The term “professional designer” can apply to anything from a service provider to a strategic partner, depending on a person’s individual experience, their approach to problem solving, and their relationship with a client. At one end of the scale, a design vendor simply responds to a specific request made by a client and provides them with a commodity. They perform tasks that can be easily replicated by others. Competition at this level is based primarily on cost. In the middle of this scale are design professionals who offer direction and some degree of specialization. They bring not only expertise to the table, but also a degree of professionalism. At the far end of the scale stands the design consultant. They are able to serve in an advisory role, guiding the client through the design problem solving process. As design problems become more complex and require broader collaborative thinking, advisors provide not just solutions, but actually lend insight and depth, and help synthesize information amassed or created by collaborators.

Many designers think of themselves as experts in their field. This is often evident in the “trust me, I’m a professional” response they typically give clients who challenge their direction or advice. Seemingly a reaction to the marginalization that designers have experienced in the past, this type of bluster is an attempt to position the designer as authority figure, one who knows “what’s good for the client.” Unfortunately, the end result is often a breakdown in the trust previously established between client and designer.

In contrast, a design consultant positions themselves as a collaborative partner, facilitating the problem solving process. As Jagdish Sheth noted in his book Client for Life, “in the twenty-first century the knowledge workers who excel will be those who transcend simple expertise and are able to provide insights to clients in the context of a collaborative, learning relationship.” Designers that make the leap from craftsperson to collaborator, who don’t necessarily have all the answers, but at least boast a methodology for facilitating design thinking, will be able to position themselves as a trusted consultant. As such, a designer does not tell; rather, they listen. They do not control. Instead, they collaborate. In addition to being able to offer expertise in a specialized area, the design consultant provides a broad and sophisticated body of knowledge. (Sheth 2000)

Tim Bruce, principal of the Chicago based design firm lowercase takes client collaboration seriously. Bruce noted that involving clients at key points in the process is critical. As he puts it, “We involve the client for certain projects, like annuals. We do this for several reasons. One, they have good ideas. Two, it brings them along because they help create it so they end up supporting it. We do this more with businesses that are public companies where there are layers of groups that we need to sell through.”

“There are only two ways to secure design’s opportunities: reputation and personal relationships.” So says Rick Valicenti founder of Thirst, the internationally recognized design firm dedicated to taking their client to the edge of the “Discomfort Zone.” As Valicenti notes, graphic design, like most professions, is about the quality of the relationships we form with clients. Design is collaborative work and requires that both designer and client pull together. Clients hire designers to help them solve business problems; designers push clients to communicate their unique value in fresh and unexpected ways. The resulting tension can actually push development of ideas that are balanced and that consider multiple sides of a problem. Gaute Godage, founder of the world’s leading independent computer game developer, Funcom, notes that managing this tension can only be achieved through trust.

Extracting detailed objects from a background can be a tricky thing in Photoshop, particularly when dealing with fuzzy edges like hair, fur, and leaves of trees. The Quick Selection tool and the Refine Edge feature introduced in Photoshop CS3 go a long way, but there are more powerful solutions…

Personally, I’ve been a fan of the Extract filter for a while. With it, you use a “highlighter” to roughly define the edge of the object you wish to extract, and Photoshop comes pretty close to what you’re looking for. The results can be a little rough or jaggy, but usable or easily fixable in many cases.

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The World Wide Web Consortium is planning to implement a new version of the Web accessibility guidelines this year, and it seems like many people have had negative things to say about the version 2.0 update (not official yet). These guidelines affect the way designers and developers build sites for the disabled, so it’s more important than ever as the Web becomes the de facto repository for information, commerce and entertainment.

People smarter than I think the project is confusing, long overdue, and that the process of revision is broken.
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Steven Heller’s latest tome, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-century Totalitarian State, is an intense read. As an object, the book is an impressive chunk wrapped in black striped plastic, with the vibrant colors of propaganda peeking through the stripes from the inside cover. Yet the book structure and narrative are highly accessible.

Part coffee table artifact / part required design history reading, the book is a must for anyone interested in branding. Read the rest of this entry »

Ebay has created a new sub-site where “shopping shapes the world.” World of good offers products designed with sustainability in mind. Lately, I’ve been thinking that my choices as a consumer could be as significant as my professional ambitions to take on responsible clients and projects. And what girl doesn’t like to learn that a shopping spree can help others?
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You’ve probably already heard the news that Adobe announced Creative Suite 4 tv.adobe.com on September 23rd, the latest versions of its ubiquitous design apps. As usual, there’s plenty of excitement surrounding this announcement, as every Adobe release brings cool new features, better cross-product integration, and (hopefully) speed improvements that make for an easy transition to your usual work flow.

There wasn’t much chance that Adobe could beat the buzz surrounding last year’s CS3 announcement, since that was the first version of the suite to include applications purchased from Macromedia, like Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash. And, realistically, CS4 isn’t the type of update every designer and her mom will run out and buy right away, but for you antsy early adopters, let’s have a look at some of the features that will get you ready to hit the preorder button…
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If you are not actively involved with any social networks you need to stop reading this and sign up for a few. If you are not using social media to get your business out there and interacting in a new way with your clients, you are missing a huge opportunity. Now with those big words out of the way, I admit I went into the idea of social marketing my business a bit skeptical. But here is what I quickly discovered: talking to my clients about social media marketing was a great “in” to talking about a larger piece of their marketing planning.
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I was already a pretty ambitious designer when I went to the Aspen Design Conference years ago. Mary Catherine Bateson, Margaret Mead’s daughter, spoke and I heard things that hadn’t occurred to me. She talked about designing life and how to create and build the rituals that celebrate the journey of living.

Then, I met Milton Glaser. From him I learned to take everything personally; to connect with the things I create in a real way. His definition of design has always stuck with me: Read the rest of this entry »

Rebecca works her magic with a soup can arrangement in her favorite space in the studio: a harvest table that doubles as workspace and office desk.

Rebecca Cole thrives on creating unique floral, garden and interior designs with a rustic, natural aesthetic. She’s best known to the public as co-host of all 200 episodes of Discovery Channel’s “Surprise By Design” with fellow designer and studio neighbor, Robert Verdi. She continues to educate on a national and global scale through a weekly radio show, “On the House,” regular appearances on shows such as “The Today Show,” as a “guru” on Howdini.com, and as the author of 3 books. From her studio in Manhattan’s flower district, Rebecca Cole Design delivers her unique style to a growing clientele of New York area celebrities and aficionados. Wall-to-wall windows lend an airy greenhouse feel to the space overlooking W. 30th Street.

We stepped into the middle of the proceedings to find out what makes her space so inviting.
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ANDY: Rick, regarding academia and it’s “fixation to ignore the really interesting and productive examples of online collaboration and to only showcase the grand Professors and organizing committee members of such conferences and the menial work they more often are doing” – that’s a real can of worms. But let’s open it anyway.

I think the first thing to address here is that academia and education is changing. Charles Leadbeater has researched and written some great work on this. Well, I say they are changing, but it’s more of a case that they need to change and it will be forced upon them. The pyramid of expertise, of professional elitism, that has driven education has been over-turned in many areas thanks to the web, but higher education in particular is predicated on the idea of a select few having expert knowledge. It’s no wonder that, regardless of new technologies and cultural shifts, the “grand Professors” carry on with their traditional mode. Cultural change requires generational shift, as I mentioned before. Put bluntly, the old men (for it is mainly men) in tenured Professorships need to retire and/or expire in order for that change to happen. Read the rest of this entry »