It was a golden age, Alexey Brodovich was dazzling the fashion world with his dramatic layouts in Harper’s Bazzarr, Bob Peak was grinding out film and theatrical illustrations at a mind boggling pace, Sidigicouff Berman and Gomez were creating corporate brochures (what we called collateral) that reflected the youthful vitality of the Summer of Love, and everyone waited with hushed anticipation for the next issue of U&lc to see what the grand master of typography, Herb Lubalin, had produced. In Palo Alto California Richard Coyne inaugurated the new monthly publication CA (Commercial Art), and aspiring graphic designers graduated from Parsons School of Design’s three year program. list of graphic design businesses

What year was that, someone asks? It wasn’t really a year, it was more like an epoch, an age, a dynasty. It’s far easier to date its demise than its origin and its demise began in 1984 when Apple Computer introduced the laser printer and the world jumped on the digital bandwagon.

It may appear that the author is waxing nostalgic for a time few of his readers can remember. Perhaps there is romantic value in an industry committed to exploiting every creative possibility from outmoded technology, for that’s what we were about. But you will never hear this writer bemoan the vastly liberating advances of the digital age. Because, in spite of the atrocities that have been created in the name of faster, cheaper communication, the 21st century graphic designer is finally in command of a vast array of tools. Virtually everything he requires is at his finger tips. No longer must we “send-out” for type and spend tedious hours with the glue pot and exacto knife re-kerning a headline (as was the practice of Herb Luballin). No longer do missing samples for a photo shoot distress us. We simply shoot similar goods and change them in Photoshop™. No longer do we spend days over a hot drafting table attempting to “comp” a client’s package design with Pantone coated stock and press type. We simply press a few buttons.

To say that these advances have not come at a price would be naive for the technicians who have granted us this wealth have found it necessary to convince the public that they have, in the process, made us redundant. graphic design business plan sample

“Don’t bother with those temperamental, expensive graphic designers.
With our software you can create your own ads, brochures, catalogs . . .
even the Sistine ceiling in your own living room.”

But with age comes a renewed confidence in the human spirit’s ability to triumph over technology and the promoters thereof. In truth, technology and art have always shared an uneasy, yet mutually beneficial history. What seems to have been mutually exclusive are their periods of greatest glory. It takes years, sometimes generations for artists to understand and exploit technological advances. Still, in the end, the human spirit prevails and art is elevated.

Art, you say, you think that this is art? Well, it’s a kind of art. It feels as though it should be closer to art than, say, boiler repair. I learned to do it in art school. Ahhh, there’s the rub! Perhaps the untrained practitioner is more successful than the art-school-graduate simply because he comes to the job with none of the classic preconceptions of an artist. In fact, when two or more graphic designers gather the conversation inevitably gets around to “how art school ruined my life.” It’s one of the oldest krevtches known to man. Because, in the process of elevating students to the highly critical vantage point from which designers should operate, those schools also instill a bias against compromise on any level, esthetic, budgetary or political. This makes it extremely difficult for designers to operate in the real world without being wracked with a sense of guilt that they have betrayed their profession. gr

If we accomplish nothing else in this volume, let us endeavour to make these two points:

1. Few people care about your art
2. Most people want solutions.

Now you can comfortably set this book aside, for you have gleaned its most profound insight. Everything that follows is merely an illustration of these two truths.

Yes, I can hear my colleagues, gasping with indignation as they read. “How can he presume to teach design unless he believes it is the solution to all society’s woes, the cure for cancer and the highest calling of mankind,” they’ll lament. Well gentlemen, and lady . . . it’s not! A career in design may have kept me from a life of crime but it never fed a starving child in Africa, cured a disease or stopped a war. In fact, there are those people (the vast majority in the USA) who have little understanding of design, much less an appreciation for its necessity. Like other art forms, design has been relegated to the sphere of elitist diversions by a public school system stretched too thin by social engineering issues to concern itself with more than the most pragmatic curriculum. Design in late 20th - early 21st century America is only as valid as its market potential.

If Tommy Hilfiger jeans make me feel young and patriotic, or a Ralph Lauren shirt makes me believe I’m swinging with the country set, or a baggy Kenneth Cole boarder’s coat makes me feel funky and street-wise, I have discovered the breadth and depth of this country’s appreciation for design. The general public recognizes two basic functions of design:

1. Branding, the definition of taste and style to a predetermined market.
2. Technical correctness, “I guess we had better get an architect to ‘design’ our new media wing so it doesn’t fall down in a high wind.”

Beyond these two factors 98% of the American public would be hard pressed to define the roll of the designer in society. Issues of rationality and esthetics are seldom considered. And, examined closely our two functions frequently merge into one:

Can the designer make me feel the way I want and do it
in a technically appropriate manner?

In a society accustomed to making choices from column A and B, cutting edge design frequently lands the designer in a bread line. Few clients want to pay for billable time so a designer can explain their vision of a project. I’m reminded of a meeting between two young, but very accomplished, architects and a corporate executive and his wife. The architects were designing a new home for the couple to be constructed in a rather arid region of Northern California. The clients had recently returned from a vacation in France’s lush Loire Valley and were enraptured by the architecture of the chateau. The clients gave little thought to the fact that a transplanted chateau would be esthetically and practically out of place in California.

“Will it have a mansard roof,” the couple queried, after gazing at a set of drawings they were obviously ill prepared to read. “Will it have the ora of French Country?”

