Creative Strategy and the Business of Design

by Douglas Davis

  I should have simply said no.

  There are two morals to this story.

  Listen to yourself when there is internal hesitation because it is best to avoid some situations altogether. And if you are sixty-four-e-mails-for-clarification clear, and still have a miscommunication, then

  No has to mean no, even when you’re telling it to yourself.

  Different Kinds of Noes

  Why is saying no so difficult for designers and creative folk? I don’t have the answer, but it just is. Knowing that, it is important to develop the discernment to know both:

  When to give no for an answer and

  When no is not the final answer.

  N-OOOH: WHEN TO GIVE NO FOR A FINAL ANSWER

  As the previous story illustrates, saying no protects us from the projects that we obviously should avoid. No one can always do everything. Nor should they. And that goes for some jobs that would be more of a time suck than an enjoyable experience. I’ve worked under crazy, screaming creative directors and needed to raise my voice when telling them that this was my last day. Whether it is an unreasonable request from a client, the freelance project where they want something for nothing, or telling it to yourself so that you don’t get sucked into it again: say no sometimes. It’s for your own good.

  YOU GONNA JUST TAKE THAT?: WHEN NO ISN’T THE FINAL ANSWER

  Knowing when no isn’t the final answer can be just as difficult to figure out. This is especially important for those still in design school or fresh out, trying to make it happen. I remember deciding that I was going to intern at the Smithsonian Institution after my freshman year at Hampton. I found an internship there and I applied in March, well before the May deadline, and waited patiently. After the semester ended in May without any word from Washington D.C., I called to follow up on my application. I was confused when I heard, “Sorry, you weren’t selected for the program” on the other line because I had already decided that I was going to work there this summer.

  So I went to D.C. anyway.

  After a month of visiting the museums and looking for internships, I had two jobs within the Smithsonian better than the one I was looking at originally. One was a graphic design internship with the National Museum of American History, where I also shot and developed my own photos.

  This is the first time I learned to set my mind and go get it. Hiding behind a computer in the comfort of your own home won’t work most times, especially if the person you are e-mailing came from the old school. If the answer is no, sometimes you’ll need to think through how you’ll ask again to get to yes.

  FORGET RIGHT AND WRONG

  This is hard to do but important because though everything ain’t for everybody, there is something just right for everyone. As a creative person, you have to figure out the right approach for the right people. With primary and secondary research, quantitative analysis, and deep knowledge of your target, there’s only what’s viable and not viable. Remember this when pitching to a client, or selling an idea internally—there is no right answer, just your right answer and why you think it’s right. Be sure to base your conclusions on insights because everyone has an opinion but they will pay for your analysis.

  The 3 C’s: Learning the Wrong Lessons

  Grades don’t matter in what we do. See, here’s mine.

  No, these are not my undergraduate grades (what undergrad design student who smoked, drank, and partied didn’t make vast numbers of C’s?). No, these reflect the best I could do as a serious adult, and I’m sharing them in order to prove this point. No one in the field has ever asked to see my grades or the three beautifully framed degrees that came as a result of these letters. Not once. Because they weren’t the point of going to school. What employers and clients always want to see are the results of your education: What I can do. The way I think. My work. The experimentation and confidence that came from the hours of time I threw at problems to develop my work ethic. This is where I excelled, and no letter could represent the value of that. This is what levels the playing field and this is what you sell to employers who want to buy it from you outright by hiring you, or rent it from you through freelance jobs. It’s the same for you.

  So you went to the design program at the school without the name. Who cares? How’s the work? Can you place your portfolio next to the people who did go to design school and blend in? In a profession where they’ll hire the dog if his portfolio is better than yours, you’ll probably want to start focusing on the quality of your ideas and not where you went to school. The reason you walked onto campus should be about the learning, not the letters.

  Turning Words Into Inspiration

  Remember, what people are buying is your judgment, discernment, and foresight. This intangible ability is a competency to solve problems. So when dealing with common fears, remember:

  Everyone faces fears in his or her career. Those who succeed have learned to overcome those fears with knowledge, practice, and confidence.

  It’s not where you went to school or what grades you got that’s important, it’s what you learned and whether you can apply it to real-world business problems.

  Learn to say no when it makes sense. Don’t let yourself get dragged into jobs that are dead from the word Go.

  On the other hand, know when “no” means “just try harder.” Rejection happens to everyone. It doesn’t define you unless you let it. Use the experience as a stepping stone on the way to something else. #getit

  15 Portfolios Are Like Cartons of Milk

  Word Problems from Relevant Practitioners

  During my time at NYU, I honed the skill of articulating my ideas as a creative strategist. This has been a great asset in giving clearer direction to my creative teams and students, and as a result has helped me find an audience beyond the classroom. That’s where my request to the design community of HOW Design Live attendees, my former students, and design greats comes in. I asked them to give an assignment representative of the problems they solve for their clients every day. The result is this chapter of relevant problems from relevant professionals, which with your application of the principles from this book should produce relevant portfolio pieces.

