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Gary
Thank you for inviting me here to T Rowe Price. What’s the name of the division?
Sam
It’s the Client Experience and Delivery Transformation Lab. We’re trying to figure out exactly what we’re going to be calling it, so usually I’ll just refer to it as the Innovation Lab at T Rowe.
Gary
OK, that was it, the Innovation Lab. OK. So, this is for the listeners: before you became an in-house Senior Experience Designer at T Rowe Price, you were an Associate Creative Director at the advertising and marketing agency, idfive, so for…to put the questions that I’m going to ask in context, can you compare and contrast these two roles?
Sam
Sure. So, at idfive, I was Associate Creative Director and helped lead and mentor a small team of designers, about three to four, and then another UX person, where we worked on everything from ad campaigns with traditional print placement to integrated campaigns to sort of one-off websites as well and development in-house too, so my CD and I would, my Creative Director and I would review portfolios and go through the hiring process together to look for Digital Designers. At my current role at T Rowe, I’ve moved into more of a hybrid and hands-on design role in the Innovation Lab here. It’s brand new, it just opened about a year ago, so we’re really still working on staffing up here as well and I’m on the Self-Service Journey Team; there’s currently three different journeys, and we’re working on re-imagining the bi-flow, so it’s pretty exciting to work on these really complex problems and figuring out how to perform workshops and get user research and that insight that we need so then we can iterate on the products that we’re building, so T Rowe’s really investing in User Experience, which is really cool and great for us. They know they have to do it to stay competitive and it’s something also as designers that we have to do as well.
Gary
So, again, to set up that compare and contrast, I understand what a typical project probably would look like at…here, at T Rowe Price, but what about idfive? What would a typical project be?
Sam
They’re so different, which I think is part of the exciting part of it where we might be doing an advertising campaign that might involve billboards, digital banner ads, print ads and maybe a micro-site and email campaign; that’s maybe the big, robust things that we liked doing at idfive, or we’re working on a website, so we worked on a lot of education websites, so University of Baltimore might come to us, which is one of our clients along the way and they might say hey, we need a new website, so we work with them through the research phase to the user experience and then on to design. We’ll then develop it and do QA work on it as well and then sometimes we actually would stay on board to do maintenance after the fact to kind of keep up with that and make any changes that they needed. A lot of their projects there were either WordPress or Drupal based, so we were heavy into the content management systems. Does that answer your question?
Gary
Oh, yeah. And they are two completely, totally different jobs but they are two jobs that students coming out of traditional two-year or four-year Graphic Design programs are applying for and are sort of qualified for but also sort of not, and so that’s a perfect segue into the next question. So, you’ve been a portfolio reviewer in AIGA Baltimore’s annual Ink and Pixels student conference and portfolio review?
Sam
Yep.
Gary
So, most of the students you see at the Conference come from traditional two and four year Graphic Design programs. Can you describe how suited or un-suited the students are from the perspective of working at idfive as a Graphic Designer and as a UX/UI specialist at T Rowe Price?
Sam
Yeah, I think…well, there are a lot of similarities between the two job: there’s a lot of differences but there’s also some similarities in that we’re trying to get people to take an action or to do something, so we’re still looking at, be it advertising or user experience, we’re still looking at the people, who they are and demographics, or those personas and then trying to get them to perform an action, so in those ways, I see them very similar. But as far as their portfolios go, there’s always a few students that really stand out and kinda like wow you with their personality, so I think that’s almost outside of skills, so it might be their personality or their passion or excitement for their craft and for me, that’s something that I sort of gravitate to and really…I don’t know, those are the people that you really want to help out and give good advice and work with.
And so then…but one thing that we’re not, that I don’t normally see, I would think is a lot of interactive work and definitely not a lot of user experience, from what I’ve seen. A lot of it is good typography and those really good foundational skills that you need but it would be nice to see those in more translated over to the web or even mobile would be great. And even I think that as a student, you could probably take, if you had a branding project, you could take that and build on it: build out a website, maybe translate to the mobile experience and I’m sure that your teachers would say, oh this is great, or let me give you some feedback if they see your passion as you’re working through that project.
