DESIGNING - It's all about IMPACT

DESIGN(ING) - IT'S ALL ABOUT IMPACT

These days, it seems like anyone can claim to be a designer. And in all this confusion it can be hard to find the right one for you - or indeed if you are a designer it can be hard to help your prospective clients find you.

Whether you are a designer or client looking for the "Best person for the job", the core focus of your search should be IMPACT.

As an artist (or designer if you choose to define a difference) the shape and style of your impact is the key to being successful. It's about more than just good idea's, in order to get commissions you need to have a unique edge, you need to stand out from the crowd and say "I'm here! look at me!".

Unfortunately the result of this largely is that many young designers and artists enjoy playing dress-up, they raid their mothers wardrobe, prancing around, wearing too much make-up, and generally looking miserable. Social Impact is about passion, inspiration and execution. With out all three, it is not worth doing. Good design is art but it's also function. Things have fit together, this is also key to good Social impact

As a prospective client this might all be a little daunting; Just how does one find the right person for the job? How do you distinguish between the all the different voices? Should you look to value or quality? Do you really have to choose between value and quality?

Of course all these questions that a prospective client will need to find answers to can be solved initially by asking themselves "How 'hands on' do I really want to be with my product's design?"

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FOR THE PROSPECTIVE CLIENT:

FOR THE PROSPECTIVE DESIGNER:

So, how do you go about finding the right designer of the job?

The key here is to first look at your budget. A well known designer or artist will usually produce the best work and is likely to be more accurate with their time estimates and quotes (though I'm not saying unknown's can't do this, just that they don't have a reputation for it yet), but this timeliness and quality comes at a price, literally. So if your on a tight budget it might be advisable to go with the wildcard entry, loosen up the time frame and direct the designer to the result you want. Of the two options the latter obviously requires much more effort on your part but can save you a lot of money.

Once you've decided on the budget and time constraints your ready to look at portfolios. But where to start? How do you find the artist that fits the profile? This goal artist with the right social impact that fits the budget you've defined.

Well now you have 2 options:

Put out a call on a popular forum or jobs board, receive hundreds of entries and spend days filtering through them, and possibly still not find what your looking for.
Pro-actively seek out potential artists and designers through the regular channels such as google, deviantart, cgsociety, designforums, etc.

I'm getting to that: You see social impact can only really be reviewed through pro-actively seeking your artist. It can't be read from a résumé and it can't be completely understood from a portfolio. So by following the first of the two options you can be actively throwing away perfectly good profiles by mistake.

"So what is this social impact thing then?" Well it's an impression of the artist's personality, style, and presence in society. It's a reflection of what they bring to the world as an artist and person.

Your looking for the aspects that make them unique and individual, they need to already fit in with your world view - there is no point trying to make a square peg fit a round hole when you can find one that's already round. An artist is your tool, their work is your words as a picture, your views expressed beautifully.

So what constitutes a good social impact? Is it their on-line presence? Their artistic fingerprint? Or, their interpersonal skills?

Well, in short it is all of these things, these days an artist cannot survive professionally without a consistent on-line presence, they can't produce the result your after if their style doesn't suit yours and they will be very difficult to communicate your ideas with if they have poor interpersonal skills.

To paraphrase Neil Gaiman's commencement address to University of the Arts Philadelphia "A good artist has at least 2 of 3 things:

They do good work,
Are easy to get along with,
They always deliver on time."

But I'd say that a great artist has all 3.

As an artist you need a good brand, you need to look, sound and feel like you. And you need to present this "brand of you" as eloquently as possible; you need an holistic presence, that describes and displays you.

It needs to be unique, it needs to be expressive, and most importantly it needs to be you. Your social impact is how the world will see you, it needs to be visible in your work and your profile. If your work says one thing and what you say about yourself contradicts that then no one will be able to understand you. A good way to do this is to plan out what it is you want to tell the world.

Once you have a draft of this statement, you need to start looking at what your producing, does it fit what you want to say? if not, then why not?

Your art, your designs, your writing, they are all physical (or digital) extensions of yourself.

It has been said that an artist's impact can be measured by their effect upon society, but this isn't 100% true, you can have impact without changing society, and you can change society without impact.

History tells us that subtlety can be as effective as vulgarity at influencing the world. Too frequently do people leave art school looking like a caricature of themselves they think that by being this they are being individual, when frequently there are many more that look just like them.

Social impact is, to put it simply, the way the world will see you through your work, your profile the way you present your portfolio. it is your unique shape.The way that you and only you are. If you do work "only for the money" then this will reflect in the way people see you. And then if you don't get the money, the time is wasted. If you do work because you love doing the work, then if you don't get paid then you still have something that you're proud of, something that you can take to your friends, family and future employers and say, "I'm proud of what I do!".

If someone doesn't get you, it can be simply that they are not perceptive to you, and if that's the case then you don't need to worry about it too much. But if a lot of people don't understand you then it's probably because your sending a mixed message; a message that isn't consistent and contradicts it self.

The key to a good social impact is to stand out in the right way - everything must be planned. You have to think "how does this effect my the way the world sees me and does it invite clients to employ me?", if you don't the net result is a discontinuous message that annoys and confuses potential clients. It's like dressing as a vampire and telling everyone your vegan.

Yes we can say that art isn't about getting employed, it's not about the money, it's about self expression and therefore I don't need to worry about what people think about me. And to some extent that is true and always will be, but you can only have so many "Tracey Emin"s in a generation, and the fact is most of the world don't like what the real Tracey Emin does because her message isn't always consistent, it's haphazard and fragmented.While that works for her, it doesn't work for 99% of people, this thing we call art is a profession, which means that we want to use our love to make a living and pay our bills.

For further insight I would recommend watching Neil Gaiman's Commencement Speech to the University of the Arts Philadelphia (Class of 2012)

"That's great! but I'm still none the wiser as to what this social impact thing that your talking about is."

By Timothy Armstrong (1421 Words)