Tag: graphicdesign

3 Reasons why design competitions are bad for designers.

Post author By Nia Sian
Post date 9th July 2020
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3 reasons why design competitions are bad for designers.

The design competition, otherwise known as spec work.

It’s a term that when uttered to most seasoned designers will be met with growls and irritable sighs. Every designer will at some point in their career be asked to “enter my logo design competition!”

But what is spec work? Why is it a touchy subject?

So, for the duration of this blog post, I’ll be using the terms spec work and design competitions interchangeably.

A design competition is where a company will advertise, quite often on social media, that they have a design competition to create a logo for their amazing new company. if they’re lucky, they will receive upwards of 40 – 50 or more, (depending on the size of their online presence and influence) entrants. These entrants may also “enter” 2-3 or more designs in the hopes to win that coveted prize. Usually, a nominal sum of money that doesn’t even cover the time, effort and experience of those designers entering the competitions.

Can you see the issue yet? If not, keep reading below. Here are my 3 reasons why design competitions are bad for designers.

1. There’s a very high chance the designers won’t get paid

Imagine doing all that work, and not even getting paid!

According to Apex Creative, the average chance of winning one of these competitions range from 0.2% to 10%. Imagine you do your best work, you submit 2-3 designs. But its not just you submitting 2-3 designs. There’s around 20-30 if not more hopefuls sending in their designs. That’s a lot of pretty much free design work going to the companies who arrange these competitions.

2. No Other industry does this.

Imagine going to a restaurant and ordering 10 different dishes. You try each one, but only decide to pay for 1. Hardly fair is it!! Restaurants have overheads such as rent/mortgage on premises, food stock, staff to pay for, gas, electricity, kitchen equipment, their advertising.

Did you know that designers also have overheads? Rent/Mortgage, student loans, computer equipment (which can run into the thousands) Software packages (Adobe creative cloud full package alone is circa £50 a month) pens and pencils etc for when we get seriously creative, oh and gas/electricity, food, and other general household stuff if were freelancers working from home. (some of us even have kids to pay for too!!)

2. Design contests cheapen our work.

When you set up design competitions, or, if you as a designer compete in design competitions, the work is free. Regardless of the “prize money” because let’s face it, only one person will win the competition. AIGA (the professional association for design) is totally against this, and in their article state:

Clients risk compromised quality. …. Designers risk being taken advantage of. Some clients may see this as a way to get free work; it also diminishes the true economic value of the contribution designers make toward client’s objectives.

I understand if you’re a design student, just leaving university with your degree in one of the many design disciplines, but please, don’t put all that hard work and effort to get your amazing degree in the bin. If you’re fresh out of the oven and want some stuff in your portfolio, use your degree work. Design some off the cuff work for yourself, ask friends and family if they would like anything doing. Design a logo for your little sister and frame it for it to put on her bedroom wall!! I can guarantee she will appreciate your work 100x more than those who call for spec work/ do design competitions.

And to you who run these competitions: please don’t. It just degrades all the hard work we put into our careers. It devalues our profession. And to be honest, as someone who has been in this industry for 13 years now, it’s insulting.

Unfortunately, design competitions such as the ones I describe aren’t going away any time soon. The only consolation is that with continual education & saying NO, their prevalence will diminish.

Tags anglesey, design, design competitions, designers, graphicdesign, greaphic design anglesey, how to design a logo, logo design, north wales, welsh design

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Creative Confidence

“DESIGN IS SUBJECTIVE. WE KNOW THAT MUCH. WHAT ONE PERSON THINKS IS A GOOD DESIGN, ANOTHER WILL THINK ITS UGLY OR USELESS”

This is a statement I wrote back in December 2018. It’s taken me awhile to get going on this blog post.

Because I’ve been busy with client commissions and
Because I’m a procrastinator and have dealt with serious creative confidence issues over the last few months.

Is it a good statement? possibly. But the issue here is the fact that it’s taken me almost 5 months to get back to writing this blog post. Why? I hear you ask… Well, dear friends, like I said above, I’m a procrastinator. I have so many “projects” on the go, that my head is spinning! I start a project, and quickly lose interest, unless it’s something I have to do, like commission work where it pays my bills, or watching Game of Thrones (Can that be classed as a project even?!) or the blanket I’m knitting for my soon to be born niece.

