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Published October 28, 2008 by Rebecca Matheson

Design and the pitching process

cutbA small note to commemorate my first official branding/design work pitch. The sweet day of irony that began with a lecture on… you guessed it, pitching.

It went quite well, with some great discussion around my ideas, there was a small moment where someone thought that the brand vaguely resembled a penguin, but it passed. All around, it was an excellent learning experience, that has basically put legs on a heap of stuff that we’ve been talking about at uni. Nothing is official yet, but I am optimistic that it will progress to the next level.

For those who are less familiar with the world of design, there is this little thing (actually freaking huge, but they don’t tell you until it’s too late) when you do design that involves your momentary transformation into a sales guru, otherwise, you don’t get work or, at least don’t get good work. The realm of pitching is not exclusive to freelancing, it is rampant in the design industry… basically standard practice. Why I’d never thought about it until relatively recently, beats me… but work certainly can’t keep falling in your lap forever, eventually your friends run out of things for you to do.

I’ll take this moment to mention the slightly ginormous proposal I am working on for my Managing Design class. The subject is entirely composed of developing a concept based on Future Melbourne, managing a project, writing a proposal and pitching it at various stages through the semester. As a team effort, it’s surprisingly been (quite honestly) great fun, I am in a diverse but generally hard working group of 4 (myself included) and am enjoying being Team Leader. As person with the keenest writing skills I have also taken on the task of writing the increasingly lenghty document while the others do hard yards in further research and 3D modelling (We’re working with both Multimedia and Industrial Design students). My tutor has come excruciatingly close to convincing me to get excited about public speaking. It’s good to be able to step up and feel comfortable and natural leading while maintaining a level of ‘stretch’. Because there are Tuesdays where I sit in class not fully feeling the 100% get up and go.

Pitching requires confidence. It’s not the easiest of things having your ideas and work bandied around as you sit there, and I’ve barely even begun to experience it, but surely it brings a kind of integrity to the work and helps designers not to dance to their own irrelevant little tune and chase down the thousands of loose ends that do exist. I think design in teams is an incredibly useful thing to employ. 8 eyes see much more than 4 and have exponentially greater the number of ideas.

image source

Branding Design Uni

branding Design pitching the pitching process

Published October 18, 2008 by Rebecca Matheson

How to be a Graphic Designer without losing your soul

how to be a graphic designer without losing your soul“The biggest problem designers face is fear; fear of clients, fear of failure, fear of ideas. Our ability to overcome fear is perhaps the greatest skill we can acquire. Most bad design, most mediocre design, is a consequence of fear. Clients are frightened, designers are frightened; audiences are frightened. The modern world of commerce runs of fear: a marketplace terror that makes us timid and risk-averse. Most of us deal with fear by falling back on the familiar and the safe. but if we do this, we are not allowed to turn around and say our lives are dull. If we are going to avoid losing our souls, we have to overcome this fear.” – Adrian Shaughnessy (p.147)

I finally managed to get my hands on a library copy of this book and am already eternally grateful. Shaugnessy has written a brilliant book that talks about the Design industry through it’s pitfalls and triumphs, it is gloriously practical, interesting and well written. I am a fan.

This takes the shiny button for the ‘best’ of design books that I’ve read thus far, just ahead of tellmewhy by karlssonwilker. Very different, incredibly helpful. I even feel vaguely prepared, although I’m sure that’s naive.

On another note, I’ve been exploring illustration lately… in that I’ve been thinking about it rather a lot and am getting these small hits of inspired glee. I bought a CAP magazine on Illustration a little while back but I’m holding out until holidays, where those things that I “have” to do aren’t getting in the way.

My branding assignment for the school is FINALLY coming along. I need to meet up with them again to discuss through some of the concepts that I’ve come up with. Still battling to get a decent linear mark as the uni brief requries that we produce: a linear, solid, abstraction, postive/negative, pictogram.

Books Branding Design Uni

Books Design illustration Uni

Published October 15, 2008 by Rebecca Matheson

Blog Action Day – Intentions

Apparently I have to credit Geoff for this idea… because it is his, but as I am married to the man – I technically still own at least some of the IP (What?) so I’m going to write about it anyway.

My attitude to Blog Action Day is somewhat like my attitude toward poverty. In that I really would like to do something about it, but life gets in the way. It’s a crap excuse. As it currently stands, it is nearly 11pm and I have to finish this post, print out stuff for uni for an 8:30am class as well as fix up a cover letter, while still wanting to watch an episode of the West Wing before bed. My grand scheme of thoroughly researching and writing up about Design related approaches to poverty has fallen in a heap, and I am here with a lot of good intentions but not a lot of practical outcomes.

It saddens me that the most obvious, in your face experiences of poverty (at least as a western, middle class, train rider) when asked for money come first with a knee jerk reaction followed quickly, but not quickly enough by the guilt to do something about it when it’s already too late, the moment has passed.

We are not proactive about poverty and often do not have the right mindset about it even when our intentions are good.

This is my confession.

And here is as far as I got with my design/poverty based research (I would love to know of more):

  • LOVE – Lens of Vision and Expression
  • Visionary Images

Blogging Design Social Justice

apathy blog action day busyness Design poverty

Published September 29, 2008 by Rebecca Matheson

Ability Scrutiny

I am interested to hear on designers on this one – if any do read this. About pressure relating to ability in the realm of design. There is a lot of work showcased out there (leaning heavily towards illustration) and it sometimes get a little overwhelming because there are individuals out there with freakish talent.

As a design student who struggles with illustration specifically what are great ways to explore other mediums when your drawing hand isn’t so strong? AND what are great ways to explore illustration when you’re low on time.

I will, when time permits explore a class or short course in illustration because it is a skill I want and need to improve.

Design Life

ability communication design Design illustration questions

Published July 1, 2008 by Rebecca Matheson

Blog theme from scratch

24959x-086aI have this shocking habit of going and starting interesting things at very inconvenient times.

The other evening I began work on a new blog design/site design, in order to incorporate or in more realistic terms, mash the whole lot into something cohesive.

It currently looks very, very different to anything I have had up before. Yes I like it.

But wait! There’s a catch, at the moment my pretty little design sits in all it’s html and css glory and I have this ugly obsession with this marvellous WordPress thing. So until I figure out how to make it all work as a blog (and when I do, I can squash the world between two pinkies whenever I like, because this will give me great power, truly it’s exciting!) please sit tight.

I have to go overseas first, finish and improve a certain photographer’s website, hope and pray that my ‘design contact’ calls me some time that’s more convenient and wait for the sordid remains of my university marks for the semester – which could at worst throw me into a pit of despair and I mightn’t show my face for months.

Meanwhile, any resources you surely-able technologically minded people have in relation to scrubbing up a wordpress theme FROM SCRATCH would be greatly appreciated. I do have some idea what I’m doing but anything helps.

*Apologies for the boring title, this is my ploy to lure useful people from the depths of the internet. Alternatively I would’ve gone for something more like, “We’d change with the season, if it didn’t take so much work”. And that would just be silliness going beyond reason.

**There is a clue here. Unless I change my mind.

Blogging Design Experiments

Blogging Design I my how exciting prettifying is not a word

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