Confession time: I used to be a staunch defender of unpaid internships and advised fellow firm owners and young design grads alike to engage in this time-honoured tradition. I was wrong. So wrong. And I feel quite lousy about it.

There is nothing new about this practice or the debate surrounding it. And it’s not unique to the creative workforce—it’s endemic in a bad economy. Some very notable and respected leaders in the design field have endorsed its use for years and continue to do so. But they’re wrong and the practice is harming our industry. Let me explain why.

Internships can be an amazing way to break into an industry, and young designers all think they’ll do such a good job that they’ll be offered a paid position afterward. Most I’ve spoken to think they don’t have any choice, so they do it.


But the industry has profoundly risen up against speculative work in the last few years, establishing that earning work by pitching free creative devalues our industry. Many even argue that dangling the carrot of exposure or a potential future job is actually immoral, which is exaggerating the situation in my opinion. There are other more practical arguments that are worth discussing though.

The argument I always used to defend unpaid internships was that it was a vital bridge between education and work, and that it also was a costly, time-intensive commitment for any design firm. As an educator, I felt it was part of a young designer’s education akin to an apprenticeship.

Well hold on there. Even apprentices of old were provided with room and board. It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, if you had talent and potential, you were given an opportunity to learn while earning your keep. These days, typically the only people able to accept unpaid internships are the privileged young supported by their family. How is a young designer buried in student loans, working part time just to survive supposed to show up five days a week for months without pay? That is unreasonable and leaves qualified, hard-working candidates behind, ultimately contributing to class divide.

Furthermore, a culture of unpaid internships results in a vetting of candidates who are unwilling to work for free, potentially resulting in candidates not actually being the most qualified. That sort of defeats the purpose, no?

Most unfair is that young designers likely aren’t strong enough to take a stand. Nor should they be. The “If you don't like it, don't accept the internship” argument puts the onus on them, and that is cruel.

Lastly, most of the above is a moot argument. It turns out that unpaid internships are illegal anyway.

Vancouver-based social media company Hootsuite was lambasted for its three-month unpaid internships. Critics quickly pointed out that according to the Employment Standards Act, unpaid internships are illegal. Not a “grey area.” Not “up to a person if they want to volunteer.” If a BC company is a for-profit enterprise, the practice is totally, unequivocally illegal. The same goes in Ontario and elsewhere, although according to the Canadian Intern Association, there is no clear law governing this across Canada. It’s time there should be, in my opinion.

That these interns are there to learn doesn’t matter. The law says that only a company working directly with an educational institute in offering hands-on learning, as a required component of a formal education, can be considered a practicum and thus not “work” requiring compensation. But unless the opportunity never involves working directly on any client projects and the intern makes no contribution to the company whatsoever, then it is indeed work.

I’m not arguing that *real* school internships require payment. That’s different. And that’s legal. The lines between the two can blur but this is clear: it’s B.S. when agencies take advantage of young people, claiming their internships are some kind of learning experience when really they are exploitative.

This is why companies have junior positions, and I reject any claims that firms can’t afford to train juniors. If you can’t fork over ten bucks an hour for a young designer to contribute to your success, then it’s completely inappropriate for you to lure them with hope and false promises of exposure and experience. Give your head a shake!

The good news is Hootsuite’s leadership quickly owned the situation, apologized, changed its policies, and even offered back-pay to current interns. Good for them for doing not only the right thing, but the smart thing.

The fact that there is a long line of willing design students and grads doesn't make it right. And the fact that the economy is terrible doesn’t make it acceptable. It’s plain laziness if a company doesn’t take advantage of the many government wage-subsidy funding options available. Employers, especially visible leaders in our community, are obligated to demonstrate best practices and need to think hard about the real value of unpaid internships: Are they really in the best interest of the company and our industry?

Employers, I implore you to rethink your policies and do the right thing by joining me in protecting the next generation and most vulnerable among us. And for goodness’ sake, pay them at least minimum wage.

If you are a young designer feeling like you have no alternative in this hyper-competitive industry but to offer yourself as an intern without adequate recompense, think again. Don’t be afraid to ask employers to outline what you’ll be doing, learning, and gaining if not pay. Take the time to identify and pre-register for wage-subsidy funding and offer that to potential employers to make the choice easy for them.

