29 Things Designers Need to Know + 8 Ingredients for Success

Doug Bartow, principal of id29, has been long regarded as a mentor to many designers through his firm's intern program and active status in the design community. It's with that knowledge coupled with his understanding of how seasoned designers can benefit as well from his advice that he'll be speaking via a design tutorial "8 Critical Ingredients to a Successful Graphic Design Career," 2-3 pm EST Sept. 30.

Bartow will tell you about the secret ingredients for a successful and fulfilling career. Who doesn’t want that?

"The original '29 Things' piece (available below) was written with students and young designers in mind, but it got a lot of positive feedback from seasoned professionals who told me it helped kick-start their creativity. I've hand-picked 8 tenants from the original 29 that I think apply to designers of all ages and levels of experience. I'll talk about these ingredients in depth, and some of the things designers can do in their everyday work to keep the creative justices flowing," Bartow says. Reserve your virtual seat now!

4. DEFINE YOUR AUDIENCE
Who are you speaking to and what is the objective? If you can’t definitively answer both of these questions about a project you’re about to start working on, go back to the drawing board. Graphic design is simply a plan that visually articulates a message. Make sure you have the message and its intended viewer sorted out before you start making. Communicate with purpose—don’t just make eye candy.

5. BE YOURSELF
Be confident in yourself as an author, designer, photographer, creative. Don’t work in a particular personal style. Rather, develop a personal approach to your creative work.

Your commissioned work should never be about you, but it can certainly reveal your hand as the designer. As your work becomes more well-known, you will get hired for exactly that. For your personal work, don’t be afraid to tell your story. No one else is going to do it for you.

6. LEARN TO SAY ‘NO’
Some of your best design business decisions will ultimately be saying “no” to clients or projects. Unfortunately, it usually takes a few disasters to gain the experience to know when to walk away from an impending train wreck.

Carefully measure the upsides of any project—creative control of your design work, long-term relationship-building and gross billing—versus the potential downsides—the devaluation of the creative process, being treated like a “vendor” and ongoing scope creep (where the volume of what you’re expected to deliver keeps expanding, while the schedule and budget don’t).

7. COLLECT AND SHARE EVERYTHING
Find and save relevant and interesting things and pass them along to your friends, co-workers, followers and clients. Use the web and social media to share your own photos and work, as well as the work of others you find engaging. Be funny, serious, irreverent, businesslike, self-promotional, curatorial, whatever—just be yourself. For everyday inspiration, surround your workplace with the design ephemera you collect (see No. 5).

8. BE A DESIGN AUTHOR
Develop ideas. Write them down, edit them, share them and elicit a response. Poof! You’re a design author. Read design blogs and participate in the discussions. Have an opinion. If you find yourself spending hours a week contributing to other designers’ blogs, consider starting your own. The cost and effort for startup are minimal, and the opportunities are diverse.

9. BUILD YOUR BOOK
One piece of advice I give young designers looking to fill out their portfolios is to find the best local arts organization with the worst visual brand identity or website and make a trade. They get some great design work, and you get creative control and real-world projects in your book that other potential clients will recognize.

10. CLEAN UP YOUR ACT
Manage your online profiles carefully and be sure to keep all your listings accurate, consistent and (mostly) professional. You can count on co-workers, potential employers and clients to Google you, so make sure what they find won’t be too incriminating and sink your chances for that new job or project. Employers read social media posts, too—especially ones that include their proper names—so use common sense.

11. RESEARCH (AND DESTROY)
You’ll never know as much about your clients’ businesses as they do, but part of our job as designers is to try. Learn as much as you possibly can at the inception of a project about your client’s business space, their goals, their competition and their history. Dedicate a half- or full-day download session, ask a lot of questions, and then shut up and listen.

12. OBSERVE TRENDS (THEN AVOID THEM)
Keep current on the state of our industry by reading books, magazines and blogs, and attending conferences. RSS feeds will allow you to quickly skim design- and culture-related content. Avoid design annuals as a source of inspiration, as they’re a record of what’s already been done. Study the work of others to understand it, not to duplicate it.

Are you hoping to uncover the secrets to a successful graphic design career? Tune in to Doug Bartow’s design tutorial  for all levels of designers about the “8 Critical Ingredients for a Successful Graphic Design Career.”