Form is Function – Part 3, Sales and Practitioners

By Lee

Sales

Selling is a thorn for many a practitioner of many a skill. We often forget though that without an exchange of physical goods we quickly die. No radical visionary can escape this fact, regardless of their genius. So, evaluate the influence.

Sales = Profit.

It’s that simple. Group A has product. Group B needs product – tasty macro economics thus far. Even better, sales is a must. It always has been. As long as the earth spins, sales and commerce will always be. Basic laws of supply and demand are constant and formative. New products are created which, in turn, create new needs which, in turn create new products, which, in turn, create new needs for software upgrades and security updates. Sales is cyclical. It is invariably linked to information and rightfully so.

Consequently, information as of late is completelyreliant on sales to get its message to the public. Individuals are no longer individuals, they’re sponsored. Athletes and the like compete to inform you of their prowess and do so by the only way they know how, NIKE and Gatorade. While no disrespect is intended to either party, what once was an honest attempt to display ability at the hands of an athlete or good product at the floor of the sales room has morphed into a symbiosis of false resolution. They’re selling neither the individual or the product but your desire to be like the individual and your need for the product; two personal traits that may have never existed yet are now completely necessary through the wonder and power of sales, information, and their new friend naiveté. Together they breed something known as “Commercialism.”

Despite some earnest attempts to abhor commercialism and its dad “Capitalism”, most cannot escape the nagging memory that they’ve sipped from the deep waters of both. Inherent in that description is the need for both. Found in that need is deeper necessity of a way to convey their message. Ultimately, it needs to be designed. Now, man is often quick to find fault with the system yet much less apt or speedy at expunging the influence from their own lives. Needfully, objectivity returns. Akin to the observation of information is the observation of sales – being able to step outside of the ring and judge the fight.

“To sell” is not “to sin.”

Yet at times, Graphic Design is caught on both rails, slowly frying from the voltage, still able to see the train acomin’ head-on.

By good measure, Graphic Design is a selling of itself. Designers are asked to bid on projects for web sites and branding campaigns the same way contractors bid on NASA jobs. The only difference is that they wear ties and designers most often do not.

The human need to consume will never go away. Graphic Design must approach the topic cautiously and wisely. As mentioned, design is an alloy of mediums. Practitioners should be able to step back and evaluate the perceptions that sales has placed upon their realm. Many of those perceptions are entirely necessary. Others are fluff. Whatever the outcome, the hope should be that both sales and design grow to respect each other more and more. This will not happen though if one or the other or both are unwilling to recognize the necessity of the other. Let’s consider a premise in marketing – sometimes known as telling and giving people what they never knew they needed or wanted. Marketing knows that without design, sales has no structure. What oft is absent is a consideration for human interaction.

Ignore the research. Truth is that you can only subject an individual or group to implied need for a limited run. If it goes too far, one of two things will occur: resistance or rooting. Neither are pleasing when trying to figure out why your name brand product isn’t selling no matter how many times you’ve re-invented yourself visually. In kind, graphic designers do not have the fortune of being maverick when nobody cares. There must be a symbiosis between the two, an understanding of how each part benefits the message.

That may have seemed to be a lopsided stab at clients. It wasn’t lopsided, it was straight on. Now we can address the bigger knife that designers have thrown themselves upon.

Profit made is financial sustenance for the business, the individual and the persons or people who designed it all. A note that is very lost on many designers both green and seasoned is that of pay. Graphic Designers are not inherently charity workers. Graphic Design is a trade and a product, just like most other professions. Therefore, entities that enlist graphic designers should expect to compensate justly in the same manner they would another contractor or employee. In kind, designers should expect to be compensated justly.

1. If the designer is worth the pay, he will be paid.

2. If the designer is worth the pay, he should be paid.

Many times offers are made to aid in the establishment of portfolios. This falls under the word known as “respect.” Designers must respect themselves and what they do. Indeed, nothing is free. Even if something is given away, it is item lost to the giver. The same is true for your time and resources. When the approach is made to offer free work, evaluate it. What is offered? What is gained? Establishing a portfolio is a lifelong process that begins before a design job is ever landed. If hand-outs are continually given, the world will continue to ask for them and grow more willing to expect them.

Design isn’t free.

When a designer reaches the point of awareness for art, information and sales and their place in the amalgam of graphic design, they’ve most likely learned something that drinks from much deeper wells than do color theory and pie charts. What is learned is how valuable design skills are as a commodity and how best to use them. Even better yet, learn to be humble.

Practitioners

The variety of personalities that embody the practitioners of graphic design are about as diverse as a three-armed orangutan in a sea of emperor penguins. Diversity does not define design. Diversity describes voice, attributes that makes one’s work different from the rest. Not everyone develops a voice. Not everyone is apt to be a designer. Remember the comparison between design and medicine? Now consider the ramifications of someone who decides to press beyond their means. In medicine it generally means a lawsuit. In design it means a lack of food for approximately 3-5 weeks. Any parallel can be drawn whether they be financial, educational or spiritual. The point is to realize one’s potential and boundaries and then realize where and how far those boundaries can be pushed.

