How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul, 2nd Edition

Adrian Shaughnessy

• Publisher: Laurence King Publishing
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781780677651
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Grafikdesign

Graphic designers constantly complain that there is no career manual to guide them through the profession. Adrian Shaughnessy draws on a wealth of experience to provide just such a handbook. Aimed at the independent-minded, it addresses the concerns of young designers who want to earn a living by doing expressive and meaningful work and avoid becoming a hired drone working on soulless projects. It offers straight-talking advice on how to establish your design career and suggestions - that you won't have been taught at college - for running a successful business. This revised edition contains all-new chapters covering professional skills; design thinking; and global trends, including social responsibility, ethics and the rise of digital culture. Also included are interviews with leading designers: Jonathan Barnbrook, Sara De Bondt, Stephen Doyle, Ben Drury, Paul Sahre, Dmitri Siegel, Sophie Thomas and Magnus Voll Mathiassen.

Chapter 1

Attributes needed by the modern designer Cultural awareness / communication / integrity
A discussion about the key attributes required by the contemporary graphic designer. Or how to prevent your work being mangled by irate clients.

What are the essential qualities needed to be a graphic designer? There was a time when all we needed to earn a living and call ourselves a designer was talent and mastery of a few craft skills. Today we need more. The modern designer needs to be a diplomat, a business thinker, a researcher, an aesthete, an ethicist, an innovator – in fact, a polymath. And yet, it seems to me that all the necessary qualities to be a designer can be boiled down to three essential attributes that we need to combine with talent and craft skills: cultural awareness, communication skills and integrity. They may sound grandiose and intimidating but, as we shall see, they are really everyday qualities that many designers possess naturally, and that others acquire over time, through hard work and dedication.

Cultural awareness

There are thousands of definitions of graphic design. Here’s one that really hits a vein, by the American designer and writer Jessica Helfand: ‘Graphic design is a visual language uniting harmony and balance, colour and light, scale and tension, form and content. But it is also an idiomatic language, a language of cues and puns and symbols and allusions, of cultural references and perceptual inferences that challenge both the intellect and the eye.’1

Helfand’s first sentence is a conventional summary of graphic design; few would argue with it. But her next sentence is a blockbuster. It alludes to design’s power to evoke emotion and generate an intellectual response. Cues, puns, symbols, allusions, cultural references and perceptual inferences are the essential elements that give authority and resonance to visual design work. The only way we can introduce these qualities into our work is by taking a tireless interest in everything that goes on around us. In other words, we must develop an insatiable curiosity about areas other than graphic design – politics, entertainment, business, technology, art, ten-pin bowling and mud wrestling.

Hang on. Cultural awareness? Surely this is just old-fashioned research? Surely every designer knows that when we start a new project we have to do some mental (or actual) legwork and mug up on the subject. This is true; research is a vital part of being a designer. I once turned up for a meeting with some people from an art gallery who were looking for a new design company. Arrogantly, I didn’t do any research. I relied on a shaky notion of who I thought my potential client was, when in fact, I’d mixed them up with another gallery. My mistake was exposed and I got a frosty response. Needless to say, I didn’t get the gig.

By cultural awareness I mean something deeper and more wide-ranging than research. When the British writer Iain Sinclair was asked if he did research for his books, he replied that his whole life was research. I can’t think of a better motto for the modern graphic designer. Without constantly scanning, scrutinizing and absorbing everything that goes on around us, we can’t hope to become successful and effective designers.

The graphic designer and typographer Erik Spiekermann has employed dozens – perhaps hundreds – of designers in his career. In an interview I asked him what he looked for in a candidate:

‘…they have to have general knowledge. I hate people who don’t read. I hate people who don’t cook, or don’t know anything about music. I couldn’t work with anyone who only goes to McDonalds. I want people who know movies, who know music, who read books. As you know, not all graphic designers are “multi-dimensional”. They don’t read, they don’t do anything else, and I couldn’t work with those people. I need team people who have general knowledge because that’s what we do…’2

I once read that safe-crackers rubbed the tips of their fingers with sandpaper to increase tactile sensitivity. It makes them ultra-sensitive and enables them to feel the nuances of the lock’s mechanism as they rotate the dial in search of the magic combination that will open the safe. It’s the same with graphic design: we need to find ways to make us more sensitive to the world around us.