Beyond that, be ready to demonstrate how you are precisely the right person for the job and how you can bring value to the organization while learning and paying your dues. If they insist it’s no pay or no opportunity, know that you can take a stand and politely decline.

Mark Busse is a founding partner and managing director of the Vancouver-based strategy and brand design firm Industrial Brand, a past president of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada [B.C. Chapter], and a design writer and educator. You can follow him on Twitter at @MarkBusse

In celebration of our launch this week of the 2013 edition of Do Good Design, printed on 100% post-consumer papers, I'm sharing with you an excerpt of an interview conducted by Mohawk Papers' Allyson Van Houten. For the full interview please visit the Felt & Wire blog.

Allyson: Your book is ready for a reprint in what feels like a pretty short amount of time. Congratulations!  Why was it important for you to produce a printed edition of your book?

David: The future of civilization is our common design project. And as we now live in a time where everyone is a designer, we need to find a way to reach everyone with the message of where and how they fit in a sustainably designed future. Of course e-book distribution is rising, which is wonderful for strengthening universal access. Meanwhile, responsibly crafted paper continues to have many merits. Print provides expression, access, permanence, reach and focus not always available in electronic media.

Why did you choose to use Mohawk papers for the reprint?

We needed papers for this book with great surface qualities, high post-consumer waste content, FSC certification so we turned to our neighbours just across the St. Lawrence at Mohawk, not just for their expertise, but for their history and commitment to sustainable design. They were the first American commercial paper manufacturer to match 100% of their electricity with wind power renewable energy credits.

Tell us a little bit about why you chose Mohawk Options and Mohawk Everyday Digital.

We really wanted the feel of a hardcover book, but in a light and convenient airplane read. So for the interior, we sought out the vellum texture in a 100% post-consumer stock with strong opacity. We found all of that, without compromise, in Mohawk Options. For the cover we were seeking great performance for the embossment, the heavy red ink coverage, and the folding of the flaps that were added to this edition. Mohawk Everyday Digital was an excellent choice. We like the name too! Every day design and designers doing extraordinary things!

We’re working on a campaign in our studio and Ben, stuffing a letter into an envelope, asks me, “Why are #10 envelopes the size they are?” I answer without looking up. “Well, to perfectly hold a letter-sized sheet folded in three, of course.”

“Uh-huh. And why are letter-sized sheets 8.5 by 11 inches?”

Hmmm…Now that forced me into System 2 thinking (don’t know about System 2 thinking? If you design for good or evil, then the most important book you can read this year is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann). “I have no idea Ben, let’s find out...” As it turned out, the process of finding out about the history of paper lead us to thoughts about the future of paper consumption and waste.

So, why exactly is “U.S. Letter” exactly 8.5 by 11 inches? We have to go back over four hundred years, a time where it is said that North American forests were so thick that a squirrel could get from Niagara Falls to the Atlantic Ocean without touching the ground.

We also have to cross that ocean, to the Netherlands. The Dutch invented the two-sheet mold for papermaking in the 1660s. Apparently, the average maximum stretch of a vatman's arms was 44". In terms of depth, many molds were around 17" front-to-back because the laid lines and watermarks had to run from left to right. So, to maximize the efficiency of papermaking, the Dutch molded 44” x 17” sheets...which cut down nicely to eight 8.5" x 11" pieces of paper: just right to pen a personal request for more double salt licorice.

Now fast-forward a few hundred years to a time where machines, rather than people, were making most of the paper.

In 1921, American president Herbert Hoover’s Elimination of Waste in Industry program created the Committee on the Simplification of Paper Sizes, made up of printing industry reps and the Bureau of Standards.

The committee decided on a standard paper size in the interests of minimizing paper waste, and they stuck with the standard invented by the Dutch in order to help hand-made paper makers stay in business. (The committee actually standardized 17” x 22” as the basis for letter sheets, and 17” x 28” as the basis for “legal” sheets, which yields four annoying 8.5” x 14” sheets that lawyers love to mess us up with.)

Here in Canada in the 1970s, we did our best to leave the Americans alone with Imperial units. The Ontario government set the example of switching from Letter to the Metric A4 size, but gave up in the late 1980s at the same time that the Mulroney federal government bailed on metrication, and went back to U.S. Letter. The schism between what was available and in use outside government was too confusing and expensive to maintain. And so paper remains Imperial for the most part in Canada.

