Professional Designers Survey

[Alphabet Man]

G'day fellas

So I've got a SAC for VCAD due at the end of May, and I've had this since about mid-April.

Basically we gotta interview professional designers (I think freelancers may be able to get away with it too).

Instead of interviewing just one, I'd like to use quotes from all you guys and answer the questions in paragraph form, try make it look like im intellectual.

I'll break this down into 5 parts I think it is, I haven't looked to far ahead, but I think I'll break the essay/report down into parts, one survey equals one part or page of the essay. Yes, that's 5 pages of writing. (My last SAC was 4 pages which wasn't too bad).

So if you could help, that'd be great.

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To give you an idea of what I have to do, the SAC is: a written report to discuss the roles and relationships involved in the design and production of visual communication in a professional setting.

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Part 1

• Your name and design firm you work for or own
  
• Q1: What methods do you use to explore and gain inspiration for a particular task/ design briefs?
  
• Q2: Do you look to the designs of others?
  
• Q3: Do you have a favourite (place for inspiration) or does your focus shift depending on the design brief?
  
• Q4: Do you use the internet, print or electronic publication? (maybe explain, which ones)
  
• Q5: Do you brainstorm as a team (as a design firm) or create ideas individually?
  
• Q6: How do you organise the information to make the best use of it during the actual visual design process?
  

Thanks fellas for your help.

[Davidson]

Part 1

Your name and design firm you work for or own

Q1: What methods do you use to explore and gain inspiration for a particular task/ design briefs?

Q2: Do you look to the designs of others?

this question seems a bit strange. nobody is going to answer no, and anyone that does is a retard. so instead perhaps you should be asking where you look or whos work particularly interests you?

Q3: Do you have a favourite (place for inspiration) or does your focus shift depending on the design brief?

Q4: Do you use the internet, print or electronic publication? (maybe explain, which ones)

Q5: Do you brainstorm as a team (as a design firm) or create ideas individually?

Q6: How do you organise the information to make the best use of it during the actual visual design process?

i dont really understand the question? what do you mean by information? the brief? or the designs work you are creating? your initial ideas?

[Alphabet Man]

Link Q2 and 3 together into the one answer.

Q6? by information, taking into account the design brief, how do you use your insipiration/research and use them to the best you can.

[fiasco!]

* Your name and design firm you work for or own

Joel / Art Director / Fairway Outdoor Advertising

* Q1: What methods do you use to explore and gain inspiration for a particular task/ design briefs?

Most of my inspirations comes from keeping my eyes open and something catching my eye, whether it be nature, traffic patterns, exhaust from a plane in the sky, tire marks on the road, etc. Music helps alot too.

* Q2: Do you look to the designs of others?

Any designer worth anything looks at other designers' work, if only to stay current on styles, or to break away from what people are doing.

* Q3: Do you have a favourite (place for inspiration) or does your focus shift depending on the design brief?

Focus shifts. It depends on the project. I'm not going to go to the park and take in nature for inspiration on a project for a Auto Repair Shop.

* Q4: Do you use the internet, print or electronic publication? (maybe explain, which ones)

I design for both static and digital billboards, so print and electronic.

* Q5: Do you brainstorm as a team (as a design firm) or create ideas individually?

Our art department rarely brainstorms as a team, we each generally get our own projects.

* Q6: How do you organise the information to make the best use of it during the actual visual design process?

I'm very unorganized.

[Davidson]

in that case:

BACKROUND: my name is fraser davidson, i am a motion graphic designer/ animator. i make music videos/ title sequences/ promos/ adverts for various advertising agencies, tv stations and the music industry. including: mtv/vh1/ bbc/ channel 4/ nickelodeon/ cnbc/ virgin/ e4/ five/ discovery channel and others. we also produce a fair ammount of print/web media but its not our main focus. i work for a company called mainframe in london, uk. im 24 and have been an employed designer for nearly 4 years. at university i studied graphic design.

The Mighty Mainframe

My Showreel

My Other Reel

Q1: i guess it depends on eth timescale/ 'size' of the project. without trying to answer later questions, it varies from simply getting together as an office and knocking ideas about to just trawling through any relavant design books/ internet sites/ catalogue of stuff i keep that i find in my 'inspiration folder'. and once in a while you just have a good old fashioned 'light-bulb' idea straight away. the key factors in deciding which of the above is the way ahead are of course time and money.