Gary
I have a question about the passion and excitement. You said that might…you initially said that that’s not a skill, that’s outside of the realm, but I actually am wondering that. And I’m going to go back to, so most traditional two-year…most traditional four-year Graphic Design programs, they have a Foundation year, where they have…but those foundation courses, whether it’s 2D design, 3D design, photography or time-based media are generally taught by Fine Artists. I would love to see them taught by Graphic Designers because I think there is, it may seem cliché, but there is a designerly persona that I feel the students don’t bring, that has to be taught, and if you’re already teaching it, so by the time you get them as a Sophomore, you’re now trying to de-program the artist-creator mentality and then try to train the designer-creator mentality. Does that make any sense to you whatsoever? Is this just something that maybe because I’m stuck in the Academia…
Sam
No, I mean, yeah, I’ve seen people from interviewing that maybe have the skills to put together a website and they’re very organized and trained but maybe they don’t have that sort of artistic flair to their work and then I’ve seen the opposite. One of the things I think is really exciting and what we had at idfive was a designer that was more artsy and she learned the web and then we had another designer that was more of a straight designer and she kind of grasped onto UX too, so I always enjoyed putting them on one project to see how they would kind of come up with completely different solutions to the same thing. So, I think that you have to have both and I think getting somebody to embrace it and just kind of own it is good and hopefully they’ll fall into one of those slots where it’s either they hopefully figure out how to bring web and the artistic stuff together or if they have a strong liking for advertising and conceiting, how to bring that conceptual work to the web and find out how to blend that so you’re never just making something look pretty but really kind of bringing your skills, blending that with web design or interactive design I think that’s what’s creating these really special people that we’re looking for.
Gary
OK. And that makes perfect sense and I think again though, but it’s a balance and when you just have all art your first year and then all design your remaining three years, you don’t have a balance.
Sam
Right. And it could be misleading too, as a designer in your first year thinking OK, cool, this is what I’m going to do, I’m digging it and then you get into your second year and maybe you’re like, oh my gosh, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not quite what I had thought.
Gary
So yeah, that’s something I’ve been thinking about. Viewing the portfolios, you feel like the fundamental design skills are there, the typographic design skills are there but their application is kind of missing in the interactive and the user experience realm? So, what would you like to see design educators do differently to kind of make that up?
Sam
I think just get some more web design work into design classes. It can be part of the branding project but then get students to really research. They’re already doing so much research in potentially building a brand or creating a print campaign, something along those lines, but even just taking it one step further then to translate that to the online world, I think will be really helpful for students.
Gary
So, when you say the web design, can you define that? Because I’m…I struggle with, I want to teach them HTML and CSS, so they’re building it themselves and that’s front end development. So, our static mock-ups using things like InVision, or whatever the prototyping software is out there, is that what you’re referring to?
Sam
Yeah, yeah,. I mean, I would not expect you to come to me, applying as a Designer saying OK, well I hand-coded this; I’d be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s awesome, that’s cool, but that’s just something that I wouldn’t really expect a Designer to necessarily know because we always, every place I’ve been, we’ve had people that do specialize in that and I think it’s a completely different way of thinking; it’s a skill that I wish I had. A little bit of CSS knowledge is great, just so you can say to a developer when you’re working side by side with them, change the line-height here, change this font size, blah-blah-blah, so I do think that that’s really valuable but I think time would probably be better spent, rather than having them code something to give them just a kind of a crash-course in code and then having them design these things out and focus more on Responsive and how maybe things translate from web to tablet to mobile and learning those skills and how to talk to developers.
Gary
You know, you just mentioned the Responsive Design and I do teach it but I’m kind of thinking back to my own practice of teaching Responsive Design; is there anything particular that they should be looking for? Do you know what I’m saying?
Sam
I think so! What I would say is that we work on a grid system so it’s kinda like figuring out that grid system and I don’t know, I think that once you have that in your head, it’s kind of easy to see these math problems fall into place where you can take a twelve column grid and divide it into three or divide it into four and then on mobile that could easily stack up so if they have a really kind of, just a basic project of, I don’t know, even if it’s a masonry grid, how would that look on mobile? How would that look on the desktop? Just having them go through that thought process and re-structuring, looking at different type sizes: do they change, do they stay the same? That sort of thing and keeping aspect ratios the same. I think just even maybe showing them that it’s not scary as it should be and to think in a slightly different way. But if you’re doing it right and you’re thinking about it from the beginning, I think it’ll flow pretty easily.
