Benjamin Adam, inspired and agitated by comments for the design competition, took it upon himself to see "whether or not design contests that promise to make up in prestige what they lack in paying the bills are actually worthwhile."
The one thing I eventually noticed from all of these arguments was a suspicious lack of even the slightest bit of data to back up any of the claims. So, I decided why not send out some emails to recent winners of well-known design contests and ask them point-blank: “Did you get more business from clients or respect and attention from peers after winning this contest?â€
As Andy (who originally found Ben's entry) told me this morning, the short answer to Ben's question is: yes. Gee, who woulda thunk it?
As a side note to all of this, after going through all the comments left in response to 'Win' I find it interesting that most of those who are opposed to this contest seem to be print designers, or have deep roots in the print world. Whereas persons who like or don't mind the idea of a contest are mostly web or interactive designers.
In my experience there has always been a large gap between the two disciplines (print vs. web) and I continue to wonder if the Hatfields and McCoys will ever get along.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
There are people who are designers. For a living. That is their job. Design is their nitch. Then, there are people who call themselves "designers" but wouldn't know the difference between a PDF and an EPS or just basically the designer wanna-be's.
...which is who I most often run into, that in turn ruins my day. Here's an article on the exact subject of the common perception of creativity.
I don't think knowing the difference between PDF and EPS makes you a designer....
Design existed before the computer...
In fact - I'd be very impressed if the winner of this "Win" contest had actually worked without the computer, and then simply scanned the design in to send it. Those who at least start with pen and paper tend to end up with better, more-thoughtful designs.
I agree with Alexandre. I normally would have set to work with paper and pen to begin, but they weren't handy. I think my design suffered. No matter how easy Illustrator becomes, actual illustration is easier for forming ideas.
Also, how could you not know the difference between a PDF and an EPS? A better, though also useless, analogy would be the difference between an EPS and an Adobe Illustrator (AI), or FreeHand document.
Most people who call themselves designers don't know design. That's how you tell the difference.
"wouldn't know the difference between a PDF and an EPS"
Whoa there arrogance, thank you for taking the time to talk to us "common folk". The gap between Print and Web design is great indeed, I'm afraid comments like that would only seem to widen the gap.
Do web designers know what an EPS is? If they do, do they care about them? Are they not designers? I wouldn't know, I'm not a designer and wouldn't claim to be. I'm just a web developer.
Print designers are kinda making themselves out to be like the crotchety old man who refuses to acknowledge such new fangled oddities like the car, phone, radio etc...
Print designers are kinda making themselves out to be like the crotchety old man who refuses to acknowledge such new fangled oddities like the car, phone, radio etc...
I think some of these people need to brew a soothing tea, play Yanni on the stereo and cut rubylith for a while.
BULLFUNKY. It’s been about 15 years since the beginning of this "new media". I was there early on trying to convince the old men at art school that it was relevant to what they were teaching. Plenty of time has passed to start blurring those edges.
It has less to do about classification and more about professional philosophy. In both print and interactive design, you can be the technician and stay up to date on the latest technology and tricks. My education and training allow me to be a "Designer", which transcends the actually tools I use and is more about problem solving (having a conversation with the client and LISTENING) and doing what’s best for the client.
As a "Designer", if a client doesn't have the time or interest to site down with me and have a conversation about their new brand, stationary, web site, etc, and how to make it special, then I take that as a warning sigh that the client doesn't take the new work seriously and will probably be a problem client. I don't need a another problem client...
I'm a designer with deep roots in print, and I also have roots in web design. I still do both with my job, about 50/50. Print will never go away, nor will the Web. Both require a functional and aesthetic eye for composition, legibility, color, balance, etc. and technical skills. They each have their own standards, flexibilities and limitations.
To say that the majority of designers who have issues with the contest are print designers may be true of this discussion, but there may be designers who have never worked with print yet still have to create logos for startups for web marketing, online product catalogs, or other businesses.
I've worked over 20 years in print design overlapped with 10 years of web design. They usually go hand-in-hand, though not always. I go back and forth so much between the two media and most graphic agencies I know offer both print and web for B2B, so I'm not sure I agree with this 'large gap' between print and web.
I think some of these people need to brew a soothing tea, play Yanni on the stereo and cut rubylith for a while.
Quite so. However, care should be taken not to group all print designers into this category, as there are many extraordinary print designers that aknowledge and use the web to it's full extent *cough*cameronmoll*cough*.
Scott>> As for your last statement something that helps tremendous amounts are creative breifs. This is just a few pages of questions like "What websites do you like?" "What's your favorite color" "What direction do you see your company heading?" Clients have interest, they just don't know how to express it until they know it's not what they want. Leading questions is where it's at.
This might be all rather obvious, but the difference between pdf and eps is in today's terms comparable to the difference between scissors and cardboard cutter. They both apply to digital file formats intended for graphics (and the whole "cut & paste" analogue methaphore of grapic software). Web design is a part of web development, so it's not only about graphical skills. A good web designer should understand basic server-client architecture, server and cliente scripting, web standards and their purpose, etc. When a designer is asked to build a new logo he/she is clearly acting as a graphic designer.
Kyle - Creative Briefs are great, if the client knows about them and can use them. Smaller clients will not be familar with them. Serious project will still require face time regardless of what was quickly written for the creative brief.