In many ways, creative confidence and procrastination go hand in hand. If you’re confident in your creativity, then procrastination shouldn’t get in the way as much. That’s my opinion anyway and confidence in my creativity is something I’ve been secretly struggling with over the last couple of months. It got to a point where I was not enjoying what I did (that lasted all of half a day!) So I did something about it, and continue to do so every day. So here I present to you a list of the “things” I did to push past this confidence block and keep building myself up.

I decided to take a really good look at what my style was, my brand, my ethos. I closed down my main Instagram page and decided to start up a new one, so that it was fresh, and clean and very very focused. I didn’t like that. I felt constricted, so I went back to my original Instagram page where you will find the odd photo of my children, some random quotes about design and Insta stories about what I’m cooking for tea. I’m not just a designer. I’m also a mum of three and a wife. I work from home, as does my husband, and to hide that side of me would be like only showing half a tv program. Pointless. and you wouldn’t get the full picture.
Stopped comparing myself to other creatives. This can be really tough, when there is so much competition in the world to be the best at what you do. Especially in the creative industries. Social media doesn’t help either. But what the hell do you do when social media is part of your job? There isn’t much you can do to be honest, apart from take a break, limit when you access social media or, do what I do. Re-frame that negative thought and send out positive vibes. Comparison is the thief of joy!
Took a break. No one can keep going without taking a break. It’s a simple fact of life so over the Easter Break, we took a trip down to Weymouth to see friends and explore the area. We stayed at the Little Sea Haven which was perfect because there were so many activities for the children to do. We also went to Durdle Door which was amazing in itself! If you’ve never been, it should definitely be on your to do list.

Bought a book. Written by brothers Tom and David Kelley – Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All I’ve followed David Kelley since I watched one of his TED Talks many many moons ago. He is the founder of IDEO and in my opinion, is one of the greatest designers and thinkers of today. Granted I haven’t ready the book yet (its downloaded onto my kindle, ready for prosecco hour tonight ;-)) But I have read around the associated website, and what he and Tom say is so absolutely true “Creative confidence is like a muscle—it can be strengthened and nurtured through effort and experience” – Which leads us on to the next point.
Made more time for practice. Its true that practice makes perfect. Or as near perfect as you can get, because no one and nothing is perfect. And that’s something we all need to remember when learning something new or practising existing talents. Mistakes do not equal failure. Mistakes prove that you are trying, and practising your craft. I have countless sketch books full of drawings, ideas, notes and more. They are all part of my creative process. the practice, the “Ideation” stage if you will. I’ve learnt so much from them, and will keep them as reference to look back on. When life gets busy, it can be so easy to forget about that little bit of time you need to just practice your craft. especially in design. We are working to so many briefs, and most of them are other peoples briefs. We are meeting their needs, their ideas, their creative input is in there. But what every designer should do is spend time on their own creative briefs. Even if it’s just putting down some doodles to turn into a sticker pack, or writing a blog post. Do it! and thank me later!

With all these steps taken, my creative confidence has improved, a lot. But it’s something that I will continually work on no matter what. I’d love to know how you get through a creative confidence block. Let me know in the comments!

Tags anglesey, branding, cymraeg, design, graphic, graphic design, graphicdesign, holyhead, illustrated, illustration, illustrator, logo, logo design, north wales, sirfon, welsh

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Logo Design – Ysgol Santes Dwynwen

Post author By Nia Sian
Post date 18th September 2018
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Following on from the success of the Ysgol Cybi Logo Design, I was asked to work on the branding and logo design for Ysgol Santes Dwynwen; the third super school to be built by Anglesey County Council, in line with the school’s improvement programme “21st Century Schools”

As with the work done for Ysgol Cybi, I was presented with a series of children’s drawings to start the process of deciding what route to take with the logo design.

