matthewclarksubplotdesign_speakerkit

MATTHEWCLARKAUTHOR &SPEAKER KITMatthew Clark BFA, CGD

Designer & Creative [email protected] 893 0412

Subplot Design Inc.The Mercantile Building318 Homer Street, Suite 301Vancouver, British ColumbiaCanada V6B2V2

subplot.com

/matthewclarkdesign @subplotdesign /subplotdesign /subplot

W

We’re out to please the most important food critics in the world. Your pets. Come visit us at SuperZoo Booth 2909-2910

At Petcurean, we approach the creation of our pet foods a little differently. We’re epicureans, it’s what we do. When we think about food, we become inspired and find ourselves creating recipes with passion and purpose, recipes that nobody has thought of making. When it comes to ingredients, only the best of the best will do. We cook with creativity. Energy. And, an overarching love for our pets. Then, with the Petcurean seal of approval, our food goes out to be enjoyed by dogs and cats the world over.

petcurean.com

435 — 44550 South Sumas RoadChilliwack, British ColumbiaCanada V2R 5M3

petcurean.com

CONFIDENTIALITY The information contained herein is proprietary to Subplot Design Inc. and may not be used, reproduced, or disclosed to others except as specially permitted in writing from Subplot Design Inc. The Recipient of this document, by its retention and use, agrees to protect the same and the information therein from loss, theft, and compromise.

©2012 Subplot Design Inc. All rights reserved.

MATTHEW CLARKBFACGDDESIGNERCREATIVE DIRECTORPRINCIPALAUTHORSPEAKER

MATTHEW CLARK BFA, CGD

Matthew Clark is an internationally-recognized and highly awarded Creative Director and Designer with over 20 years of experience based in Vancouver, Canada. Founder of Subplot Design Inc., he is also an author, mentor and public speaker known for his opinionated (amusingly?) take on branding, design, and the world of marketing and advertising. He is also a drawer, painter, and sword-play-dance-party-pantomime dad and husband.

Prepping in high-school for a medical career, he sat on the fence by enrolling in both advanced biology and studio art before fully switching to a fine art major with concentrations in psychology and literature, and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree (honours) in Fine Arts in 1992 from the University of British Columbia. Having already started a one-man design firm in 1989 during university, Matthew joined DDB Canada’s design division in 1994, moving up the ranks to Associate Creative Director, focusing on consumer, packaging and retail design. Matthew founded Subplot Design Inc. in 2004 with co-founder, Roy White.

+ + + + +

200+ Awards / Local, national and international awards, including London Advertising Awards, New York Festivals, New York Type Director’s Club, Pentawards, One Club, Graphis, Good Design, and Austria’s Lürzer’s Archive; numerous US-based design magazines including Communication Arts ID Magazine, GDUSA , HOW, and Print; and Canada’s Design Exchange Awards, Advertising & Design Club of Canada, Applied Arts Magazine, Coupe, Design Edge Canada, RGD Social Good Awards and Graphic Designers of Canada Graphex Awards.

Museum Archives / Work is in the permanent archives of the Chicago Athenaeum and Toronto’s Design Exchange.

50+ Editorials / Featured in design, marketing and business editorials on self, Subplot and notable projects, including How Magazine (8-page editorial), Communication Arts (2-page feature ), Graphic Design USA’s “People to Watch”, a full feature in Canada’s Applied Arts (6-page feature), personal profile in Communication Arts “Insights”, as well as countless features on design websites worldwide.

60+ Publications / Appearances in hardcover design books and industry publications (separate from awards or editorial), including various books by Rockport, PIE, Rotovision, Logolounge, and online publications such as ICOGRADA Galeria, The Dieline, Lovely Package, Behance Galleries and Stimulant Online.

Author & Op Ed / Regular columnist for Applied Arts Magazine “By Design”, published articles in Marketing Magazine, Strategy Magazine, Communication Arts, Design Edge Canada, and online.

Speaking Engagements & Award Show Judging / Applied Arts Student Awards, ACE Awards, GDC Salazar Awards, New York Festivals, various local design college student awards & classes.