So, ironically, while the Dutch and the rest of the planet has long since moved on to measuring paper in the very logical metric units and grams per square metre and such, we Canadians find ourselves with our American neighbours, still confusing our clients and our staff with “lbs” and “basis weights” and “M’s” and “legal” and “#10 envelopes”.

So that licks the envelope question (sorry!)...however, of course, there is far more we can do today than could be done in Hoover’s day to guarantee paper sustainability and avoid wasting our precious forest resources. Society has entrusted us designers with conspicuous power over how paper is consumed in our society...which is why sustainability must continue to become how we roll as professionals.

For our part, I'll be releasing the 2013 edition of Do Good Design with publisher Peachpit/Pearson and the AIGA, and we’re proud to say that this time it will be printed on Mohawk Papers. We chose the papers for this book based on Mowhawk's high post-consumer waste content and FSC certifications...more news on that front really soon!

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”—Mark Twain
 
I don't care what prestigious school you attended; your design education is incomplete without travel. Lots of it.
 
My industry friend Nick Black, who leads the team at Concerto Marketing Group, recently told me his company strongly prefers hiring creatives who are "third culture kids"—a term I admit I wasn't familiar with. Similar to what sociologists call "global nomads"—those who hop from one place to another without a permanent home—third culture kids are people who have spent a considerable portion of their formative years outside their parents' country or culture. They typically have relationships with multiple cultures, often without entirely fitting into any of them, resulting in a unique way of interacting with the world. Perhaps you've met a military brat or diplomat's child who grew up abroad—those are third culture kids.
 

I immediately knew Nick was right. In fact, I realized we've been favouring third culture and similarly well-traveled kids at Industrial Brand for years! I've met and worked with all kinds of designers from a variety of cultural backgrounds, but cultural transplants frequently possess a broader base of life experiences and bring a unique psychological perspective to their work as creative problem solvers. Often more curious and open to experience, they tend to behave more like outsiders looking inward—even when they have assimilated and lived somewhere for many years—observing more intently, asking better questions, unhindered by assumptions and cultural biases.
 
So what can those of us with little experience outside of our original countries and cultures do to acquire some of this perspective? Travel, of course—and travel with purpose.
 
There's nothing wrong with taking a break to reset someplace warm, lying poolside and sipping cocktails—everyone benefits from rest. But if you are a creative professional, especially if you are a designer of visual communications, opening up to new experiences creates new connections and spawns powerful thought patterns you may not even be aware of, contributing to enhanced creativity you can apply in your work and career.
 
Please understand that I am not specifically talking about how graphic designers need to be aware of what is considered rude or bad luck in other countries, or what brand attributes appeal to other cultures. That is important and something that travel helps with, but I am talking more about the personal benefits—mental, emotional, and even spiritual—that come through diverse life experiences.
 
Living in North America is a blessing, but I am convinced we have too narrow a worldview, and an ignorance matched only by our western arrogance. I recently spent five weeks exploring five countries in Southeast Asia and was struck by how little I really knew about the world and the people and rich cultures within it.
 
Did I learn new skills or bring home design process tricks I can apply in my studio? Maybe not—not yet anyway—but by choosing to engage with these foreign cultures with intent and curiosity, I learned a myriad of lessons, saw numerous breathtaking examples of beauty, and returned feeling humbled, with a new perspective on my own country and culture. My travels helped break down barriers to perception, reset my ‘empathy meter’, allowing me to view the world through fresh eyes. I returned feeling inspired, energized, with clarity and focus unlike anything I've ever experienced after a week poolside.
 
As Nick explained, "being a great traveler and a great creative both require psychological flexibility and divergent thinking—a willingness to deviate from what's normal." You need to be prepared to take a risk, break your routines and step away from what you know. And what better way to boost your creative ability than through travel?
 
Digital product designer Cennydd Bowles believes “genius design” has no first-hand research phase. To anticipate user behaviour, a designer must draw upon stockpiled experience, imaginative analogy, and psychological fundamentals. I'm convinced my own recent travels have added to my stockpile and will benefit me in my design career for years to come.
 
The world is rapidly shrinking as it becomes more digitally connected, and one could even argue that everyone can access global cultures with the click of a mouse. But there is no substitute for the analog experience of immersing yourself in a foreign culture, exploring its language, history, architecture, art, cuisine, and traditions. That feeling of being a little lost, on the outside, struggling to communicate with locals, forces you to think on your feet. It changes you, leaving you more open, more aware, a better person even.
 