Clarity in terms of personal ability and purpose provides Graphic Design a clean description by detailing it’s parts – the same as each section previous has served to inform of Graphic Design by a description of its parts. More broadly, this sort of micro-macro description helps to understand Form is Function as a concept in its entirety.

Focusing once again on ability, it is not the intent of this section to dissuade those desiring and aspiring to be graphic designers. In fact, the opposite is true. It is meant to encourage. Good evaluation does that. Statements have already been made about quality of work and the influence graphic design’s other parents hold, it seems fair to evaluate the task of the sort of internal auditing the designer must undertake.

It is daily. It is by the bid and in the moment. If a “Yes, I can accomplish that” is given to a client, the designer had better follow through. Not to say that everything needing to be accomplished for project is concretely known. That would be awful boring after a while. What it means though is that the designer possesses the blocks and tools needed to complete the job.

So now we find a new term, “tools.” Tools differ from blocks. They are the instruments by which the goal is accomplished. Consider once more the analogy of the builder. His tool may be a nail gun. The nail gun creates speed and eases physical strain for the operator. But, if the nail gun breaks, a builder that knows how to build a house is going to use a hammer in place of the nail gun; not because the hammer replaces the nail gun, but because the builder knows how to build a house.

Nails are simple. You could beat them into a piece of treated lumber with a brick if you wanted to. It doesn’t matter what the tool is if those foundational blocks are in place. Graphic Design is no different. Many books on the shelves (and classes and workshops for that matter) automatically plop the individual down in front of the computer and tell them “You are now a Graphic Designer because you have software and a computer.”

Neither software nor computers have anything to do with the beginnings of Graphic Design! What happened to the foundations? What happened to interpreting data structures? What happened to project briefs? What happened to the blocks that give the tools their place? They’ve disappeared to make way for nothing but a facade that hides Graphic Design’s true intent. If they are eliminated or never considered, all of the preconceptions that give Graphic Design definition rather than description will never abate. Similarly, if a designer has no tools, his foundational blocks are useless.

Illustrating the builder one last time; what if the builder had every tool necessary? A nice slab of concrete, lumber, nails, joists, trusses, brick, stone, siding, fixtures, electricity, plumbing, chop saws, table saws, belt sanders, crowbars, lunch, permits, and, most importantly, an OK to start building from the owner – everything needed for that structure. Now, imagine that the builder has no idea how to build the structure. Will the lumber help? No. Will the bricks lay themselves? No, and don’t argue that that’s the mason’s job. What about the plumbing? Is it going to fit it’s own pipes and drill holes in the walls that have yet to be built and hook themselves up to the tub and sink that aren’t there? No, they will not. They cannot. Tools need a builder. If the builder isn’t able, then all the tools in the world will not help complete the job.

Again, the same is true for Graphic Design. Sketch pads, brushes, software, hardware, none of them will help if knowledge and wisdom of how to use them does not exist.

Mentioned at the end of the section on sales is the word “humble” described as a learned trait. Unfortunately, learning to be humble can mean getting smacked around a bit until the trait sinks in. It’s generally not a pretty process for anyone involved, but once humble is grasped, many problems seem to dissipate. Some designers will never learn to be humble. They ignore the blocks and leap for the tools. Honestly, it’s a difficult profession to be humble in. Everything that Graphic Design produces is visual. This means that people are looking at it and scrutinizing it and opinionizing it and all you have to defend yourself with is the quality of work you put out. If it’s good, no worries. If not, you won’t have to wait long to hear about it.

How then does a designer know if their work is good? An interesting question no doubt – especially since it is asked often and required by many new forms of competitive concept bidding – another topic entirely. Let’s consider the world of medicine one last time. If a doctor performs surgery or makes a diagnosis that has him ask of his peers, “Was that good work?”, isn’t a lack of aptitude is shown? What is he going to do, have someone fix the surgery or diagnosis? Sure, if the patient isn’t already out the door or dead. What are the costs of fixing the problem? They skyrocket well beyond simple cost. They’re emotional, physical, psychological, spiritual and the like. The better question to ask in lieu of “Was that good work?” is, “Am I a good worker?” Am I a good designer? If so, what makes me a good designer?

The cycle continues, as it should. Self-reflection should never end. There should always exist a hunger and desire that drives creativity to deeper and more profound levels; a hunger and desire and creativity kept in check by a humble self. No, this does not disregard creative processes that involve others. Quite the opposite in fact. If a designer knows their bounds and to what extent those bounds can be stretched, creative conversations are all the better granted those creative conversations are being held with minds that are equally aware and able to accomplish their goals.

Not everyone is able.

Not everyone is humble.

Posted on November 29th, 2009

Tags: culture, designer, form, function, sales