+ + + + +

BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) / The University of British Columbia

CGD / Professional Member of the Graphic Designers of Canada

+ + + + +

Subplot Design Inc.2003 – present / Founder, Principal & Creative Director

Karacters Design Group / DDB Canada1999 – 2003 / Associate Creative Director 1997 – 1999 / Senior Art Director 1994 – 1997 / Art Director

hépa! DESIGNS 1995 – present / Proprietor (part-time, select projects)1989 – 1994 / Proprietor (full-time)

www.subplot.com ©Subplot Design Inc. All rights reserved. 6

Fake Work = Real Awards? A business designer should be solving real problems for real clients. So how do we justify awarding fake work?

By Matthew Clark / Applied Arts Magazine “By Design”

“Work created solely for the purposeof entering competitions is not eligible”D&AD Awards Rules

Nothing gets designers’ collective blood boiling more than discussing spec work, what we should call what we do for a living, and the merits of awards shows in the profession. While the debate rages on about whether awards are purely self-congratulatory beauty pageants or have a real place in attracting business clients, there is one topic that (most) designers agree on: Fake work is a no-no.

Design = Art, or Design = Business?Your viewpoint on “fake work” is ultimately shaped by your paradigm of art and business. Grotesquely oversimplified: Art is, to a large degree, self-expression, and the artists’ clients are buyers and patrons, fuelling the artists’ vision (and keeping starvation at bay). But the locus of control, if you will, comes from within the creator. Design-as-business starts from the client-as-origin, and problem solving is paramount to the designer. Without a client and a significant problem to solve, the “business designer” is simply incomplete.

Design is businessImbued, one hopes, with creative vision, beauty and soul, great design adds business value. And isn’t this what we have heard time and time again from the design community:

“Why doesn’t business take design seriously?” Indeed, if we are to be taken seriously as an industry, doing fake little jobs for fake clients it just not the way to prove that we have a real place in the business world. It just shows that arty people can have cute little ideas for unchallenging projects.

So, how do you ever know whensomeone is faking it?For clarification, good old-fashioned pro-bono work is not

fake. It is nice. Honest-to-goodness business cards for your mom or friends is not fake. You probably owe them. The worst kind of fake comes straight from the artist’s perspective: Having an inspired “a-ha” moment and then executing that work sans client, only to be entered as real work in real awards shows and in the designer’s portfolio. It happens more than you think.

Second place: Entering rejected work as real work. Shameful. And a close third (and perhaps the most insidious): hunting down any business that does for a living what your “a-ha” idea was all about, and giving it the creative for free (or massively discounted) so you can enter it in awards.

Jealous rant much?Truly, honestly, no. I really love awards, albeit less than watching my clients win. I have won enough to covet them, and lost enough to be bruised on occasion. But if design is business, then clientless design has no place in design awards shows. It struck me as particularly incongruent as I listened at the Icograda Vancouver Design Week last year that the conference’s theme of “Design Currency” was being contradicted by designers who, themselves, give away their work for free. Nobody will pay for the cow if they get the milk for free. And collectively driving down the value of design, both as a business tool and monetarily, can’t be good for any of us.

Fake work for fake clients = real clients?Can’t imagine so. Real clients want to see real work for other clients. And if fake work gets you noticed, are you telling me that the large retail client you just landed should expect the same level of knock-it-out-of-the-park creativity that you showed for a hair salon down the street that had no brief, no goals and no client input?


So what role do awards shows have? The impetus lies, of course, with individuals and firms to help support honest awards shows. But a number of leading shows have taken this problem to heart. The Design Exchange Awards have long required in-depth case studies and actual client signatures, demonstrating real clients and actual measurable goals and results.

D&AD continues to reinforce its stand on “scam ads” by insisting that “work must have been produced in response to a genuine brief and be approved and paid for by the client.” The One Club penalizes fake work by barring the offending agency from entering its awards for five years (three years if you try the runaround of playing the spot once on late night TV or if the agency paid for publishing the ad). Even the Chip Shop Awards, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, rewards fake work openly and enthusiastically. Other awards try to get those “fake” projects into categories such as “best idea never produced” (Summit International Awards).

It is my hope that still more awards shows will take a proactive role and demand that work be real. Of course, some projects are big, some small. Some strenuous and some easy. No two projects can truly be judged with absolute equality. But if awards shows start to demand that “client-less” work be placed in a category by itself (self-promotion comes to mind), then the playing field can be somewhat levelled.