Alexander - I think you proved a little bit of Christina's point. The scanned paper logo might look good - but really won't be a workable logo. I think there are a lot of talented designers who could make their work a little more useable if they just took time to learn the software. Design did exist before the computer but in this day and age (and especially where a logo is involved) they need to work hand in hand.
Nothing like a little unscientific analysis to set the record straight! :)
If nothing else, a good healthy disagreement can cause you to step back and approach something a different way to find an answer you're happier with. That's what I think happened here and I don't mind eating a little crow in the name of unscience!
BTW, I go by Adam -- that seems to be unclear by the domain name, huh? Not the first time it's happened since I switched to the new domain. Oh well.
Alexander - I think you proved a little bit of Christina's point. The scanned paper logo might look good - but really won't be a workable logo. I think there are a lot of talented designers who could make their work a little more useable if they just took time to learn the software. Design did exist before the computer but in this day and age (and especially where a logo is involved) they need to work hand in hand.
Useable? What do you mean by that?
I suppose you mean vector art. It looks nicer than something drawn out. In many cases - this is true. But on the other hand, it can also look industrial - and who says everything these days has to look industrial? Hand drawn stuff can actually look very fresh when cleaned up a bit in Photoshop.
The point is that computers tend to give us too many options. Too many fonts. Too many colours. When we start, we have no idea what we want, and end up just fooling around until we get something we like.
Start off with pen and paper - and the results are more focused and clear. You KNOW why you drew it that way. But on the computer. you only picked that font because you thought it looked cool at the time.
What a crock! This has absolutely nothing to do with print/web design and everything to do with professional/hobbyist. I'm starting to think this all just one big flame-bait.
why do people get so worked up over the definition of designer. more importantly, if you weren't interested in entering the contest, why the uproar over it?
you have too much time on your hands. i have never read so many lame posts in my life...
Benjamin's simple mistake of drawing even the remotest parallel between the situation here regarding the Airbag design contest and the brainwashing and propaganda of Nazi Germany (not Nazi-era), for me at least, completely invalidates any other point he makes. Not only is the comparison stupid, dumb and so short-sighted that it requires so little knowledge of history - much less than was taught in school, I imagine, but it is inappropriate.
*sigh*
Ryan, everyone knows you can't have a great blog thread unless it contains some comment about Nazi's. I mean, duh, it's in the Moveable Type manual.
I use WordPress.
And, besides, the MT Manual deals more with the Attila-era Huns.
And criminy Greg, it's Nazis, not Nazi's -- you weren't even remotely close. Stupid, short-sighted, dumby ... inappropriate-er. I invalidate you. Shazam!
*sigh*
I'd encourage all to avoid the thinking that maintains these cliches about 'types' of designers. There are areas of design practice, and there are good and bad and narrow-minded and broad-thinking designers in every area. Scott who said Bullwinkle or something to that effect above is correct.
Design = thinking, skills = technique. They have a relationship, but Design (with a capital D) is a way of thinking, understanding a problem, and communicating a vision. I don't know anything about the techniques required to build a piece of furniture, but I know a well designed piece from a poorly designed one. I had a free-flowing conversation with Greg this weekend about "cultural literacy" and I believe being a mature designer requires an appreciation for how design fits in the world, commercially, aesthetically, culturally. The "type" of designer you might be doesn't count for squanto, IMHO—all a specific area of practice does is limit the crowd when you really want to talk shop and discuss tactical minutia like how to propery use an application or ink your sumi brush. Tactical (or technical) details and skills enable the designers ability but having them does not make one a [good] designer. If a musician has virtuoso technical abilities that only enables her to avoid being limited by 'can I do that?' considerations. If she has vast experience and 'cultural literacy' it will [perhaps] inform her creative decision making, but composing and performing is the art, and all the technical skills in the world doesn't guarantee a great artist.
I see no significant rift between print and interactive design, and I've been doing them both, almost both every day, for ten years (print longer). Rather than anything inherant in the medium, I'd say there's always been a rift between traditional thinkers and free thinkers. Maybe it is arguable that print designers are likely more inclined to more conservative thinking, their practice being a mature tradition with professional organizations and an established discourse regarding standards of practice, ethics, best practices, etc. Design schools (up until very recently) have churned out only print designers, but that is changing. I think it's as arguable that web designers have a chip on their shoulder and an inferiority complex spawned by their lack of visibility and influence in the broader world of Design, and the fact that they are often self-taught, without the fancy sheepskin from a blue-chip design institution. I'd encourage people who perpetuate the notion of a schism to get over it—there's only two types of Design in my book: good design and bad design.
Tom Dolan is now my hero.
Yup, Lea said it best, thanks Tom Dolan for sitting down and writing up how it actually is. Or rather, how it should be and even would be if people thought about it and opened up a little.
But what I want to know is whether you've ever blogged about actual zeppelins. If there's a search function here you've hidden it well, and I'm not going to dig through a whole archive of funky one-word titles....
For those who haven't read the article that was refered to:
The contest winners did not seem to get any more business from it (yet)
So Greg's conclusion on the usefulness of design contest seems kinda misleading.
THIS is devaluing the design industry far more than any little contest!