How to organize a creative?

The task list for a creative is a little different than most. We're often called into brainstorming meetings where ideas fly around and it comes down to us to create steps that make the idea happen. Even our daily list of to-do's can change drastically based on deadlines or vendors.

I'm sure you have your own method. Just today I was sitting in a meeting with another guy I seriously respect for his ability as a designer, Britt Collins. I've got my pad and I'm jotting ideas and drawing lines to connect similar points, doodling along the way. Britt across the table from me brought only three neatly folded papers to the table. He laid them out and jotted with extreme precision each idea on one of the three sheets.

All this to say I've been looking at websites that help creative people stay organized. I'll post them here. If you have your own ideas or places please post them here too.

Lastly I came up with my own idea based on the method I've been using since I started working. My printer was kind enough to discount me a few pads. Feel free to rip this idea off if it helps.

behance.com is a site dedicated to making ideas happen. They interview giants in the industry and see how they were able to make it happen. They have an outfitters section with some pads that I really like. They also have an "unscientific" method on how to use them. Thanks to Drew Kimball, who creates some of the best designs I've seen, for the link.

knockknock.biz is a site that I just like. Some of their office pads really interest me and just being on their site gives me ideas. Don't know how much I'll ever use. Thanks to Jason Walch, a guy that just oozes creativity from every large pore on his body, for turning me onto them.

And last- here's what's working for me.




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Our private little sandbox

This week I’m departing from the series on concepts of design for a moment of personal investigation on a topic.

Just the other day my boss came into my office and plopped a magazine down on my desk. “You’ve got to read this,” he said. This is a guy I highly respect and who is a leader in his area so I listen carefully when he gives something such a glowing remark.

Before leaving I threw it into my bag for a read over the weekend. As I was browsing through the articles I came across one written by a guy with some lengthy credentials. The title caught my eye as something I thought I could relate to. So I dove in.

Whatever my expectations were I realized by around the second column that they weren’t going to be met. Don’t get me wrong, the content was great. The author was quoting sources, using proper illustrations, and using a logical story progression.

Technically it should have been a perfect article. The problem was it didn’t say anything to me. It was talking a lot, and quite eloquently, but I didn’t get it.

I thought about this pretty carefully. As I said I was interested in the topic, I was in a proper setting to hear what it had to say, in my normal chair at a quiet time on a Sunday evening. It just didn’t register.

As I went back and read over it a second and then a third time I started to see problems in the writing. First and mainly, the writer was writing for himself. The article was more of a journal entry that had been adapted for publication. Much like a book adapted for screen, it just usually doesn’t live up.

The writer was playing in his own sandbox, making his sandcastle. It was a perfect castle to him and most importantly it made sense. The problem came when someone else wanted to play in his sandbox.

When I came in I didn’t understand the rules or the circumstances of the sandbox. Therefore it made little sense to me.

Looking over it I realized crucial points were left out of the illustrations, gaps were left between supporting resources and his own points, leaving the reading to wonder about their connection.

There is a parallel here with design. Often designers play in their own sandbox. We create complex symbolism and iconography that often is lost before that masses.

However, I don’t believe that the burden of understanding lies on the public in this case. As designers it is our creative task to develop symbolism with significance. If all we ever do is play in our own sandbox then how are we to expect others to understand our meaning when they don’t know our circumstance.I love symbolism. I often spend time looking up color meanings, animal icons and type histories. I want everything to be authentic and meaningful. But when you look at one of my designs will your first instinct be to crack open your laptop and google the colors I used. I would imagine not.

As designers it is our calling to create images with universal application and understanding. We must create design with both meaning and comprehension for everyone. How, is the much more challenging and eternal question.

Avoiding the fatalistic other extreme is equally as difficult. We mustn’t determine that since not everyone will understand that we will only create those things which have no significance.

Erring on one side or the other allows the birthing of design which is not worth the time the public will spend viewing it. We absolutely must strike a balance. Failure to find that higher middle ground only leads to the degradation of the art itself.

The perfect little black dress?

Last week I said that you can classify almost all popular design today into four categories: timeless, retro, grunge, bleeding edge or high tech. Bu what do those style mean and what message do they convey to your clients?

Today I want to look at the first and most classic style of all, timeless design, and what it really means and how it fits into the supermarket of design before us.