And please, keep being creative! Create ground-breaking, fabulous work. Don’t censure yourself, and always keep the ideas flowing. But the next time you have client-less creative epiphany, be patient and wait for the right time. Or go hang it on a gallery wall.

………………………………………………………………...........………

Matthew Clark is principal and creative director of Subplot, an internationally recognized brand design firm based in Vancouver.

Originally Published in Applied Arts Magazine

Vol. 26, No. 4October 2011


Why Ad Agencies still can’t do Branding. Part one of a three-part diatribe on the intertwined nature of ad agencies and branding — a detriment to the brands we serve.

By Matthew Clark / Applied Arts Magazine “The Wire

Fifteen years ago, advertising agencies were quite content to just make ads. But with atrophied media spending and dwindling traditional media consumption, it’s no wonder that they want a piece of the pie that previously belonged to the original brand-builders: designers. But why have they faltered and given branding such a bad name?

Let’s get this out of the way: the term “branding” is mercilessly overused, to the annoyance of marketers and creatives alike. Hopelessly bastardized (“branding” a baseball cap means sticking a logo on it?), even its recent movements to go “beyond branding” get it wrong.

For this piece, let’s define “brand” as the sum total of a company’s body, mind and soul, including strategies, creative and any “output” that represents the audience’s total experience with the products and services they sell, from their inherent promises to the way the receptionist answers the phone. There.

I would like to suggest that you can judge the appropriate-ness of advertising agencies’ branding suitability by three measures: where do they make their money; what tools are in their toolkit; and what kind of longevity do their solutions have?

Ad placement drives profitsEven with diminishing traditional media consumption, agencies still make higher profits from markups on media placement than they do through planning or creative services.

This makes even the most self-professed “communications agency” intrinsically tied to bought media to prop up the

business. In the end, agencies sell advertising, plain and simple. With the disappearance of traditional media as the main source of profit, this is changing, but make no mistake: there is plenty of media buying going on in the new forms of media as well. Non-traditional media IS the new traditional media.

Advertising creatives are spoiled. And entitled. And enabled.Even the best-intentioned agency brand planner will regularly have their creative brief ignored — or even left unread. That’s because the agency system — not to mention the award shows — favour the “big idea” over on-brand advertising any day. So agency creatives continue to shock and disrupt, and agency suits rewrite post-ratio-nalized briefs to shoehorn big ideas.

So when the agency claims that they are “media neutral” and put the “big idea” at the centre of their flow chart, with each discipline orbiting around to demonstrate how they put brands first, they are forgetting to mention something: that big idea will be an ad idea, virtually without exception. Brand thinking just can’t survive in this kind of environment.

The integrated agency is a fallacyTo be clear, agency-owned design departments, run independently by brand design experts, are not the “agency” I am referring to. It’s the “agency proper,” if you will, where account executives have been re-branded as brand managers, senior executives are now brand planners, and writers and art directors are now brand creatives.

My 10-year experience at one of Canada’s largest agencies is that agency-proper staff, design staff, web staff, PR staff


and youth marketing staff do not play well together. They are territorial and don’t share clients well, so the even the

“integrated agency” often leaves out the design group when starting the brand process, leaving it to the ad guys.

Advertising is a knock-knock joke. Design is a dialogueQuick, punchy, disruptive, advertising is short-lived. The next joke is always around the corner, so it’s no wonder the ad landscape is forever shifting like the sands with new campaigns, new taglines and new agencies, each chasing the other in an endless circle.

So while an ad campaign is lucky to last a year or two, well-conceived and flexible brand design programs can last for decades. Brand designers are used to this massive responsibility, while that poor advertising planner who wrote a half-decent brief, only to have it ignored, didn’t even last a year on the account.

So why should we care? Because more and more major companies have been duped by the ad system, and have come out the end with a bad “brand” taste in their mouth.

Maybe it’s because they’ve been subjected to homogenized, tasteless global branding, or maybe it’s been an ever-changing buffet of hot and spicy “soup-du-jour,” but branding itself has a bad brand. And the landscape has become increasingly convoluted. For a public institution to undergo a complete re-branding initiative, who is best suited: the ad agency or the design firm? For a complex range of packaging, the creation of a new brand, or the revitalization of an old one, who will serve them best?

