Great Designers are Inspired, Visionary and Determined
I once wrote a post about design on The Walkabout sometime in April 2009.
It was about one Jacek Utko, a graphic designer from Poland whose award-winning designs help readers reconnect with newspapers.
Jacek Utko, Polish Graphic Designer
Lately, I’ve had time to talk to upcoming designers and some friends who still cannot believe that I did not attend design school. They keep asking what one needs to do to be a better designer. This post attempts to answer some of their questions.
Despite being a little-known newspaper designer, his redesigns not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. In the following TED talk, Jacek says in no uncertain terms:
“you can live in a small poor country, you can work for a small company, in a boring branch, you can have no budgets, no people, but still you can put your work to the highest possible level. And everybody can do it. You just need inspiration, vision and determination. And you need to remember that to be good, is not enough.”
Watch Jacek Utko’s TED Talk, read reviews, or download the video on the TED web site:
Design Success
On his official web site, Jacek outlines 7 Steps to design success. They are:
- Strategy and goal
What do you want to achieve? Increase sales? Attract new readers? Change image?- Newspaper content
Is the change of content necessary? Is the paper structure clear? What are the reader’s needs?- Design
Is design coherent with strategy and content?- Focus Groups
Will readers accept it?- Organization and planning
How to improve workflow and planning?- Marketing
How to self-promote our content?- Implementation
Presentation and training, style book, supervision
This post will be especially helpful to those in the creative, publishing and marketing services industry. In a broader perspective however, the above design insights and TED talk are useful to anyone who is in the business of adding value.
