3 - Research in Design: My Never-Ending Quest for Knowledge and a Job

Clients. Defined in Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, a client is “a person who engages the professional advice or services of another.” From my understanding these are the people who will be controlling your livelihood in the design business. Success in the design appears to be determined by the number of clients you are able to attract and the quality of work you are able to produce for those clients. So then how do you go about finding clients? Two options for attracting work are actively seeking out potential clients/job opportunities or allowing clients to come find you. Although they are both very similar they do differ slightly.

As a new designer attempting to work in “the industry” you will have to seek out your clients. According to Cynthia Baron’s, Designing a Digital Portfolio the first step in searching fro a job is to determine your audience. What is your target audience and how can you go about appealing to them? Baron gives a list of questions to assist you in narrowing your job search:

- Geography: Where are you looking?
- Independent studio / agency or in-house department?
- Company size?
- If independent, what is the specialty?
- Client or company industry category or categories?
- Type of projects?
- Specifying in a specific media?
- Specifying in specific activities or sub-culture?

These question will help you to narrow down the search when looking for a job in the in the industry. So where do you find these jobs? Like searching for any job personal connections are important.

Look for personal connection in fields in which you are interested. For example, if you are looking to work in graphic design and page layout and you have a friend working at Sports Illustrated and he is in good standing, talk to this friend and see if he knows a position that is open or give a promotional card of your work which he could then pass onto his employer. These types of connections can often lead to interviews, internships and even job offerings. Now you may have no interests in sports but remember the experience is key and can help you land future work.
Another great way to find work is through the Internet. Searching on various engines such as Yahoo or Google can help a designer to actively seek out work while allowing for specification of those positions. These types of sites also come in handy when researching you potential employer. Weather it be a large corporation or an individual client it is extremely helpful to do the research on that employer. Baron suggests researching the type of designers they have worked with in the past, the work they have had done for them, and the specific about any upcoming work they are looking to have done. Collect the research you have gathered and then design your portfolio to match the result. Both Baron and Shaughnessy, the author of How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul, suggest researching your potential employer before hand and then applying the knowledge you have gained form that research to determine which work to include in your portfolio as well as which work to discuss with that employer. While this may seem like your are narrowing yourself down to a certain specialty, you are showing the client, or employer, that you understand their business and what they are looking for. If successful in your research, what they are looking for will be you.

Another way of attracting work is to let employers find you. A great way to do this is to do year mailing to companies that interest you. Including promotional samples of your work can often attract new business. While this practice is far less successful than actively seeking out clients it is not something to be forgotten.
In order to be successful in the industry or even to survive in the industry I have learned that I must be constantly searching for work, weather it be at a large corporation or a small flyer for a mom and pop bakery in my hometown. With the ever-fluctuating economy work is scarce and if I wait for the moment when I am out of work to search for other work then I am already too late.