Part two of three will explore why brand consultants are – perhaps surprisingly – as unsuited to the task of branding as ad agencies.

………………………………………………………………...........………


Originally Published in Applied Arts “The Wire”

May 2010


Marketing Magazine _ April 2012 _ 26-31 SUBPLOT DESIGN INC. [email protected] www.subplot.com


Strategy Magazine _ October 2007 _ Article page 43 SUBPLOT DESIGN INC. [email protected] www.subplot.com


Design is Easy. An excerpt from a keynote address to the BC Chapter of the Graphic Designers of Canada Salazar Student Design Awards

By Matthew Clark

I am thirty-three. I have been doing something vaguely related to the field of graphic design since I printed t-shirts and sold them to schoolmates in grade twelve. That means I have been doing this for 16 years: slightly less than half of my life.

I have worked in paste-up at a quick print shop while I completed my bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts. I worked for 90 days in a larger print shop, and quickly remedied my mistake. I have run my own freelance company. I have been employed as a junior, a middle, a senior and an associate creative director at a leading Canadian design firm. I upand quit and have formed Subplot Design Inc. with a talented partner.

I have worked on horrendous projects for mean-spirited clients. I have worked on ground-breaking projects withfabulous clients, and I have been honoured with some 120 design awards by magazines and various societies.

All of this puts me in the precarious position of neither being able to claim blissful ignorance in the world of design, nor having yet reached a level of quotable notoriety. As Pope put it, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”.

Thus armed with my little knowledge and dangerous things, I was asked to be the keynote speaker at the BC Chapter of the Graphic Designers of Canada Salazar Student DesignAwards. Given the captive audience of the best, the brightest – and the youngest – in BC’s graphic design community, I decided that they should be let in on the fundamental principles of being a graphic designer.

We all know: there are 10 + 1 rules. They are universal. They are unquestionable. When followed to the letter, they make design very easy. And they are very, very serious.

Design is Easy: Rules to live by

Rule 1: You are born a designer. Were you bothered that the birth canal ruffled your otherwise impeccable hair and you immediately began requesting every hair product you could lay your hands on? Did buying the “right” maga-zines, handbags, shoes, music, bedroom paint and half-caff, no whip, no foam lattés just seem to come naturally? Does waving your arms in the air while you walk and talk colour theory happen without you even knowing it? That’s right: you’re a designer. Just ask TV. And talking like a designer about things like “mood”, “tone”, “kerning” and “dynamic tension” will also go over really well in client presentations.

Rule 2: Limit your education. A good designer is never distracted along the way to success. Don’t stray off the beaten path: go to design school! Learn the tools of the trade, do fake projects for fake clients and receive actual grades. Why have clients when you can have teachers? The point here is to not be distracted by liberal arts courses, commerce, earth sciences, mythology or philosophy. Certainly not marketing. Don’t believe the hype behind a so-called “well-rounded education”. And remember, surround yourself with people just like you: diversity is for suckers.

Rule 3: Love your computer. Always had an affinity for technology, but just couldn’t stand the dress code of the IT department? Here’s your chance. When people ask you (and they will) what you do, and you say, “designer”, and they say, “like, you do stuff on the computer?”, you’ll be able to answer “yes, exactly” without any of the gut wrenching shame. All your best ideas will come from these cool little boxes where magic just seems to happen when you move things around a page. You’ll forget what a layout pad and marker even is.

Rule 4: Only work on really cool projects. I once heard a junior freelancer say to the creative director,

“I don’t do packaging”. That’s the spirit. The goal of


especially your first few years is to only work on really sexy design for amazing clients. By being extra selective, it will show everyone how high your standards are. You shouldn’t even acknowledge anyone who utters the word, “retail” in your presence. You can only dream of where that junior is now.

Rule 5: Don’t just learn from your heroes, copy them. First, buy all the design books and magazines you can lay your hands on. Then see who’s really hot: maybe you’ve got retro taste and really dig Paul Rand (nice choice). Maybe you just think Sagmeister is the bees knees. Just follow their work, learn their “tips and tricks” and, whammo, in no time, you’ll be able to design just like them. This is particularly useful in reducing the confusion when approaching a new project – a bank, a snowboard company, a holistic spa, a kids snack food – you’ve got a style now, so just go ahead and use it!

