, even long horizontal strips. These allow the user to scan through the work brusquely so a potential hirer doesn’t have to do a lot of work. You have to go into each project individually rather than being able to see everything at once.

STATS:
Free:
• 35 images
• Flash units hosted

Paid:
• $12 mo/$120 yr
• 50 projects
• 500 images
• 10 videos
• custom formats
• custom URL
• high quality video
• priority tech support

How it meets the criteria:
1. Custom URL: available with paid subscription
2. Custom look: available with paid subscription
3. Looking good: many examples provided on site
4. Custom masthead: available with paid subscription
5. Display: custom layout and thumbnails available
6. Flash SWFs: upload directly into CarbonMade
7. Accessible: yes
8. Ease of use: yes
9. Size of pieces: limited/larger if using paid version
10. Few steps: yes
11. Individual URL: yes
12. Mobile: good size for Mobile

Summary:
I did feel that the paid version of CarbonMade was ‘Whoo’ and the free version actually was ‘Meh’ except for the fact that unlike most other OSPs it loads Flash files directly.

OTHER SITES

CREATIVEHOTLIST.com
One of the oldest OSP sites and it looks it. A key place where design job are posted. Linked to Communication Arts.

INDEXHIBIT.org
Mainly for artists, the work here is very inspiring but not really the place for graphic designers looking for a job.

SQUARESPACE.com
With three paid for bands of pricing ($144, $240 and $432 per year) the key differentiator for this site is having unlimited pages, bandwidth, storage and more editing features. There is no free version of this site but you can try it for free for 14 days.

FOLIOHD.com
From their hmepage:”Who uses FoilioHD? Photographers, Make-up artists, stage designers, illustrators, journalists, costume designers, 3D modelers, product designers, architects, interior designers…”

JOBRARY.com
Combines résumé production and portfolio into one integrated site, something most designers could do anyway…
.

CONCLUSION
If I had to choose one site that was the best I would say Behance is just a little bit better than CargoCollective. The former is easily designed through their WYSIWYG layout tool but cannot host Flash units directly like Coroflot. While Cargo needs a knowledge of CSS/HTML to customize it is extremely easy to update once designed and can host Flash units directly. I also recommend setting up a Coroflot version of your portfolio just to see which pieces create the most interest (through the stats) and modify your portfolio accordingly.

PORTFOLIO SITES:
Ahead.com
Behance.net
Carbonmade.com
Cargocollective.com
Coroflot.com
Creativehotlist.com
Deviantart.com
Foliohd.com
Freeonlineportfolios.org
Hostmyportfolio.com
Indexhibit.org
Krop.com
Jobrary.com
Squarespace.com
Weefolio.com

Sites about portfolio sites:
http://www.viget.com/inspire/put-your-portfolio-online/
http://freeonlineportfolios.org/

Nov

Rethinking résumés – Who am I?

INTRO
At some point in your career you’ve been laid off or wanted to change jobs. At that point your résumé was dusted off, tidied up a little and the most recent position was added. And that’s it until the next time you needed it.

When it comes to redoing résumés it’s very easy to ask yourself “What have I done with my career so far?” and “How do I use that to get a new job?” Hence people often go down the route of listing jobs, responsibilities and skills. After all it’s what you know you’ve already done. Add a sense of panic to the process too in the rush to find a new job if you’ve been laid off or quit.

But the real questions you should be asking are more forward looking: “Who am I?”, “Who do I want to be?” and “Is it so obvious that I and the résumé are inseparable?”

OBJECTIVE
The résumé provides the linear part of explaining what you’ve done previously and demonstrates a pattern of behavior. It’s this pattern of behavior that potential hirers are looking at primarily to see if you’re worth taking an hour out of their busy day to interview you. If you’re a designer reading this you probably have a portfolio which should be considered your primary document as this will either grab a hirer’s attention or not. This is the lateral part of explaining what you can do.

Designers tend to spend lot of time developing a look and feel of your portfolio and then adding on a résumé afterwards. Non-designers are much better at seeing the résumé as a primary document. However it may be easier to consider the résumé as a brief for the portfolio i.e. define what you want to achieve and hone down the message – all done by expending far less energy. And of course this approach should be undertaken when you’re already working – the best time to overhaul any résumé.

TARGET AUDIENCE
A résumé’s purpose is to give the potential hirer an idea of who you are and what you can do. As such they have to play amateur psychologist or detective to work out who you are from all he details. After all they may have to work with you for a few years. Sooner than that they may have to decide if you are worth taking an hour out of their busy day to meet with you. Although some kind of director will choose to hire you or not, it will be a recruiter, someone in HR or one of the director’s direct reports will hone down the choices. With this screening process in mind you don’t need to give the various people involved an excuse to treat your résumé like spam.

Most articles about résumés say to craft the document to the individual position being applied for. I actually disagree. I believe that if there are too many versions of events depicted in the various résumés tailored to specific positions you end up with a cloud of uncertainty over your head. Instead of thinking “Is this person right for the job” the hirer will think “Which parts of the résumé are lies/exaggerations and which are true?” If you really have to adjust your résumé to target specific jobs remember to keep track of which one is which by changing the file name.

However taking a different (and funnier) tack this can be used to your advantage: I once was at a talk by Caucasian actor Jerry Doyle who said he put the Harlem Gospel Choir, an all black choir, on his résumé. He figured if an interviewer didn’t spot that outright lie they wouldn’t spot the other lies on the résumé.

FORMAT
When it comes to laying out the information in a résumé the format is usually either Chronological or Functional. Choose a chronological format if you wish to be defined by your previous jobs or to continue doing what you are doing now. Choose a Functional résumé if you want to be defined by your skills/personality or change industries.

Chronological résumés show a list of jobs through bullets points in reverse chronological order. It tends to account for time spent in jobs and responsibilities. LinkedIn uses this structure because it is by far the most popular way to write a résumé and because we are connected to other people through specific jobs. While all the key details are written down in a linear order the reader is left to work out for themselves if you are suitable for the position.

Functional résumés show achievements grouped around key experiences/skills. This is my preferred format since it helps the reader grasp what skills you have, what you’ve achieved and whether you are suitable for the position. All your accomplishments are listed under 3-5 headings, usually skill sets. The positions held can be listed in one line each at the bottom. Click here to see my functional résumé.

NARRATIVE FLOW
Once you’ve written your résumé send it to friends, previous co-workers or previous managers to get a gut check on whether it reflects all your skills. Your accomplishments may seem unimportant to you but might be huge in the workplace. Or vice versa. Ask yourself if you are casting the net too wide and sounding generic as a result? Be specific. It might make you less suitable for a lot of jobs but it will make you perfect for some and that’s the sweet spot you want to be at.

The aim of the résumé is to build up a picture in the hirer’s mind but hitting home specific examples so lead with your strengths in key points:
• Focus on the unique parts of your work as career unfolds.
• Give specific examples.
• List accomplishments.
• Add any quantifiable results of your efforts e.g. increase in click-thrus, pitches won etc.

Hopefully titles will be in ascending order to show clear growth and responsibility. Titles can be verified so it is not a good idea to lie/exaggerate these.