Designers sometimes imagine that the world revolves around graphic design. And when we are working fourteen-hour days and thinking about design problems from the moment we wake till the moment we go to sleep, it’s hard to remember that there are other things in the world besides typefaces, colours and paper stocks. But the best designers are always characterized by an interest in life beyond their subject; design is their main concern, and it provides them with a consuming and stimulating career, but it doesn’t eclipse other interests.3

Non-designers often accuse graphic designers of being nerds who are only interested in ourselves and our work. This is a pretty damning appraisal, since the single most important thing a designer can do when discussing a project with a new or potential client is to demonstrate understanding of the subject under discussion and show knowledge of the way the world works and the way people think and act. The designer who shows only signs of self-absorption and narrow focus is not going to inspire his or her client.

However, many designers use encounters with clients as opportunities to talk about themselves and boast about their skills and achievements. These are often the same designers who complain that their work is frequently rejected or that they are never allowed to ‘do what they want to do’. This is hardly surprising. They are guilty of the worst crime a graphic designer can commit: they are revealing themselves to be self-centred and to have a limited outlook. For the ambitious designer, this is fatal. To counter this understandable instinct for self-promotion I have a rule when meeting clients: I never talk about myself until they ask me to. Instead, I let them talk, I ask them questions about their business, and I allow them to have centre-stage. Then, a little bit of magic occurs; they (usually) turn to me and say – OK, tell me about you.

Of course, there’s a paradox here: to be good designers we have to be utterly dedicated to our chosen career, yet our dedication is often mistaken by clients as self-centred obsessiveness and makes them think we are unreceptive towards their needs. However, if we can talk about the project at hand; if we can show that we understand the cultural or business context into which their project fits; and if we can listen instead of prattling on about ourselves, we will find our clients more receptive to our ideas and willing to take us seriously. It’s another paradox, but the less we make a client/designer relationship about ourselves the more it will tip in our favour.

Communication

As well as keeping our surveillance cameras pointed at the world beyond graphic design, the modern designer needs to be a skilled communicator. This doesn’t mean making eloquent speeches at design conferences, or delivering blockbuster presentations to boardrooms full of marketing executives. What we’re discussing here is the ability to speak about our work to clients and non-designers in a coherent, convincing and objective way without resorting to the language and idioms that we might use when talking to other designers. And since communication is a two-way street, it is also about listening. An inability to listen is a serious handicap for a designer – it’s like trying to sprint while wearing full scuba-diving kit.

But why this emphasis on talking about our work? Surely the point of graphic design is that it speaks for itself? Well, it’s true that graphic communication is required to function without the benefit of written or spoken commentaries describing the designer’s intentions: we can’t stand in the street beside a poster we’ve designed and draw the attention of passers-by to our subtle use of Akzidenz Grotesk, with its mute evocation of Modernist rationality and truthfulness. Yet there never was a client who didn’t demand to know why we’ve done what we’ve shown them. If we can’t explain our decisions in a convincing and objective way, we risk rejection and failure. As Norman Potter notes in his seminal text What is a Designer: ‘This aspect of design work is frequently underestimated: an ability to use words clearly, pointedly, and persuasively is at all times relevant to design work.’4

Persuading clients that our ideas are good, and that their money is being spent wisely, requires carefully formulated arguments combined with lots of stamina and determination. But for many designers, this requirement is a source of lip-chewing frustration. All good designers focus their efforts on their target audience, yet are compelled to spend almost as much time and energy persuading clients to back their ideas. This is one of the inescapable facts of life for the modern graphic designer: we always have gatekeepers (clients) standing between us and our intended audiences (end-users, or human beings as I prefer to call them).