Gary
OK, and that’s one, I basically focus on, OK, typography because the reading, optimal reading length is going to change, so if you’re paying attention to the typography, the size, you should be having more than one size for the type across a site and same thing with, I think, imago grids, product grids are like the perfect examples: OK, having a grid of four is not going to work on your mobile!…It’s just not, so where does it change? Where is the idea? OK, so I was just looking for key milestones so those…so it sounds like it’s on the right path.
Sam
Yeah, and I always tell them to look at it on your phone. So, if you design something before I maybe even say anything and critique it at all, just send that to yourself, email it to yourself or through Sketch, I know you can synch it up to your phone; take a look, see what it looks like on your phone and then a lot of times you’re like, oh yeah, I get it; oh, I should change that!
Gary
Yeah, that’s my biggest frustration is just with a poster, you design your poster on the screen and then you hang it up on the wall and you realize, oh yeah, that scale’s way off!
Sam
Yeah. Logos, yeah, same thing.
Gary
Everybody thinks, just because you’re designing on a screen for a screen that the scale is the same. It’s totally different. It is just totally different and you need to get things on devices to check.
You know, another thing, since now your new role is User Experience, so what are some of the…you mentioned personas, but what are some of the other UX, User Research things that you think Graphic Design educators should be kind of incorporating into programs?
Sam
I think definitely talking to the users as much as they can is a great thing and when you’re putting your portfolio together, pull out a quote from a user that says, oh, this could be better or some sort of stats in your research that maybe thirty per cent of the users couldn’t find out how to click on the submit button for your form, and pulling those out in your portfolio is always great. But then, personas, as a Designer, I kind of design my personas too so they’ll go in my portfolio. We’ve been doing a lot of user research workshops here and taking photos to sort of document that process, I don’t know, what was your original question?
Gary
No, the user experience, because I don’t…we don’t teach it. I don’t know, we just don’t do it enough credit and I’m just trying to think, what are some of the ways that we could, Design Educators could be better teaching User Experience. Even in the…OK, so I understand because the argument you’re going to get from Graphic Design Educators is like well, we’re teaching them to design logos; we’re not teaching them to UX, UIX which is a fair comment but back to, you said with CSS, you need to know a little bit.
Sam
Even a logo, I think you need to know who you’re designing for or who…so that could be seen as a stakeholder interview if you’re interviewing the Vice President of the company or the main stakeholders. Of if you’re designer for a hipster ice-cream shop, that’s going to look different from a very high end gelato place or something. So there’s still that user persona that goes along with logos too, so I think that that always should be taught. I think design is way more than making something look pretty so if you’re not teaching some research or thought behind it in some way, are we doing the right thing?
Gary
This is just a gross generalization, but I’ve got a hunch that most Design Educators when they’re telling the student to design a logo, they’re saying, take your audience into consideration; I think it’s literally stopping at that.
So, what would be some simple things to…OK, personas is one, that’d be an easy task to assign: OK, do a persona of the potential audience for this logo. Are there…and so then the interview, what does that kind of look like or entail?
Sam
Sometimes we’ve done everything from just calling people and just saying hey, what’s up with your current site, how do you feel about it, what would you change and just getting their feedback. Here at T Rowe we actually had a user research workshop where we got users that were T Rowe clients but also not T Rowe clients and had them come up with creative solutions about how they would create a good app to buy mutual funds and they came up with their own solutions, which was really cool to see them get excited and passionate about it. So, I think any of those things that teachers could do to help, even if you’re just interviewing each other in the classroom; also creative briefs I think are a good practice to kind of go through to train your brain. What one thing am I trying to say here and get people to do? What are the barriers, what’s stopping them? And the you still have to definite your personas or demographics there as well.
Gary
Yeah, I think that’s the other thing that I know I personally could do better is that I think I heard the term, Key Performance Indicator, is that a term or am I making that up?
Sam
Yeah, KPIs, yep.
Gary
OK, so every kind of project should have KPI because how do you measure its effectiveness if you don’t and whether they actually take it to heart, the student, is kind of almost irrelevant but they now officially have that stop, to like hey, no, check. So anyway, that makes perfect sense: I think we need to do more of the interviews. I think we need to formalize the research.
And I think that’s kind of what’s missing, it’s kind of loosey-goosey and go Google something or go talk to somebody instead of just formalizing the research process.