LANGUAGE
When it comes to reading résumés who wants to read a list responsibilities – these were in the job spec of each position that you held but says little about you. In order to communicate who you are, list your own personal accomplishments. Avoid phrases like “Responsible for”, “Experienced in”, “Excellent written skills”, “Team player”, “Detail orientated” and “Successful” e.g. instead of saying you ‘successfully pitched to new clients” you should say that you “won three out of four pitches at X company”. It’s a long painful process, writing and rewriting your résumé is par for the course.

Since you’ve done a lot of the same work across your career you may fall into the trap of using the same words or phrases to describe what you did. Check how many times the same words appear in your résumé. In one draft of my résumé I had the word “emergencies” 7 times – the reader is going to get bored after 2-3 times. Also, enunciate the finer details of your accomplishments to create more unique language in your résumé. This also helps further flesh out just who you are.

Knowing the right amount of personality to add/keep out requires a fine balancing act. On the one hand you don’t want to appear to be vanilla and on the other hand you don’t want to seem like a weirdo by sharing too much. Pepper your résumé with a few hints at your personality but keep it toned down. People are very judgmental when looking at résumés and there are a lot of people who will look at your one before you get to an interview.

You’ve seen your résumé so many times it’s probably really easy to miss typos and repetitions. While typos may be overlooked in day-to-day communications they won’t be on a résumé. A lack of typos says a lot about you – effective, detailed and goal oriented. Having typos says you are lazy, have low standards, miss details and can’t see an end goal. The final word on the language of résumés, in fact the golden rule of résumés, is spell check, spell check and spell check again. If you know a proofreader get them to look it over too.

CONCLUSION
As you’ve gathered by now I believe résumés are more than something you have to do to get a job. I see them as a honest manifesto for your future. Working out “Who am I?” and “Who do I want to be?” will help guide you through the maze of uncertainties about what to write in a résumé. You may get just as many hits and misses as before but at least you’ll feel a lot more certain about yourself and what you are doing.

Dec

Creativity in a Cubicle

INTRODUCTION
Recently I did the Facebook Quiz ‘How well do you know me?’ for Ryan, who sits opposite me in work. Although I had only known him for three months when I did the quiz I scored better than his own sister – highlighting the fact that we spend far more of our waking hours living in our cubicles with our co-workers than with our significant others, friends or family.

Like some kind of miniature office a cubicle defines an individual’s a physical space in the corporate world that it’s occupant can call their own – a bit like your childhood bedroom. The fact that we spend so much time in these small, often uninspiring spaces yet we are still highly creative is a testament to the human ability to adapt to any environment. However cubicles may actually help their occupying cubistas be more creative.

Intrigued? Read on…

WHERE DID CUBICLES COME FROM?
Prior to the omnipresence of the personal computer companies had banks of clerical workers in typing pools servicing the corporate elite in their offices. Originally intended as high-end ergonomic furniture to allow office workers to see all their paperwork spread out the ‘Action Office’ was introduced in 1968 by Herman Miller Inc. That same year US tax law changed allowing companies to depreciate furniture much faster than fixed assets like buildings and suddenly the new ‘cubicle’ exploded across the office landscape.

The Action Office’s creator Robert Propst, designed it with increased productivity, privacy, and health (greater blood flow) at the expense of some inefficient use of space. He never intended the cubicle to be used to maximize space and increase employee density at the expense of everything else but that’s exactly what happened as Action Offices shrank into “spaces” that shrank further into the squarish cubicle we all know so well. By the 1990s many employees of similar skill levels could be packed into huge open spaces with increasing density like a Dilbert cartoon.

Years later the anxiety that cubicles cause is summed up by a lawyer friend (who did not want to be named like the Deep Throat of the Cubicle world) who had this to say about them: “the thing I hate about cubicles is the design. The fluffy carpety walls, damn it. The squareness. The lack of quaint Victorian features. The echoes of a prison cell”. Deep Cube went on to say “Another issue I have with cubicles is status. Cubicles have a low-status reputation. They say “knowledge industry cannon fodder”. They reek of temporariness and instability. You could punch a hole through a cubicle wall in a strop, and topple the whole lot of them in a real warp-spasm.”

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CUBICLE

1880s-1960s: the Typing Pool

1968: the Action Office is introduced

1970′s: the Open Plan Office

1990′s: the Cubicle Jungle

2010: What Every Cubicle Yearns To Be

JUST WHAT IS CREATIVITY?
While creativity can take many forms I’ll just look at advertising/design since that’s what I do. If you’re reading this you have a career in media too and proficient at screening out the 247 to 3000 ads we see in an average day (depends on who you ask – click here here to find out more). Just like we get jaded with linguistic clichés through over usage (think of words like ‘honkey’ or ‘wicked’). The same thing happens with the visual language of advertising and design. Hence creative agencies continually get asked to produce ads/designs that are “outside the box” in order to “break though the clutter” (referencing the corporate landscape).

Cracking problems is the key to most white collar jobs. Stereotypically professions such as medicine, engineering, law, science have a more linear approach but they too have a creative element in problem solving. For graphic design there are less linear constraints than the professions above and therefore the parameters of the design brief are the essential. The key reason I was drawn to Graphic Design is the constant problem solving and there are no absolutely right answers – much like life itself.

Deep Cube, had this to say: “I could not work in a cubicle or open-plan office. Almost all my work is “creative” in the sense that my brain needs to be fully switched-on, analytical, thinking, comparing, coming up with ideas. There is very little of what I do which is mere “process” – coloring in, churning through lists, data entry, etc. That needs a LOT of mental energy. So I need to faff, in order to do bursts of work. If I felt that there was someone looking over my shoulder then I would not be productive: I would leave a spreadsheet up and let my mind wander.”

THE SEARCH FOR BELONGING
We yearn to think of escaping beyond our daily grind of phone calls, emails and padded cubicle walls (or frosted glass if you have an office). The many empty cubicles in most companies after the financial crisis are evidence that many people did indeed escape the confining walls of their cubicle whether by their choice or not. Yet despite this we miss having that workspace to call our own.

One previous creative director gave me the task of re-arranging all the desks of the creatives to fit the large space we were in. Each of the 14 designers approached me privately saying they didn’t want to move – it would have to be someone else. It turned out that no matter what layout I came up with no one wanted to leave their designated (non-cubicle) space. The eventual solution was a figure of 8 that didn’t move anyone very far from their current position and met with no resistance when introduced.

In 1993 ad agency Chiat/Day, declared a revolution in spatial possession when it moved it’s employees into newly renovated loungelike space in Venice, Calif. Employees were expected to park their belongings in lockers and check out laptops every morning as if renting a movie at Blockbuster. However the new concept had a fatal flaw: No one had a fixed place to work. Many employees simply stopped coming to the office, preferring to work at home. Eventually everyone got cubicles again when the agency was bought by a conglomerate.

OTHER SPACES
With the omnipresence of increasingly powerful laptop computers the desktop (both the type of computer and the physical desk) is becoming more redundant opening up the potential of other spaces in which to work. When I freelanced at Intuit on their Quickbooks pre-launch campaign a ‘war room’ was set up – really a long meeting room with several tables all pushed together. 20-30 people with laptops escaped their cubicle for two months by sitting around several tables all pushed together in one long meeting room. It is even more cramped than you might think but at the same time it had a party atmosphere as it was such a change from the cubicles they occupied for the other 10 months of the year.