This is why the way in which we present our ideas is as important as the ideas themselves. When a good idea is rejected, it’s often the presentation of that idea that is being rejected, not the idea itself. So far I’ve talked a great deal about clients. But really I’m talking about anyone who we have to make presentations to. And no matter where we find ourselves in the graphic design landscape, we always have to make presentations. Designers who work in corporations or small businesses often report to non-designers; junior designers in design studios are required to present work to creative directors, team leaders or senior designers. These people are ‘clients’, and how we treat them determines how they treat our work. For the ambitious designer, being good at presenting work is as important as having a head for heights for a high-wire walker.

However, considering the importance of presenting our work, it’s surprising to discover that we designers are often not much good at it. In Chapter 2 I discuss the finer points of making a presentation (think of it as the graphic designer’s equivalent of the Japanese tea ceremony), but for now I’ll just make the point that knowing how to talk about our work, how to explain it, and how to present it, is fundamental to becoming a well-rounded designer.

To help young designers develop the verbal skills they need to talk about their work I sometimes ask them not to show me what they’ve done but to describe the work instead. I do this to encourage them to talk about their work with objectivity and passion. I know experienced designers who can persuade clients to sign off complex (and expensive) projects purely on their ability to talk compellingly about their ideas. I’ve also seen resourceful designers rescue disastrous presentations by coming up with instant ideas and describing them in vivid and simple language. I don’t recommend verbal presentations as an alternative to showing mock-ups; clients always want to see what they are buying. But the ability to describe our ideas is an essential component of any presentation. Any designer who thinks it’s enough to throw work on the table and say nothing will soon be stacking shelves in the local supermarket rather than designing the packaging that sits on those shelves.

As I’ve already mentioned, communication is a two-way street. This means that no matter how good we are at talking about our work, we must also remember to listen. The reason for this would become instantly clear to any designer nimble enough to climb inside the heads of one of their clients: they’d discover someone fretting about spending money on something that he or she can’t see or touch. Think of it like this: imagine going into a chic furniture store and telling the sales assistant that you’d like to buy a sofa. ‘Sure,’ she says, ‘we’ve got lots of wonderful sofas. I can sell you one – but I can’t let you see it.’ If this happened you’d walk out and go to a furniture shop where you could see what you were buying; at the very least, you’d want to check the colour and sink yourself into the upholstery. Yet when clients buy design, especially from a new and untried graphic designer, they don’t know what they are buying until it is delivered. This aspect of design leads to more unhappiness and failed projects than any other factor in the relationships between designers and their clients. But by listening intently and identifying the factors that worry our clients, we can help to make the commissioning process, the presentation process and the creative process far less of a gamble for our clients.

Before we go much further, I need to say here that I’m assuming that the readers of this book are designers who have a point of view – or, to put it another way, designers who don’t see themselves as doormats. Doormat designers are people who take the view that design is about giving clients exactly what they want. There is nothing wrong with this; there is plenty of work for anyone who gives their clients whatever they want with no arguments, no questioning of briefs and no rocking of the boat. But, for designers who want to produce work that has depth and resonance, being a doormat designer isn’t an option. So, assuming that I’m talking to designers with a viewpoint, and assuming that I’m talking to designers who want to find a way of expressing their viewpoints, we arrive at the most important aspect of communication between designer and client: clients will take our opinions seriously only if we give their opinions the same value. In other words, there has to be a balance of interests. All great work comes about when viewpoints are balanced; when both client and designer feel that they are being listened to and that their views are respected. When we find that point of balance in a relationship, we hit gold.

This brings us to the central conundrum at the heart of graphic design: the conflict between inner conviction and the need for external rationality. What does this mean? It means that we become graphic designers because we discover that we have an aptitude and a compulsion for what Jessica Helfand calls ‘uniting harmony and balance, colour and light, scale and tension, form and content.’ To complicate the matter still further, we also discover that we have something called creative intuition, for which we can’t always offer a rational explanation, but which is nevertheless a tangible and vital part of our life as a creative producer. In practice, this means that we use fonts, colours, layouts and imagery because of an inner aesthetic conviction – and when you think about it, it would be an odd designer who used elements that he or she didn’t like. Even when designers are being totally subservient to the brief, they still use styles and modes of expression that they are personally convinced are right. And here’s where the conundrum kicks in: we have to learn to present these ‘inner convictions’, these ‘intuitions’ as rational and objective.