  I want to say thank you to each of my collaborators from around the world, and say that I’m humbled at how giving you are, despite your busy schedules. You are the reason that many reading this book will be inspired to create a differentiated body of new work to achieve their goals, and this is especially important to those who are not located in a major city with a design community. On behalf of all those who will read your words, and be inspired to push past what they’ve done previously, thank you, thank you, thank you.

  Freshen Up Your Book

  This chapter could prove valuable beyond measure to your career. Now that you have acquired new information, there’s a new problem: showcasing the new skills in your portfolio. No matter where you went to school, the quality of your ideas will level the playing field. Sounds easy enough, but most of us can’t afford to quit our current jobs to focus exclusively on developing the portfolio needed to land a better position. Add the fact that job listings these days are written in such a way that they want to see a certain level of experience before trusting you with the position or project. But then how will you gain the needed experience if you don’t get the position or project? To top it all off, even if you have a great book now, as fast as things change it may not be that great in six months. Portfolios are like cartons of milk; they have expiration dates. These problems are all too familiar to creatives and can make us feel trapped if not exhausted. If you’ve experienced any of this, I’ve got just the solution: fourteen more problems.

  This collection of problems is designed to help you reapply your new skillset in the presentation of your work. This compilation of creative assignments—word problems—from creative professionals mirrors recent requests their clients have asked them to respond to.

  Emely Perez is a designer and illustrator currently at J. Walter Thompson New
York. Emely has won an ANDY’s Bronze in branded content and her portfolio includes branding and identity for the 4A’s Multicultural Advertising Intern Program (MAIP) and poster, game design, and illustration for the One Show awards.

  ASSIGNMENT: Find an established brand that has been around for years but that has lost relevance among its audience. Construct a brand analysis to figure out what caused this turn of events and develop an action plan to counter these brand flaws. Create a comprehensive presentation that would walk the clients through your analysis, findings, and proposed solutions.

  Sacramento-based brand enthusiast Chemene Phillips is a graphic designer, strategist, creative director, owner, customer, and soccer mom. Armed with a business degree, a background in IT, and a flair for design and marketing, it only seemed natural to combine the three. She takes a unique approach to her projects, ensuring the right combination of long-term business strategy, applicable technology, and effective design techniques.

  ASSIGNMENT: Complete Rebrand and Visual Identity For Construction Industry. Company Name: Sage Construction. This includes a new logo, brand guidelines, tagline, positioning statements, printed and digital stationery (including PowerPoint template, Excel bid sheets, Word stationery, etc.), website design and development, copywriting, social media page presence and design, and business folder (print and digital versions).

  The Brief: The logo has to function in single color, two-color, or grayscale across multiple channels in both large- and small-scale formats. This includes print items, digital items, large heavy construction equipment, hardhats, and work shirts. Its identity stands out from its competitors, and it should be memorable, impactful, clean, highly professional, and immediately recognizable. It can include a simple icon, but the typography must make a bold interpretation of the name. The target audience is age 25–75 and includes developers, project managers, property managers, land owners, general contractors, and public workers. The company should be positioned as a reliable resource that’s been around for a long time for heavy construction needs.

  Nick Matarese is the president and creative director of The Barn, a creative branding agency fully entrenched in the sports world. The Barn strives to create something Nick has dubbed a “franchise brand” for a professional sports team. His past clients include Disney, Adidas, Adobe, the AFL, Brute Wrestling, and several minor league sports teams.

  ASSIGNMENT: Create a brand that not only shows the characteristics and personality of the business, but makes a personal connection with the city or community.

  A sports team fails without a fan base. To create a true brand that will stand the test of time in the sports world, it not only has to represent the team, but should make the community feel like they are represented as well. You’ll have to do your research for defining elements of the town or area and then combine those attributes with the mascot or marks of the team. For example, the Nashville Predators are loaded with local cultural influences: The name and logo reference a saber-toothed tiger, an animal whose fossils were found literally under the building where the team now plays. The secondary mark on their shoulder both has the stars from the Tennessee state flag and is in the shape of a guitar pick to reference the city’s roots in music. Not only does the secondary logo represent the city’s heritage in music, but guitar strings are inside the player’s numbers and there is even a piano key design inside the neck of the uniforms. A great sports brand makes the everyday fan like the logo, and someone who understands the local references love the logo.

  Jacob Cass is a prolific graphic designer who runs the popular design blog Just Creative, which doubles as his graphic design and branding firm. Jacob’s clients include the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Disney, Nintendo, and Powerade, and his award-winning work has been recognized worldwide; he was even declared the “top graphic designer in NYC” by the New York Post. He has a strong personal following on social media and his resourceful websites have been viewed more than 3.5 billion times.

