Episode Links

Abridged Transcript

Gary
OK, all right, so probably this is not the most exciting question that I could ask because you’ve already written about it quite a bit, but this is super-relevant to me and my students and it’s specifically because when I’m explaining break-points to my students, I actually use your new design website because it’s just…it’s so easy for them to see it where some of the other ones are just so subtle. So, and I’ve read the case study that you have on your blog so I tell the listeners: go read that first to see what we don’t ask and don’t cover, but I’d like to hear more about the visual design choices you make, especially the Kluchov effect. Is this how you determine the sequence of design changes?
Lynn
You know, I…so I took a lot of inspiration from print design, actually; a lot of the kind of vintage posters, vintage movie titles, a little bit more of the kind of traditional graphic design. With CSS Grid that’s coming out, or that has come out and is prevalent now in modern web design, a lot of the kind of older, cool, unique graphic design layouts are much easier to accomplish now in CSS so I was kind of experimenting with a that visually to kind of see what kind of interesting layouts I could accomplish, and so as far as the Kuleshov effect, which is basically, it’s a term from film editing where the sequence of two shots are more meaningful together than one shot in isolation and so as you re-size the site, at each break-point, the layout shifts dramatically, and I didn’t have an over-arching plan; I kind of started with one and then went to the next one and said, OK, well this is what I did with this one, so this next one just needs to be different, it needs to have a contrast. If you actually look at all the designs side by side, there are some that have a lot of similarities but I wanted those ones to be separated and so each one feels unique from the one before it. I kept things consistent in some ways. I tried to keep a limited color palette, mostly black, white, yellow and red; I kept mostly the fonts the same and I think that helped tie them all together but I did want every single one as you moved through them to feel like a totally different thing.
Gary
Can you talk a little bit more about the whole idea of the movie poster and other things like that, because I’ll preface that, one site that I designed I actually got…I was flipping through Prints Regional Design thing and I was like, huh, how would that translate to the web? And so, I don’t know, can you talk about that?
Lynn
Yeah, sure. I actually saw a talk by Jen Simmons, where she kind of took inspiration from traditional graphic design and some graphic designs of the past that would’ve been really difficult to translate into CSS but now with CSS Grid it’s a lot easier. And so what I was looking at…essentially with print, you have a lot more freedom in terms of where things are placed on the page, in terms of layering; things can kind of float in negative space and the way that we’ve been designing for the web for so long is kind of adhering to the document flow of the mark-up: this comes after this and this comes after this and they kind of just are boxes that kind of exist within this space but with Grid you can really take a piece of content and position it in a way that makes it…I guess you kind of have to break your thinking a little bit of the document flow, but it allows you to really experiment and so what print designers have been doing for years, we can kind of come around to again and so with things like diagonals, things like boxes, asymmetry, putting things on angles; shifting…thinking about the page as a canvas, you can really do a lot of neat things that print designers have been doing for years and I think the web is finally catching up to that.
Gary
OK, so with the Grid, CSS Grid, would it almost be better to teach students the CSS Grid, so they can use that? Whenever a student approaches, whether they’re marking it up, whether they’re making it in Sketch or XD or whatever your layout program du jour is, or if they are even approaching it from HTML and CSS, they’re very stuck in that Grid…everything’s symmetrical, so I’m just wondering a good way to break them of that, what would that be and I was wondering if maybe, no, let’s just learn Grid and then maybe that’ll be…
Lynn
Yeah, I think that could be cool. I think what Grid allows you to do is to move stuff around really easily and so I think it’s…especially if you’re coming in fresh, I think sometimes if you’ve written CSS the same way for many years, shifting to Grid can kind of be harder than coming in fresh with Grid. But yeah, I think a student could take…hey, pick a poster from the sixties or something that has a really unique layout and let’s re-create it in CSS; I think that’s a cool exercise and yeah, I think the way to do that and to do it easily is with Grid, in my opinion. But of course there’s the dilemma that people have about, well, I still have to support older browsers, so I think you do have to look in conjunction with Grid look at other layout techniques that people use, things like Flexbox, Floats even, there’s a lot of ways you can do any one thing in CSS, so you kind of have to balance that but yeah, I think Grid is a super-accessible and easy way to get into that and thinking about the page in just a unique way.
Gary
I think we’re lucky, because I’m specifically thinking about design in the terms of a graphic design program, so they don’t have to worry about how it’s going to be produced. Yes, they need to worry about it but at the same time, if they can produce it in Grid, then the developer could find polyfills…I know that’s not how it’s meant but like you said, there’s a bazillion different ways that somebody could work around it and make it progressive and things like that, so I think fortunately we don’t have to worry about that yet. I think we need to spend more time pushing the boundaries and then reel ourselves back in.
