Sparkman - Selling Graphic and Web Design

SELLING
GRAPHIC
& WEB
DESIGN

DON SPARKMAN

Allworth Press, New York

2006 Donald H. Sparkman, Jr.

All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

100908070654321

Published by Allworth Press, an imprint of Allworth Communications, Inc.

10 East 23rd Street, New York, NY 10010

Cover and text design: Don Sparkman

ISBN-13: 978-1-58115-459-7

ISBN-10: 1-158115-459-3

ISBN: 978-1-58115-824-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sparkman, Don.

Selling graphic and Web design / Donald Sparkman. -- 3rd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Rev. ed. of: Selling graphic design. 2nd ed. 1999.

1. Graphic design (Typography)--United States--Marketing--Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Web sites--Design--Marketing. 3. Design services --Marketing. I. Sparkman, Don Selling graphic design. II. Title.

Z246.S658 2006

381.456862252--dc22

2006013943

Printed in Canada

To those who know the difference between
function and form.

To Those Who Chose to Help

Mary Edens, Brian Choate,

Tad Crawford, David Cundy, Chris Foss,

Ed Gold, Ed Gracholski, Glen Kowalski,

Monica Lugo, Barry Miller, Esq.,

Kathy Renton, and John Waters

FOREWORD

MULTI-TASKING DESIGN

Communication Seamlessly Integrates
Words and Images

A few years ago I began to notice an amazing change taking place in the design community. Design firms were no longer being asked to create design.

In 1990 I began a second career as a design instructor at the University of Baltimore, having been fascinated by the unusual approach to design I saw there. Led by a few very far-seeing and brave English instructors, the university had created a design program based on the at-the-time revolutionary idea that the best kind of communication is that which seamlessly integrates words and images.

In order to accomplish this, they created a graduate program that requires students to study and master both design and writing. In the almost thirty years that the program has been taught, it has turned out to be one of the most successful programs at the university. Graduates of the program are now spread out over the entire country championing the message to all designers integrate or perish!

Educational Overload

The problem with that message is that there is just too much for a designer to learn in order to integrate everything that needs to be integrated.

Designers are now being asked to create brands. A brand identity is something that exists in the minds of clients and consumers based on every experience they have with a company. If designers wanted to stay in business, much less grow, they were being asked to understand and manage a whole range of disciplines they had had no experience with, including public relations, advertising, packaging, crisis management, employee relations, interior design, marketing, and media selection, just to name a few. This means that designers were being asked not only to create effective design elements, but also to advise their clients on how they could successfully convey their message across the board, in every possible way.

Clients were no longer interested in design as most designers understood the term. They were certainly still interested in problem solving, but the problems they were posing to design firms were no longer the same, simple ones they used to ask their designers to solve. They finally understood what designers have known for years: Design is not merely about what something looks like, it is about the blow to the psyche a person feels when he or she is confronted with a powerfully constructed message that comes through in everything they see, hear, feel, touch, or smell.

A Brave New World

The newly sophisticated demands of clients caught many designers unprepared. Most of them had spent years mastering the medium of print and perhaps television, but they found themselves at a loss when asked to develop branding strategies that communicated an integrated message across every possible communications medium, including ones that they themselves had no clue at all how to construct.

Recognizing this, the University of Baltimore approved the School of Communications Designs request to create a new terminal degree, the MFA in Integrated Design. The objective of the degree is to prepare designers to not only master all the various media clients are now asking designers to work within, but also to manage all the parts and pieces of an integrated branding campaign.

More and more, all businesses recognize that design can make the difference between products and services that succeed and those that fail. More and more, businesses are seeking graduates with MFA degrees rather than MBA degrees. Those who can innovate and create are being actively recruited by businesses that wish to grow.

Opportunity Is Knocking

Don Sparkmans book is the first one Ive read that addresses this incredible opportunity being presented to designers. In this book, Don is asking designers to raise their heads from their computers and recognize that they have the power to change the world, and, at the same time, change the design business from the equivalent of a mom-and-pop store to a megaplex.

It wont be easy to do this, and, for certain, there will be many designers who will hate the very idea of abandoning the arts and crafts approach to design that the profession has followed for years.

But, as always, change is inevitable, and, as Don writes, this particular inevitability is already here.

ED GOLD

Ed Gold is a professor in the School of Communications Design, which is part of the Yale Gordon College of Liberal Arts, University of Baltimore. He is the author of The Business of Graphic Design (Watson-Guptill).

PREFACE

A BLURRING OF LINES IN DESIGN

Its All about the Design, Not Just
Production

G raphic design today covers print, animation, and the creation of Web sites. Some people argue about which method of communication is the most effective. If you are a designer, you must be grounded in all forms. If you want to sell only Web design or only print, Im sure you can find a firm that shares that tunnel vision, and youll be happy in the short term. But design, like water, will seek its highest level. If a message is better communicated through print versus the Web, it should be produced for print. If interaction is important, the Internet is probably best. The Internet can stand alone as a medium, but with no support from print, Web sites are easily forgotten or never found in the first place. While the Internet has the flash and sparkle that much print lacks, people need a break from constant motion, hype, and glowing color (even with millions of television sets and computers in homes all over the world, there are more magazines published today than ever before). Often, both print and Web design are needed in concert; they can complement each other. The one-two punch of a good print ad that features a Web address is ideal.

Embrace Technology

The Internet is not the first, and certainly not the last, revolution in the field of design. Letterpress printing was replaced by offset. Hot type was replaced by cold type. Paste-up was replaced by computer-generated, page-making programs. The printing standard went from two-color offset, to four-color printing, then five color, then six, etc. The point is that you should never feel like youre on the leading edge. Design is just a train moving ahead, and you are on one of the cars. Its amazing to me how many people have retired because they didnt want to cope with the new technology. They couldnt embrace what they couldnt understand. Whenever we feel too superior, we should remember the arm in the bucket theory. What you do is fill a bucket with water and then put your arm down in the water. Now pull your arm out and see how much youve affected the level of the water. This is an old trick, but it certainly says a lot about our true importance.