Author: Garth Beyer

A Little Added Design Won’t Hurt

A Little Added Design Won’t Hurt

Garth Beyer

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If you have a solid opportunity to add some design to something standard, take it.

Chobani has some text on their yogurt stating they are a proud sponsor of the olympics. Instead of stopping there, they decided to have a bit of fun with design. Sure, the design may only be noticed and appreciated by a few, but they are the few that matter most.

Plus, adding some design raises brand awareness with those who don’t care for greek yogurt. It has to be comforting to Chobani knowing you will now think of them when you consider giving greek yogurt a try. (Trust me, you eventually will if you haven’t already.)

The real beauty of design is it can be made to appeal both to your target audience and the masses in its unique way. Fun little design is universally appealing.

It’s the little things in life, ya know?

 

Stay Positive & Out With The Standard, In With The Design

 

One Hour

One Hour

Garth Beyer

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That’s as long as a meeting needs to take.

Think of yourself as a QB. You have an end goal and you need to get there play-by-play. No point in thinking 10 plays from now because the game will change by then.

Huddle, break, make the play. Repeat.

A 2 hour meeting rarely produces 4 hours of effort. And an all-day meeting? Forget about it.

How boring would football be if they only made 3 plays a game. How boring would your art be if you only shipped something once a year. Let’s not even go into how boring meetings are to begin with…

 

Stay Positive & Let’s Not Be Boring

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Know What You Want To Do In Life? You’re Still Behind

Garth Beyer

Asking what someone wants to be when they grow up is stopping the ball short. Same goes for the person who asks herself what she should really be doing with her life. If I ask you to tell me a color and you say “green,” that’s not enough either.

What kind of firefighter? What type of entrepreneur? What shade of green?

When Steve Wozniak decided to develop a computer (along with Steve Jobs), do you think he just thought to himself he was going to become a computer developer or did he think he was going to become the riskiest computer developer? the best computer developer? the most design-in-mind computer developer?

Think Seth Godin thought he would be just another marketer? Think Adam Levine thought he would be just another lead singer? Le Corbusier, David Meerman Scott, Zig Ziglar – they didn’t just think they would fill a spot in the world, they decided they would make a spot by doing things differently than anyone before them.*

When we decide what we’re going to do with our lives (for the time being, until we decide something new [and that’s okay too]), we have a chance early on to decide to do something difficult, to trailblaze, to do something in a way no one has thought of doing it before. Don’t become just another ______ (fill in the blank).

If you thought it took long to figure out what you were truly passionate about, imagine how long it takes to turn that passion into something different, unique, remarkable.

 

Stay Positive & Better Get Going

*Certainly they leveraged themselves by doing what those in the field they were interested in had done before, but they also improved, added, and twisted the techniques into their own.

10 Ways To Make A Difference

Garth Beyer

1) Talk to people

2) Go sell something in person

3) Don’t just make something crafty, give it to someone too

4) Tip big (treat everyone the way you wish you would be treated)

5) Fire the people who are holding you back

6) Cut out what you don’t need in your to-do list, in your grocery list, in your work list

7) Fall in love

8) Destroy something with a kid

9) Send a handwritten letter/leave a handwritten note to anyone, make it special

10) Never give up, never never give up

 

Stay Positive & Go Make A Difference

I Haven’t Been Home

Garth Beyer

I had a strategic communications professor who at the start of the very first class told everyone if they currently were not the type of person who goes home each day and spends an hour using photoshop or if they didn’t bring their computer with them to the terrace to work on mock ads or if they didn’t have a journal with them at all times to draw ad concepts, then they weren’t passionate (advertising) designers and should be sure they are taking the class for an alternative reason, a different pursuit.

Friends upon friends of mine state something is their passion (gaming, writing, football, design, etc,.). Yet, when I ask if they’ve done their passion lately, they’re response is they haven’t been home or they left their computer somewhere or there wasn’t any time.

I have to agree with my professor that if you haven’t done your passion because of any of those reasons, then it’s not really your passion. Not saying you shouldn’t do it at all, merely be sure you’re doing it for a different reason, one worth doing it for.

 

Stay Positive & Is Your Passion Really Your Passion?

When Your Client Doesn’t Know What They Want

Garth Beyer

I’m guilty of asking a couple designer friends of mine to make me something for my website that is sharp or to make something standout. What does that even mean? There’s no sense of direction, no working visual ques for them to work from. Some of the best desginers can take Comic Sans and make it look sharp, but I’m telling you that’s not what anyone wants.

Thing is. It’s not the client’s problem anymore to communicate exactly what they want. It’s your job to give them, not just what they say they want (or what they think they want), but what they will be impressed by. After all, you’re the artist. Right?

The real question, then, is how do you deliver something the client says they want and still make it remarkable. That’s the crux of design, of PR, of art.

When a client doesn’t know exactly what they want or even if they do, it’s your job to overdeliver. That’s what you do. That’s what the client doesn’t realize they want.

Take every request to the extreme, to the crazy, and you’ll quickly discover exactly what every client wants.

Stay Positive & Remarkable Is Never What The Client Has In Mind
(it’s always something more)

When In Doubt Frankenstein Out

Garth Beyer

When you find yourself struggling to create some crafty content, Frankenstein your work.

That is, take pieces of writing in your journals or parts of your favorite photographs and stitch them together with thread of your own flare.

So often art is taking pieces of different puzzles and putting them together to create something new.

Stay Positive & Watch Your Work Come To Life