Rule 6: Style = Substance = Style. I know this one looks complicated, but it’s really not. The big secret is, that even with all the “creativity” that designers are always harping on about, there are simple tips for approaching every design project. Designing an electronica CD case: use silhouetted figures and an outline of headphones. Designing a refreshing fruit beverage: show fruit splashing in water. Not sure what the company does: use really big type with philosophical fragment sentences. By just picking a “style” that is the best “fit” with the company, you manufacture meaning!

Rule 7: Never meet the client. Let the suits do the hard work. Let’s face it: clients just get in the way. The more you meet them, the more you get to know them, the more they get to know you, and the more they start to think that they can stick their anti-creative noses into your precious design process and mess things up. Remember: their ideas are always bad. Never give in. Stay behind the scenes and keep your work pure. An added bonus if you can successfully avoid returning any of their calls.

Rule 8: Work in a design firm that pits designer against designer. Darwin had it right: it’s “Survival of the Fittest”. Every large studio knows that the best way to engender an atmosphere dedicated to design excellence is to lock designers both in mortal combat, and in their own offices. Job comes in, everyone takes a stab, someone wins! That person gets a bigger office and a pay rise: it’s the free-market system. Remember: collaboration is just an excuse for other designers to steal your ideas. Stay secretive, stay competitive, stay strong.

Rule 9: The more senior you get, the less design you want to do. Why do yourself what you can get others to do for you? Managing people and talking business is always better than actually designing for a liv-ing. Ask around. By the time you are 15 years into your ca-reer, things will be really easy and you can just sit back and coast: it’s time for you to jet off to New York and Milan to attend world-wide conferences and sip martinis. Celebrate by trading in your sneakers and rock t-shirts and getting a Beemer.

Rule 10: When you show people your work, never let them in on the process. Your work is your secret formula. Remember Rule 8: your competition is your enemy! The best disguise for letting people into your process is to invent a “Branding Process” which you then claim is totally proprietary to you and to which you give a really cool name like “BrandizationTM” or “The Brand Character MatrixTM”, or maybe name it after you company name. Give it 10 unintelligible steps, maybe a super-cool pyramid or some chart with lots of intersecting circles, and you get a bonus: you won’t only fool your competitors, you’ll fool prospective clients, too!

Rule 10 + 1: Someday, if you are really lucky, you will get to write an article or give a speech to young design gradu-ates on the cusp of their careers who are ready and eager to receive some insightful advice from a designer who’s been around a while. When you do, lie to them.


Your Strategy is Showing. Obvious strategy and pedantic execution will do more than just bore your audience. It may make them cover their eyes in embarrasment.


“Pardon me, but I believe your strategy is showing.”Said in a plummy English accent, this is a quote from Vancouver’s Hyphen Communications chief David Martin who, in turn, is quoting former colleague Richard Foster. As a believer in sound strategic design and branding over flimsy surface decoration, I have adopted this as my own mantra and a caution against ham-handed, strategy-heavy communications that ignore the elegance of intelligent design.

It’s alive, but it’s a monsterIntelligent branding, whether it involves design, communication, advertising or the like, always begins with rigorous audience and market understanding, in-depth audits, strategic planning and messaging. But when done without creativity, it can be still-born, a victim of not enough nourishment or care. At best, the strategy is fat-fingered and awkward, brought to Frankensteinian life by the designer who, with lightning bolts of creativity, tries to make it walk and talk. But it will always be too-obvious messaging, talking in marketing sound bites and headlines; not quite human and certainly not convincing. When strategy roars this “loud,” consumers revolt with pitchforks and torches, and brands suffer an awful fate.

If you have to say you are cool, you most certainly are notCited often by Subplot partner, Roy White, this wisdom also holds true if you say you are sustainable, green, globally conscious, healthy, responsible, fun or innovative. It’s not that you shouldn’t communicate these things, it’s just that putting your strategy into didactic language not only shows your pantyline, it reeks of self-conscious manipulation. We have all seen the bank that uses teen language to court the youth market. Or a recent soft-drink

theatre campaign that shamelessly tries to prove a green-loving-community-minded philosophy that seems contrary to high-fructose corn syrup. Live it, breath it, communicate it. But let it be organic—and true.

