Facilitating Community Growth

Over the past semester I learned a number of critical lesson, which allowed me to more successfully grow a digital & physical community.

- The Importance of Incentives: People respond to incentives. Since childhood we have been exposed to the idea of incentives. For example: when a child gets a good grade, his parents may reward him with a new toy. It is important to involve this method within communities in order to promote initial and constant contribution by the majority of users.

- Promoting User Interaction & Contribution: Make clear your interest in community members thoughts, opinions, and criticisms. People like to feel needed and respected for their intelectual contributions. Once you get "the ball rolling," in terms of user interaction & contribution, users will react to one another and follow suit.

- Constant Content Evolvement & Growth: It is important to constantly grow and evolve your communities home content. Whether it be digital or physical, community members need new and changing content in order to keep interest in the cause or purpose of the community.

- Attracting Multiple Target Markets: Do not make your communities market attraction to narrow in focus. The point of a community is to grow its user base, not to turn away or restrict access to certain groups or markets.

The Voicebox Project

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The Importance of Client Confidentiality

Even when a formal agreement of confidentiality has not been signed, designers must step carefully in regards to client confidentiality and intellectual property rights. Actions as simple as a few words with a friend over coffee or leaving work up on screen in your brief absence can have serious consequences and lead to the premature release of a clients product or service.

One unexpected tweet or blog post can change the course of multi-year projects and can lead to great fiscal loss for both the designer and the client. For this and many other reasons, designers should follow these simple rules when considering what can and cannot be said outside of your immediate work team and clients.

1. Decide in advance what you can and can’t talk about, then stick to those boundaries.
2. Be prepared for your boundaries to be tested.
   
3. Confirm with vendors that they also comply with your set boundaries in advance of sharing any confidential information.
   
4. Don’t blow off steam about a project in public. (This means social media, too.)
   
5. Ask permission for promoting projects post-launch.
6. Compartmentalize your work on your computer.
7. Know when to use the strongest protection for IP that you pass back and forth
8. Use a password-protected screen saver and phone.

Get more in depth insight from the original article @ imprint.printmag.com
"DesignBiz: Take Client Confidentiality Seriously"

Exceptional Person

Rachel Cuyler is a graduate of Marist College with a bachelors of science in digital media. She is currently employed as a junior designer at the Madison Group in Manhattan where she works directly with clients as a part of design and presentation teams to both conceptualize and execute design projects and multimedia presentation design for print and multimedia presentations.

The Madison Group is an independently operated graphics and press company of the Young & Rubicam network that supports both Y&R network companies as well as a large amount of highly esteemed exterior clients and businesses.


During my time speaking with Rachel she highlighted the importance of going the extra mile when taking part in an internship. She spoke of nights where she would stay passed midnight to help employed peers complete various projects and tasks and she reaffirmed the importance of showing a sincere interest in the companies and its various functions.

This outlook on undergraduate internships paid off in the end when Rachel was employed by the Madison Group where she interned.

We also discussed the importance of diversifying within your field. Rachel practices photography as a passionate hobby and freelances as a web designer/developer on top of her very demanding career life.

Always looking for a new opportunity Rachel portrays a confident young designer who knows that hard work and sacrifice early in your career pays off tremendously.

Changing the Game: the digital revolution

For the most part good graphic design in the 20th century has been equated to the ability to tell a compelling visual narrative, which finds value within an otherwise inert product. This valuable skill of storytelling has been the backbone of the modern western design field, within the commercial realm, for all of its existence. Clients understood the advantage good design gave a product or service, and they hired designers to tell the story.

But we have reached an inflection point within the profession where simply creating a product narrative is no longer the most effective way to approach design. The digital revolution has without a doubt changed the game. Products are no longer just analog, and some products and services have became completely digitalized. One great example of this switch to digital is the music industry. Brick and mortar record stores are no longer the place to hang out and discover new music. Digital storefronts and social networks are now the driving forces in the evolvement of the music industry.

This switch to intangible has sparked two radical changes within the design profession. First, clients can no longer afford to depend on outside sources to fulfill their storytelling needs. And second, designers are no longer dependent on clients to practice their profession.

The first change in the design field holds a more negative connotation. In a digital economy products and services are more intimately tied into the company its self. The products they sell have become synonymous with the company they are. Clothing stores must constantly optimize and design their online storefronts, which makes it impossible or the client to entrust the project to a designer outside the company. So for many designers this means that they will have to leave the studio model behind and embrace the in-house model. Negatively this will mean that the range of projects will diminish substantially and areas of focus will narrow.

But the second change cause by this digital crossover greatly broadens the possibilities within the field. Digital tools have become democratized within the last decade and it is now possible to build a digitally based business at a fraction of the funds once needed. This puts designers in command of their own destiny by allowing them to channel their creativity into a viable business. Without demanding deadlines, strict budgets, and painfully ignorant clients, the designer is left to create and prosper at he or she wish.

Jake Blanchard: The Life of a Freelance Illustrator

In connection with his recent exhibition "Hylozoism" at the Bardens gallery in London Jake Blanchard discusses the fulfilling but inconsistent career of a freelance professional. Jake is able to take a topic wrapped around doubt and fear and turn it into a poetic, hopeful piece of art, which will be featured in the upcoming show that will contain a collection of his prints and drawings.

Jamie Reid: Cultural Dissent

The London born artist Jamie Reid played a critical and controversial role in the sharp edged punk rock movement which exploded throughout the US and the UK during the 1970's. The punk rock movement, rooted in the DIY mindset was the jumping-off point for Reid's uncensored, in your face aesthetic, which perfectly captured this aggressive sub culture.

Reid was exposed to political and cultural rebellion at an early age by his activist parents. Highly influenced by the anarcho-dadaists, Reid's work contained the strong and restless voice of a dissatisfied generation of mainstream misfits. Reid channeled his dissent by starting an underground publishing outfit: Suburban Press, which managed to catch the attention of the UK based punk band, the Sex Pistols.

Reid's work was not considered gallery worthy at the time. In fact, most of his work was so controversial that many people thought it to be tasteless filth. Thus, Reid used the street to voice his social commentary.

In a recent interview with the art & culture magazine Juxtapoz Reid comments on the enduring influence of public/street art...

"Ordinary people would see these images wheat pasted on walls, stickers, in shops, and splashed across the covers of newspaper, and they couldn't help but react. Sometimes they'd be scared, sometimes they'd be amused, and sometimes they'd start wondering what was really going on."

Today Reid's art is predominantly shamanistic and religiously inspired. Reid explains that he is simply exploring the other side of the evolutionary spectrum...

"If there's one thing I've always been aware of, its that if you need political change, you also need spiritual change."

But when it comes to his opinion of art galleries, not much has changed. He still approaches these institutions with the cynical outlook that helped define a worldwide cultural movement.

"The whole thing is so corrupt and so negative. Im not depressed about it at all–I just choose to do things my own way."