Your journey of self reflection begins with two simple steps

Self reflection offers you an opportunity for personal and professional growth. Growth that often occurs through reflecting on experiences and expanding your perspective. In the spirit of self reflection and growth in a graphic design context, I ask you, have you identified the skills you bring to the creative table? What about areas you need to improve? Your journey begins by answering two simple questions. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?

The practice of turning your focus inward and being brutally honest with yourself can be challenging:

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All joking aside, your journey of self reflection is worth the inner struggle for it results in clarity, establishes direction and starts you on the path to achieving your next personal and/or professional goal.

What are your strengths? 
Identifying your strengths enables you to pin point qualities that perhaps only you posses empowering you to shout these unique, stand out qualities from the rooftop! OK, not the rooftop but in your communication with clients, creative directors and potential employers. The rationale behind my last blog entry building a better ladder doesn’t only apply when you’re concepting for clients. It directly applies to how you promote yourself and how your intended audience perceives you. Having a strengths list at the ready is an excellent resource as you edit your résumé, write cover letters, update your portfolio, interview, promote your brand and build your ladder.

What are your weaknesses? 
Additional benefits present themselves when referencing that dreaded list of weaknesses too. Is this not an excellent starting point of “to-dos” encouraging you to become a more effective visual communicator? You’ve basically self-identified action steps to make you more marketable in an extremely competitive field.

In another previous blog post, things I’ve learned about visual communication during my lifetime, I cite the contrast between a design school environment where inspiration abounds (other designers’ work, examples the professors show, etc.) to the environment of working in the industry where those vital inspirations are sometimes more difficult to discover. Keeping that weaknesses list on hand ensures you always have areas to improve, keeps you inspired and ultimately enhances your strengths list.

In conclusion
I hope working as a visual communicator you’re always thinking, questioning, finding more effective ways to emotionally connect with consumers, and yes, enhancing your own skill sets. Your journey of self-reflection truly begins with asking those two questions. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Use your chosen strengths for stability and support and your weaknesses as a personal mission of growth, self-motivation and inspiration.

I challenge you to build a better ladder

When tasked with the creative challenge of promoting a brand, product or service, consider how you want to position that brand, product or service in your target audience’s mind. What do you want the consumer to think about when they come in contact with your message? What emotions do you want to conjure up? What do you want the consumer to associate with your brand, product or service? As the creative strategist, it’s your goal to fulfill your target audience’s need, develop a solution to their immediate problem and make your brand, product or service relevant in their mind.

So what is positioning? 
Businessdictionary.com defines positioning as a marketing strategy that aims to make a brand occupy a distinct position, relative to competing brands, in the mind of the customer.

We are creatures of habit. 
Take a moment to reflect on your own purchasing habits. What deodorant, shampoo and laundry detergent do you use? Chances are when it comes to choosing brands, products and services you’ve got a few personal favorites. I’ll be so bold as to state you probably stick with the same brands in each category. You might try a new one every so often, but chances are you go right back to your tried and true favorites.

It’s a jungle out there!
To cope with the explosion of brands, products and services vying for our attention daily, we’ve conditioned ourselves to mentally rank them. This process can be visualized by imagining a series of ladders in the mind. Each ladder represents a completely different brand, product or service category (ladder 1: deodorant, ladder 2: shampoo, ladder 3: laundry detergent…). Upon each rung of a ladder sits a different brand within the ladder’s brand, product or service category. (1) The ultimate goal for any brand, product or service is to occupy the top rung of their category. Once a brand, product or service is sitting on that top rung, it’s extremely difficult for any other brand to knock the holder of that top rung off. The best they can hope for is to settle for the second, third rung or worse!

This visualization is crucial to remember when positioning a brand, product or service. If the chances of knocking one of those top three competitors off the rungs of your chosen ladder are so slim what other options do you have?

The answer is quite simple… build your own ladder! While there isn’t much room on the ladders currently found in your target audience’s mind, there is more than enough room to build a new one and place your brand, product or service on that highly coveted top rung.
 
So you’ve decided you want to build a new ladder. Where do you go from there? My suggestion: do a S.W.O.T. analysis to determine your brand, product or service’s (and the competitions’) Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. What are you and the competition doing right? What are you doing wrong? What unique attributes does your brand, product or service bring to the consumer? Remember, the consumer always asks him/herself “What’s in it for me?” Fulfill a need, be the solution to their immediate problem and make your brand, product or service relevant in the consumer’s mind. Look at the market landscape and identity areas that currently aren’t being utilized. If you find such an area, start building that ladder and get your brand, product or service firmly planted onto that top rung!

What is your brand, product or service’s unique selling proposition? 
I alluded to this in the previous paragraph by asking you to determine what unique attributes your brand, product or service brings to the consumer.

Entrepreneur.com defines the unique selling proposition (USP) as the factor presented by a seller as the reason that one product or service is different from and better than that of the competition. Unless you can pinpoint what makes your business unique in a world of similar competitors, you cannot target your promotion efforts successfully. (2) You can thank ad guru and marketing master Rosser Reeves for coming up with the concept of developing a USP. In 1961, Reeves outlined the promotion technique in his book “Reality of Advertising.”

