Design

Pick Your Costume, Path, Hat…

Garth Beyer

Halloween is over but I still see people trying to find the perfect costume, path, hat…

(This post is choppy with a purpose. Bare with me.)

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Not everyone is cut for a traditional education, not everyone can look good putting on a hair-net and flipping burgers, not everyone can be the all-star jock. Simple fact is that different people are looking for different costumes.

My favorite part about Halloween is seeing people who think they are wearing the same costume as someone else. Two people can dress up as a cat, but the makeup is different, the ears are different, the tail is different. We all have something special to offer even if we wear the same costume, walk the same path or put on the same hat each morning.

There’s a reason most agencies need multiple coders, PR people with different personalities, and a variety of people answering phones.

My SO gets me to watch Cupcake Wars and while the bakers are all professional cupcake makers, their finished cupcake products are different from one another.

Starbucks can hire five people who can make a perfect brew, but they all make it their way. The speed they complete an order is different, what they write on the cup is different,  how they hand it to a customer is different.

And when it comes to designers, I have never seen two designers that design the same. Not even when one designer tries mimicking another.

Doing It Right

You’re getting a lot of variety thrown at you here and I appreciate you reading through the choppiness of it all. But there is a point to it.

No matter what you do, you get to invest yourself in it, add your style, put part of you into it. Unfortunately, so many people give up following their interests because what they create is so different.

I still remember one day a few years ago that I thought of melting crayons on a canvas to make art. I never did it because I thought people would say it was stupid, no one would like it, and it was just too different.

A few months after my decision not to do it, a classmate did it and her piece got showed in a glass case in the school. Then I was surfing the web and saw that she wasn’t even the first one to make something by melting crayons on a canvas.

Turns out what I thought people would think was just too different to like, they actually loved.

Doing It Wrong

You’re going to have a lot of people tell you that you’re doing something wrong because it’s different. Worse yet, you’re often going to tell yourself that you’re doing it wrong because you have never seen anything like it before.

The harsh truth is that you (and they) might be right. But it’s better to be wrong and learn from it than not do it at all and never know.

 

Stay Positive & Remember, It’s About How You Deliver

Garth E. Beyer

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Upgrading What Is Free

Garth Beyer

NittyGritty

There’s a bar and grill in downtown Madison that gives a birthday mug to all those that go there for their birthday. They also fill that mug up with a free drink of your choice if you couldn’t have guessed.

One year they decided to redesign the mug, making it larger and more aesthetically appealing.

It bummed out all those that had gotten the smaller, less good-looking one.

When you upgrade what is free, it is a sign of your business making progress, but you run the risk of hurting your previous customers. It’s never an easy decision to make when you consider that those who have gone to your bar and grill are more likely to return than those who have never been inside.

The first way to fix this is to give the redesigned, larger mug to everyone to begin with. Don’t wait for the profits to do it. We know that people buy into how things make them feel, what also matters, though, is that what the buy continues to make them feel that way. When free things are upgraded, it devalues the feeling of what has already been given away.

I don’t recommend doing it this way.

The second and ultimately beneficial way of fixing the problem is to reach out to those who already received the smaller, less good-looking mug. Suggest that they can come in and swap their mug with a new one. Or state that for the next month, if they come in with their old mug they get a special dessert put inside it, or a discount on their meal, or another free drink.

When you upgrade what is free, you can’t neglect those who already received the smaller, less good-looking thing.

 

Stay Positive & New Customers Is Progress, Old Customers Is Profits

Garth E. Beyer

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Why Are Manhole Covers Round?

Garth Beyer

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I once heard that those who interviewed at Google were asked why manhole covers were round and not any other shape.

I can’t help but say it’s because the artistic ability to work with something round (rather than the traditional square canvas), which allows for some phenomenal creativity.

The real answer is that a round cover is the only  shape of a manhole cover that no matter how it is turned, it won’t fall into the hole.

But, you know, design still matters after choosing a shape.

 

Stay Positive & Shape Is Only Part Of Design

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit

Another Day, Another Picasso

Garth Beyer

“At a time when it was cool to bend the rules of art, Picasso smashed every one.”Picasso

Look at the world of design around us. It’s cool to bend the rules of design. Ogle at what Steve Jobs has done. Even after his accomplishments, I still can’t help but wonder, with the world rewarding those who challenge the status quo and bend the rules of design and connection, who will be the next to smash every one of them?

Stay Positive & Jobs Is Just The Start

Garth E. Beyer

Anyone Can Design, Right?

Garth Beyer

Untitled

There are so many tools (free and cheap) that allow the most novice of designers to create something better than they can on Microsoft word or Minecraft. Take presentations, for example.

It began with Powerpoint. Outside of academia, I have yet to see someone present using Powerpoint. I have, however, seen users upload their information to Prezi or Haiku Deck, two (free!) fantastic and simply designed presentation platforms.

It makes me wonder why we need “professional” designers if – so it seems – anyone can design an adequate presentation.

Then I come across people like Nancy Duarte and her methodology to designing presentations. From there I visit her portfolio, my jaw drops. I – hopefully you, now, too – am astonished and impressed with her work. It is some of the finest design I have seen.

Sure, anyone can design, but very few can design like Duarte. I suppose that’s why I am so fascinated with design, simply because the moment you think everyone is a designer, someone steps it up a notch and raises the “average.”

I will tell you this: you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by keeping up with the average. I have said it already, design is in everything, no matter what career you have or are pursuing.

 

Stay Positive & Forget The Joneses, Keep Up With The Designers

Garth E. Beyer

What It Means To Mashup

Garth Beyer

I preach endlessly that the new age art is created by mashing up two or more properties, objects, or entities to create something entirely new.

Here I present to you Ben Heine’s Pencil vs Camera project. Click the picture to view more.

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Something I’m incredibly happy that I found: Writers as Architects.

Another artist, defying gravity.

Art was once about taking a photo of a photo of a photo of a photo. Now it’s about using a different medium at each level. It’s about combining not only different types of brushes, but different paints, different juices, coffees, and mud.

This method of creation goes beyond the easel. It encompasses us in advertising, in technology, and self-made products. The world is being redesigned and it wants you to be an artist.

Well, will you be?

 

Stay Positive & Mash Mash Mash

Garth E. Beyer

Why These Are The Best Years The World Has Ever Seen

Garth Beyer

Not even a hundred years ago, everything was work. Food on the table. People relied on each other. You got what you made. Blood, sweat, and tears.

Then we hit the industrial revolution, and as a result, work became less of a worry. What took our attention is all the free time we had. What would we watch on television? What would we listen to on the radio? What activities and groups would we now participate in?

Then the post-industrial revolution happened. This revolution is lead by this current generation. This revolution can be summed up like this:

everything that had become free time, has now become design.

 

Interesting concept... - ImgurAnd if your mind goes to robots designing everything, I would argue that. Sure, robots can help us create things. But they can’t design them ahead of us. We crunched the numbers and wrote the program before a calculator could tell us the square root of 64. So it is with everything that is designed. And I’ll tell you, everything, and I mean everything is being designed.

Will you be a leader of it?

 

Stay Positive & Go On, Design

Garth E. Beyer