Sam
Make it real. Yeah, and lay it out in a really interesting way and add that to your portfolio; something that I love seeing is the process that somebody takes to get there.
Gary
Yeah, you know what? Since that’s a good segue I’m going to skip ahead on some of my questions and I’m going to go to that. I struggle…how do they show that process in their portfolio and they have…I’ll let you say if you think this is appropriate or not, but I’m assuming they have two portfolios: they have an online portfolio that gets them the interview and then do they still bring portfolios to the interviews? What do you want to…how do you showcase that process?
Sam
It’s tough. Yeah, and I’ll tell you how I usually end up interviewing people: we’ll get a résumé in and usually in the cover letter, the email, they’ll have a link and sometimes I don’t even look at the résumé yet; I may glance at it to see, is this design? Yes/No. OK, if I see click résumé designed, cool, I’ll go to their portfolio and look over their work immediately. And then if it looks good, then I’ll go back to the résumé and just read through it a little bit more and then either have a phone conversation or get them to come in. I like meeting people more face to face because I think that there’s a lot of chemistry that you need to take into account and seeing that passion over the phone’s kind of weird and awkward sometimes? I know I’m not best on the phone, so like to bring people in.
But then a lot of times when we do get into the interview in person, I will say, I’ve already looked through all of your work, and in interviewing as well, I’ve had this happen to me also; people have already looked through all your work, they’ve already seen most of it and so a lot of times I’ll say hey, what are your favorite pieces and tell me about those. So I think then having the story behind that is really what I’ll judge somebody on and hopefully they’re picking out their favorite pieces so they’re really passionate about those, which then I guess leads to telling their story of the process, and I’ll keep asking them for a couple of favorites until I really get a feeling for what they want to do, what they like doing.
My Creative Director, Matt at idfive has this skill for seeing somebody’s weakness or where they might either not want to work at our company or they might not be happy in the long run and he can just drill into that, so he has a unique talent for that. But yeah, I just will talk to them about their favorite projects and get a feel for that.
Gary
So, that’s mostly verbal then. So, simply just…when somebody walks into the interview with you, how are they…how would you like them to show their portfolio now? Do you want something printed out in like a little binded book? Do you want things shown on a laptop or do you care?
Sam
It doesn’t really matter, as long as the story’s there. I think if you have a printed piece, with some nice paper quality, I would love to see that in person, but if it’s web, it’s not weird at all to have it on your computer. A lot of places, they’ll just have you hook up to the TV and so it’s pretty easy and seamless and it’s not any weird sort of way to look at things. I used to bring my iPad and had some weird interviews where it’s like, OK, all five of you, can you just huddle around my iPad for a second!
Gary
No, I figured that was one of the ways though was just that you’re going to put your stuff onto a projector because…when I’m telling students about portfolios I say, make sure that you put yours on a portfolio…whatever you design, make sure you look at it on a projector because it’s going to be washed out and you’ve got to make sure you have enough contrast to get through. Anyway, that’s a bit of aside. All right, so…
Sam
And I do have ideas about how to really tell the story as well because I think that telling the story is so tough, especially when you have either boring forms or boring charts that are integral to your process and your research, but how do you show those things? So, I love photos, if you’re in a class and you guys are doing workshops, maybe you have a student or somebody takes photos of the process and put those up there would be great because then when you’re walking me through it you’re like, and here’s where we put five million Post-its on the wall, and like cool, that’s part of your process: awesome. And here’s my notebook full of dirty little smudgy sketches.
That’s cool because I appreciate that and I want to see, OK, you go to paper first, you’re not just jumping in and designing something without thinking about it and then also you could mock something up if it’s a user at a computer and you put your form in the background, I think that’s OK. Doing pull quotes to pull out some of the user feedback that maybe you got, or even doing infographics just highlighting some of the numbers, maybe even before and after, or fifty nine per cent of the people liked the website after I designed it. I don’t know!
Gary
So, this is more of a case study then?
Sam
Yeah, I think for User Experience it has to be more of a story that you tell.