By just using a laptop and cell phone many individuals can work out of Starbucks. LinkedIn’s sales team had to work out of Starbucks as so much of their clients’ agencies were in downtown San Francisco – a 90 minute drive from their main offices in Mountain View (Silicon Valley). With two or three meetings a day there was no point in going to the office at all so they eventually set up a separate office just for the sales team.

Michael Modes, a freelance copywriter has this to say about getting out of the cubicle: “The cube is a three-sided version of the dreaded blank page. So escape it. Go for walks, particularly outdoors. It’s where you go to solve problems in your own life. A breath of fresh is not called a breath of fresh air for nothing. If you need to get a grip on a creative problem, the biggest obstacle is gripping. A change of venue can relax your mind.”

Increasingly the biggest competitor to the cubicle for the “knowledge industry cannon fodder” cubistas that Deep Cube mentioned earlier is the option of working from home. You’ve probably done this already – typing from the couch in your pyjamas with the TV all day long can be rather appealing. While you’ll always be working near a window and you’ll never have any difficult face-to-face confrontations the biggest attraction for working from home is the fact that it is YOUR space. Escaping the cubicle for a day is a little like leaving home except you get to do it again and again.

HEAD SPACE
So you’re sitting in your cubicle working away/being creativity – what’s going through your mind? Whether or not they are a designer most people I know listen to music through iTunes as their moment of zen while working – again eeking out some sort of self identity in the process. As for me I watch movies from Netflix while I work. It takes me away from the stress of constantly meeting deadlines. It occupies the intellectual part of my mind while I craft the design at hand. The constantly changing plotlines/drama throws together different combinations of thoughts. For the linear part of my work I pause the movies. While it doesn’t work for most people it works for me.

Kathleen Turaski, principal at Resonance says this of cubicles: “I can work within cube land, as long as the culture allows for freedom to explore creativity and my cube is big enough for me to spread out all my stuff. What I mean is that the setting isn’t nearly as important as the mentality. Especially when working in the creative phase, I want freedom to leave my desk and get outside, sometimes several times a day. This could look like I’m ‘wasting time,’ but in reality getting out of the office helps me clear my head and solidify ideas quickly. I also want enough physical room – and freedom to be messy – so I can spread all my ideas out and have space to shuffle, sketch, rearrange.”

On the other hand producing ‘breakthrough’ creative all the time sounds like the most ideal job a designer could have. I once met an Art Director at Goodby Silverstein who had won a nationwide Art Director of the Year award yet within a year he had completely burnt out and left the profession for good. Just like the blank page at the start of any project is a daunting prospect, the Chiat Day’s experiment is having no permanent personal space is equally daunting.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE WORK
I went to a design talk recently where one of the speakers mentioned that the most appealing thing in anyone’s portfolio’s is the ‘Hot Rod’ projects. He went on to explain what that was: Imagine you had to choose between two mechanics to fix your car. Both charge the same price and estimate the same amount of time to finish. However if one of them builds Hot Rods in his spare time which one would you pick to fix your car?

The 1991 book Generation X talks about cubicle occupants pinning up pictures of the palmy beaches to dream of in order to get through the daily grind. Instead of a physical place it seems that these days people dream of their ‘Hot Rod’ projects as their escape. Constant advances in web technology are increasingly making those dreams more tangible – after all Facebook was created in a dorm room.

If we were all in separate offices we would have less the cubicle effect i.e. the extremely fast exchange of ideas or as designers we can assess the quality of design in a few seconds. Or simply put if we see more good work on someone’s screens we get inspired or motivated to match that higher standard of work.

On the other hand while being super creative all the time sounds amazing it has it’s soul destroying quality. A friend worked briefly at London’s Attik design studio. Internationally renowned for their high levels of creativity their open plan studio with MTV playing on TVs all day long. And the days were very long. 9am to 6pm was for all the client work that gets charged by the hour. 6pm-9pm was for pitch work. 9pm to midnight was for working on whichever of their book design books was coming out next (and over the years there have been many books). Jaded and exhausted my friend left after 6 months. Most new designers hung on for 12 months and left. There were no cubicles, lots of highly creative work yet there was little happiness.

CONCLUSION
As a quasi-private space the cubicle defines the dimensions that is all ours in the working world. We yearn to break free, to escape to a sunny beach or a corner office (really a fully enclosed cubicle). Creativity needs some restrictions in order to cause that ‘ah-ha’ breakthrough moment in creative thinking. Likewise a designer will eek out any leeway in a tight brief in order to find some means of getting that creative high out of solving a problem.

Overly repressive environments or briefs will drive down the creative standards but a little but of restriction, whether in a project brief’s parameters or the corporate landscape, easily provide something to escape from and may actually help the creative process. Like the underground art and writing from the former Eastern Block, restriction inspired great ideas as creatives yearned to express themselves and were mentally stimulated from breaking free. (See Rafal Olbinski’s work click here). Similarly Oscar Wilde’s great writings have many hidden messages about his homosexuality disguised as being different from what society expects.

It would seem that there is a delicate balance with being overly restricted (producing uncreative work) and overly free (nothing to escape from) with the ideal being in the middle. Somewhere along the way the cubicle with it’s low level restriction as contributed to the creative process in a way we never realize.

LINKS
http://youcube.us/blog
http://www.cubiclesfilm.com/
http://www.withresonance.com/
http://www.frankwbaker.com/adsinaday.htm
http://www.attik.com/#/menu-latest/thegrandreturn
http://www.allposters.com/-st/Rafal-Olbinski-Posters_c33050_.htm
http://www.maxonfurniture.com/info/more-cubicles/computer-work-stations.aspx

Nov

Ask not what your network can do for you…

…ask what you can do for your network – exploring the difference between “networking” and cultivating the existing network of people you know.

INTRODUCTION
If you’ve turned on a TV lately you’ll have seen Facebook mentioned in some way – unless you’ve been watching Mad Men exclusively. While there’s lots of talk about Social Media there is little talk about social networks or networking in general. With so many people laid off in the last 18 months many are discovering the need to network for the first time. Many people aren’t really sure what to do when it comes to networking or get shy at the thought – is it shallow to ask friends of friends a favor? Or do you just go to a ‘networking’ event and talk to people – right?

When we think of “networking” we picture in our mind a stockphotoesque image of superficially smiling business people gathered together at an event shaking hands and giving out business cards. The phrase itself implies an individual has ulterior motives when talking to you. Something deep within us reacts against this.

In this blogpost I’m suggesting taking the focus off what you need and onto what other people need. The resultant activity will create much deeper relationships amongst the people you know (referred obliquely as your ‘network of contacts’). Paraphrasing John F. Kennedy I’m asking not what your network can do for you but what you can do for your network.