Lynn
Right, yeah, I think for students, especially, it’s cool to kind of just see what’s possible and to just experiment with different mediums and so I think yeah, that’s a cool approach.
Gary
So, you have some amazing web-based side-projects such as why.az, a.singlediv.com, airportcodes, …airportcod.es if you want to say it that way; topchefstats.com, just to name a few. Can you talk about your most favorite one? How did it start, how did it grow?
Lynn
Yeah. So, probably I love them all in different ways, they all kind of express a passion of mine. I think though the one I feel strongest about is my singlediv project and what it is essentially is just a sketchbook, a digital sketchbook for me of drawing different things using CSS and so generating images, illustrations, with code and the reason I started it was I kind of got into CSS drawing; I was looking at a lot of examples and I just wanted to challenge myself. I think it’s a challenging concept and it is divisive, I think some people don’t like the idea of it, but it’s cool and with a.singlediv, what I do is I put a constraint on myself which is that I only use one HTML element and then the rest of the image has to be drawn with CSS and so it’s been the longest ongoing project I’ve done; I’ve been running it for almost four years now, updating it semi-regularly and I think it’s the project that has challenged me the most over time and where I can really see my growth over time. I’ve tried to draw something once and like, oh I just can’t quite figure it out, then I re-visit it in a couple of months and like, ah, I see it, I can see how I can do it, and I think that’s just a really cool progression and experiment that I’ve been working on for several years.
I went to Art School, kind of traditional Fine Arts School and one thing that we always did was essentially take a thing and do it and then do it again and do it again and you learn by practice and you can see the progression of your skills as you go and style progression and what you have to say is different as time goes on. And doing exercises with constraints so like the example I always point to is in our painting classes it’s like, OK, you have to paint a picture but you can only use the primary colors; or you can’t use black. And so you have to use your tools in a different way and you have to look at, OK, I can’t use this so what can I do with the tools that I have and I think that’s been just a really good exercise for me and just pushing myself to keep learning and in addition to that, I think it has produced some inspiring work. I think it’s fun to see what I’m able to accomplish and I love seeing other people trying it to; I think that’s just a really fun part of it, using your tools in kind of an interesting way that maybe they weren’t meant to be used and just exploring and learning new stuff, so it’s been really fun.
Gary
Yeah, I’m so glad that you mentioned that because you mentioned…so, when you were in Art School, you do one thing but fifty different ways and you really push and you really explore and I think that is the biggest…that is absolutely my biggest frustration when it comes to interactive web design, however you want to label it is, in a program you’ve got one, two, three…three typography courses; you’ve got three general layout courses and then you’ve got one web course. And that one web course needs to teach every single thing besides typography and it’s just not practical. We’re so missing out on that repetition of doing things because of just I think the limitations. So I’m glad somebody…I’m glad that…I think it’ll be easier for me to explain to my colleagues, let’s think of this in the Fine Arts context: you practice this over and over and over again and this is how you achieve your best results.
Lynn
Yeah, I think that people sometimes look at tech or web design coding as being separate from art but I think the way that you approach it and the way that you learn and gain mastery over it is really similar. I think the process is similar, the repetition, the learning. I think that you can…I’m actually writing a blogpost right now about software engineers essentially getting Fine Arts degrees, or not degrees but learning more about Fine Arts and the process that artists go through because I think a lot of it is applicable.
Gary
I’m lucky where I’m at because it’s…our Fine Artists all really do generally appreciate creative coding and they’re just bending it and making it to what they want and I’m so glad that they’re in the forefront of that, adopting that as a new tool for them to use.
So, again, I love all of your website projects and I think what I like most about them is not any one, but all of them: the fact that there’s…you’ve always got this clever idea to try something because again, it goes back to that idea of experimenting. Just keep trying something, keep trying something, this is how you learn. So, if you could turn these into a student assignment that I could give my students where they come up with their own idea for a side-project from ideation all the way to launch, and keep in mind that my students do have limited HTML and CSS skills, how would you go about boxing that up?
