Graphic Designers are really in the service industry

When it comes to advertising it seems that graphic designers are not primarily passionate about any product in particular, rather they are passionate about providing a good, clear bridge between the consumer and the product. If we do our job well the product manufacturer is happy because the advertising we designed for him gets the client interested in or purchasing the product itself. Like waiters in a restaurant we present the food to you for eating, we are not the makers of the food. It is our job to clearly communicate what and how good the food is.

One kind of frustrating thing about this is that we never really design the product. We are servants to the product designers or engineers who make things like a house or a bridge. Our part of the job usually ends up in the trash. After all, they didn't come to see your brochure or website, that was just means to get them there!

Beautiful work

The guys at Handbuilt Studio in LA do some fantastic work. You can check out their portfolio by clicking here. I stumbled on their site by clicking through some of the work on indexhibit.org (mmm, I wish I could understand PHP!)

Handbuilt make the kind of work that I aspire to make. Sometimes I feel like a donkey trapped in a stable who's never seen the outside. If someone would pay me to experiment in life, I'd stop working for other people and I swear I'd come out with some crazy greatness!

They made this poster for a small studio. The challenge was how many variations can be made with 14 shapes and 4 inks. "After experimenting with mixed-ink swatches and working closely with the printer, 966 different colors were created for the final design. Additionally, a set of 15 shapes retrieved from the year’s past projects was defined and used to create a collection of 107 unique letters, spelling out the poster’s message." Awesome or what?

Quality off the wall ad from Nike

How do you get this type of creativity? Good leadership making way for plenty of the following ingredients:
time, space, and the freedom to experiment.

Here's the making of the film:

New additions to portfolio site

The past few weeks I have reworked the structure of my own portfolio site. I am pleased with the new navigational structure and new content from the spring semester of my Junior year. You can see the site here.