GETTING CONTACT DETAILS IS NOT NETWORKING
I once stayed in L.A. for a few days with a CEO of an online company. He came home one night from a bar with multiple pockets full of other people’s business cards (approximately 30). While getting other people’s contact details isn’t networking it is assumed that a certain threshold of commitment has been reached. Having someone’s contact details does not automatically make them a ‘contact’. After all it is easier to ignore someone via email than when they are standing there in front of you. Later that night the CEO tossed out all the cards.

Despite living in a highly digital age it is amazing that we still want to see business cards. People still need a means of capturing contact details for all those new or chance meetings. I met someone at a Bris who was in the gaming industry too – naturally neither of us were carrying business cards to such a ceremonial event. Luckily the iPhone application ‘bump’ cuts out the middle man by allowing you to transfer contact details directly between two iPhones (watch bump movie).

It goes without saying that your job search materials should be in a high state of preparedness if all your contact details are pointing to them: résumé, website, business card, blog, LinkedIn profile etc. (personally I love LinkedIn as it provides a window from your working life into someone else’s and keeps updating as things evolve in either person’s career.) After all you only have one chance to make a first impression.

THE SCIENCE OF NETWORKS
“Networking” is traditionally seen as placing yourself in situations where you can create some kind of new relationship with someone who you previously didn’t know. The hope is that you make enough of a ‘connection’ (emotional investment) so that the other person is more likely to say yes if asked to do a favor. It’s rather like going to a singles event – everyone wants to make a connection with the right person (or people) but not really being sure who it is in the room.

The phrase ‘growing your network’ is mentioned in articles and blogs but this usually refers to adding more people to your network – a case of scattering the net far and wide in the hopes that you scoop up someone that will help. Rarely are people thinking about cultivating their network i.e. helping those people who you know already e.g. if you’re reading this you probably know me as a friend, worked with me, met me at an event or are in the online/media industry. I’ve probably done you a favor at one point.

There is an enormous amount of Anthropological and Sociological research into social networks all summarized well in Wikipedia’s page on the subject. The gist of it is that cliques are filled with people who know each other very well and at the opposite extreme is networking events where people don’t know each other at all. Everybody else in your life is somewhere in between. If you are a bridge between different groups/networks then you have potential influence e.g. I know a lot of designers, a lot of recruiters and a lot of people in the online/media world – all of whom want to talk to each other.

Sociologically a person with many loose connections (called ‘weak ties’) to other groups or networks are seen as having a much greater access to useful information or individuals. Mark Granovetter developed this line of thinking as ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’ theory (he is also is the originator of the Tipping Point theory). While weak ties connect different groups or people – see diagram below – they rely on there being strong ties at each end.

CULTIVATING YOUR NETWORK
In my quasi-anthropological diagram above you are at the center and the amount of people in the different rings drop off exponentially from the 10-15 close friends you have to the next ring where there’s maybe 20-40 people at the ‘you like them in work’ or ‘friends of friends’ ring. The next ring could be more peripheral people in work, ex co-workers and friend of friends of friends etc. (make up any titles you want for the rings to fit your world view). At the largest ring is the enormous amount of people like the guy with the really odd job you met once at a party once.

I feel the key to building a network is to take a qualitative rather than a quantitative approach to add depth to your network i.e. having specific rapport with specific individuals. In the diagram above the closer to the center the greater the similarity in personality or resonance the two of you have i.e. building more resonance would be the equivalent to moving someone from the darker rings to the lighter rings.

Freddie McKenna, Copywriter-at-large, points out how the personal touch that builds rapport is needed now more than ever: “I would say in a time when job applications are sent off into cyberspace and everything is done online, face time is actually more important than ever. It’s one of the few ways you can stand out in the sea of resumes.” With the Holiday Season of work parties ahead of us now is the easiest time to put in this facetime.

A while ago a friend was worried he would seem shallow if he started connecting with people in senior positions that he last knew when they had much more junior positions. The same issue appeared in a networking article I read recently that suggested aiming high when trying to ‘network’. This may work for some people but more people will respond to the sincerity of connecting to anyone. In time they/their careers will grow organically so start early and remain sincere.

FAVORS ARE THE CURRENCY OF ANY NETWORK
In this day and age the favor is probably something you could do from your computer whether it is forwarding a résumé, recommending someone on LinkedIn or answering a technical question. Some favors are more in depth such as providing references or giving informational interviews or mentoring. Just like life people are unpredictable so I highly recommend not keeping a scorecard but just being open to helping others in the hope that they will respond to your sincerity. If you’re worried about what people will do with the favors have a look at this 69 second movie from Burn Notice.

This should make using your network even easier since favors are the currency that flows through any network of people, however informal. After all what’s the point of having a network of ‘key’ contacts in useful/influential positions if they aren’t willing to do you a favor. Likewise if you aren’t willing to do anyone a favor why should anyone want to think of you as a helpful contact.

The flipside of offering to do favors is follow through. I’ve noticed that most people like to offer help but a lot less people actually want to put in the effort of doing the favor. Often it is simply a case of being too busy to take the time to help that friend of a friend of a friend who keeps emailing. If you promise to help someone and then keep putting it off in the hopes that the person eventually stops asking then you may as well say ‘no’ from the start. Like the example in the last paragraph, why should anyone ever help you?

CONCLUSION
As you’ve gathered by now the key point I’m getting at is knowing the difference between ‘networking’ (adding more people to your network) and what your network actually is (a collection of individuals you know who may be called on for favors or information). Sounds simple but it’s all about perspective – knowing people is not enough if you don’t have the charisma or rapport to convince them to do something for you.

When I was briefly out of work an amazing amount of people helped me immediately. Doing them favors helped build that rapport. I wasn’t calling in favors – they were just helping me because I had helped them and others they knew over time. By just being yourself and helping others things start to fall into place organically. Sure, most people are afraid of being taken advantage of by people they barely know or have no emotional investment with but like it or not none of us got where we are entirely on our own. Somewhere along the way someone helped us. Why not do likewise? It’s good karma.

LINKS
Kennedy Inaugural speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZudLSKaBgM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_ties
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_%28interpersonal%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation
http://www.sixdegrees.org
http://www.hulu.com/watch/2909/burn-notice-ask-a-spy—getting-promoted

Nov

Free/Low-Cost Online Design Resources

Listed below are many free or low cost resources for those design emergencies such as when it’s hours from the deadline and you still haven’t gotten that much needed vector logo or font from the client. There’s also specific and generic tutorial sites for those projects that have more time etc. Since this list can’t cover everything that’s out there I’ll add more links as time progresses.

