“When starting a new business, expressing your unique proposition is a critical message to communicate from the outset.
Professional approaches to design management and strategies for future growth are also important issues to address early on. For many, this involves initiating a model of practice that suits the founding partners’ philosophy and underlying design principles.
He said that is very important before to make expenses for office and equipments, you need to have clients.
He also said that the repeat business is the best business.
Usually 90% of what we do doesn’t have anything to do with design.
“John Maeda’s creative nature makes him a different sort of leader—one who prizes honest critique and learning how to “productively fail.” In this candid, entertaining, and instructive talk, Maeda uses perspectives from his various backgrounds—as an artist and designer, a technologist, and a professor—to discuss new leadership lessons he’s learned throughout his career. What are the opportunities and the limits of using social media in the new networked organization? What does leadership even look like today? And how can we adapt and move forward in our ever-changing innovation economy?”
Michael C. Place, David Bailey, Ian Anderson, Nick Bax and Matt Pyke share their secrets for launching and running a successful design studio, from how to employ people and structure your team to when to stop growing.
https://www.magazinesdirect.com/us/guides-and-specials/categories/design
It is interesting that 90% of her clients come from referrals. She charges for a logo between 5000$ and 6000$. She said she needs to gross around 7000$ a month to make money for herself, taxes and business expenses. Basically, if you don’t know how to deal with new business, you are not going to have business for long time. Working 40 hours a week will not be enough – you will need to do not only the design but also the administrative part, client relations, sales, marketing… The hours will be between 60 and 80. Starting your own business is a lot of work. She uses the Trello system.
“What or who prompted you to start thinking in the long term?
Some time ago I spent a weekend with Harvard psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker who wrote lucidly about the complete change of perspective when we look at the world from the long term point of view. I’m also friendly with inventor and scientist Danny Hillis, who created a clock that will still work in 10,000 years. A prototype of that clock is currently on display in the Science Museum in London while the full scale – several stories high -mechanical clock is being installed in a hollowed out mountain in Western Texas. To appreciate the difficulty of a 10,000 year clock as an engineering problem, consider the pyramids. They are only 4,500 years old and they failed in their function to protect the tomb of the pharaoh.”
“Does thinking that everything got better not make us complacent?
For myself I noticed that when I’m in good shape, I am of much more use to the world than when I feel everything is terrible. I feel we can improve things more effectively building on successes from the past.”
“Why did you initially offer your services to give feedback on people’s design projects?
I had gone to a salon of the late artist Louise Bourgeois, who allowed every Sunday evening up to 12 people to come to her living room. Everybody needed to bring work, which she then critiqued. She was ruthless! And of course incredibly generous too, it is quite a gift to be giving up an evening every week in order to do this. In the studio we had received a constant stream of requests from people who asked to come in and look at their portfolios, I simply copied her idea and conducted a salon, where up to 12 designers came into our studio on Monday evenings. This worked well for many years, until my travel schedule made it impossible.”
“Who inspired you when you were developing your practices as a student, and who inspires you today?
As an art student I was completely taken by a book about Storm Thorgerson and the work he did for Hignosis, the British design company that created all the album covers for Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and many others. They developed the most unusual ideas and employed impeccable craft to execute flawlessly. Right now I’m very much looking forward to the James Turrell show opening at the Guggenheim here in NYC, his exhibit at the MAK in Vienna was one of the most influential shows I had ever seen. Today I was inspired by an Ann Hamilton interview, where she was asked about creativity, and she mentioned that this is not a term she wants to talk about, that flexibility is something that is much more interesting.”
“The series “Things I have learned in my life so far” is a typographical experiment. How does typography influence the transmission of the message?
In this series, the message is always very clear and straightforward, the typography much more ambiguous and open for interpretation. I found that by utilizing an open typographic approach combined with the clear message many viewers have an easier time relating their own experience. We do employ various typographic strategies from one project to another (within the series). Some are influenced by the environment they take place in, some by an outside person, some by personal experiences.”
“What’s the best part about maintaining a small agency?
We are not financially dependent on our clients, we have the freedom to pursue unusual directions, we are nimble, we are focused, we are responsible, we all get to design, and be involved in all aspects of the job, so we are not bored. There is little need for meetings. There is rarely any misunderstandings internally so what we design mostly gets produced.”
“How important is formal design education?
I myself loved design school a lot, extended it for as long as I possibly could (I also have a masters in communications) and probably would still be in art school if I could have found a way to make it happen. Having said that, many of my favorite designers (Tibor Kalman, James Victore) have never been to art school at all.”
“What’s your favorite design city, and why?
I was tempted to either pick the obvious like Barcelona, Amsterdam or Tokyo or go for the more hidden treasures like Teheran, Quito or Beirut but went for neither and chose the city that I studied in, Vienna. Vienna right now achieves a delightful equilibrium between the contemporary and the historic, between young pips and old farts. And the Albertina right now shows a giant exhibit of one of my favorite Austrian artists, Arnulf Rainer.”
Vicky Kafkaki - Graphic Design MA Falmouth University 