It’s more than just work If all there was to work was work, this would make many of our lives easier. But in the real world we need to communicate and work with others.
And that means dealing with everyone’s various foibles and quirks. Understanding what makes you and others tick can help you to be a better graphic designer and team member. . Meet Sam Sanguine In part one of Graphic Designer Personalities: What Type Are You? we explored the first personality type of four: the phlegmatic. She’s dependable, low-key, amicable, and a bit shy; a person who cares but resists change.
In part two of this series we meet Sam or Samantha Sanguine. You’ll recognize these types of people immediately because they are always telling stories and talking. They are the optimist’s optimist and are always positive.
In the workplace, they are usually more concerned about how they are liked rather than what is at hand; work and deadlines. Sanguines are extroverts and love to be the center of attention.
Sanguines are extremely talented in getting along with everyone and revel in meeting new people. They love attention, are fun loving, and feel lonely when people are not around them. They are ultimate social animals.
Since sanguines are generally well liked by everyone, they have the ability to motivate and encourage people to do tasks or projects. But because they are so socially motivated they often get lost in project details or forget them altogether.
The sanguine graphic designer Graphic designers who fall into this personality type will excel at customer relations. Their bubbly personality puts clients at ease.
They are natural born salespeople and can usually persuade clients to accept their design ideas.
But on the downside, since this personality type abhors details and deadlines they often find that they are behind in projects or fail to meet project specifications. . Sanguine traits: The good and the bad Typical traits for the sanguine personality are: . * Extroverted, charismatic personality * Expresses emotions easily * Warm and friendly; loves people * Loves to talk and tell stories * Confident * Persuasive * Doesn’t Worry. Carefree * Apologizes easily and quickly * Always needs to be the center of attention * Can be undisciplined and unproductive * Tends to exaggerate * Not detail oriented * Overly concerned about being liked * Restless; cannot sit still * Can be easily angered . Graphic design school and coworkers A good graphic design school will not only provide you with the necessary education in graphic design and computer graphic techniques, it will also help you develop skills in working in a team setting.
In graphic design college you will meet many personality types. By understanding what personality categories they fall into, you’ll have a heads up on how to work and get along with others.
Next time… For more information on how the theory of the Four Personality Types developed, see part one of Graphic Designer Personalities: What Type Are You?
When we meet again we’ll take a look at the personality type of the choleric graphic designer. These individuals live and die by keeping schedules. You’ll recognize them by their fierce yelling. Calm is not in their vocabularies!
There’s No Place Like GNOME Yes, that was an incredibly bad pun but as they say, it was too good to pass up. Aside from the pun, there is a graphic design competition that may appeal to your artistic senses; the Gnome T-shirt Design Contest.
The Gnome Foundation is a non-profit organization that is responsible for GNOME, a computing platform for use in the development of free software applications.
The sponsors (zazzle.com) of the GNOME T-shirt contest want your design ideas for a t-shirt that will celebrate the release of GNOME 3.0, (GNU Network Object Model Environment). . Contest Details You may only submit one entry to this contest. Be sure to visit zazzle.com to see the different t-shirt styles and colors in order to gauge how you design will look on the final product.
Submit your designs as an SVG file or compressed file.
Judging and Prizes Three winners will be selected by a contest jury comprised of GNOME Project experts. According to the contest rules the prizes will be:
* First Place: $100 USD and two t-shirts with your winning design. * Second Place: $50 USD and one t-shirt with your winning design. * Third Place: One t-shirt with your winning design.
Other Information and Contest Links The deadline for entries is January 15, 2011. This contest has no entry fees. All designs for this t-shirt contest must be in English.
Follow these links for additional contest information:
Been There, Done That, and Been There Again Sometimes a difficult customer can make you feel depressed, angry or both. But as they say, it’s all part of the package when you work for clients.
Tak Robinson, a lead graphic designer, shares his story of a difficult client.
“One of our customers used us because we were known for fast service. He had to pay a premium but grudgingly did so to meet his tight deadlines.
“Then he started to drop off his work after our studio was officially closed for business. He knew we had a night crew and demanded that his projects be ready by the next day.
“This really disrupted our night shift’s schedule in taking care of other rush jobs for the following morning. Our excellent night team was not happy.”
What did Tak do? The rest of the story is at the end of this article. (As usual certain circumstances and names have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty.)
Difficult Clients Most of the time, clients are reasonable. But there are always customers who stretch your patience to the max. . ………………. . As Jill the graphic designer indicated, you can’t really tell off a customer the way she did. But in rare cases where compromise or a mutual understanding isn’t working, it may be the better part of valor to diplomatically turn down the job.