I can't believe I am going to wrap up a design article with a Steve Jobs quote, but I can't help it. He was very vocal on this topic, famously stating in a 1996 Wired Magazine interview: "Creativity is just connecting things…A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."
 
If you're a third culture kid or have a stamp collection in your passport, congratulations, you have an advantage. The rest of you, please carefully consider the limitations of a sheltered design school education and get out there and see the world you're going to be designing for. Curiosity and discovery are fundamental to design, and travel helps us master the art of discovery itself.
 
I understand that many of you are still in school or just starting out and probably can't afford to travel right now, but if you're serious about being a successful designer, and knowing that firms like Nick's (and mine) prefer hiring well-travelled people who view the world and think like third culture kids, how can you afford not to? Travel IS school.
 
Have any tips for traveling on a budget or know of any international design internships? Share in the comments section below.

Mark Busse is a founding partner and managing director of the Vancouver-based strategy and brand design firm Industrial Brand, a past president of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada [B.C. Chapter], and a design writer and educator. You can follow him on Twitter at @MarkBusse

Google is blind. And deaf. And has severe cognitive challenges. And most online shopping begins with a Google search...or perhaps a search on Yahoo or Bing...or Siri.

So, aside from the many other powerful arguments for making your sites and your documents inclusive (doing the right thing, leaving no one behind, broadening reach, attracting the best personnel, fulfilling corporate social responsibility goals), it’s simply good business.

Structuring a site in a way that makes its content perceivable and understandable to people with substantial disabilities will also result in Google finding your content and ranking it higher.

For example, the same alternative text we add to images so that a screen reader can describe the content to someone who cannot see it, also is used by search engines to index that same content. The rigour we apply to heading levels to structure an accessible web page also suggests to a search engine the priority and context of our content.

Design is about making things work, often in an intriguing and delightful way. An accessible design is about making things work for everybody.

Here in Ontario, we live in the first jurisdiction in the world to legally mandate web accessibility not just for government sites, but for business sites, which is great for social justice. But considering how accessibility yields better ethical SEO (search engine optimization) it will prove beneficial for economic competitiveness as well.

So while the accessibility standards speak of how to accommodate all users, far better strategically is to delight all users...and communicators. So go ahead: delight Google. When we design for the extremes, everybody benefits.

By: guest blogger Oliver Oike

Students, start practicing and say it with me: "It's my fault, it's my fault, it's my fault..." Because when clients don't "get it," it is your responsibility to add clarity and order to the process.

"If you are involved in something that goes wrong, never blame others. Blame no one but yourself. If you have touched something, accept total responsibility for that piece of work. If you accept responsibility, you are in a position to do something about it." — Paul Arden

That new design smell
We were ready. We had wrapped up the design of a new identity system and accompanying awareness campaign for a new client, and our team was confident that we had uncovered a thoughtful solution to address their wide-ranging audience segments. I had carefully crafted a presentation to walk our client through the ideation process and resulting work. In my mind, it all made sense, and there would be celebrations to follow.

Something smells fishy
On the day of the presentation, our primary client walked into the room with a colleague — someone we had met in passing at the beginning of the process, but who had not been actively involved throughout. It isn't out of the ordinary for something like this to occur, but the body language and visible tension between the two of them caught my eye and for a brief moment I wondered to myself what should be made of it.

Blindsided
We proceeded with the presentation. I made my case as I revealed the process and work. Our main client was enthusiastic and pleased, but her colleague sat stoically until I had finished and then leaned across the table, looking directly at me. "I thought we would have something that looks a little bit more like this..." With a mild look of derision he gestured for my pen, then flipped the presentation package over and proceeded to draw his own idea for an identity.

I held my breath, momentarily confused. I glanced over at our main client, who had a look of both embarrassment and fear in her eyes. She caught me looking her way and then shifted her gaze to the activity occurring on the paper in front of us.

At that moment I knew that we had made a critical error.

Don't be so stupid, stupid
It was later revealed that this person was the source of the company's startup funding and had final approval of the work. We should have known this from the beginning — it was an embarrassing, catastrophic oversight, and it still stings to think about today.