Lynn
Right, so I guess a similar, or I guess the common vein of all of these projects is just something that I’m really obsessed with, or just something I’m excited about. And it can be anything, it doesn’t have to be art-related. I think I may be one of those people that has a really loose definition of what can constitute art but one of my sites is just how I love the show Top Chef, and so it’s just hey, there’s a lot of data that exists within this show: I’m going to compile it and analyze it and then share that in a graphic way, which is…I don’t know if there’s any sort of course related to infographic-type creation but I think that’s just it, which is hey, what do you care about so much that you could create something about it? And so you could take an angle like, hey, here’s this knowledge I have about this TV show; or this band; or this whatever it might be, this location. I have a site about Arizona, things I love about Arizona and kind of compile that information. I think taking information and making that visual is kind of an easy step to creating a project, as opposed to it having to do something for someone, I think it’s like, here’s some stuff that I know about that I’m sharing with you and people respond to that. I think if you’re not doing code you could create a poster or an infographic or I think for me, I just make stuff for the web so I’m like, oh, it’s a website.
I think of, hey, I love this show, it’d be cool if there was this site about this show and I think that’s a good way to get started. It doesn’t have to be anything…I think sometimes there’s pressure that your work needs to be world-changing or it has to be something that’s never been done before, or do something novel and I think what a lot of people respond to is, hey this person just really loves this thing and loves it so much that they turned this creative energy into this, whatever it ends up being: a poster on a wall or a pamphlet or whatever, and just turning it into something visual, I think, would be a cool assignment and I think with that, you can also…some of my sites take months to compile all the information but I think you could do something where it’s like, hey, just take a couple of days, compile some info about a thing you love and turn it into something visual.
Gary
I think…it occurred to me when I was listening to you talk about it is, I think, I’ve tried…I tried this once before in another project we were just like, we’ll call it internet memes, but it felt like there came too much pressure to pick something and so you’re right, the ones that did end up being the best ones were the ones that people were just like passionate about. Remember, this was back when I was in Chicago and one woman, she did just a simple Vote for the Cubs or Vote for the Whitesox, and it was one of the best ones and she was passionate about it, so let me see what you think about this, so I think the problem is the pressure of having to pick up an idea, so I’m wondering if it would be better to literally start in the classroom: what are you excited…like literally say, ten random goofy facts about yourself, or five fandom goofy facts about yourself and then just kinda start bouncing those around?
Lynn
Yeah, I think Anil Dash posted a Tweet on Twitter once that was like, what’s the one thing that you know more about than anyone else does? What’s the thing that you are so into that you could teach someone else about it? That might be a fun way to do it too.
Gary
Yeah, that’s actually perfect because then that’ll…it alleviates the pressure of picking something because then we’ll talk about it and then I’ll randomly take notes and say…this is what you should do but go on and sleep on it and see if you can come up with something you’re more excited about, so that’ll…no, that’s perfect, because that was the hard part for me, how do I introduce this as a project about something that I know. All right, so I also love your illustrations; I’m actually jealous of people who can illustrate well. So, how do you balance your drawing practice, with your front end development practice, with your UX/UI practice? Each one of those is a separate field that needs a lot of practice, so how do you….how do you do that?
Lynn
Yeah, I think…kind of along the lines of coming up with a project, sometimes I do think, well, what skill do I want to stretch for this project, and so sometimes you can basically create the parameters of your project around the skill you want to do, so actually, airportcod.es now is mostly photographs of the airports, which was a good idea to do it that way but originally when I was doing it, I was going to do illustrations of each airport and I started that, and I got through about ten but then realized there’s just thousands of airports and so it would just take a lot of time but I think with topchef, the Top Chef site, I was doing some Photoshop skills while I was doing that with a.singlediv I’m learning CSS Illustration and my job at &yet just has an interesting breakdown of UI/UX, front end development and illustration, so I’m lucky that my job provides that learning opportunity for me too.
But what I’ll do sometimes is just focus my energy in a particular project, like this project I’m going to learn this CSS technique and in this project I’m going to practice my illustration and so combining those things together, which is why I also like making for the web because I think the web allows for a lot of that to exist within the same project, so if you’re creating a site, I think the web is really embracing header illustration right now: lots of sites are having these really kind of neat illustrations in their hero space on their websites and so I’ll just focus some energy on each of those things when I can and combine them into the same project. I do like to illustrate for fun, just little silly things, so to learn…I do some illustration with my track-pad on my laptop and sometimes I use a Wacom, like a pen and tablet, and so just doing silly little things like posting it to Dribbble or posting it nowhere, just practicing, and coming from a Fine Arts background, I learned early on that drawing, just like anything, you just have to practice and so I try to do that as much as I can but yeah, I think if you tie it into a specific project, doing that work over and over again, it’s a lot easier.