Kristen Holden of SitePoint offers this advice:
“The easiest way to deal with problem clients is to not take them on board in the first place.
“Avoid feeling compelled to accept every piece of work you come across. Some clients are truly not worth the extra effort spent on managing them. Over time, you actually lose money.”
With that said make sure that you are doing the best you can to be professional and understanding in order to find a solution that will keep both you and your client relatively happy.
Graphic Design School and Customer Relations The first priority for going to a graphic design college is to get a strong education in design and art. The secondary purpose is to prepare you for career opportunities upon graduation.
How you relate to your fellow peers in graphic design school, how you handle the pressure of deadlines, and your ability to produce consistently good work under adverse circumstances helps you in providing good customer service.
Hard Decisions In a perfect world there should never be a circumstance where you need to turn down a client. But as we all know this isn’t a perfect world. Turning down a client must be done in a pragmatic and logical manner after all other avenues to work with the client have been closed.
In some cases a job may not be financially sound for your business. In extremely rare cases the client is unreasonable and unrealistic concerning expectations, deadlines or final costs.
Let’s find out the rest of the story concerning our graphic designer and the difficult client.
“His demands were becoming increasingly over the top for us and we had to make a decision to tell our night staff to charge him premium-rush-overtime to complete his work ahead of our other clients.
“The funny thing is he never complained about the extra charges. He started to drop off his work during the daytime again instead of at night. Eventually we figured out that he was always behind in his work and passed his hectic deadlines on to us.
“We wanted to drop him as a client but things worked themselves out for us. We think his company fired him because another graphic artist took his place.”
Next Time… We hope you’ve enjoyed this series about Graphic Designers vs. Clients. In the next few weeks we’ll take a look at the creative processes of graphic design and see how good ideas can sometimes backfire.
“It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over” Although grammatically incorrect, this phase is often quoted during the times when all hope of winning or completing something looks lost. The quote is remarkably obvious, humorus and philosophical all at the same time.
Yogi Berra, (not Yogi Bear!), a Hall of Fame Baseball inductee (1972) and former coach/manager of the New York Yankees and Mets, was responsible for this infamous quote and others.
We’ve selected a few funny t-shirt designs to demonstrate the phenomenon where popular media has become a foil for humor by graphic designers and artists through t-shirt designs. Click on each image for information about these cool designs.
Enjoy!
Star Wars Many individuals grew up with the Star Wars saga.
Whether they are fans of the original trilogy, the prequels or all of the episodes, a Star Wars fan has the inherent ability to memorize and recite dialogue, trivia or facts about the movies. (”I plead guilty on all three counts, your honor…”)
A startling revelation occurs in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Backwhen Luke Skywalker realizes (spoiler coming if you don’t know the plot!) there is an unbelievable connection between him and Darth Vader.
One graphic designer decided to take a famous scene from the movie and do a parody on it. And thus we have: ………………….
Logos Tens of millions are spent annually by corporations and businesses on logo creation and designs. They are looking for just the right image that may help them make a memorable market brand.
Logos have also become part of pop culture. In 1964, artist Andy Warhol transformed the lowly Campbell’s soup can logo into a piece of art, thereby adding his mark on the pop art movement.
Product logos can not only be seen as good examples of graphic and artistic design; they can also become fashion statements.
In the following t-shirt design, an artist has turned a very recognizable company logo into a different message that will make you smile. …………………………………………
Slogans Who hasn’t heard the slogan “What goes around comes around,” as a roundabout reference to Karma or cause and effect? This and other popular sayings permeate our daily speech.
In this rendition of a popular catch phrase, the graphic designer pokes fun at this slogan while also pointing out, with a cynical eye we think, the simplistic failure of the advice.
We think vegetarians will like this one. ……………………………………..
Next Time… Yes we heard those groans out there; there will be a next time for PopCulture, Graphic Design, and Funny T-Shirts. In the last installment, we’ll see how famous individuals have been incorporated into popular culture and t-shirt designs.
Funny is in the Eye of the Beholder In this series of Pop Culture, Graphic Design, and Funny T-Shirtswe’ve seen how modern media influences t-shirt fashion in a humorous way. We continue in part two with more examples.
As far as graphic designs a little humor, if used properly, can help a piece be memorable instead of forgettable.
If this premise seems doubtful, try to remember a recent advertisement on television. Usually, the funny ones tend to stick with you.
And now, we present part two.