LOGOS
http://www.brandsoftheworld.com
http://www.allfreelogo.com
http://www.gmkfreelogos.com

PHOTOS
http://www.iStockPhoto.com
http://www.turbophoto.com
http://www.fromoldbooks.org
http://www.stockvault.net
http://www.cheapstockphotos.com

FONTS
http://www.dafont.com
http://www.1001freefonts.com
http://www.urbanfonts.com
http://www.free-fonts.com
http://www.fontstock.net
http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont
http://www.soft3k.com/CrossFont-p336.htm

WEB FONT USAGE
http://labs.odopod.com/web_type/
http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html

LOREM IPSUM
http://www.lipsum.com/

PORTFOLIO/STORAGE
http://www.coroflot.com
http://www.carbonmade.com
http://www.behance.net
http://cargocollective.com
http://www.krop.com/creativedatabase
http://www.lokeshdhakar.com/projects/lightbox2
http://delicious.com
http://bestwebgallery.com

UX/UI
http://www.theuxbookmark.com/2010/08/interaction-design/a-monster-list-of-ui-guidelines-style-guides/

FILE SHARING
http://www.megaupload.com
http://www.getdropbox.com

DESIGN BLOGS
http://www.core77.com/hack2work
http://www.designobserver.com
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net
http://www.24seventalent.com/confessions
http://bookcoverarchive.com
http://marcsdesign.com/blog
http://the99percent.com/tips

COLOR
http://kuler.adobe.com
http://www.colourlovers.com/palette
http://www.viget.com/inspire/the-mysterious-save-for-web-color-shift

HTML
http://htmlpurifier.org/download
http://www.w3schools.com/html
http://www.htmlforums.com

ACTIONSCRIPT
http://www.actionscript.org/resources/categories/Tutorials
http://www.flashandmath.com
http://www.cbtcafe.com/flash
http://active.tutsplus.com

CSS
http://www.csszengarden.com
http://cssremix.com
http://cssmania.com

WIREFRAMES
http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/
http://hello.hotgloo.com/
http://dub.washington.edu:2007/denim/
http://gomockingbird.com/
http://www.mockflow.com/
http://www.serena.com/products/prototype-composer/index.html
http://www.fluidia.org/
http://cacoo.com/
http://www.lumzy.com/
http://iphonemockup.lkmc.ch/

GRIDS
http://960.gs
http://www.thegridsystem.org
http://www.gridsystemgenerator.com

ICONS
http://psd.tutsplus.com/freebies/icons/81-pixel-perfect-social-media-icons http://psd.tutsplus.com/freebies/icons/elegant-blue-web-icons
http://www.unstage.com/2010/03/70-free-icons-sets/
http://www.freeiconsdownload.com
http://www.freeiconsweb.com
http://www.iconarchive.com

TUTORIALS – PHOTOSHOP
http://naldzgraphics.net/tutorials/33-newly-fresh-web-design-layout-tutorials
http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/designing-tutorials/how-to-create-a-retro-boxing-poster-in-photoshop

TUTORIALS – FLASH
http://www.kirupa.com
http://www.lynda.com
http://flashden.net
http://www.flashkit.com
http://learn.richmediainstitute.com

SOUND
http://ffmpeg.org
http://www.sounddogs.com
http://www.stonewashed.net/sfx.html
http://www.thefreesite.com/Free_Sounds

VIDEO
http://vimeo.com
http://www.dailymotion.com
http://www.vidilife.com
http://www.yourfilelink.com

PRINT
http://www.vistaprint.com
http://www.proxprint.com
http://www.printdirectforless.com
http://www.cheapprinting.com

THE FOLD
http://iampaddy.com/lifebelow600/

CLICK-THRUS VS IMPRESSIONS:
http://www.nationalrealtorsdirectory.com/somefactsaboutbannerarticle.html

HOMEPAGES:
http://www.coolhomepages.com

PROJECT MANAGEMENT:

http://www.stevenhenty.com/web-tools/web_project_management_tools/

Oct

Using Social Media In Your Job Search

INTRODUCTION
Everyone reading this blog will know someone (or is someone) who got laid off in the last 18 months. A recent issue of Time magazine had an in depth article about the new unemployed in the US. When I opened up the article I scanned through the 19 people profiled. I knew one of them was going to be a graphic designer – and there she is Leanne Maxwell.

With so many people out of work across the US it’s clear that whatever industry you’re in, if there’s a job going then you are going to be bombarded with applicants like the clamor a Western tourist creates when walking through an Egyptian bazaar. I’ve been that tourist and it’s not pretty.

So if the figure that 70-80% for jobs obtained through friends and contacts is correct then isn’t it time to look at using the social media sites to aid a job search rather than seeing them as just for “play”.

BLOGS
If you are out of work at the moment then now is a good time to start a blog (if you haven’t already). It probably shouldn’t be full of angst about why you were laid off but rather reflect the experience that you accumulated in that job. If you have something worthwhile to offer readers they are more likely to want to come back. Show the kind of thought leadership that allowed you to thrive in that job or at least in your fantasy job.

For topics to discuss consider the projects that never made it into the light of day. Having a blog like this will display your depth of knowledge and experience to recruiter or potential hirers in a way that an online portfolio (or résumé) may not – perhaps placing you ahead of other job applicants who have to be lucky enough to get an interview to show that insight.

If you’re a designer and have another interest such as cooking (like this girl’s food blog) then a simple link to your blog gives you a chance to articulate this without getting in the way of your résumé or URL’s main focus. If anyone wants to know more the they just have to click the link (as would be the case if the girl above was applying for a job at Chow.com). Likewise if you live in LA and chase down stars in your spare time posting all this on your blog could propel you ahead of other candidates for a job at a site such as TV.com or CBS.com rather than making you seem like a stalker.

Feel free to research a target company’s inner workings through employee blogs before an interview. However actually talking about a disgruntled worker’s scathing blog in an interview may not earn you any brownie points so you may want to keep it to yourself. Click here to read a CNET article about the dangers of employee blogs.

When it comes to actual blog hosting sites Tumblr, Blogger and WordPress are all free. I gravitated to WordPress as it is really easy to use and slightly more professional looking. Although you have to pay for Typepad it does have an enormous list of articles about how to get the most out of your blog.

TWITTER
My own personal feeling about Twitter is one of disappointment. I just don’t think my life is that interesting to have a site that is entirely devoted my momentary updates. I’m not Ashton Kutcher with 3,839,456 followers using it to direct people towards the Malaria No More charity.

Despite not being as famous as Mr Kutcher it doesn’t mean you and I can’t use Twitter in a job search. Many large companies have a Twitter account that allows you to follow their news and job postings e.g. here is CBS Interactive’s. TweetMyJobs compiles many of them together by company or other in different searchable categories – to see those at CBS click here. It’s far more up to date than job postings on a corporate website (which have often been filled months before – no one bothered to take the page down).

Searching for company or topic Tweets by adding a ‘#’ in front of the company name (e.g. #BBCnews’s). Cite another Twitter member adding ‘@’ in front of their member name.

While there are also many similar sites such as Indenti.ca, Koornk and YouAre, Twitter is the clear leader in the microblogging sphere. So much so that most of the really interesting things that you can do on Twitter come from 3rd parties. Click here for a list of other interesting this things you can do with Twitter.

LINKEDIN
If you’re reading this you probably already know that LinkedIn allows you to post your résumé and recommendations plus your connections all on one URL. Make sure that your résumé and LinkedIn profile say the same thing and have the same dates as hirers are likely to see both. Have a trusted meticulous friend go over both before you go public with them – you’d be amazed how many errors a fresh mind would find. For more details about how to complete your LinkedIn profile check out my blog post on the subject by clicking here.

Generate goodwill by writing recommendations for current or previous co-workers as people are almost always happy to get them. Be specific. I always check people’s recommendations before interviewing them and vague or waffley ones don’t inspire me to think highly of the person while specific ones provide much more insight into their inner workings.

