sepoctpreview2015

BUSINESS

Ellen Shapiro

Six Secrets of Highly Effective Graphic Design Marketers Getting your work seen in the right places (like this magazine) takes a lot of effort, and as these designers prove, it won’t happen by accident.

T

o succeed as a designer, you no longer have to be in New York or London or San Francisco—or anyplace in particular.

But, in addition to doing great work, you do have to invest in a well-thought-out marketing strategy and spend significant time making things happen. A design firm or agency with a big budget can easily make an impression, but there are plenty of innovative ways for small firms to get their work noticed. There’s no one secret recipe, but the following strategies have proved highly effective in helping graphic designers secure the kind of work they want.

Use good old advertising I first “met” Jane Tilka in 2010 on a transatlantic flight. No, not sitting next to me, but on page 49 of an airline magazine, right between Karrass Negotiating Seminars and Las Vegas hotels, in a full-page, long-copy ad.

A full-page ad for a graphic designer? “Designers can really learn from the advertising industry,” Tilka explains. “Ads are not directly tied to getting work, but they build awareness and get you noticed. The design community shouldn’t shy away from advertising.”

The Minneapolis-based Tilka Design mixes traditional ads with a targeted e-communications campaign. “You have to have a multifaceted strategy that covers all the bases,” Tilka says. Her firm sends out a bimonthly e-mail to more than 800 influencers via MailChimp.

34

Design Annual 2015

The e-mail introduces new work and links directly to tilka.com, where recipients can learn about each project in detail and peruse other work. Each e-blast results in 75 to 100 replies, Tilka reports.

“This is a long-term, disciplined process. On the website, we demonstrate our capabilities and provide a video peek into our office and how we work. Thus, potential clients are engaged in a whole arc of communications, not a single event. And it works,” she says.

“Our average open rate for an e-blast is 50 percent. According to MailChimp, the industry average open rate is only 20 percent.”

Surprise them into feeling something When Adam Zolis and David Adams went into business together in 2014, they kept it mum for a year. Their new firm, Art & Mechanical (A&M), is located in Toronto, a highly competitive market.

Zolis acknowledges that even with considerable experience at ad agencies and design studios, it’s difficult to establish yourself with key decision-makers— CEOs, business founders and owners—and get considered for the kind of projects that can put a new entity on the map. So he and Adams spent an entire year developing their brand, brainstorming and hatching their plan.

The partners launched A&M with a surprisingly dark, expletivefilled, seven-minute video titled “Souls of Sin,” which tells the story of a gang-style execution that’s called off when the killers receive a well-designed promotional package in support of the

victim. Produced with a full team of writers, actors, director and cinematographer, it required an investment of many thousands of dollars as well as bartered services. A&M distributed the video via social media as well as through a traditional PR campaign that included press releases sent to trade, business and creative publications, all timed to coincide with the launch of its new website.

“The film created a buzz and gave us credibility,” Zolis says. “It shows that we can create experiences that are emotionally relevant and that can inspire change, motivate people to feel something, to do something. The film gave us more traction than launching with the site alone, but both were critical. And now we’re busy with projects for beverages, restaurants and financial service firms.”

The partners’ plan includes doing something just as ambitious and surprising every year. “Stay tuned,” Zolis warns.

Give promotional gifts that people actually want New York City–based Adventure House creates websites and digital marketing for such powerhouses as Citibank and Scholastic—big operations with many decision-makers, all in different office locations and on separate teams.

Agency president Alexander Acker’s strategy is to create and send out functional, meaningful promotions that, in his words, “are designed to keep us ‘sticky’ with clients who have the means to refer us to others within their large organizations.” The most successful by far has been the iTowel, a beach towel designed to look like an iPhone with summer-themed parody app icons. Last June, Adventure House mailed the towels in specially designed cartons with personal notes to 150 current clients. “We ran the numbers on sales-byclient per month and had near-triple billings from six of our largest clients 30 days after we sent out the iTowel,” Acker reports.

“The buzz factor was huge, too,” he adds. The iTowel popped up on hundreds of tech blogs and a CNET video. “Clients were calling us up and sending us e-mails, asking for more towels to give to family and friends,” Acker says. And, perhaps more to the point, requests for app designs spiked.

Leverage online resources Slovakia is a small Eastern European country of about 5.5 million people—not exactly a design hotspot. From there, Victor Novak runs

a fifteen-person design firm, Higher Brand Experience Agency, with a global clientele, built mainly through online content marketing.

Novak says he gets big returns by leveraging free web channels, particularly Behance.

The firm’s projects have been viewed more than 1.1 million times on the Behance Network. Higher Brand Experience has 123,000 followers and nearly 80,000 appreciations, and the exposure has led to projects large and small from more than 20 countries, primarily in Europe, but also in Africa, the Middle East and China.

HUNDREDS OF

POSITIONS IN VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS.

