I read a few essays in the book Luke gave me and they are really marvelous. The first essay is summed up by the line "Not everything is design. But design is about everything. So do yourself a favor: be ready for anything." It just makes so much sense. If you stop worrying about art being about art, it will be easier to make art. I mean... you could make art about art. But you rarely see artists make art about art; they make art about war, love, death, relationships, disease, music, etc... The less you limit yourself, the more you can create. It's really that simple. Of course you may be given projects in which you must create something based on an idea, and which in that case you must do it (even then you can have some creative leeway). Michael Bierut says that graphic designers are lucky because they can "vicariously partake of as many fields of interest as [they] have clients." Since graphic designers have clients, they have a better scope of the field of the client. A lot of artists don't work for clients so they don't always get to explore fields, but this doesn't mean they can't. I guess it's the fact that graphic designers can design something for a corporation one day and a coffee shop the next.
Bierut has an essay entitled "How to Become Famous" and it's quite informative. And not even if you want to be famous, just if you want to be great. "Fame is relative" and that's something that should be understood if you do in fact want to be famous. Beyonce is clearly famous, but most people don't have an idea of just how famous a graphic designer might be- but another graphic designer will be able to understand how "famous" this person is. Again, it's all relative.
Unfortunately, you can only do so much with the talent you have. You might have to do trivial things in order to obtain fame such as entering competitions or giving speeches. When you enter a competition, enter pieces that win in competitions (this was targeted towards design, but I think it's a pretty universal rule), don't enter things that are complicated to unwrap, enter bigger pieces (it's an advantage), and don't enter anything that you think wouldn't be shown. Those are some basic tips that are really quite useful.
Now when it comes to giving a speech, you should follow some follows.
- Show two trays of 80 slides each. One tray first, and then the other one. Don't show over 160 slides.
- Don't ever tell people about the slide they're looking at. It should have a dramatic rhythm. Bierut suggests that you should "describe the design problem you were asked to solve." Hopefully the audience will think about what they would do given that problem. It wouldn't hurt to add some humor in this process.
- Also, never read a speech word for word. If necessary, use notes instead.
- You should avoid displaying anything with annual reports, it will leave the audience uninterested
- Choose the last slide of the first tray carefully- it should be great, surprising, or funny so that it keeps the audience satisfied
Last in this, Bierut writes about how to do great design work.
- Make lots of work. This is something Luke has taught me. Just keep making more and more work. You will only improve. Design whenever you can, even for the simple projects such as a birthday card. This counts as practice!
- Make a lot of posters. Posters are really cool and look awesome. Do it.
- Make a lot of freebies. Do projects for their own merits and not to win prizes- perhaps make something for a local group
- Make work that you sell the best it can be- don't do bad work for money. It's just obnoxious.
- Have something that looks cool that you can fall back on if everything fails, it can't hurt.
- "When in doubt, make it big. If still in doubt, make it red." This had me laughing, but it's something everyone can pretty much agree on. Bigger work tends to have a really intriguing quality to it.
- Last but not least, in the words of Bierut's mother, "It's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice." Wise words.