Gary
OK. Because I’m just…so that’s where I think I trip up is because, I’ll give you an example: last semester I made students go ride the bus and then we came back and we did…they did their presentations and everybody wrote down on Post-it notes problems they saw in the systems and they put that stuff on the board and I was like, OK, make sure you take pictures of you riding the bus. You take pictures of the Post-it notes. But see your sketch book. And they did all that but it’s their app that showed up in their portfolio, not any of the other stuff. And I can wrap my head around the online process; so they just failed on that part! Because they could have easily done, they could have easily shown that information online, but how do they do that when they’re in the interview? That means they’re showing you their work from a laptop. I guess just the printed piece, for those that want to do a print book; I don’t know how to wrap my head around that in a print book
Sam
Yeah, I mean, I think you don’t need a print book.
Gary
OK.
Sam
Yeah? So, if…that seems like…I don’t know. It seems like a lot of work, it’s horrible to say because you’re trying to get your first job, maybe. But if you can have your computer, I would just do it that way, but I think that I would do it the same, either online or in a book where I would print out some of those photos and sort of maybe take a full spread in your portfolio and say, OK, well here’s me riding the bus and then us putting up solutions, and here’s my solution and here’s us collaborating and working together and then show the final piece of where you ended up. Even in print, I think that would be cool too: I wouldn’t really say, oh, well that’s not on your computer so I’m not hiring you, so like OK, that’s just how you chose to show it. As long as it’s nicely printed out and not just some sheets of paper that you’re tossing at me.
Gary
No, and I think the reason I asked that was kind of a leading question, because I still see a lot of discussion out there about how are you handling print portfolios? I just silently think to myself, you don’t because that’s just not the best medium for what you need to deliver now for the case studies but I’m trying to be open-minded, OK, so the employers want to see process but the educators want them to make it into a print book, so I’m just trying to think, how do we cram all that process into, I think, just the web’s a better medium for it!
Sam
Yeah. I totally agree. And for a long time, I’ve been putting in just really dirty sketches into my print portfolio, before I even had a website, I would say, here’s my concept and here’s some of my sketches and it might not have looked the best but you can still see what I was thinking and how close just my hand-sketches could get to a finished product.
Gary
And that’s one thing that every professional that I’ve interviewed is basically so they want to see the process!
Sam
Yeah, we’re big on process!
Gary
Well, it’s important because you understand how somebody works, because I think when you look at the portfolio, of course it has to look good or you’re not going to…
Sam
…right you’re not going to get in the door.
Gary
Yeah, it’s the process that is the differentiation.
Sam
Yeah, and you want to see that somebody can…you can collaborate with them and they’re not a jerk. I’m huge on just not being a jerk, don’t have an ego, tell me about how you work together to come up with a great solution.
Gary
Yeah, no, that’s a problem but…no, because I had a former student, many years ago who ended up losing her job because she just argued with them, no it needs to be this way. No.
Sam
Yeah, sometimes the client is right!
Gary
Well it was the Art Director.
Sam
Oh wow!
Gary
Yeah. And I kinda saw that one was going to happen too, just from how she was as a student, I knew that was going to translate into…you’re just going to have to get fired once or twice and then…
Sam
Hopefully you learn your lesson. Or you work for yourself.
Gary
No, she was a talented designer so it was just a matter of…you’re young, you have to go through it yourself sometimes; I know I was that way. A lot!
Sam
Interesting!
Gary
So, if there’s one skill that you think is necessary from designers but missing from education, what is it? Do you see one that’s commonly missing?
Sam
That’s interesting.
Gary
Because you mentioned typography is there; you’ve mentioned kind of like layout and general design principles are there. Are there any other core competencies, and you kind of like touched on UX/UI a little bit. And interactive.
Sam
I think…gosh, maybe empathy for the users and I’m big on concepting and conceptual work, so I think that that actually, yeah, that is probably a bit thing that we’ve seen is missing is that everybody’s so focused on maybe the…maybe too focused on the research and then this step and step number two, three, four, five, I checked all the boxes that some of that more conceptual work might be missing where, OK, I can design a website but how could I make it really special and how can I kick it up to the next level? Is there some sort of way to engage people more than just putting a shoe on a website? Is there some 3D that I would want to do with it and let people, I don’t know, dissect the shoe to see the sort of padding and the insides of it because that’s what matters to this type of runner that I’m really gearing this site towards.