IS YOUR NEXT JOB ONE OF THEM? FIND OUT AT The Communication Arts Career Site

CHIEF MARKETING

STRATEGIC

OFFICER

STORYTELLER

DIRECTOR OF

USER EXPERIENCE

JAVASCRIPT

MOBILE DESIGN

DIRECTOR

DEVELOPER CREATIVE

DESIGN

DIRECTOR

VISIT CREATIVEHOTLIST.COM

TODAY AND FIND YOUR PERFECT JOB. Communication Arts | commarts.com

35

4

1

1

6

BY MONICA KASS ROGERS

F

our tiny mice, tails thinner than licorice laces, nibble seeds in the corner of the acrylic pet tote Claire Rosen holds in her slender hands. “I named them after my sisters,” Rosen confides, scooping the smallest, Lillie, from the box to nestle on the front of the petticoat-bolstered dress she’s wearing to match the Marie-Antoinette-meetsThe-Borrowers-meets-The-Tailor-of-Gloucester photo shoot we are about to start. I say “we” because 31-year-old Rosen’s enthusiasm about her photo projects is so infectious, it’s nearly impossible to stand at the edge without jumping in.

“Do you want to hold a mouse?” she asks. Of course I do.

It is late morning. Sunshine streams in. Throughout Rosen’s Montclair, New Jersey, carriage house, antique curio cabinets overflow with odd bits of taxidermy, faucet knobs and parasols, bird nests and buttons, devil masks and doll heads. Hovering at this shelf and then that, Claire magpies about, gathering bits and pieces to add to the mouse-sized banquet table she’s made from a gold-swagged Ladurée macaron box. Around it, pincushion tuffets, doll-furniture settees and teensy platters of cheese await the mice, the newest group of animals to be treated to a Claire Rosen Fantastical Feast.

The feasts—banqueting beasts photographed around elaborate tables filled with the foods each species loves— are Rosen’s most encompassing photo fixation yet. Thus far,

shoots have included tapirs and sloths in the Amazon, goats in Sarajevo, and elephants in New Jersey. And if a new proposal pans out, Rosen will take the show on the road in a traveling exhibit to include “participatory installation” benefit banquets in collaboration with famous chefs at each international locale.

“It’s very inspiring to watch her brainstorming as she translates her vision into photographs,” says Ron Haviv, New York photojournalist and owner of the VII photo agency.

Haviv is filming Rosen at work and has animal-wrangled and assisted on many of her feast shoots. “Her approach to photography is the opposite of what I do,” he says.

“I’ve never looked at a camera as a documentary tool,” Rosen explains, fingering silk ribbons she hopes to tie on the mouse tails. “Even in the beginning, when I would drape my little sisters in sheets and have them pose as Greek goddesses in the backyard, I always wanted to set things up to create my own world,” she says. “I want people to be swept away by the story in the image, deeply engaged so that even after they walk away, the image lingers.”

A fairy-tale world

Rosen’s world does that. It’s a fairy-tale place at once dreamily whimsical and darkly alluring, oddly familiar and freshly exciting. You glimpse it in all of her richly luminous

Right: “Nostalgia is defined as a sentimental longing for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. This still life, titled Black & White, is from my Nostalgia series, a study of my personal belongings arranged by color and visually inspired by the childhood game I Spy. A web of memories is displayed through my scavenger hunt treasures, travel trinkets and gifts from family, friends and lovers collected over the years. The objects that fill the images are of little monetary value to the outside world, but each serves as a priceless sentimental landmark in the emotional landscape of my memories.”

62

Design Annual 2015

INTEGRATED BRANDING PROGRAM 1 (series) Ross Gendels/Estelle Kim/Soobin Park, designers Heui Jin Jo, art director Steven Bennett-Day/Manuel Dilone/ Joe McHeffey, creative directors Michael Bucchino, writer Havas Worldwide, New York (New York, NY), ad agency helia, client “How do we unify data and creative to establish one universal language?

Like the sun of our solar system, people are at the core of both data and creativity. Helia, meaning ‘of the sun,’ represents the sunlight and the variation of data. Inspired by the data analytics capabilities of helia, we developed an algorithm that creates unique data-informed expressions of the brand identity. The visual language uses precise data informed by the sunrise and sunset time cycles, as well as real-time weather and geographic information.”

2 (series) Cindy Goulet, designer Claude Auchu, creative director Gilles Chouinard/Geneviève Jannelle, writers Luc Robitaille, photographer lg2fabrique, production Marion Haimon, project manager Catherine Lanctôt, project director lg2boutique (Montréal, Canada), design firm Communications Johanne Demers, client “The event Tous debout pour nos p’tits loups (We all stand for the little wolves), a benefit dinner for the Fondation Maison-Théâtre, paired creative directors with chefs who created an updated version of their favorite childhood dishes for guests.

Maison Théâtre’s geometric identity inspired the mask, the foundational element of the dinner. Given to guests, the mask transported attendees into the evening’s theatrical theme. The event design was adapted for a souvenir book, an invitation, the decor of the venue and tables, as well as a projected animation.”

116

Design Annual 2015

2

Communication Arts | commarts.com

117

“Design is more important than your clients think, but less important than you think.”

—Jordan Gray, via Communication Arts

“In the age of social media, logo design is a blood sport.”

—Michael Bierut, via Twitter

“THE CLIENT MAY BE KING, BUT HE’S NOT THE ART DIRECTOR.” —VON R. GLITSCHKA

“A graphic designer is a machine that turns coffee into “MY FAVORITE beautiful, DESIGN functional TOOL IS A THESAURUS.” imagery.”

“To say a grid is limiting is to say that language “Change the world? is limiting or typography Design can’t even change the design is limiting.” industry.”

—SCOTT STOWELL, VIA TWITTER

—Ellen Lupton

—Lisa Manson, via Quotes on Design

—Jennifer Daniel, via Medium