Unless you’re interviewing with a teensy design studio, chances are good you’ll meet with more than one person. At the very least, you should know your interviewers’ names and titles before you show up. If the hiring manager doesn’t give you this information, simply ask for it: “I’d like to be well-prepared for our time together. Might I ask...
I often find that designers, whether they’re business owners, freelancers or employees, get sort of freaked out by the idea of planning their business or career. It can be an overwhelming prospect: figuring out what you want from your work life (and life in general) and charting a course to get there. But what if you approached it like a...
By Bryn Mooth I often find that designers, whether they’re new to the field or have been at it for a few years, are a bit muddy on their career options. Should I go the in-house route? Is a design firm for me? What kind of business know-how do I need? What about opening my own shop? I suppose it’s not...
‘Synergy’ is one of those words I hate: a business buzzword that’s so ubiquitous as to be meaningless. Trouble is, the word pretty much describes what we try to do with HOW as a brand. Speakers at the HOW Design Conference write for the magazine or are sources for articles. Feature stories become conference sessions. Conference speakers author HOW...
Used to be, planning the HOW Design Conference involved choosing a site and inviting a handful of speakers. Now, there’s way more to it. Oddly, I’m always amazed and even a little overwhelmed when I see the final conference program, with not only the lineup of sessions that we’ve developed but all the other stuff that’s going on during...
There’s something different about the HOW Design Conference. I’ve been to other professional events where I’ve been tempted to blow off sessions and go sightseeing or whatever. But designers who come to HOW are hard-core: they never miss a thing. Still, it’s easy to go to a big event and just go through the motions. So it’s helpful to set...
Since the folks at Notes on Design have asked me to contribute a few posts previewing the upcoming HOW Design Conference, I wrestled with where to start. So I figure I’ll begin with a few of the presenters I’m most excited to see in Boston. Namely: • Debbie Millman. She’s flat-out one of the brightest, most talented, nicest people I...
Good thing designers are curious types, hyper-aware of the visual world around them. The designers I’ve met tend to mine their surroundings and experiences for creative fodder that feeds, consciously or subconsciously, into their work. Keeping an eye on trends—fashion, interior décor, color, type—is one of the ways creative pros can stay abreast of what’s fresh (or what’ll be...
This week, I’ve been trading e-mails with Peleg Top, a designer in Los Angeles. I first met Peleg ages ago at a HOW Conference, and over the years we’ve become friends. Peleg was telling me that, after pondering the things he really loves to do—cooking, photography, music—he realized that he was spending absolutely zero time on any of...
Amid the pile of layouts on my desk today for the next issue of HOW (http://www.howdesign.com), I found the feature article about Matthew Sporzynski that we’re working on. Let’s see: how to describe Sporzynski? He calls himself a “cardboard couturier,” but that’s deceptively simple. He creates dimensional objects in paper—eye-poppingly realistic, amazingly detailed, gorgeously crafted. A Parsons grad living...