Gary
I am so glad you mentioned that because that is something that has kind of been my silent theme throughout all of this is, there’s a lack of innovation in interactive web design, whatever you want to term it. Anything that goes on a screen, there’s a lack of innovation; it’s very step and repeat. And I think the reason it is step and repeat is because it’s not being taught in Graphic Design Schools. So, innovation is not happening…School is where innovation should happen because you’ve got free rein to go as far out as you can; I always like to say, it’s so much easier to reel students in than it is to cast them out and you can do that in design education. And I think…so I’m just really glad that you said there’s a lack of…
Sam
Yeah, I think…show me that cool idea that would probably never happen or cost a billion dollars to do, but maybe it does now but it won’t in a couple of years, or it’s good to just see that you’re even thinking that way, because we can reel it back but it’s hard to push somebody to think bigger: that’s almost impossible, I think.
Gary
Yeah, and I think that’s just a fundamental problem because we’re not teaching it; literally most programs have three, maybe four classes on typography; they’ve got one, maybe two on interactive design and that interactive design also now has to encompass some user research, some information architecture, some little introduction to HTML and CSS. All these different things. Where’s that innovation? Where’s that pushing the visual design?
Sam
Yeah, I mean, it would be really interesting to have just one little mini-project even to do emerging technology and you have to research something completely new and learn about it, learn the insides and outs and then apply it to whatever product or service.
Gary
Yeah, that’s a good idea because…I accidentally stumbled across that when I was…the students were…I had them re-design a website for a design conference and some students were at the point where they realized they needed extra credit! And it was like, all right, design what the watch app would look like for this. And then we were like, oh, well what would need to be on that, because we don’t really need the visual design of it: we need…so it was like the discussions around what would show up on that watch was way better than what was for the website. I was just shocked by that.
Sam
Yeah, that’s really cool. At the class I was teaching, we did this kind of activity card, it was a TXD, Transformation Experience Design, where we map out a user’s…just how they would navigate a problem. Maybe it was that they couldn’t find a parking spot or they lost where they’d parked at the airport which recently happened to me and was really embarrassing, and so how do you know…how do you remember where you parked? There’s a lot of solutions, like I just take a picture of my car in the spot that it’s in but we worked through this project to see how they would really solve it and they came up with all these creative, awesome solutions. We only spent one class period on it but I would have loved to have them actually sort of envision this, come up with a campaign for it, maybe: what does the app look like? Maybe it’s not an app, it might just be some weird new technology that they’ve just invented. You don’t know.
Gary
Yeah, that’s another little bit of frustration when I do teach a UX/UI class: students will…their ideas…because of the course, it has to be interactive but I don’t say it has to be an app; I don’t say it has to be a website; I don’t say it has to be a kiosk. But damn, it’s always an app!
Sam
Yeah, I know!
Gary
What is the magic about it? Because what they’re doing could just be easily done with HTML and CSS: there’s no reason it needs to be an app. I don’t know, it’s interesting, how we default to certain things, get excited about certain things. So, is there anything that you personally wanted to add that we didn’t cover?
Sam
Yeah, I think the one huge thing and I always tell students and anybody that I’m mentoring or talk to, ever, about this is, always after you interview, send a thank-you email. Please. You’d be surprised actually at how many people don’t and we’ve interviewed awesome, amazing people and you go on and you go on and a week passes and you’re still talking about them but you’re like, you know what? That person never sent me a thank-you note. It’s a little thing and it’s like it’s such a little thing that it shouldn’t bother me but still I’m like, let’s continue the conversation, keep it going, say thank you for your time and sometimes it just means the world to people and not a lot of people do it.
Gary
No, and I think that’s something that comes from parenting because my mother was always making sure that I sent thank-you notes to aunts, uncles, whatever. When I interviewed for jobs, we still had email but I would literally sit in the parking lot, write out the thank-you note, and go take it to the post-office that was that zip code so it would get the next day…
Sam
Get it fast…Yeah, I mean that’s what I did; I would email…not email but actually mail cards. Now, it’s easy, it’s OK to send the email; it doesn’t have to be long either, just a one-liner: cool to meet you, thank you so much for your time, I look forward to hearing back from you.
Gary
I’m going to ask one other question about the whole interview…so you mentioned, you read the résumé and then you look at the portfolio then you go back, but you didn’t mention the cover letter.
Sam
Cover letters, it’s one of those things that you kind of have to have; check it off, tell me a little bit about yourself. I’ve used it before to kind of maybe explain something that might look odd or if you want to get into User Experience and maybe you have one or two samples and you want to say, I really see myself going in this direction, or I’ve been working and doing classes and staying up late at night to learn more about User Experience, I think that’s what I would put in a cover letter. So it seems more just like a kind of check the box thing. I don’t know that some places don’t even see them a lot of times I’ll get an email forwarded to me or just a résumé forwarded to me from somebody so we don’t always get those things either.