When you do apply for jobs you can see who’s been looking at your profile by clicking on the ‘Who’s viewed my profile’ button in the right hand column of your LinkedIn homepage. Clicking on it gives you a list but the actual person is really in the top 5. If you’ve applied for a job and people from that company start appearing in this section and you’ll know you are being talked about and your information is being passed around.

Show your experience and ‘thought leadership’ by getting involved in a discussion group that covers your particular interests. You’d be amazed at just how many sub groups of design there are on LinkedIn alone. If a group doesn’t exist that matches your interest then feel free to set it up. If you’re worried that some interest is counterproductive to your job search you can actually hide the logo that indicates that you are part of that discussion group.

YOUR STATUS
There is a vast array of social and professional networks out there (click here to see how many) – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter get the lion’s share by far. If you don’t have the time to do a blog then change your status often as a miniature blog (Twitter is technically a ‘microblog’).

Consider what your status should say - “looking for a job” gives you no where to go but “I need a job badly”. Your status should say something more appealing that reflects what you are doing in your profession or industry. “Adding new work to my website” or “attending the Design How conference” makes a more interesting message to read. It is amazing how being more specific gets much more responses from people you know. You can even find out more about other people’s interests as they respond to your status updates.

Ping.fm allows you to update the status on all your online networks with the same status in one click but I recommend different messages for each of the different sites but all interwoven and stemming from the same story. Facebook could have a purely personal message such as “Is watching his favorite movie of all time” while LinkedIn could say “Reading a book about Film Noir poster design” and Twitter could say “Watching Casablanca”. LinkedIn sends out weekly update emails about your network so if you are always modifying your profile (even just a little) you will appear in the update emails received by your contacts.

FACEBOOK
Let’s face it, people are in the mindset for fun when they go to Facebook. The sheer number of apps for fun in the graph above bears this out. Likewise when logging on to professional sites such as LinkedIn and Plaxo people have a more serious intention in mind. I found that the imaginary wall between both worlds is very porous as co-workers/clients become friends or you get a job through a friend. I found it used up more energy keeping them separate than just blending them together. Facebook is for fun – if someone makes you laugh who cares if are a “friend” or “co-worker”.

In this kind of environment you can check out what friends you have in common with an interviewer/hirer/point of contact, get some idea of what they are like or it can give you something to talk about at an interview. If you really want to keep the two worlds separate set up a Facebook account under a fake name with your more outrageous pictures or details – keep your photo so that your close friends will know it is really you. This way it won’t appear in a Google search of your name.

Build rapport by commenting often and freely on people’s photos or postings – if it’s up there on the web then they want someone to notice. As I mentioned before, you are far more likely to get a job through someone you know so start getting to know your friends better – even if it digitally for now.

YOUTUBE
You might laugh but imagine the difference between getting a document version of a résumé and then getting David Schmidt’s résumé. I know – it seems cheesey but video résumés are slowly becoming more popular in an age when YouTube is omnipresent. If you’re a designer and reading this I’m sure you can think of several ways to make it more interesting than David Schmidt’s. I won’t labor the point – for tips on putting a video résumé together click here or have your video résumé put together professionally by Rezbuzz.

Of course if you really want to explore the milieu you could match Barney Stinson’s video résumé from the CBS show ‘How I Met Your Mother’.

KEEPING TRACK OF IT ALL
Once you get lots of job applications in the pipeline you’ll find that weeks can go by before you get a response. By then you probably can’t remember what you said in your various cover letters/emails (salary, start date, recent references etc.) or prep notes for an interview. There is an enormous amount of social bookmarking sites out there (click here to see just how many) but Diggo allows you to highlight, annotate and archive the web pages you researched in your job search. You can even share your annotated findings with others, say for example someone you know who is already working for your target company.

Delicious helps you accumulate URLs with your own narratives and you can define your own search parameters or tags. The site considers all information submitted to be public and expected to be tagged by others but you can set each individual postings as private (e.g. for your own personal job search) since you may not want to share your links publicly.

Plaxo is intended to store contact details of individuals by being able to port over entire address books from Outlook, Mac OS X’s Address Book or Mozilla’s Thunderbird (although you now have to pay to port from Outlook to Plaxo). Be aware that (unlike Facebook and LinkedIn) if you give Plaxo you email password it automatically fires out emails to everyone in your address book – you will have no control over the process.

CONCLUSION
When I left college I had to take time off work to schlep a portfolio across a city for an interview only to find out that my work was unsuitable for that job once I got there. Thankfully I don’t have to do that anymore. Living in the entirely digital world of email, IM and social media means that a potential interviewer and I waste far less time I still feel that some human element is missing.

How I feel is similar to one of the projects that didn’t make it into A. J. Jacobs’s recent book ‘The Guinea Pig Diaries’ – this experiment was a plan to “push the limits of technology by communicating only through technology, not face to face, for a few months.” which was vetoed by his wife saying “You are not going to our niece’s bat mitzvah through Skype.”*

Mrs Jacobs has a point – despite the hype, spending all your time sitting on a computer using social media sites creates a image of popularity but doesn’t replace face-to-face one-on-one interaction. In the end you have to be able to cut it in the real world of an interview or the workplace without these social media sites. Anyway, just think of all the gossip you’d miss out on at the water-cooler!

LIST OF SITES MENTIONED
https://www.blogger.com
http://www.delicious.com
http://www.diigo.com
http://www.facebook.com
http://www.identi.ca
http://www.Koornk.com
http://www.linkedin.com
http://www.ping.fm
http://www.plaxo.com
http://www.rezbuzz.com
http://www.twitter.com
http://www.tweetmyjobs.com
http://www.tumblr.com
http://www.typepad.com
http://www.wordpress.com
http://www.YouTube.com

* From a recent talk at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco

Sep

Working with Recruiters (Headhunters)

Introduction

Throughout most people’s career there are going to be times when you will need to the services of a recruiting agency (also called a ‘staffing agency’ or ‘headhunters’). Recruiters spend their time building up a pool of ‘candidates’ to fill the vacant positions and build relationships with employers (agencies, firms, publishers etc.) who pay them a commission for doing so.

Some people regard them as a necessary evil, to be nice to only when you want to leave a job or have been suddenly laid off. The reality is that you are more likely to get the job you want by establishing a long lasting relationship with recruiters. When I worked in London it was always the same recruiter that came through for me year after year with great jobs.

The screening interview

The initial meeting with the recruiter is crucial, rather like a first date. You’ll have to sell yourself to the recruiter as they form an opinion of and hence a (potentially) life long relationship with, you. Linda Holmberg (linh@artisancreative.com) of Artisan Creative has these key points to make about this initial interview:

• Limit the number of recruiters you choose to work with based on a meeting with them, which you may have to ask for in this market. Do you get a sense that it is just a routine, “hi, this is our paperwork, we will keep you in mind meeting?” or did you leave with a commitment from this recruiter to put a proactive approach into you specifically and finding jobs to suit your wishes.

• Ask the recruiter to please be honest with you about the reality of how likely you are to hear from them, based on your skills and your marketability for what you have expressed as being your desire for work, whether it is for freelance work, or for a full time position, or both.

