Good Design Takes Time… and passion

To get the best out of design it’s essential to take time out from work to look at what you’ve done and make sure it all works together, I’m not a fan of the “get it in, get it designed and get it invoiced” approach to design, having worked in a professional print studio, I expect this to happen there.. not however in a top design agency. but I have witnessed half finished designs and rushed work being printed due to workload and being rushed by bosses who want it invoiced as soon as possible and you to get on to the next thing as soon as you can for a similar reason.

I like to take my time and consider what I have done an make sure that it’s exactly what my client needs rather than something thats what they are not going to need but get charged for anyway

I’m sure I’m not the only one to think this… bring back proper design!

What rate should you be paid?

funny, it seems most of the designers I know are on a smaller wage than the national regional average for their position… maybe this is down to inflation not catching up in the companies they work for, and simply not asking for regular pay rises. I’m not the best at asking for raises, but maybe I should press on and have punt and see what I can do!

I heard about this from Design Week’s website and the article comes with alot of stats which make interesting reading… see what you’re on and compare it to what they say you should be on!!

http://www.designweek.co.uk/Articles/137905/What+rate+should+you+be+paid.html

Speculative Work

I’ve always been a keen supporter of the movement that has gathered pace recently, which is making an concerted effort to try and get graphic designers to not do any speculative work. Having been caught before by a client who has no intention of paying anything or taking the design further and just wants fresh design concepts to give to their “own” designer to work up for them. Never trust a client who sends a brief along with initial the contact email and expects you to send an initial design with your quote… in all probability you’re never going to hear from him/her again after the design has been sent. Sad but true, this is a growing trend… I even know of a company from Ripley, Derbyshire (who I won’t name for reasons of not getting a punch to the chops) who place a small job ad in all the local papers and expect all applicants to produce an initial design for their catalogue prior to interview. Sounds pretty plausable, right? It did to my friend (a great designer) who went for the job, didn’t get it and was talking to another designer from the Derby area who knew the designer who actually worked their and said that they do it every year… just to get some fresh design concepts into the building, there never has been a job there in 7 years.

Anyways… if you’re interested in any more visit www.no-spec.com and give them a link from your site

Still awake at night

I don’t know what it is about design that makes me disregard my sleeping necessities and stay awake longer working on my designs. I can only assume that my passion for detail and design is taking over my brain and blocking out that basic human need. That said I’ve always been a night owl, even before I was bitten by the design bug all those years ago.

night night…

Freehand Vs Illustrator

This has been a sticking point for me over the last few years. From the early days of my Design life, both at university and during the initial years of my employed life I used Macromedia Freehand. I was trained on it and used it on a daily basis… and now it’s gone. I have made the transition to Illustrator fairly easily and although I can use it for most things that I used Freehand for I am always left thinking “I could do this with less fuss with Freehand”.

I had expected that over time Adobe would incorporate some of the more useful aspects of Freehand in Illustrator, the most obvious being the support for multiple page documents, which I find Illustrator sadly lacking in. With Freehand I could make a multiple page document and have each page a different size and have them all visible on the same canvas, so I could mock-up a design for a stationery set and see them all at the same time on the same canvas… not even Quark allows for this.

The advanced path tools were far superior in Freehand, and I fear the days of simply being able to paste an image, path or group inside another are long lost. I now have to contend with Illustrator’s unexpected results from making a clipping mask. Punching holes in filled shapes are now less of a formality and more of a game of roulette trying to guess whether Illustrator will actually do what you asked, or come up with it’s own interpretation of a Picasso masterpiece with unexpected extra paths added on!

Come on Adobe… smarten yourself up, you have the technology to make your industry leading software the top of the pile forever… and you have it sitting in a vault somewhere gathering dust.

I suspect I’m not the only one who keeps a copy of Freehand MX safely tucked away in my applications folder… for when Illustrator simply fails to make the grade.

Intellectual Property Rights for Designers

I’ve recently come accross this from Design Week about the sketchy debate regarding intellectual property in Design. Designers regard work that they’ve done for to be “their” intellectual property… whereas their clients feel that as they’ve paid for a design the intellectual property is theirs also. I’m not sure what I feel about this… certainly for me, a situation has not arisen as yet for me to have formed a concrete opinion on this. If you bought a Van Gogh painting, it would still be a Van Gogh and wouldn’t suddenly become a John Smith when sold to Mr Smith…

Anyway… the article is quoted below

“A new petition by Ralph Capper Interiors to extend the rights of designers will help their intellectual property rights to be taken seriously by Government, says lobbying group Anti Copying in Design.

Acid chief executive Dids Macdonald says that she thinks the petition, coming from an ‘independent grassroots’ level is an important step in addressing the disparity between design rights and those of other creative industries.

‘The innovation strategy released last week by the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills and various initiatives filtering through is really starting to put IP protection [for designers] at the top of the table. There is no better time for independent groups to show that this is a real problem,’ says Macdonald.

Earlier this month, the minister responsible for intellectual property, Baroness Morgan of Drefelin, spoke of the Government’s commitment to ‘safeguarding the intellectual property rights of those who make a living from their creativity, ensuring the long-term economic viability of our creative enterprises’.

‘There is no point in supporting the design industry unless there is a framework in place to protect against copying and infringement,’ she adds.

At present, it is legal to manufacture and supply copies of furniture in the UK, when the original design is more than 25-years-old. Unregistered design protection is available for just three years.

According to Acid, the furniture industry is the one of the most copied sectors in design.

Acid has long campaigned on behalf of designers and manufacturers to be afforded the same privileges as other rights’ holders, including authors and musicians.

The petition, organised by director of Ralph Capper Interiors Ben Capper, has so far attracted 105 signatories.

He says that original furniture designs, protected for 70 years after the death of the designer, as in Germany and Switzerland, would discourage immoral production facilities and plagiarism.

This would in turn, according to Capper, promote good quality, environmentally aware manufacturers and rightfully protect the royalties earned by designers.”

For further information, go to: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/CapperCopyright/

New Website and Blog

My new website is online now and I’m really happy with it. I think it’s a 100% improvement on the last version, which i loved at the time, but has sadly had its day. Also this is the 1st time since my world travels that I’ve had the chance to write a blog.