Poetry over proseNot that I would advocate e.e. cummings as the right tonality for an annual report, but there is something to be said for the poetry of design over the often awkward prose of typical marketing communications. Poetry can say more in fewer words. It can evoke emotions and feelings. It can help a person come to realize something rather than being told it. It has sticking power and embeds itself in the brain. It often brings to mind visual imagery, which lends itself to the design process and craft. In short, poetry, on some level, can help strategy be something that is felt and imagined more than it is simply heard. By all means, be prosaic on a sell sheet, but don’t forget the poetry that is at the heart of creative design.

Beware of the storytelling abyssAh, the story. A rich, lush tale woven with care and grace, talking more about the story of a brand than about the old-school, hard-core strategy of old. Proponents of storytelling would have you believe that sound strategy can live between the onion-skin leaves, and that the human need for mythology and the oral tradition is ultimately tapped by this approach to branding. Well, I have to admit, I have not seen it yet. I have read wonderfully written tales, with little to no backbone and next to no market relevance or brand justification. And while the clunky, strategy-heavy beast wielded by communications companies can scare little children, the bottomless story can suck you down like the mythological Charybdis whirlpool. You are drawn in, but there is just nothing underneath it all but perdition.


Don’t overplay the post-modern cardI love the irony and referential quality of post-modernist advertising and design. This is when you craft your advertising and communications to admit to their manipulative goals, like “Our ad agency told us if we said ‘dude’ a few times, we could appeal to the youth market. So, c’mon, dude, like slide over and open a bank account. Sweet”. Post-modernism is the perfect run-around: You get to declare your strategy right out in the open so unapologetically that your audience laughs along with you while they are being sold. But irony and sarcasm are dangerous tools in the wrong hands, and their arms-length nature, by definition, can be distancing to audiences in the long run.

Like tightrope walking, it’s all about balance. Using intelligence and strategy to guide messaging, rather than to write it. And allowing design to involve rather than just to persuade. It’s that elegance, after all, that makes intelligent design what it is.

………………………………………………………………...........………



Vol. 26, No. 3August 2011


Inspiration or Theft? When is browsing around a healthy part of the design process, and when is it downright laziness?


I guess it’s no wonder that the new designer is often confused. Her creative director commands her to be original, to create unique design solutions for clients, to be innovative. And yet she is bombarded with curated galleries of inspirational design, from online blogs to feature editorials to design awards.

Some designers believe they are doing “research” when they are really just ripping off work. Others actively shun or ban their staff from looking at the market or at design “inspiration,” and only end up embracing competitive ignorance.

The thing is, there is a difference between diligent audits and lazy appropriation. And there is, especially, a right and a wrong time to surf the design galleries.

A Time for True Competitive AuditsA lazy stroll through online blogs or design sites is not a competitive audit. A true competitive audit chooses the top 10 to 15 competitors, direct and indirect, and looks at them through several lenses. From a communications standpoint, what is their brand positioning, their mission, their products and services? How do they speak? What technologies do they use? How are their communications elements organized and presented? What is the brand’s overall concept or POV?

From a visual perspective, how are their materials designed? What are their brand identity systems? What kinds of images do they use? What typefaces and design principles do they embrace? How are their environments designed, from bricks-and-mortar to online?

And don’t forget the “Best Practice Audit.” What examples, in the same or adjacent markets, have really stood out? And why? And what results have they achieved?

The result, most importantly, is a strategy that embraces noteworthy market trends but simultaneously carves out a one-of-a-kind brand positioning for the client. Uniquemessage. Unique tone. Unique visual identity.

Without thorough audits, the designer is simply embracing ignorance and developing a strategy only from the inside out. She is not taking into consideration the marketand how to best stand out.

A Time for Sequestered ConceptsI am a brooder. Sometimes, a very solitary one, especially when it comes to concept time. For me, and for designers I direct, this stage is one of furrowing brows and pacing. This is the hardest task: to solve the client’s problem with a highly unique, memorable and relevant design and communications solution.

This is not the time to be considering style or colour or type or layout. This is the time for big ideas. For big risks. For bold leaps.

So I never look at design blogs, magazines or what the competition is doing during this time. Instead, I hunker down and try to solve the big problem at hand. I don’t want anything “polluting” my creative vision.