• Everyone is pleasant in this business world, but you need to know realistically how you might make yourself more easily placeable? If your recruiter doesn’t seem to give you any guidance or ask for samples to promote you for a specific skill set, then you probably are going to get entered into a huge database, and may not hear from them ever. You need to probe.

• Ask your recruiter how they would like you to follow up with them, and where you can see their open jobs posted? Does the company post all openings on their website? Does he/she prefer you call them? or email them? how often? If they say, we’ll contact you, I would not feel to hopeful. I think if your recruiter asks you to email them every week to check in and stay in their inbox, that is a very good sign they want to keep you fresh in their mind.

• It’s very important to have something arranged with the recruiter with regard to a procedure for the recruiter to follow if they see a job come in and think you might be interested in and right for that position. Do they just go ahead and send your resume? Do you want them to call you first and get your permission? Of course you do! What if the company gets back to the recruiter and says “Oh, we already have that person in our database as having sent us their resume directly” so we don’t need your agency. But thanks for bringing her to our attention, we appreciate all your hard work, now go away.” This would be an example of poor communication and doesn’t really make your recruiter or you look to good.

When a recruiter sends you on an interview

Since recruiters are acting as a funnel for the Creative Director/Hiring Manager/HR Manager it is important to get their backing. When you get an interview through a recruiter then they are putting their reputation on the line for you with their long standing clients – the key here is act professionally. Kate Gilman (kgilman@24seveninc.com) of 24/Seven has a lot tips on how a candidate should prepare for an interview which is best summarized as follows:

• Always confirm date, time and place a day ahead of time.
• Confirm who you are meeting and their title.
• Do some research on LinkedIn or through your network of contacts about the people you are meeting.
• Bring a few printed résumés (even if you have already emailed them a PDF)*.
• Bring a laptop to show your work (just in case).
• Dress professionally, even if for a creative position.
• Show up on time – get there early but not too early.
• Eat and hydrate beforehand.
• Turn your cell phone off.
• Do not smoke before or chew gum during the interview.
• Don’t bring extraneous things e.g. coffees, dogs, boyfriends/girlsfriends.
• Shake their hands firmly and make direct eye contact.
• Take off any jackets, sunglasses, purses etc.
• Show interest by asking them questions about the company, their role, what their expectations are for the position. Do not interrupt them.
• Be positive and upbeat – who wants to work with someone who is negative.
• Always send a follow-up thank you, referencing some of things mentioned in the interview.
• If you do get the job thank the recruiter who got you the interview.

(*Check with your recruiter to see if they want a version without your direct contact details.)Doing it right

Once you are actually on a freelance gig placement it all boils down to a few simple things:
• Know the software programs – they are not paying you to learn on the job.
• Be nice to everyone – you never know who will affect the decision to keep you on. It’s also good kharma.
• Take notes in meetings and listen closely when given creative direction.
• Ask questions – lots of them, rather than waste paid hours doing the wrong thing.
• Learn the file naming/file storing conventions and use them.
• Hit all deadlines – give lots of warning if you think you can’t.
• Don’t try to take credit for other peoples work (be aware that once you are gone other people may take credit for your work.)
• Although it is good to build rapport with your coworkers don’t spend a long time visibly doing so unless it’s lunchtime or a deliberate social setting in work.
• Remember you are being paid by the hour and people judge you accordingly.
• You are likely to be thrown in the deep end so be prepared to rise to the challenge.
• Recruiters generally prefer that you do not discuss the financial side of things with their clients.

If the company/agency/publisher tries to come to some kind of hiring arrangement with you behind the recruiter’s back be aware that not only is it illegal but very bad form. Recruiters might not take legal action for fear of losing a paying client company but more importantly you are burning bridges with the recruiting community which may hurt you more in the long run than any legal action.

The bottom line: Doing it right = More work

The bottom line is that you know you are doing it right when you get asked back again (and again, and again…) without having to continually look for more work. If you got the placement through a recruiter then it’s like having the taxi meter running all the time – something that greatly pleases recruiters, wins great favor with them and gets you even more of the right kind of work in the long run.

List of Agencies in San Francisco

This is where I live and work so naturally I’ve accumulated a list over time. If anyone has a list or even a few names for other cities I can add them here:

http://www.24seveninc.com
http://www.akraya.com
http://www.aquent.com
http://www.artisancreative.com
http://www.artisantalent.com
http://www.artlinks-staffing.com
http://www.cm-recruiting.com
http://www.creativecircle.com
http://www.creativegroup.com
http://www.emergingblue.com
http://www.filtertalent.com
http://www.graphicsoncall.com
http://www.macpeople.com
http://www.subtractionco.com
http://www.syndicatebleu.com
http://www.visuals.com
http://www.vonchurch.com

Aug

What’s in a name – tidying up your online presence

Ok, you’ve already Googled your own name a few times and laughed at some of the things people with your name (henceforth called your “dopplegangers”) have done. Now, while you know what you’ve done in your online life, a hiring manager or HR person could easily mistake these doppelgangers for you while doing a background check prior to a job offer. With that in mind the following is a list of tips and resources to check out just what can be found out about you or any of your doppelgangers and how to boost your online presence at the same time.

1. Google

Google is the first and most obvious place to start. I typed in my name and straight away found two comedians: Rick Byrne and Richard Byrne. There’s also another Richard Byrne, a professor of sociology at the University of St Andrews who has published many books on primate psychologist. Nor am I likely to be mistaken for the Richard Byrne, the Martial Arts Grand Master.

You might think “so what?” Well, I certainly hope a HR person wouldn’t think I was this Ricky Byrne. It’s good to know about what’s out there and to combat potentially being mistaken for all these other Rick/RIchard Byrnes I send people my email address (based on my site’s URL), my site’s URL, my LinkedIn profile as well as my cell phone number as the signature of all my emails. This cuts out the possibility of people having to track me down online by directing them specifically to the sites I can control.

2. Check out variations on your URL

I focus on my ByrneCommunications.com URL as sometimes people looking for me often end up on RickByrne.com which shows some guy stroking an Alligator. Ok, I’m probably not going to be mistaken for him but I have been mistaken for another designer also named Richard Byrne. One Creative Director thought he was me and had very negative comments about the work on his website. As a result I created as much distinction as possible from his website. I’ve taken the same approach to dealing with Byrne Communications Inc., a small marketing agency in New York. Not only will a distinctive look help with this problem but also making sure that all emails have your site’s URL in the signature so people don’t have to google you to find it.

3. LinkedIn

Make sure your LinkedIn Profile is up to date and has a photo so that you can be discerned from all the other people with the same name. LinkedIn’s ability to show your contacts is also likely to point to the right ”you” too. Get involved with the discussion groups that are specific for your industry (or segment of your industry). This will put you in direct contact with peers in a format that gives you a chance to shine by commenting or providing insight.

For more details see my posting on LinkedIn here.

4. Facebook

On Facebook I remove all personal details and set everything in the privacy settings to “friends only” for security reasons. A genuine friend looking for me will know it’s me specifically from my name and photo alone. Put up a photo you’d like HR/hiring managers to see – I’d rather be found as me than this guy who may be too old for positions I might be applying to. I also know someone who deliberately has a false name on their Facebook profile so that no one from their professional world will find them there. Also keep posting things to your page to push it higher up in the Search Results.