The designer Rudy VanderLans identified this problem when he wrote: ‘You have to listen very carefully to what the client wants and be careful not to approach the project with a preconceived idea of what it should look like. In my own experience, too often I approached a design job wanting to use a certain font or a particular typographic mannerism, simply because it’s what I felt comfortable with at the time. But that wasn’t always what the client wanted.’

This is a hot potato for all designers – even for the most pragmatic and service-minded. Few clients will accept the argument ‘I’ve done it like this because I like it’, yet this is often what we’ve done. But if we want to see our ideas come to fruition, we have to dress them up in the objective language that clients understand. It’s a subject that the designer Michael Bierut has dealt with in an influential blog post on Design Observer called ‘On (Design) Bullshit’. He wrote: ‘It follows that every design presentation is inevitably, at least in part, an exercise in bullshit. The design process always combines the pursuit of functional goals with countless intuitive, even irrational decisions. The functional requirements – the house needs a bathroom, the headlines have to be legible, the toothbrush has to fit in your mouth – are concrete and often measurable. The intuitive decisions, on the other hand, are more or less beyond honest explanation. These might be: I just like to set my headlines in Bodoni, or I just like to make my products blobby, or I just like to cover my buildings in gridded white porcelain panels. In discussing design work with their clients, designers are direct about the functional parts of their solutions and obfuscate like mad about the intuitive parts, having learned early on that telling the simple truth – “I don't know, I just like it that way” – simply won’t do.’

In lectures and talks when I’ve discussed the subject of disguising or obfuscating personal convictions and intuition, I’ve been accused of promoting hypocrisy and dishonesty. The charge sticks. I’d like not to have to put a spin on what I do, and my aim in all client relationships is to quickly get to a point where it is possible to be frank with them, and in turn, for them to give honest appraisals and reactions. But until that point is reached – the point of balance that I mentioned earlier – we have to indulge in a ritual dance that everyone knows is bullshit, but that few of us feel able to dispense with. To me, the role of bullshit in design is a bit like good manners in daily life: if we always say what we think, we end up offending everyone we come into contact with. Instead, we develop codes by which we allow each other to co-exist without the need to punch each other at every utterance.

A last word on communication: our clients are not the only people we have to communicate with effectively. If we have designers as partners, or if we employ designers, we have to be able to communicate with them in such a way that they feel inspired and encouraged. We also have to be able to talk to suppliers and collaborators, not to mention IT people, bank managers, tax officials and window cleaners.

Integrity

After extolling the virtues of bullshit, it seems strange to now extol the virtues of integrity. So what does integrity mean in design? Does it mean being true to ourselves and standing up for what we believe in? Does it mean behaving professionally at all times towards our clients? Or is it about doing the best we can on behalf of our intended audience? Well, it means all of these things. Yet there’s no denying that preserving our integrity in the remorseless climate of modern business is not easy. Integrity often becomes a bargaining chip. We give it away in return for a job that comes with a lot of cash, or we hang onto it in order to do the work we want to do, often for little or no money. It is tough to retain integrity and make a living. But it’s not impossible.

As designers, we are free to conduct ourselves in any way we want. Specific offences such as copyright infringement and software theft are punishable in law, but unlike lawyers and estate agents, designers don’t have codes of conduct, and we are as free as the marketplace allows us to be.

I’ve always relished this freedom, but in recent years I’ve come to question it. I now hold the view that designers, and design itself, would benefit from an ethical code. This is not just my view; I see a hunger for ethical guidelines expressed in design blogs and by the rise of interest in design with a social focus. I also see it in the students I talk to who are keen to do work with an ethical focus. I’ve also noticed that, as a general rule, desi...