Gary
So, since you do a lot of design, a lot of illustration, UX/UI, and you do have the Fine Art background, what do you think is it…OK, so I’ve always kind of wondered if life drawing, if still life drawing is the best way to introduce designers to drawing, because I feel like they need quick sketching, illustrations, it’s like abstraction, not detail, so what do you think is the best way to kind of help prepare somebody to make those header illustrations that you were talking about?
Lynn
Right, yeah, so I do actually have kind of an exercise that I’ve given to people which essentially there’s…you do two things once a day: one is, you draw something that you can see, so more like a life drawing or still life type thing, pick something and draw it and the second thing is to draw something from your imagination and so you do those two things once a day or at whatever frequency you feel comfortable with, and what that does, I think life drawing is good: I think what you’re practicing then is seeing something with your eyes and putting it down on paper and then imagination, drawing from your imagination is good because you can’t see it and so you’re taking something that only you can see and making it visible to someone else and I think both of those are just a part of illustrating, I think, especially different styles on the web right now, most illustration isn’t super-representative or photo-realistic and so you’re taking parts of realism and imagination and combining them together.
And then as far as not worrying about details, you can kind of structure it essentially as your first several drawings are a minute long and you use a fat Sharpie, or a piece of charcoal and so the fatter your instrument, the less detail you can even get and so you don’t worry about it as much and then as you feel more comfortable doing that, then you can refine your pen, start using a color pencil and then you can move to a regular pencil or to a pen and then do two minutes or three minutes or four minutes and kind of work your way up. I think those things have helped…I do that still sometimes, just to practice and it’s quick, it’s like hey, I’m just going to take a minute and do a drawing and then also no pressure; I know that people like to use sketch books, carry them around, but I sometimes just use a piece of scrap computer paper or an envelope, draw something and then throw it away. Not everything you do needs to be something that is kept; I think that can be pressure too: oh no, I’m going to look back on this and…arrgh! It’s cool to look back and see how you’ve grown and see how you’ve progressed but also I think just draw and don’t worry about creating a masterpiece each time.
Gary
I love that…you articulated what I’ve been thinking for such a long time beautifully with that statement about…the exercise for drawing, life drawing, is drawing what you see but then drawing from your imagination is trying to get your imagination out on paper and that’s where…that’s what the designers need to do. They don’t need a really super high-fidelity: they just need to get their imagination out on paper and they can do it through the paper medium quicker, pen and paper medium quicker than they can on a computer and they get their ideas out at a low enough…at a high enough fidelity that people know what the heck they’re thinking but then not super-time-consuming where they spend all day moving around buttons.
Lynn
Right, yeah. I think with paper, especially, it can be just really gestural and if you draw a rectangle on a piece of paper, I think everyone understands that it’s ephemeral; this isn’t the product, it’s not the final. But if you’re in Photoshop or Illustrator and you’re creating these perfect rectangles, it can be hard to get away from that…ah, it’s not quite perfect and people can also fixate on that as a client or as a team member: this feels off-balance; is that on purpose? As opposed to a sketch, everyone knows that’s not…or it was quick or it was not the final thing. And I think with getting stuff out of your head onto paper and being able to explain that to someone is a huge part of UI/UX too, not just art; it’s how are you able to communicate the thing that you want to do visually.
Gary
So, in Graphic Design programs, we don’t have enough credit hours to train students to master all these skills that we were just literally talking about. We don’t even have time really to have them master one! So, based on your own personal experiences, how should design educators better prepare students to meet the demands of this multi-disciplinary economy? Because that’s what it is.
Lynn
Right. You know, that’s really hard. I think there’s only so much time. I think I’ve always kind of been multi-disciplinary. My Major was actually inter-media and so I was just jumping around through lots of things anyway, which I think was super-valuable, I think, because you can’t master any one thing, it’s hey, here’s…you can maybe touch each thing at a surface level, I guess, or you can get deeper in some like maybe, I don’t know, you do an emphasis in something that’s much more specific, you can do a deep dive. But I think preparing students to be multi-disciplinary and to look at mediums and to think about the space in between disciplines I think is super-valuable that not a lot of Schools are teaching and a lot of people don’t get even when they’re self-taught because sometimes you pick up a path really early and you just deep-dive into that path right away and jobs are set up that way too, where it’s like, hey, you’re a JavaScript developer: what are doing, doing design? But it’s like hey, if you have experience with both, that makes you really valuable on a team. And if you can understand and work well with designers, that’s super-valuable.