He defines a USP has having three parts:
> Each ad must make a proposition: "Buy this product and you get these benefits".

> The proposition must be unique: something that your competitors do not, cannot or will not offer.

> The proposition must sell: it must be something consumers really want; it pulls them over to your product.

In essence, a USP briefly and clearly explains a single quality about your product that lets it stand out against the competition. (3)

In conclusion
There are many “me too” companies in the market today touting similar messages about similar products or services, and yet there’s still plenty of unchartered real estate in the consumer’s mind for our brands, products and services to stake claim and begin building a better ladder. Working as creative thinkers we must figure out ways to connect with the consumer helping them see the value in what is being communicated. There is concept and strategy built into every mark we make. Design is so much more about psychology (what makes us tick) than it ever is about just making stuff look “cool.”


Blog Resources:
(1) http://teamaltman.com/2010/05/understanding-the-ladders-in-your-head/
(2) http://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/term/82480.html
(3) http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Rosser_Reeves.htm

Words to design by

While working with my creative teams, I often catch myself repeating tried and true design mantras. This got me to thinking; do I have a list of personal musings I rely on to get my design point across? We all know the answer to that question or there’d be no point to this blog post! Here’s a sampling of what I compiled. Given more time and thought on the subject, I’ll add more. Let’s just keep this as a running list of “words of wisdom” or better yet, “words to design by” and leave it at that. Here goes nothing:

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
A quote I absolutely live by! If you’re on a path, it is someone else’s path. Chart your own path for this is the best way to ensure you’re unique. Unique and one-of-a-kind means your work has a platform to stand out from the endless parade of other designs that consumers come in contact with.

If graphic communication is expected, it is boring. If it is boring, no one pays attention to it. If no one pays attention, you have not communicated anything
Make connections to disparate objects and build an unexpected bridge between them. Only when the consumer is able to walk across that bridge will they understand the connection. The key here is finding unique, unexpected connections. If the concept (the bridge) is expected, it is boring. If it is boring, no one will pay attention to it. If no one pays attention to it, you have not communicated anything. If 9 out of 10 designers come up with the same solution, it’s too obvious. Always push your solution beyond the typical and expected.

We’re all egocentric when it comes to design
Most graphic communication is created on a mass scale; meant to be read by numerous viewers and yet we all engage with it as if the design is speaking directly to us. Successful messages are those that you can relate to, you can laugh along with or touches you on some level. I firmly hope your work invites the viewer to become involved, gets them to act for a cause, educates, and informs. In the simplest of terms, inspires and motivates the viewer to do something!

Ying when others yang
We as visual communicators design in response to what is happening around us. Keep an ear to the ground, educate yourself about what’s current in visual communication and then run in the opposite direction as fast as you can! Ying when others yang for it’s the best way to stand out from the crowd. If you use design elements (colors, typefaces, etc) that everyone else is using how can your message possibly stand out?

Is anything original?
Don’t have the audacity to think your idea is original. It doesn’t matter how out of the box you think your concept is; chances are it’s been done before. It’s your responsibility to research and determine if your “original” idea has been executed before and develop ways to modify it and make it your own.

You’re the captain of your own creative ship
Follow your gut instinct when designing. Doing so helps you find your own visual voice. We’re creative thinkers and interjecting our own point of view into designs is what helps bring unique solutions to the table. The goal is to develop a stand out message, right? Since you have your own perspective, your own point of view, you offer what no one else can.

You make the final decision as to how you want to present your work. In the end, you’re the one who must defend it to your creative director, client, professor, etc.!

One visual and one word can affect the lives of many
There is power in our visual voice and with this power comes great responsibility. What you put out into the world influences others. Don’t take this responsibility lightly. Rely on your morals and integrity. If what your promoting doesn’t feel right, do something about it.

Designers must be transparent
I want you to develop your own visual voice and fully expect to see common threads connecting your individual designs together when looking at the breadth of your work. That being said, ensure your clients’ voice comes through loud and clear. Your design “style” needs to overlay on top of your client’s brand elements allowing their brand voice to resonate. You’re communicating their message to their audience after all!

Establish visual hierarchy
Ask yourself this simple question every time you design: what do I want the viewer to see first, second, third? Placing the elements in the composition according to the predetermined numbered list is a simple but effective way to start establishing visual hierarchy. Using basic design principles allows you to emphasize one element over another so more important content looks and presents as more important. Placing the elements so they are on the same level of visual hierarchy can create a sense of visual tension, a visual tug of war of sorts. This visual struggle can result in the design feeling cluttered and disorganized leaving the viewer confused. Don’t get me wrong; some visual tension is a good thing to have for it offers a sense of energy and movement. The issue occurs when everything in the composition is screaming, “look at me!”

In conclusion
That’s all I can think of at the moment… mentally exhausting, but a little journey of self-reflection does a designer good!

If we’ve had the chance to work together on a creative team previously, any additional comments, phrases or words to design by you’d like to add to the list?! Give a shout out if I’ve missed something.