  ASSIGNMENT: Create a new logo + poster campaign for a NYC Broadway play. A new play is coming out on Broadway by the name of Double Sided. It’s a tale of love and romance between a couple with the core message being that there are two sides to any story. Think of a rose . . . it’s beautiful, but it also has thorns to harm you. Or a double-edged sword. Your assignment is to create a poster series that communicates these core messages. The poster should feature a logo/logotype for the words Double Sided and an instantly recognizable image that can be used for all of the play’s marketing. Think of The Lion King’s theatre poster: it has the large iconic lion image as the instantly recognizable image, and then the complementary type treatment for the words “The Lion King.” Can you ace the king?

  Intan Trenggana is an award-winning art director, currently working at a multinational healthcare ad agency. She graduated from CUNY’s City Tech in 2010 and is expecting her MS in Integrated Marketing from NYU in 2016. Her brilliant design chops have taken her through a multitude of projects in various mediums—print, digital, even video games.

  ASSIGNMENT: Growing up (professionally) in a pharma agency, I handle a lot of uber-niche medications—products that only affect one millionth of the mass population. That means that not a lot of people are aware of these products, much less what they treat. Pick a social issue—any social issue, doesn’t have to be an illness. Your task is to build an awareness campaign around it. Social issues and illnesses you might want to consider:

  Transgender stigma

  Income inequality

  Hemophilia

  Alzheimer’s

  Look into your own cultural background: are there any taboos/preconceptions you don’t find in your larger social surroundings? E.g., in Egypt, men don’t reveal their mother’s name for fear of being ridiculed. The act is considered taboo and has become a deeply ingrained part of their culture.

  Short Brief: Budget is limited. Social awareness campaigns are usually backed by nonprofit organizations, which by nature don’t churn out a crazy amount of money. So, consider your media mix carefully and have strong reasoning behind why you decide on those media.

  The campaign has to be integrated. Be innovative both in your messaging and media choices. Consider your audience—how to best approach them? Is there an opportunity for sponsorships with other brands to help further the message?

  Michelle Muhammad is a Chicago-based designer, educator, maker, thinker, writer, and critic. Michelle is dedicated to using all of her God-given creative abilities to collaborate with businesses, nonprofits, educators, and individuals to help them design ways to achieve their goals.

  ASSIGNMENT: My client works directly with at-risk, inner city youth in public schools across the country. Together we collaborate on designing curricula that teach social and emotional behavior skills, which help students cope with life issues while improving academically. During a recent conversation, he asked me the following questions: “How do we compete with the messages in images that surround our students? Can we still teach young people that ‘decent living’ or ‘doing the right thing’ is the best path to success when the images they see, and are most attracted to, tell a different story?” These days, people become paid celebrities overnight by degrading themselves in various media: The biggest fool becomes the greatest success. Impressionable young people perceive “celebrity” as an easier path to a fulfilling life. Students often approach my client with dreams of being the next big “star,” rather than with strategies for pursuing a good education.

  Brief: Find a local nonprofit that is grappling with a social issue that you care about and develop a counter-cultural ad campaign for an at-risk teen audience aged 13–17 addressing that issue. It could be a childhood obesity, sexual identity, or violence issue but it must resonate with the target and have a call to action that sends them to an engaging digital experience that offers an alternative. Aim to get the target audience to share the link for the experience with other at-risk youth. Success would be finding a headline or tagline an
d a hashtag that these youths could get behind. The challenge is that your campaign message must have the same power to attract this group’s attention and must be delivered in the channels they pay attention to.

  Fabiola Veronica is a Sao Paulo–based creative director who specializes in all aspects of design. Her experience allows her to develop creative solutions for print, digital, and interactive marketing campaigns. In addition to her technical skills, Fabiola applies conceptual thinking and digital strategy, allowing her to present a broader platform of solutions for clients.

  ASSIGNMENT: Create a launch campaign for an established brand of your choice looking to enter the South American market with a new service. Think Ralph Lauren, Bloomingdale’s, or Rent the Runway goes to Brazil. The service is a virtual personal stylist and it is still very foreign to many in the region, so as a result it has an air of exclusivity. Most think that it could only be affordable to the “rich and famous.” How would you use or change this label? Either way, it is your job to create a digital strategy to make this a success. You’ll be judged on how you would create a market for this service through awareness and presenting the features and benefits. What channels and phases can you design to make this service sustainable? What social media tools or platforms would you use to engage in conversation with potential new users in this new market? How would you use events, promotional items, and partnerships to increase the exposure of this brand? Lastly, how would you measure each channel and tactic to gauge the efficacy of the campaign? The metrics you’ll need to measure are number of followers, amount of traffic, and new subscribers to the new service.