So I think yeah, I think approaching design in that way, where it is cross-discipline, I think is super-valuable and also I think maybe the most important thing, especially for the web is being prepared for things to change. Where I think it’s an industry that you’re just constantly learning, you just have to, to keep up, which is cool but I think also can be hard and intimidating when you’re coming into it. Or, I get intimidated by it too: there’s so much that sometimes I’m like, ahh, I feel like I need to catch up but I think what you learn in School sometimes people lament, oh, I went through this program and now everything I learned is out of date. But you’re building a foundation and so if what you’re learning is, hey, here are these tools and maybe these tools aren’t the things I’m using in a year from now, but the concepts are. I think thinking about things between tools, between mediums, a lot of the concepts you learn in graphic design are absolutely applicable to programming but maybe you’re not using the same tools or you’re not thinking about…you’re just thinking about a problem differently so I think that is super-valuable, as hard as that can be to articulate and to teach, so yeah.
Gary
One thing I’m wrestling with, and I’ll just ask you your opinion on it and then we can go from there is, like I said, I feel like we have enough time to teach print or we have enough time to teach web but not both. And I know yes, there are some skills that designers, good design is universal, so there are some fundamentals that change but there are some that are different. But then there’s also UX/UI and I’m just wondering if that kind of needs its own…
Lynn
Oh, its own program or something?
Gary
Yeah, because…I mean, and also too they say, designers make the whole design thinking, like designers are really good at that or…where do you stand on that whole…
Lynn
Yeah, I think UX is something that’s missing, especially…I think there’s some contention about UX means within companies; a lot of times they’ll say, oh, you’re designer so you’re just naturally good at UX or you think about the user so that’s UX but there are, I think UX designers, there is a practice and a discipline where you’re using tools, you’re using strategy, you’re using process and gathering insights and things that I think are absolutely missing from a Graphic Design or even a Web Design program or even in roles, I think a lot of it is like, well you can kind of fill in the gaps where you can and so yeah, I think that feels to me like it should be a separate thing but I don’t know where the crossover would be with the others.
Gary
Well, I think…so in most traditional design programs, this is why…the is the argument that educators will make: we teach them how to…we’re designing a logo, we teach them to think about the audience, we teach them to research that but that research starts and stops at Google and so I think it’s…designers do it but on such a very superficial level: there’s no depth to it and so that’s to me where the difference between how a designer approaches the research of a user versus how a UX designer. It’s the depth involved in it. Is that a fair assessment because again, I’m making this up!
Lynn
Yeah, no, I think for sure, the depth definitely. And also just being deliberate about it. I think the way that UX designers…UX designers that work for large-scale…that work at a large scale with a lot of audiences and they’re gathering research, they’re just doing a lot that a visual designer or even a front end developer can touch the surface on but they’re not going to…it’s a full-time job, right? And I don’t know, I think that feels to me like a discipline that really, really could benefit from mentorship where…I think a lot of the stuff that we learn is on the job, which is hard because you want to learn as much as you can in School to be prepared for the job but I think UX feels so insight-driven and process-driven as opposed to just…all of these disciplines are difficult in their own way but I think there are some that rely more on just memorization and practice as opposed to…like I don’t think that anyone will have access to an Amazon-sized scale of audience to do research on, on their own or even in a program at a University. I think sometimes to learn those skills someone maybe has to take you under their wing or you have to learn from a team so I don’t know where to bridge that gap; maybe it would be an apprentice mentorship type program where you can really kind of jump into something like that. That to me feels like the hardest to convert into a program at a University or at a Bootcamp or anything.
Gary
The way I’m thinking about it, there’s a lot of jobs in interactive design and there’s a lot of jobs in UX design and I don’t think students coming out of a Graphic Design program, even if it’s…because I can introduce, we’re going to do a persona, this is some…and I can even give a tiny little bit of methodology to it, but that’s not enough to be a UX designer, just because you know how to make a persona. And just because you can know how to conduct a user…semantic differential survey and that’s not enough to make you a UX designer so I think that’s why I’m…I can give…I feel that we can, design educators in Graphic Design programs can give Graphic Design students a taste of UX, to understand it, to be able to utilize it when they’re working in teams but conversely, I don’t know if somebody leaving a Graphic Design program, I don’t know how to make them prepared for a UX job.