Gary
OK. I think I’m, just from doing this, I’ve asked that more than once and there’s no consensus. I see a lot of people who like the first thing they want to do is read the cover letter because they want to see how they write. Their argument was that they can get a lot of those things that you say you want to meet somebody face to face, they can kinda like pull that through the writing a little bit.
Sam
Yeah, I think if you…maybe, lately I think I’ve kind of tried to show more personality in my cover letter, just because sometimes it comes across as, Hello, I would like to apply for this job…but if you can make it interesting or funny, I think that is a great opportunity. And if you’re a writer, if you’re a copy-writer or a content strategist, of course you need to make that thing great, perfect, funny, you know, witty, the perfect balance of everything.
Gary
So I just…it’s the advice, now when I talk to my students about it, it’s like, you have to have all three. You have to have a killer portfolio, a well-designed résumé and…well, you know what? OK, so you do a lot of the portfolio reviews. I don’t know how often students bring résumés but how often do you see them…constitutes a well-designed résumé for you?
Sam
You don’t need a logo. I don’t know, I’m not…I don’t have a logo brain, that’s not what I love doing but I appreciate a great logo, so I would say, it’s not necessary. If you are logo designer, yeah, I would expect to see a logo on their. But if you’re a web designer, I don’t think that would cross you off any list if you don’t have that for me.
Gary
OK, yeah, I just…if you’re a good logo designer, then design a good logo for something else!.
Sam
Right, yeah!
Gary
So, I tend to think students, they over-design résumés, because they don’t…especially students that are just graduating because there’s nothing on there. So there’s this fear of a blank résumé so they’re like, OK, I gotta design the heck out of this when…no. Just show you’ve got really good typographic skills.
Sam
Yeah, show some hierarchy, nice typography, even something I’ve been telling people I’d maybe throw on their résumé, if you need it, is just what you’ve been doing to give back to the community, if you are involved in the AIGA or this or that, if you mentor younger kids or…I don’t know, taught an art class to like a fifth grade class or something.
Gary
No, that’s good…yeah, show relevant…
Sam
Yeah, relevant is also key. I don’t care if you worked at a golf course; maybe that shows that you have good communication skills or something but those things I think that you can leave off as well.
Gary
See now, I’ve had some people say they like seeing previous work history, because it just shows that the person can at least hold a job.
Sam
Wow, OK.
Gary
They don’t sit there and look…they don’t judge it as…they’re just like, OK, this person has work experience. I’m not taking somebody who’s never had a job. So, yeah, trying to narrow…this is just proof to the students they need to do the research who they’re applying to. As much as they can, they’ve got to find out, they’ve got to tailor each piece to whoever they’re applying to, if they can figure it out.
Sam
Definitely, yeah. And then when you find something that works, if you’re getting calls back on your cover letter, or emails back, keep going with it, keep using it, don’t totally re-write it.
Gary
Yeah, I know…
Sam
But definitely change the company that you’re applying to, because I’ve also seen that not happen and that’s important!
Gary
So, Sam, before I let you go, is there anything that you are working on personally that you want to share or anything you want to talk about?
Sam
Not really. I go to work, I go home, play with my two-year-old and watch The Bachelor and that’s about it! No, my sister, this is maybe for her, but she is just developing this app called Tire Kicker which helps people find, without the dealers involved, to get the best price on their cars and stuff so it’s been really interesting seeing her navigate this new adventure into app development.
Gary
But is she…so, what is her experience and role in that?
Sam
She’s the brains and it’s been really cool to see her actually shoot wireframes over to me and I’m like, oh my gosh, you’re doing it, and I’ve helped her design some of it, so we’ve kind of been like working together on it but she has this interest and I think she’s going to hopefully do some really cool stuff.
Gary
Have you taken it to developers yet?
Sam
Yeah. She has it out there and working and it’s probably in like a very, very initial stage where she’s testing it with friends and family but hopefully it’ll take off and she’ll sort of disrupt the auto industry a little bit!
Gary
Cool! So, that’s kind of like a perfect case study for everything you’ve done, it’s all come into that.