“It will have many of the elements of a French county home,” the frustrated architects responded, “a roof, walls and a floor.” Needless to say, the architects were thanked for their efforts and dismissed. Their vision of the executive home was not incorrect, it simply failed to coincide with that of the client. The executive and his wife had already made their selection from column A (French Country) and they lacked the esthetic sophistication to understand why that might not be the best choice.

Should the architects have been more diplomatic? Should they have attempted to explain their design and convince the client of the inappropriateness of their fantasy? I think not. I have never seen this strategy work well over time. Individual designers are ill equipped to correct the deficiencies of our education system and provide supplemental training in rational esthetics. The only way a designer can enjoy a financially rewarding career is to make a basic choice between:

1. providing exactly what the client dictates and doing it faster and cheaper than the competition or,
2. developing a unique body of work to which prospective clients can refer, “Give me a logo like the one you did for that hair stylist in Concord”. m

Option #1 has long been employed by a minority of designers who value personal relationships and enhanced compensation above any professional achievement. Option #2 seems to fly in the face of the long-held doctrine that every assignment must be evaluated on its merits and allowed to resolve itself in its own unique solution? But that’s not exactly true. What I am suggesting is that, in this brand-crazed society, each designer needs to establish their visual language from which they create solutions. This language must be distinctive and flexible, sufficiently broad-based to be commercially viable yet difficult (or embarrassing) to pirate.

To be honest, the basic premise of a design competition is that it will attract dozens, perhaps hundreds, of valid solutions to a given problem and allow the sponsor to choose the one that most closely coincides with their vision. By developing a tightly defined visual language we appeal to the client who has not yet envisioned the solution. They see our work in the market place or hanging on our wall and say, “yes, like that one, only different.” It allows them a sense of participation in the process without art directing it and it gives us the platform from which to evolve our own stylistic universe. I know, I know, by now there are shrieks of horror coming from the audience.

“You mean I’ll be trapped in one stylistic mode for the rest of my career?”

Well, no more than Cezanne or Picasso or Matisse were, and besides, it’s far better to be trapped in a stylistic mode than a bread-line. Perhaps Picasso was not the best example of an artist who’s mature work is highly identifiable from start to finish. Unlike most visual artists, his career encompassed several radical stylistic shifts. But the rule is only proven by the exception. Most visual artists spend a lifetime developing, refining and expanding a single vocabulary.

But this is a book about practical ideas, not esthetics. Here, we are concerned with ways to earn a living with our art, not its quality. It was easier for those of us who graduated from art school in the mid-twentieth century. We got an entry-level job at Macys or Young and Rubicon, became junior art directors, moved to California and started a design firm. From there we fought ruthlessly over the logo design project for every trendy restaurant and dot-com startup and ended our career teaching. That was a fine career path before the techies convinced everyone designers were redundant or before for-profit “art academies” sprung up in every village and hamlet, graduating class after class of designers, year after year.

Today’s designer is forced to become far more entrepreneurial. They must exert the same level of energy in the creation of personal opportunities as we exerted in the creation of our art. In short, they must be twice as creative as we were, just to earn a living. Therefore, this book is dedicated to helping the young designer or techie develop a strategy to replace the comfortable career path that no longer exists.

Traditionally, designers earned money in three ways:

1. They accepted a staff position which provided a salary plus benefits.
2. They accepted assignment projects for which they billed clients, either at an hourly rate or at an agreed flat fee. hardware necessary for desktop publishing
3. They created products that could be manufactured and sold by a marketing firm, thus generating a royalty payment to the designer.

These career types encouraged tremendous specialization within the general field of commercial art. Graphic designers weren’t expected to be able to draw. Illustrators never specified type and no one in their right mind considered picking up a camera, much less aiming it at a product. You called a photographer for that. Moreover, no one would have expected a commercial artist to write a concise English paragraph. You called a copy writer for that.

With the liberating digital revolution came a second and third wave with far reaching consequences for artists’ employment. They were task diversity and multitasking. In response to the economic downturn of the post dot-com era even the work-groups in major agency accounts shrank to a fraction of their former size. Suddenly designers were expected to be capable of far more than text manipulation. At the very least they had to be sufficiently conversant with Photoshop™ to fix the work of cut-rate photographers. To survive, independent freelance designers were forced to reach deeper into the pool of existing prospective clients, attracting prospects with smaller and smaller budgets. This meant not only adjusting rates downward but finding new and innovative ways to produce work. If a brochure had to go to press for under $1000.00 it was likely that not only would the designer shoot the photos, he would also be called upon to polish the copy. Naturally, this caused a painful transition for older, more highly focused practitioners. It called for a new renassaince-designer, one who felt unconstrained by the traditional boundaries of his discipline and wanted to realize a greater sense of authorship from each project.

To some degree, the growing importance of the internet during this period softened the blow to the overall job market. Still older designers were required to gain daunting new technical skills, or be left in the dust and much of the new web work was a replacement for traditional brochure and catalog assignments, not a net addition to the overall budget. Faced with falling rates, demand for greater skill competency and an overall contraction of the advertising industry, inventive designers, unwilling to sacrifice their standard of living, embarked on entrepreneurial exploits.

“If I’m going to be expected to become a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ to
land an assignment, I might as well become one for myself.
At least if I fail . . . it will be on my own terms.”

Was the cry heard around the board room at Y&R (and thousands of smaller agencies).

Yes, it’s still possible to land an entry level design job with a respectable ad shop or retailer. It’s just a lot harder than it’s ever been to flog your way through the legions of designers ahead of you to that art director’s office in the sky. The shear increase in the volume of graduating art schools students has assured that. As competition becomes more intense the designers who prosper are those willing to think outside the box.