Lynn
Yeah, I honestly, I feel like that’s the biggest gap in my knowledge too and I came…I went through Art School but a lot of the web development and UI stuff that I’ve learned has been on the job, for sure, and so yeah, I don’t know, I think there are a lot of people like Jarred Spool doing this kind of UX School, training for companies and for students, I think that’s really awesome; I think we’re heading toward that path but I think also the number of teachers too is just naturally smaller, the pool, compared to Graphic Design or some of these programs that have been established at Universities for a long time.
Gary
Yeah, I mean again, it’s a relatively new field that educators who are teaching it probably are making it up and that doesn’t mean it’s the right way or the wrong way, just what they learned! OK, so, on the subject then of these different schools, can you talk a little bit about some of your client work, specifically the approach; just your client work and then I’ll follow up?
Lynn
Sure. So, I worked with a kind of a broad range of clients through freelance work and then also I’ve worked for agency consultancies for most of my career and so it just depends on, I think one thing I’ve realized is that you can have a process, you can prefer things but every relationship is different, every project is different and you kind of have to adapt to what each project needs, so I’ve worked on some team augmentation type clients where I just kind of joined their team and handled whatever: illustration, design, front end development tasks that they need, so those are kind of cool relationships where it’s really collaborative, there’s a lot of learning and things like that, understanding their product and then there are some clients where it’s like hey, we don’t know what we’re doing, you need to tell us what we’re doing, which is I think kind of the more consultant-type relationship that I think, if I were to pick one, I think that’s the one that I’d prefer where you can really kind of share your experience and take the things that you’ve learned and your expertise and really help a client in a kind of contained project.
Gary
Two things there: well no…yes, there’s two. The first one, and I’m glad you mentioned this because I’ve been talking to my students about it too and it goes back to that…there’s a lot of work out there for like, I’m going to use Universities because they all have, every University has a web team working for them, that implements somebody else’s design system that was created for them or they…and so there’s a lot of that now, there’s a lot of that where you’re going to be kind of working with another design, almost an in-house design team. Can you talk about that a little bit more, like what that looks like?
Lynn
Sure. So, essentially you would come into a team where there’s a lot of history: either the designer or designers that you’re working with created the system or they also may have inherited it, so there’s some different dynamics there and so what you need to do essentially is to jump in, learn about the company, learn about their product, their goals, kind of figure out what works for them in terms of timing, delivery, communication so there’s kind of that learning process of just figuring out how to work together, which I think is sometimes the harder part of the job. But I think any…I guess a good skill to learn too when you’re jumping into jobs is that very rarely are you starting something from scratch and so it is important, we all have a style, we all have a method or decisions that we would’ve made about a thing but you regularly jump into something where a lot of those decisions have already been made for you. Maybe you disagree with them, or maybe it fits right in with what you would’ve done, and so a lot of it is, how do you work within someone else’s system?
How do you adapt your style to fit in? I think that’s a big part of working with clients is that in most cases, you can’t just do whatever you want, it has to fit within their brand guidelines, it has to fit within their web style guide, it has to fit within the voice and the tone of their company. What might be appropriate for a fun, small, start-up wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate for a medical company or something: you have to adjust what you’re doing based on that. But I think a cool part of it too is that as you work with clients and you gain trust and you collaborate, maybe the things that you didn’t like that were decided earlier you can say, hey, I would maybe do it this way, what do you think? And they might say, oh, absolutely, we’ve been thinking about that for a long time, thank you for bringing it up and I think you can start to create change within their system which is really cool and you can, I think, as much as we love doing work for clients, I think we also want to do work that’s fulfilling for us and I think for me, what’s really fulfilling is like, hey, how can I make this better in a way that my experience can lend to this other team.
Gary
Yeah, I think that’s the biggest shock to the system for students is, so they go to University and they go into their Freshman year and they’re taking foundation courses that are generally taught by artists, so there’s that mentality of self-expression, creative and then by the time they go into Graphic Design, then they go into their Graphic Design Major but then they’re given pretty much creative freedom to do whatever they want and then they end up going out into the industry and you’re like no, you’re not re-designing Airbnb: Airbnb already has their design, you just need to take their existing system and make it into this new product that they’re doing or something like that. And that is super-hard. And I think we need to find a better way as educators to prepare, because that’s also I think a kind of a different type of design, creating something from scratch versus creating something from parameters that…I think it’s a different skill-set.
