Very clever redirection on content. Disgruntled because content I had earmarked to view again wasn’t there? – The opposite – divert my attention into humour – I was almost suckered into thinking the brand (Holden maybe) was advertising specifically on 404 errors. Great stuff CarSales.
It’s important to design things you love. Working with ideas and concepts that inspire you is what makes designing fun and that’s the best part about this job, it can be really fun. Design tutors often use this technique to get students thinking and engaged in the wonderful world of design…
When showing your portfolio to a potential employer however, it’s important to show diversity so often it’s these pieces that will bring your work down. They stand out in a portfolio like a beacon – so much so that we’ve coined the phenomenon the ‘The CD Cover No-No’.
As a designer, being creative is only half the challenge. Being creative within the confines of a client’s brief can often be what takes a real stretch of the imagination and this is what we don’t get to see in the example cover art you’ve mocked up for your favorite band. Work like this makes up a very small part of the workload too and is more often than not shopped out to illustrators or artists so instead of showing us how creative you are without constraint, show us how you bring that passion to other things.
Just because you don’t have real clients doesn’t mean you can’t create real briefs. What does your Uncle Frank do? Own a garage. Does your next door neighbor still run a health and fitness business from home? Yes. These are your clients. Create your own brief from here and start designing around it.
Develop Uncle Frank a ripper logo, create some indicative stationery or maybe what his imaginary service car could look like. For your neighbor’s fitness business mock up some brochures, a web splash page or even some social media design. Yes, this is imaginary work but I guarantee it will better show your understanding of what’s involved in being a designer and go a long way towards you actually selling your skills and abilities to prospective employers.
So get rid of the cover art you did for your mate’s MySpace band page. It’s a definite folio no-no. Instead, show work that highlights your ability to come up with inspired and creative ideas no matter what the job. If you can make a family garage or backyard fitness business look just as interesting as your favorite indie band, then you can probably make someone else think so too – and that’s what makes a designer.
I recently saw a tattoo emblazoned across a bare chest that read ‘Each too their own.’ In ink. PERMANENTLY.
The obvious solution to this is to wear a shirt at all times. Some grammatical disasters are however less easily fixed or covered up.
If you’re a writer, or in any line of work where you get published (and I mean anywhere – emails, social media, web content, corporate literature, ads… employees of the world, ahoy), then that extra ‘o’ is a blunder almost tooo big to fathom.
Overlook a typo on your corporate website and all of a sudden your business is more whiner than winner and expat than expert. It’s a problem.
This is bad and not just because it looks like you didn’t pass primary school English. All of a sudden your carefully thought out work looks hurried and uncared for. Best case – you just look dumb.
The other major problem with mistakes like these is permanence. It might not be inked on but a typo on a towering billboard is as good as. Consider every eye that sees it adds a month to its longevity in the public mind, and published media gone viral tends to adopt an indeterminate lifespan of its own.
Also, internet content is permanent so mistakes published online are too. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother deleting them. You should. At speed. If you’re lucky, your copy errors don’t get too many hits before you get to them, because they are metaphorical blemishes on the rosy face of your business. And they scar.
Consider, if it’s in the ether it’s there forever.
Prevention is better than treatment, so before you publish, send or print ANYTHING that can be cached, stored, copied or forwarded, check it says what you think it does. Then do it again for good measure.
Of course typos and editorial disasters happen to all of us and mistakes often prompt the quickest learning curves, but one bad one should be enough to ensure you never have another.
Make mistakes, learn from them, then never make the same ones again. (Instead, make different ones. Jam the printer, or lose a brief. Pretty soon you’ll learn not to do that again either…)
Spelling and grammar matter, so if you’re the kind of person who bothers to put a shirt on every day because you care what people think (even if you have nothing too hide), then bother to check your copy and show you care about your work. That’s something they’ll remember.
From October 4-27 I was lucky enough to be a part of the ‘Grolsch Grid’ 2011 – A group of 68 local musicians, artists and graphic designers who came together in one giant collaboration, taking over the Collingwood/Fitzroy area to promote our local talent and one famous beer, Grolsch. Paring up with another creative, we spread our designs across three skateboards which we turned into blackboards and 2 huge posters which were inspired by the iconic silhouette of the Grolsch swingtop bottle and the theme of ‘worlds collide’. Last Wednesday night we all came together for the closing exhibition at Collingwood World. It’s been an awesome month, meeting so many creative people, drinking loads of Grolsch and getting involved in supporting Melbourne’s local creative talent. Check out the link for more info : http://www.facebook.com/grolschbeer?sk=app_181460735264296
