Enjoy,

Jeff
The Chief Laughing Raven

In 1982 I went to New York to study Menswear Design and Marketing at The Fashion Institute of Technology.  One week into the course I knew I was home.  Here were people who thought like I did.  When I’d mention something that was in my head, they had similar stories and could relate to me.  They didn’t look at me like I had three heads – they looked at me like a brother.  We were all there for the same reason – we all had a passion for creating beautiful things and getting them out to the world.

Design school – no matter what the curriculum or where it is – teaches us how to think in different ways.  It teaches us that above all else, form and function do go together – they are like two sides of a coin and the edge is what holds them together.  Of all that I learned and have practiced in the – wow, almost 30 years – since I left those halls and classrooms, these 5 things are the ones that have stuck with me and proved themselves to be needed in every project I’ve worked on.  From designing a course catalog for Queens College, to determining the right balance of colors to use in a textile print, to designing user interfaces at The Pentagon, these principles are what I believe should build the foundation of every designer’s discipline.

5 Things Design School Taught Me

1.  Research – This is number one for a reason.  Without it you will fail.  Research gets you to the heart of any design challenge.  Never go into a project without first researching everything.  Find out about your client or customer.  Find out about materials to be used.  Find out about competition.  Find out about resources.  Find out what has worked in the past and why.  Find out what current best practices in your industry are and tie them into the research. Ask intelligent questions and you will get the best answers.  All the digging you do and all the info you gather gives you the power to ask the intelligent questions.  Never go into a project without thorough research.

2.  Conviction – If you don’t believe what you’re doing, nobody else will.  This spins off of your research.  The more prepared you are, the stronger your conviction can be.  And many times this will come from previous projects of a similar nature.  You know what you’re proposing will work because you’ve made it work.  This can be while standing at a showroom table with the design director and other designers.  They want to know why you believe what you’re showing will work.  They want to know why you’ve chosen those particular colors or that font face, or that material, or that snap closure for the pocket.

And I’ll tell you something else around this too – sometimes these things just come down to a gut feeling.  And don’t be afraid to say that either.  Some of the greatest design successes have come down to a feeling someone has about something.  When others feel that your intuition guided you strongly, they will listen.

Now – other side of that particular coin.  Sometimes you will be wrong.  And that’s okay.  Ralph was never always right.  Mr. Sagmeister hasn’t always picked the winner.  And I guarantee you that Raymond Loewy had some bombs.  It’s from these mistakes and errors in judgement that we learn to get really, really good at what we do.

3.  Space – And I’m not talking about the final frontier.  Well, maybe I am.  Space is a crazy thing – either you need it or you don’t.  “I just need some space,” your significant other will tell you when you thought everything was going along quite well.   I started out that way because I’m really grasping for how to explain this one to you.  If you’re a graphic artist you know that when you group things together tightly in space they form a group.  When you’re an architect you know that when you put a higher ceiling in a smallish room, the additional 3 dimensional space makes the room feel bigger – even though the additional cubic footage is for the most part unusable.  Or think even about the modernist movement in architecture – what Neutra, Schindler and a few others brought to us and Julius Shulman so brilliantly captured.  Glass walls, huge windows, open flowing interior spaces.  In relatively minuscule amounts of square footage, they made you feel like you were living in the middle of a wide open field – they cleverly used an absence of familiar details to create the illusion of limitless space.

4.  Balance - Life always seeks balance and that holds true for everything we design.  There’s symmetry and asymmetry.  There’s the Golden Ratio and Rectangle.  Balance is a factor of space in that you can use the space to achieve certain types of balance.  Look at a Rothko and study the way he achieved balance.  Look at some of Milton Glaser’s work and the way in which he mastered balance in his work.  You can invoke feelings by unbalancing some things – they might not be good feelings, but you can do it.  Balance creates a feeling of rightness and peace.  Balance in design is a psychological trigger that either confirms or denies someone’s belief about what should be.  This holds true in all disciplines of design – clothing, industrial, graphics, etc.  An Issey Miyake suit has a different balance than a Chanel, yet they both achieve a balance that speaks to their customer.

5.  Communication – You have to learn how to talk to people.  People are the same all over the world – they like to be treated with respect and they like to be heard.  When you ask a question to clarify a point, really listen to the answer.  Watch to see if the response elicits emotion from your client, boss, director, team…  What’s coming out?  Is it passion?  Then you know you need to figure out a way to align with that passion.  Is it angst and conflict.  Then you know you need to get to the bottom of that, find the pain, and offer the solution.

Present as much as you can visually, whether in print, in fabric, or in Lincoln Logs.  Visuals get through quicker and with more understanding than words.  Paint a picture for your audience and when that’s not possible – you’ll know what those circumstances are – tell a story.  The power of story is coming back around to us.  There are countless articles on the web about using story to get your point across.  And now a big thing is canning the traditional resume and writing your bio.  Bravo to that!  Do it and stand out from the sheep.  Communicate well and be trusted.

Although I put Research as the big number 1, the rest aren’t in any particular order.  And these are my thoughts.  These are my impressions as I look back over my career and think about the lessons learned and triumphs achieved.  I’ve been around the block and I’ve been around the world.  If you get some insight from this, then I’m a happy camper.  My research came from my experience, and I have a conviction about what’s worked for me.  I hope I used this space well and gave you a balanced article.  If I have failed to communicate something, please let me know, and let’s start a conversation.

Thanks for stopping by,

Jeff

I’m selling generative art, photography, photo-montage, and print patterns for home, apparel or tableware.

The generative art, photography, and photo-montage are all professionally printed and ready for framing.  I ship them USPS insured in heavy 2″ mailing tubes.

The print patterns are in repeat and delivered as an Illustrator CS4 file.  Honestly, I haven’t figured whether I want to put those on Etsy or not.  Either way, they can be purchased through PayPal and I’ll have that set up asap.  If you have interest in any of the patterns, please let me know and we’ll arrange the transaction.

This is just the beginning of this venture so be sure to come back often.  I’ve been doing the patterns, and the other art for many years now but aside from one year being represented by a studio in NYC for the pattern work, this is my first foray into marketing my work as a solo act.

Thanks!

Jeff