Lynn
Absolutely. I think one thing that we say at &yet is that some people are starters and some people are maintainers and so I think that…and people switch off between projects what they’re good at and what part of the project I think they’ll excel at and so yeah, I think some people really need that kind of vague concept of, what is this? I want to figure out what this is and make it a real thing. And then other people really do thrive in, hey, there’s this set of structure and rules that I’m following and I’m being creative within these constraints and so yeah, I think there are different types of design. Both have challenges and benefits in either way but for me I think one reason also is why I do my side-projects is a lot of the work I work on for my day job is that kind of jump-in, help out, there’s already a system in place, you’re kind of designing things within this already existing eco-system and so hey, for my side-project, I’m going to make this thing just totally from scratch and I can do it however I want and so you do want, I think, a good balance of that but sometimes you don’t get it at work and so you can maybe figure out how you can scratch both of those itches.
Gary
This is probably and off the topic, off-topic question, but you mentioned that there’s those two types of designers, ones who kind of originate versus the ones who can…the maintainer versus originator. OK, I kinda see myself as a maintainer and I’m really jealous of the people who are the originators! Do you know exercises that cross…can you do that? Can you force yourself to be like one or the other if you’re…
Lynn
Yeah, so I’m pretty good at doing both. I think a lot of what it comes down to is how comfortable you feel with things being undefined or things being vague. I think some people feel creative when there’s nothing there. Oh, it could be anything, and so I feel creative and other people can feel burdened by that, where there’s too many options: when I’ve seen some designers where they have a set of restraints, a list of requirements and they are just so creative within those constraints and so I think there’s just different, I don’t know how…I haven’t really thought about how to deliberately switch between the two. I think this is…I don’t take this advice lightly, I think it’ll sound that way but essentially it’s maybe taking something small where there’s just the requirements are vague, you don’t know, there’s just a lot of freedom to do something and just doing it, like OK, I’m going to make a decision and just do it and I think that indecision of too many things can sometimes keep people from starting but yeah, I think it’s…I don’t know, and maybe also you’re going to start something knowing you’re not going to finish it.
I think sometimes starting, it’s hard for people to start things because it’s like, oh, I’m going to start it and then I’m going to have this thing I have to do: how will I ever find the time to finish it? Maybe it’s like, hey, just start it and don’t worry about finishing it. Get it to a point and you’re like, OK, I’ll move onto the next thing and maybe just practicing that. Or teaming up with someone and maybe you’re typically a maintainer and they’re typically a starter and you switch roles on the project and so you can assist each other in that where it’s like, oh, I’m struggling with this: what would you do here? Maybe that could be an interesting exercise, when you’re ready to hand off, there’s someone there to take it the rest of the way.
Gary
Yeah, that’s the best kind of relationships, collaborations. I had that with a former colleague of mine, she was just a brilliant starter but she started things over and over and over again and I was just really good at, OK, that one, let’s go. I see where this is going, let’s get it there. Those are just the best kind of relationships.
Lynn
Totally. And both points of view and methodologies are so valuable. You need both on any project.
Gary
Yeah, the sum is greater than its parts…
Lynn
Exactly.
Gary
…and so it’s…if you get two of those people, you can produce exponentially what you could by yourselves. OK, so, getting a little close on time but just a couple more questions. One was, the follow-up is, you mentioned the freelance work. I’ve been thinking, one thing I want to do with this podcast soon, if not immediately is, start actually talking to some freelancers. The reason being is, that is a legitimate job; I think we kind of look at it…we don’t really look at it as a job option and I think it’s definitely a job option; should maybe I just be teaching them how to make Squarespace…manipulate a Squarespace template? So, just as a freelancer, is there things that you wish you would’ve known maybe that are within the realm of Graphic Design program communicators?
Lynn
Right, yeah, so with freelance I think, like you said like Squarespace or even WordPress sites, I think there’s just an abundance of work. I think the hardest parts of it are essentially you’re managing your own time and so you really do have to, especially with Graphic Design, with art, things can just keep being improved and keep being…and you have to at some point say, OK, this is done, this is how much I’m being paid for this project and this is acceptable as done, so I think that’s a big part of it, just learning…and I think schools are a good environment for that because you have deadlines, you have to present your work at some point and so I think that’s actually good practice for a freelance type job. But you’re managing yourself and so I think that is the biggest thing. Talking with clients, I think talking about the work is a hard part where you can create great work, but if you can’t talk about it, you’re not going to have a lot in terms of client and that’s just a crucial skill of being able to sell your work.