Q2 & Q3: yup. its impossible to say accurately what influences/ inspires me with regard to style as most people are the product of the many millions of bits of visual information that litter your daily life. however the people/ companies that i particularly admire and produce work of the quality i aspire to make are easier to list. i am a huge fan of the work of johnny hardstaff. he produced a particularly amazing short film called the history of gaming that still gives me the horn. i guess the others would be mk12.com, psyop.tv, sergeseidlitz.com, graffe.co.nz, studio aka and a few others. obviously, some stuff will inspire you (or be more useful to you) more than other stuff depending upon what you are currently working on. its always good to keep an eye on these guys tho. they are the best of the best in my opinion.

Q4: for inspiration? i would say the internet more than anything else. mags are fine but they are constantly out of date and are restricted by editorial decisions. the internet is immediate/ uncensored and constantly updated. and you get to make up your own mind. there are lots of good sites (motionographer springs to mind) that point you in the right directions without telling you what to think about the work.

Q5. both. they both have their place. often it just helps to ask somebody's opinion or thoughts. very frequently i find that someone will say something very small that will give me a great new idea or help me move a project forward.

Q6: we keep a folder of original source material that we gather for each project. sometimes its things we have found or done in the past, sometimes it stuff the client has given us. once the project is up and running and into the design stage i try not to refer back to the source stuff to any great extent. you can sometimes find you are recreating something somebody has already done. so i guess, its really there to provide the initial spark in the process. that is very broadly speaking however and not always the case.

hope thats of some use to you. good luck with your essay.

/fd

[Alphabet Man]

Thanks Joel and Fraser.

Would I be able to get your city, or nearest city, just so I can write for example:

For Joel of Fairway Outdoor Advertising, city USA, the focus shifts depending on the project.

Thanks again fellas.

[slapshot]

* Your name and design firm you work for or own

Jim / Graphic Designer / Idearc Media Corp.

* Q1: What methods do you use to explore and gain inspiration for a particular task/ design briefs?

My field is Yellow Pages design. I try to look at other print media for ideas, but always have to keep in mind the quality of our paper is like toilet paper, so ink spreads and soaks into the paper, decreasing legibility. Clients want to cram as much information as possible for an ad that exists for a year, so being creative is not always an option.

* Q2: Do you look to the designs of others?

Absolutely.

* Q3: Do you have a favourite (place for inspiration) or does your focus shift depending on the design brief?

Focus shifts. A nice trendy design for a beauty salon or a lawyer would not likely work for a septic tank cleaner.

* Q4: Do you use the internet, print or electronic publication? (maybe explain, which ones)

Print, although electronic versions of the ads are placed online.

* Q5: Do you brainstorm as a team (as a design firm) or create ideas individually?

For the most part, our artists are our own art directors. Sometimes the artists sit with the clients and there is constant input, other times we bounce ideas off each other or our supervisors, just to get another eye on things.

* Q6: How do you organise the information to make the best use of it during the actual visual design process?

If i'm desiging something from scratch, I try to look for images first, ones that obviously relate to the copy. Again, it doesn't always work if the customer has a novel's worth of copy to fit into an ad the size of a business card.

[Davidson]

farringdon, central london, uk

[Alphabet Man]

Thanks Jim.

Thanks Fraser.

Thanks Joel.

[fiasco!]

Greenville, SC, USA

[creativelysain]

* Your name and design firm you work for or own

Jordan, Hoke Graphic Design (for anything inside the state of North Carolina), and my own startup studio, Jordan Sain Design Studio for anything national, and I work in Lincolnton, NC

* Q1: What methods do you use to explore and gain inspiration for a particular task/ design briefs?

Anything. Personal brainstorming, web surfing, driving, walking, listening.

* Q2: Do you look to the designs of others?

Of course, I think that is what makes us better.

* Q3: Do you have a favourite (place for inspiration) or does your focus shift depending on the design brief?

Focus shifts, I do most of my thinking at my desk though, or as I lay in bed pondering through my thoughts.

* Q4: Do you use the internet, print or electronic publication? (maybe explain, which ones)

Print, occasionally electronic.

* Q5: Do you brainstorm as a team (as a design firm) or create ideas individually?

I get projects individually, so I brainstorm on my own.

* Q6: How do you organise the information to make the best use of it during the actual visual design process?

I big pad of paper and a pen is where it all starts for me. I go through many, many sheets for one design, be that a simple logo or borchure.

Hope this helps.

[Alphabet Man]

Thanks all of you.

I think I could write a page almost on just these six questions.

Thanks again.

I've got some more questions/ for other parts.

There's 5 sets of questions, about a page for each, is a 5 page essay or thereabouts.

Just got my last essay back in the same subject - 19/20 is an A+. I'm happy, my first A+ ever.