Before I do that let’s take a look at something familiar to all of us. Ladies, all of you probably own something you call the perfect black dress, for the guys imagine the perfect white oxford shirt. It’s a mythical thing really but it’s your best friend. It’s something that you feel awesome in. It goes with almost any occasion. It can be counted on.

Now I’m going to borrow from the guys example for a moment. Guys, you all have that shirt in your closet, crisply pressed and hanging ready. Do you even have the perfect tie that always goes with it. It’s a classic right, timeless?

Go check out your dad’s closet. If he still has it, pull out his 20 year old perfect white oxford. Would you were it to the next office party? But it’s timeless right?

Timeless doesn’t mean that it never needs to be updated. Cuts change, collars grow or shrink, buttons are replaced. It’s happened to us all, we’ve reached for the thing that we thought was timeless and realized that it’s gone out of style, not the little black dress or the white oxford but at least the one we have.

Design is similar to this. There is a style that will not fade but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be updated.

One company that I think does a great job of this is Coca-Cola. That font based logo with the long tail has been there for 20 years. Sure they tried something different but just like new Coke it went away in favor of Coke Classic. They have a timeless logo, but they’ve changed the dressing and the elements around it to keep it cutting edge.

What does that say to us? It says,”We’re consistent and we aren’t changing, always Coca-Cola, but we’re also young, fresh and still cool.”

Now think of another company, Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo is a result of a merger between California-based Wells Fargo & Co. and Minneapolis-based Norwest Corporation in 1998. The new company chose to keep the name Wells Fargo, to capitalize on the 150-year history of the nationally-recognized Wells Fargo name and its trademark stagecoach.

They are banking on the credibility that 150 years of financial service gives them. People every day allow them to carry millions of dollars of their money.

Their logo and trademark, however outdated modern design may claim it to be, conveys that message. To them being outdated is an asset, it means, “We’ve been here, and we’ll be here.”

So are there any characteristics of a timeless design? I think there may be a few. First, they are almost always text based in simple fonts, many times a serif font. This allows background, graphical ornaments and icons to move around them without altering them. They are also usually done in primary colors. Pastels, bold colors, muted colors seem to come and go. Primary colors seem to never be the most popular but they always exist. Lastly, they seem to only consist of very basic shapes if any, i.e. circle, square, etc..

At the end of this series we’ll talk about each of the styles and who they apply to and how they might be able to strengthen your overall design package.

Is your design timeless?

You can mostly classify all popular design today into four categories: timeless, retro, grunge, bleeding edge or high tech. Pretty much anything you see is going to, in some way, fall into one of these categories. Some really masterful design is able to incorporate pieces of each into a single design making an artistic melange of creativity and style.

The thing is, each of these styles means something, it conveys a given message to your audience. For established companies a great concern may be the shelf-life of the design they have.

I have some close friends who would essentially say that the freshness of their companies design doesn’t really have an effect on their perceived ability as a company. They may even take it further to say that their design simply doesn’t matter, that as a company they have to have a design because they need to get information out and that it is expected, but that that design doesn’t necessarily matter.

This just isn’t the case. Let me compare this to something that we are all consumers of, the music industry. There are a lot of songs from decades ago that we still listen to. We all know Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl- in April 2005 the White House officially announced it was on regular rotation on W’s ipod. But it was released in 1967. How many songs from 1967 can you name?

The simple fact is some of them went out of style and some never made it and even others popped in and went out before we really noticed (Milli Vanilli?). What we are talking about here is style. Some of these artists were able to create styles that were cutting edge for their day but didn’t last, some created styles that weren’t even noticed for years, and some created styles that have been recurring hits for 40 years.

You might say, “Well that was their main job but style isn’t my main focus.” Not true, their main focus was to make music, they could have done it a la Mozart or James Brown, it was how they did it that we remember. Artists such as Aerosmith and U2 have been able to prove that they could produce music in many different styles, from ballads to head-banging metal music. Again this just proves they could have presented their message in many different ways, the way they chose made them icons.

In the coming weeks I’m going to talk about the different styles and how I think they impact companies and the marketplace in which they exist. There are pros and cons to each but ultimately it’s about a fit. The design has to fit you and your company. Hang around and see if you think your design is off the rack or custom tailored to your needs.