I think finding clients is a hard part too, I think that is I think a big part of School too is building up a network and so if a class could provide you with skills of building a network, places to go, people to reach out to, maybe the University teams up with companies that know they need these sites that are good for freelancers; they don’t necessarily need a big team on them or people could say hey, I need a site, but I don’t know how to find a freelancer. I think that’s hard for people too and so maybe the University could connect freelancers with teams that need it. But I’ve never…I’ve never freelanced solely as my single source of income; it’s always been either supplemental to a job that I was doing or while I was in School and so I think yeah, there’s a lot to be learned there from people that do that as their job full-time that I probably can’t provide much insight on but I think the big part for me was managing…you’re essentially managing a project yourself from start to finish with a client and so that, I think, is totally teachable: here’s how you come up with how long it’s going to take you.
I think that’s maybe the hardest part is estimating how long something’s going to take you, we’re all terrible at it and it’s always just a guess but that’s how you price your work and also I think teaching early, early on to charge the right amount for your work and I think that can be really hard when you’re starting out too you’re like, ah, well, I’m not …I don’t have a huge portfolio yet so I’ll just charge only a little bit but I think charging what you’re worth, understanding the value of your worth and I think if you’re a freelancer and then you go to a team and you find out they’re charging $250 an hour or something you’re like, oh my gosh, I’ve been under-charging my work for so long, I think teaching that skill, being able to articulate why the work is valuable and why a client would need to pay you that much, I think that would be a good skill to learn.
Gary
Thanks. We didn’t have to go too far into it because it’s just something that’s been on the back of my mind; this was just a good chance to ask just to get the generals. All right, so second to last question. This is a new question that I want to start asking each and every future guest, so I’m starting with you and this is basically why I started out doing this podcast in the first place is, what piece of advice would you like to give design educators to better prepare students for life post-graduation?
Lynn
I think we kind of touched on it a little bit, which I guess maybe there’s two things. One is that kind of teaching, setting students up to be surprised or to approach the industry as a career of change. I think that in terms of mindset and not specifically a hard skill I think that is just…if you could set someone up for that early, I think that that would make such a difference; I think a lot of the people that I’ve worked with that really succeed in this industry are people that really kind of commit to that whereas I’m always going to be learning, things are going to change and I’m not going to be dogmatic or stuck in my ways and I’m kind of on a journey, as cliché as maybe that is, but I think that is a huge part of it. I guess the other part too, which we kind of touched on with the freelancing thing is, just how to sell yourself and how to sell your work. I think this is an industry, as much as we don’t like it, a lot of it is who you know, who you can…how much you can talk about your work and how articulate and passionate people perceive you to be. I think being able to create a portfolio and speak about it, and I think at the very least, just in interviews, I think the interview processes can be scary, maybe doing mock interviews, but I think at a baseline what it all comes down to essentially is being able to speak about your work and being excited about it.
Gary
Yeah, I particularly have been reading a lot of Dan Mall has been talking about…he just does a really good job of breaking it up, like Mike Monteiro mentions it where, don’t describe what this looks like to them. They can see it. It was like, why is this valuable to them? And Dan does a really good job, in some of his presentations, of driving that home. There’s particularly one good one where he’s presenting a slide, he’s like, OK this is what I’ll show to the client and it goes into the history of the font and why did we use it…it’s laden with facts that the client at that point cannot argue; Even if I don’t like it, I don’t care, you know, you can argue it. So that’s a huge skill and we don’t do it. We just don’t force…we have the students talk about the way it looks and the choices they made but we don’t get into that, the value of the choices they made so that’s a good one. All right Lynn, so, before I let you go, is there anything new and amazing that you are working on that you personally would like to promote or share or talk about or anything?
Lynn
Sure I think, I’m going to have an interesting summer, I think. I might be…so why.az right now essentially is a list of facts; it’s kind of just an informational site but I do have some big plans for it this summer and so what I’m potentially going to be starting is a long-form story-telling and illustration and photography series for local story-tellers, local artists and local companies and venues and things to be part of why.az and kind of grow it into something that is a little bit more representative of the people here and also can share even more of what’s awesome about Arizona. I’m going to be doing some fund-raising and some why.az merch, hopefully, some stickers and pins and maybe some apparel, I don’t know; none of it’s figured out yet, but that’s what I’m working on and I’m pretty excited about it.
Gary
That’s going to be awesome because I lived here for what, four years, and I spent a year in Phoenix and that was kinda like, felt like transitory when I was here but I’ve really got to know and love Tucson and I just felt there’s a ton of history there; people don’t realize how much history and pride and stuff is floating around in this stage. I saw it in Tucson so that’ll be fantastic to be able to hear that because there’s certain gems of that floating around, so I’m excited for that, it’s awesome.