5. Intelius

I did a search for myself using my legal name and home town on intelius.com. There I was – or so I thought. It turns out that there is someone with the same name (including the same middle name) liveing just a few blocks away. Armed with these details you can actually physically locate your dopplegangers which is relevant for the next point…

6. Crimes and Misdemeanors

Check for any accidental attributions of crime to you by running your name through any of these sites (http://www.criminalsearches.com, http://mybackgroundcheck.com and http://www.peoplefinders.com) just in case a doppelganger of yours is out there breaking the law. I found another Rick Byrne with lots of traffic violations – luckily in another state but what if he had been in the same State/County? Would a HR/hiring manager take the time to check that it wasn’t the same person if the incident was in a town I had worked in previously?

You might think “so what” but I am a little sensitive because at a previous address the IRS mistook me for another person with the same name who lived on the same 12 mile long road. They probably thought ‘how could there be two people with the same name on the same road?’ and promptly sent me the bill for THEIR tax arrears. If I hadn’t found out about it and cleared it up the IRS could have really blighted my credit rating. I also found another Rick Byrne in a different town who had traffic violations and there it all was online.

7. Yasni

Yasni provides a composite of information from a number of sources including Wikipedia, Amazon, LinkedIn, NamesDatabase, MySpace, Friendster, Jigsaw, Vox, jobster, IMDb, Google News and blog search, Bloglines, Find a Grave and many more. I was amazed at some of things that turned up here but not in a Google search such as old webpages from my website that I thought were down, my birthday and book wishlist (both on Amazon – see below) photos of me (one from Facebook and one from LinkedIn). The site is not comprehensive but seems to be getting increasingly popular as companion to a Google search.

8. Online comments

Comments on Hulu.com, TV.com and similar websites can easily be found in a search as can reviews on Amazon.com so be careful what you say. Check these sites for comments under your name – again just in case there is someone else out there. If you find a topic you can excel in keep track of it through BackType.

Type your name in to http://www.thinkexist.com/quotes/ just in case their is something there under your namesake. You could be surprised what you find like this.

9. Photos

Check out photos of you on Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, KodakGallery.com or similar photo sites. Click “remove tag” from the ones you might deem inappropriate for a someone thinking of hiring you to find. Check your name in Google Images to just to see what you find. If undesirable images are found you may be able to contact the site to have them removed. When uploading photos make sure your name is not in the title if you don’t want them to be found by search engines and vice versa.

10. Amazon

The good thing about writing reviews on Amazon is that you can target specific books, perhaps career related and display your “thought leadership” and insight. These reviews then come up in a search. However I was shocked to find that by birthday could be found out through my Amazon account. I had naturally assumed that because it has credit card details that my Amazon account’s default privacy settings who prevent this. You could even see the books I had on my wishlist. Click “Privacy Notice” at the bottom of the page. Then Click “Your Content” in the left hand column and click any of the options that appear below so that you get the sub-nav with the “Edit Profile” option (I’m not sure why they make it so hard to find…).

11. Blogs

Blogs can provide a great opportunity to display your insight, experience and thought leadership. If you’re not starting one of your own then find blogs in your area of expertise (or an area you’d like to become an expert in) and practice there.

To find a doppleganger use Google Blog Search, a search engine that targets blogs specifically. I found this Rich Byrne. Luckily he blogs about totally different things.

12. MySpace

Remember that if you have a MySpace page everyone can see it so be careful what you say and post. Just being on MySpace could take away from how you are perceived for a more senior position. If you are designer make sure it looks good as you will be judged.

Conclusion

While you can’t totally eradicate all negative references to you or your doppelgangers at least being aware of what’s out there will help you bring it up in a jokey way in an email or interview. I’ve done this several times and it really helps break the ice. It also reveals whether they’ve done a Google search on you or not.

If you have a doppelganger in an area of the web where you have no presence (such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn etc) you may want to put something up just to make sure that the right “you” can at least be found by a HR/hiring manager.

Just like Spring cleaning you’ll need to come back and go through the exercise again once a year. It gets easier as there will (hopefully) be very few new entries in your search – unless one of your dopplegangers suddenly becomes famous. Luckily Google Alerts makes it easier by sending you an email every time something new with your name is posted online.

Jun

How to use LinkedIn effectively

Increasingly anyone looking to interview or hire you will check out your LinkedIn profile – even just to see who you know in common. Before an interview they may even get in touch with those contacts. If you do a good job with your projects and get the credit for the work it really pays to have people connect to you on LinkedIn.

1. Decide on a single-minded focus for your page. Cut out things that won’t emphasize this focus.

2. Have all positions expanded and explained. Bullets points help people scan through the page. Sentences should be tailored to the length that LinkedIn can support – about 80 characters otherwise it looks messy and untidy.

3. Connect to people you know – it doesn’t matter that there may be much on the other people’s profile page or that they don’t have great positions now. This will change over time.

4. Connect to everyone – good friends can be bad emailers and distant friends can be very good emailers etc.

5. Add a professional and smiling photo of yourself. Silly portrait photos can go on your Facebook page.

6. Get people to recommend you. Start by recommending people you’ve worked with and can comment on with some detail – hopefully they will return the favor.

7. Make sure your portfolio URL is added to your profile.

8. Have your personal email on your page as it is much easier to manage than a work email. Also people may want to contact you who don’t have access to the Inmails or Introductions.

9. Have your public profile to something more memorable – for example mine is as simple as http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickbyrne. This is a minor point.

10. Add a Summary and a Speciality on your page(s). Don’t bother with the LinkedIn Applications as they take up a lot of valuable space at the top of your page and are likely to distract someone looking at your profile.

11. Target people in key jobs/industries is the core of LinkedIn which is why they charge so much to do it – normally $500 a month. You’d have to write a highly targeted letter mentioning why they should LinkIn to you each time as you want them to create a connection with you and not just be a name on a list. You also don’t want them to click the “I do not know this person” button which causes a letter to be sent from LinkedIn (but ultimately amounts to nothing).

12. When you meet people in the flesh remind them in your invitation to LinkIn where and when you met. One person I met once handed me her business card and said “LinkIn to me” as though the two go hand in hand. Even better connect to them immediately on your iPhone/Blackberry if conversation goes that way etc

13. Join LinkedIn’s discussion boards and associations on select topics – this is a good “accidental” way to meet people online. The people on those boards usually to want to connect/network.

14. Since LinkedIn is free you could set them up under a false name which can be changed later (so no one googles you while you are testing it). See how it feels and send to a few people. Apply any insights to your main page and change the name to your correct one.

15. When you have everything tidied up and sorted out start connecting to recruiters – they are always looking to find people and easily connect on LinkedIn.

16. Once your profile is up check out the “Who’s been looking at your profile” feature on your homepage. Several results appear but the real person is in the top 5. You can often guess who it is if you know them or know of them. Most people don’t know this feature exists so don’t try to hide their peeks.

17. Update your status in the “What are you working on?” section in th bottom of the left hand column.

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