The designer who spends as much time surfing the net,flipping through back issues of Lürzer’s Archive and workingup pretty layouts in Illustrator is totally missing the boat.

A Time for Design InspirationYou nailed the idea. Your client loves it. It satisfies thebrief and offers a unique vision for the brand. Now it’stime for design refinement and implementation. So, goahead, and take a little peek around.


For me, design inspiration is best utilized for the design details: layout innovation, hot new photographersand illustrators, print techniques and typography. When it comes to the craft of design, there is a wealth of examples, good and bad, that can help guide you toward spectacular solutions.

It’s also an opportunity make sure you haven’t inadvertently reproduced something already in the market (via your subconscious). I find online sources like LogoLounge and Lovely Package to be great sources for disaster checks.

Of course, the lazy designer at any one of these threestages will simply mimic the inspiration, viewing them as “effects” to be copied. The diligent designer knows how to take her inspiration and inspiration found elsewhere and meld them into something new.

And that should always be the goal of any designer:Orient yourself in the market, develop unique ideas, and use inspiration as—well—inspiration.

………………………………………………………………...........………



Vol. 26, No. 6November/December 2012


Three Cheers for Ignorance Sometimes, less really is more.


Anyone who knows me, even a little, would find this an oxymoronic statement for me to make. Maybe even moronic. But in the pursuit of intelligence and expertise, I have learned the bliss and freedom in ignorance. And the bravery of weilding it as a competitive advantage.

Your first answer should probably be, “I have absolutely no idea”.Initial client meetings about reasonably challenging projects inevitably get to the “so, what do you think we should do?” part of the conversation. And my answer is invariably the same: “I have absolutely no idea”. This may at first be a frightening answer when pitching for new business, but it is the honest one. Without some serious conversations, discovery and planning, I don’t even know the question to ask, let alone the right answer. That what’s so wrong about the formal RFP process: the RFP response typically demands not only a process proposal, but the beginning of a “solution” proposal. RFPs that demand

“creative” proposals are ultimately doomed from the outset. And any firm that answers an RFP or initial client question with “I know exactly what you should do!” is either delusional or a bold-faced liar.

But isn’t there intelligence in category knowledge and specialization?A recent trend in “specialization” really gets it wrong as I see it. Trying to specialize in a “client category” (retail, credit unions, hi-tech) rather than in your own services (branding, online, pr, advertising) is putting the cart before the horse in two ways. First, just because you are working on your fifth credit union project does not really help you understand the nuances of the client who has just engaged you. If anything, it can actually make you lazy in doing your due diligence and intelligence-gathering. I have just completed the third “pet industry” project in my career:

first, by launching Petcetera in the late ‘90s; next a boutique pet brand called “Spike”; and now, Petcurean, a local pet food company with 3 food brands and over 100 skus of packaging. I can assure you, the projects were as different as if they were completely different industries.

The second reason “client specialization” is so dangerous is that it attracts lazy clients. From my experience, the client who is looking for “someone who has worked in the diamond industry before” is exactly the kind to run away from – fast. Any client looking for your category specialization, instead of your expertise in design and branding, for example, is doing so because they are either deplorably lazy or because they want you to make up for their own ignorance about their business. If you know their market, then they don’t have to. And client ignorance is definitely not the kind I am celebrating in this article.

Admitting your ignorance is the first step. Stopping the BS is the next.If you truly believe that you know, in advance, every answer a new or existing client needs to uncover, well then

– all power to you. For the rest of us, design is a fantastic journey from ignorance to intelligence; from questions to answers; and from problems to solutions. It is both logical and creative; left and right brained. But it starts with an admission that we don’t have a clue. Even a junior designer who pitches an idea to his Creative Director should have

“I don’t know” at the ready, and then endeavor to “know”. BS should have no place with that junior designer trying to impress his CD, or the Managing Director who is trying to win new business. You don’t know the answer – admit it.

We have found, time after time, that our honesty with clients actually wins us business. The trick, I suppose, is that something follows the “I don’t know”. It is usually,


“but I know how to find out”. Having a deep knowledge about a process to bring a client out of the darkness and into the light is exactly what (good) clients are looking for.