Enjoy! (And hopefully laugh too.) . “I’ll Make Him an Offer He Can’t Refuse” Humor sometimes is based upon tragedy or misfortune. Why? Because everyone can relate to those situations. We’ve all had days where things don’t always work out.
The phrase above is from the movie, The Godfather. Here we see a graphic designer’s interpretation of what could happen if a barber had the ultimate “bad day” with Don Corleone, the boss of the powerful Corleone crime family. . …………………….. . The Aliens are Coming! Or perhaps we should say they’ve already arrived. In 1978 a stand-up arcade video game named Space Invaders swept the world and became an international phenomenon.
Millions of people fed millions of quarters into the coin slots of this game for a chance to shoot down the fast moving aliens.
The game was simple but addictive. And to this day, it is still played by gamers in its various iterations.
The movement of the little aliens was predictable and if you had quick reflexes, you could play for a long time.
The repeatable movement of the aliens had one graphic designer wonder, “What would a meeting of these aliens look like during a strategy session?” Here is the result: . ………………. . The Mummy’s Predicament In pop movie culture there are films that define the monster-horror category. Movies such as Frankenstein, the Alien series, Friday the 13th, the Twilight saga, and The Mummy are familiar to most movie fans of this genre.
In the case of the Mummy, tragedy hits home as the Mummy contemplates what to do to get out of a particularly embarrassing situation. . …………………………………. . Next Time… We continue our quest to show you the humor of artists and graphic designers in t-shirt designs. Be sure to come back and laugh along with us.
Be Prepared This phrase is the motto of the Girl and Boy Scouts. This is also good advice if you are applying for grants or scholarships to help you finance your education at a graphic design school or college.
In this article we’ll offer some tips regarding the logistics of applying, where to find funding, and how you can increase the odds in your favor for successful submissions.
Details, Details, and More Details The good news is that there are funds out there for you to apply for. The bad news is there are funds out there for you to apply for. In other words, if you hate paper work and applications, this will definitely be a challenging experience.
Make sure you fill out all forms completely, accurately, and neatly. This will make the job of screening your application much easier for the person in charge of scholarship reviews. So always “be prepared.”
Here is some advice on the process of applying for scholarships: . Does the Scholarship Apply to You? Make sure that the specific grant or scholarship you are applying for is geared towards your specific needs. If you are seeking financial help for your career training at a graphic design college, applying for a science scholarship makes no sense. Do your research to be certain you fit the scholarship category.
Keep Your Grades Up A good deal of scholarships require a minimum GPA of 3.0 or better. In some instances, a 2.5 or higher is acceptable. If you want scholarship money, your GPA scores are one of the first qualifying prerequisites that will be looked at.
Get Letters of Recommendation from Your Teachers Anyone can say they’re great, but backing this up with facts is another matter. If you are exemplary in your scholastic abilities, talents or other positive qualities that fulfill the requirements for a scholarship, ask your teachers to put in a good word for you by writing a letter of recommendation.
Don’t Skimp on the Details You will probably be asked to submit a written essay on the reasons why you are a good candidate for the scholarship. You need to emphasize your strengths and not shy away from making your case. Make sure to list any awards, activities or personal achievements that demonstrate your expertise in your field of graphic design.
Keep at It Filling out scholarship applications can be tedious and tiring. But according to those who are in the know, they understand that the rewards can be worth all the work.
Where to Start Now that you know the “how,” the next step is knowing the “where” of scholarships.
The following Internet links are filled with valuable information and strategies on scholarships and grants: . . CollegeAnswer.com You’ll find a wealth of information pertaining to funding, selection of colleges, and college related topics. There is plenty of good advice and resources here.
FedMoney.org This website describes itself as, “Your FREE Guide to All U.S. Government Grants and Loans Benefiting Students!” This website has an easy to use interface that can narrow down your search for government scholarships and grants.
Schoolgrantsblog.com This blog was mentioned by Time magazine. This resource lists various grants that are available to students as well as listing the specific grant categories.
Next Time… What are the specific scholarships available to you? Who runs them? What are the pitfalls in applying for scholarships? These questions and more will be answered in Graphic Design Scholarship Basics and You - Part III.
It’s more than just work
In part one of Graphic Designer Personalities: What Type Are You? we explored the first personality type of four: the phlegmatic. She’s dependable, low-key, amicable, and a bit shy; a person who cares but resists change.
The sanguine graphic designer
Typical traits for the sanguine personality are:
Next time…
There’s No Place Like GNOME
Judging and Prizes
Other Information and Contest Links
Sometimes a difficult customer can make you feel depressed, angry or both. But as they say, it’s all part of the package when you work for clients.
Hard Decisions
Be Prepared