It was decided, by myself, Headteacher; Ms Manon Williams and Rev Canon Emlyn Cadwaladr Williams that the love spoon design, sketched out by pupil Caitlin would be the best route to take. Caitlins simple, but effective love spoon idea, which represented the love story of Santes Dwynwen at Llanddwyn Island was a perfect fit in what would be the brand embodiment of the school.

Tags anglesey, branding, cymraeg, design, graphic, graphic design, graphicdesign, holyhead, illustrated, illustration, illustrator, logo, logo design, north wales, sirfon, welsh

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Design Inspiration – Ysgol Cybi Logo

Post author By Nia Sian
Post date 13th December 2017
1 Comment on Design Inspiration – Ysgol Cybi Logo

Back in summer of 2016, I was asked to design a logo for the new super school being built in my home town. This was a biggie for me. Not only was it possibly the biggest design job Id had up to that point, but it was something that was going to last quite a few years, be seen by hundreds if not thousands of people, and my children were going to be wearing it every day in school!

Id known roughly what the brief would be. The children had come home one day with homework to design their school logo. So after a long chat and a coffee with Reverend Kevin, who had contacted me about the design work, I set about sketching out a few ideas based on the three key themes I had been given and the few ideas that my children had thought of.

The three key themes that came from all three schools homework were

St Cybi’s Church
Holyhead Mountain
The Breakwater in Newry

The colour chosen for the school uniforms was turquoise which was in keeping with the colour of part of the new section of the school being built.

So after setting about to sketch and come up with a number of ideas, presenting the ideas to the board of governors and the headmaster, and then tweeking the favourite ideas, the final logo was decided upon.

The final design is a simple, clean and recognisable logo mark which translates easily between black and white and colour, is applied easily to stationery, signage and clothing and will hopefully last a good few decades!

I would love to hear some of your thoughts on the final design so please post some comments or send me message through Facebook or the contact page here !

Bye for now!

Nia Sian xx

Tags anglesey, branding, cymraeg, design, graphic, graphic design, graphicdesign, holyhead, illustrated, illustration, illustrator, logo, logo design, north wales, product design, sirfon, welsh

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Enterprise by Design 2016

Post author By Nia Sian
Post date 28th August 2016
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In February 2016, I was chosen (along with a few of my peers from the Bangor Design School) to take part in Enterprise by Design at the Pontio Innovation Centre in Bangor, North Wales.

I have briefly discussed it on my linked in profile, because of the number of skills I developed and acquired.

8 week multidisciplinary design challenge for students of Bangor University who took part. I was one of the students who took part in this challenge and was part of a team including and engineering student, a psychology student and a business studies student. Working collaboratively to solve issues related to user experiences of the high street using design thinking and design processes.

As a design student, you are more often than not so engrossed in your own work and making sure that your portfolio represents you as an individual as best as possible, that the chance to develop multidisciplinary or collaborative skills often gets missed, or just not thought about at all.

Design is about mapping out a distinct future.

Here is a short video explaining what Enterprise by Design is by andy Goodman (Design Director at Pontio, Bangor)

The challenge started with creating a team. And the teams had to get to know each other to be able to collaborate effectively. This was done simply by the use of advertising triangles. Participants effectively had to advertise their skills and attributes on the triangle and then walk around until they had met and linked up with a potential teammate. Teams were complete when the pyramid was created by linking the triangles.

https://www.bangor.ac.uk/bangortv/ebd_intro.php.en

For further reading on how effective collaboration can enhance the design process click here

Tags anglesey, branding, cymraeg, design, graphic, graphic design, graphicdesign, holyhead, illustrated, illustration, illustrator, logo, logo design, north wales, sirfon, welsh

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KM Decor8 Branding Project

Post author By Nia Sian
Post date 2nd August 2016
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This project was the first major project I did after graduating from university. I was asked by a friend to design a logo for his business (painting and decorating) which was a new venture for him. The customer was quite specific in colour scheme and style but didn’t know how to go about producing business cards, letter heads and compliment slips. To add to this he wanted his Renult Trafic van wrapped in the design signage. Once he and I had worked on the initial design and had finalised the business cards, I then contacted a local vehicle wrapping and signage company to print the graphics and wrap the van.