And if they are honest, intelligent, informed clients who have a solid understanding of their own business and are ready and willing to work hard and come along with you on the, often long, journey of discovery – then they will appreciate and admire your ignorance. And they will consider it the highest form of intelligence there is.

………………………………………………………………...........………



Vol. 26, No. 5November/December 2011


Five Things I Learned from Advertising. Or, how I learned to stop whining and love aplomb.


Contrary to some popular beliefs (and this writer’s own diatribes in these pages), design and advertising are in many ways two sides of the same coin, each bringing its own best practices to help clients promote their brand and, in turn, their products and services. My nearly 10 years at DDB Canada, then Palmer Jarvis, put me within eye andearshot of some of Canada’s best advertising talent. And I soaked it in.

Multimillion dollar ad campaignscan be sold with stick peopleWhen I was a young designer, advertising seemed counter-intuitive to the craft I knew. But that is the point: The starting place for great ideas and solutions, advertising or design, must start outside of “craft.” It must start with a great idea. So in went advertising’s best, to some of the largest clients, with little more than stick figures and the energy and enthusiasm of an art director/writer team to walk the client through the concept. And if clients can get excited about (and approve) stick drawings, how much more enthusiastic will they be as the process moves along and “craft” comes into the picture? Designers, listen up: You can sell logos, packaging and print collateral with little more than stick drawings. Give yourself more time for thinking, and far less time for dressing up thin ideas in computer comps and oh-so-slick 3D simulations.

Don’t let the creatives into the room right awayWhile, to some, the multilayered, hierarchical structure of the agency system can be seen as a deficit, the benefit is that creatives aren’t the first to answer the door. Account executives and planners are first on the scene, and theybring with them a skill set that asks “why” first. So in comes audience research, planning workshops and marketing studies. True, the massive stakes of advertising campaigns and their accompanying media budgets simply make this

a mandatory process. But designers need to remember that, while our total budgets may be smaller, the need for in-depth understanding and the self-control to resist jumping right to creative solutions is paramount to our clients’ success.

“Our job is not to give clients what they want, but to give them what they never dreamt of, and when they see it, to realize it’s what they wanted all along”This quote (or something very close) was written on the wall in reception at the ad agency where I worked. And rather than being a call to rebellion, it is a call to insight. I have generally found that advertising agencies challengetheir clients more than design studios. Ask “why” more. Debate more. Of course, the bad ones do it for their own egos, but the good (and great) ones do it to gain the all-important insight. A client may think he needs a mass-media campaign targeted at tweens, but what he really needs is a guerilla campaign for moms. Designers tend to have a client walk in the door looking for a brochure, and so we give them the best, darned brochure we can. But the good (and great) designers challenge and ask

“why” enough to recommend solutions that are right for the challenge at hand.

Don’t do it all yourself: Call in the talentI am as guilty of this one as any designer. The agency art director is just that: a director of art. So once the concept is cracked, the AD works like a director on set: selecting illustrators, photographers, typographers, designers,models and prop makers to realize their vision.

But designers have become generalists: We are typographers, illustrators and photographers. Blame it on lower budgets, but it’s a vicious cycle. The more we “DYI”


design, the less we can charge and the more limited our solutions are. If we do it all ourselves, all our work can start to, well, look that way. And that, in turn, makes it hard to justify bringing in specialized talent on projects.

The money is thereTrue, you can’t squeeze blood out of a stone, but designers need to stop bemoaning how clients seem willing to spend vast amounts of money on agencies and media, when they seem to have so little time and money for design initiatives. The simple message is not that they don’t have the money, it is that they don’t value spending it on design. It’s not them; it’s us.

What are we lacking? Proven and measurable ROI? Success stories and case studies? Good old-fashioned persuasion? Mad Men swagger? And is this the challenge and responsibility of individual design firms or an industry-wide challenge? Yes on all counts.

The lesson to designers? Think more, decorate less. Plan, don’t react. Challenge, don’t just say “yes” (or “no” for that matter). Collaborate with the best. Find your value, and the money will come.

………………………………………………………………...........………



Vol. 26, No. 2June 2011

matthewclarksubplotdesign_speakerkit

Documents

good design

retail design

founder of subplot design

design edge canada

canadas design exchange

torontos design exchange

oneman design firm

ddb canadas design division