Say it again: “It's my fault”
Scenarios like this occur every day in design studios: you run headlong into a client who doesn't "get it." Or, late in the game, you're introduced to a new person who holds a position of influence over the project. Or, after a presentation, you hear a variation of "I don't know what I want, but it's not that." In all of these common examples you may feel frustrated and want to point fingers, but it is a situation that you are responsible for: you and your client have been trying to co-exist in an unclear, undocumented and assumption-filled design process. It should have never gone this far, and it's your job to fix it.

A kinder, gentler process
From the beginning, put your client at ease by demonstrating the level of care, attention and professionalism that you put into all aspects of your practice. Some important steps to work through with your client before beginning a project:

• Document all members from each team and what they are and are not responsible for.

• Be specific and clear about each step of the process.

• Establish a schedule that moves the project forward at a consistent pace.

• Agree to keep feedback loops short after presentations, and agree on the specific kind of feedback you are looking for.

• Ensure they understand the impact that "feature creep" will have on the project.

• Have a fair, transparent sign-off and payment mechanism in place.

Detail all of this in a well-written legal document that protects both parties equally. This is your playbook and safety net. Keep it handy.

It's your show
Before reviewing work with your clients, be empathetic to their frame of mind when they arrive for the meeting. Maybe they have a pile of other tasks and responsibilities waiting for them back at the office. Maybe the meeting they just came from went badly. Maybe they have a sick child at home.

Presenting work is an opportunity for you to remind them why you were the only choice for the project. Prepare them for what they are about to see. Describe in detail what you've shown them previously and what you discussed with them in the interim. Restate the agreed-upon goals of the project and the specific audience it is speaking to. Then, when they appear ready, guide them through the work in a measured and deliberate manner. Don't show it all at once. Pick and choose specific elements to focus on, and use those elements to reinforce ideas or relate them back to the overall goals. Think of it as a storytelling exercise, with you in the role of narrator and facilitator. Impress them with your intelligence, thoughtfulness and humility.

Be indispensable
"What do we owe clients? Loyalty, honesty, dedication, tenacity." — Michael Bierut

This is all motivated by the desire to do great work. Sometimes the design process goes well with a client; other times, like the scenario described above, it goes very badly. While you cannot ultimately control the reactions and decisions of your clients, you can build structures into your process that clear a path towards a successful outcome. When such structures are combined with a healthy dose of professionalism, humility and empathy, great work has a chance to take root and you may start to find yourself moving down the path past the role of service provider to that of indispensable, trusted partner.

Filling in for Mark Busse this month is guest-blogger Oliver Oike,  graphic design instructor at Red River College in Winnipeg and past-president of the Manitoba chapter of The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada. You can follow him on Twitter at @oo
Mark will return to this blog next month.

We’re doing a lot of work at our studio these days making other people’s InDesign files into PDFs that are accessible to people with disabilities. A file came in this morning in which the designer had wrongly used hard hyphens to force the rag he desired. Of course he should have used discretionary hyphens instead. Using discretionary hyphens may have just been a matter of good form up until now, but for universal design it can affect whether the content is perceived correctly. Using hard hyphens when not appropriate is a fail for a screen reader because it changes how the word is read out loud. (If you're thinking such subtleties of accessibility only apply to those who don't see well, I'll explain in my next post how it's equally important for many with other disabilities and reasons including Google Search, perhaps your most frequent visitor!)

It’s both the old-school typographer and the accessibility consultant in me who’s frustrated by the lack of awareness over the use of proper hyphens, non-breaking spaces, and the like. When I’m teaching how to build accessible documents (shameless plug: join us at Carleton University in Ottawa, Feb. 22 or Hamilton, Feb 28. to learn this stuff) to designers or non-designers, it’s easy to open their eyes to these issues — but then they’re frustrated as to where to find such constructs on their computer keyboards.

Seems like it’s time to redesign the English keyboard. I’m not talking about replacing QWERTY: that’s another issue. I’m talking about having dedicated keys for these key parts of our editorial alphabet (including proper quotation marks!). The timing is perfect for an upgrade because the nature of the keyboard itself is mutating as the majority of mobile devices are moving their keyboards on-screen, while technologies like Swype anticipate our keystrokes. It’s the perfect time to regain these typographic keys that used to be found on every dedicated typesetting machine, from Monotype to the Editwriter 7500, before they were lost in the shift to desktop publishing.

One way to help accelerate the cultural shift towards universal design that is taking place this decade is to teach people to stop using Microsoft Word as if it’s a typewriter. Another is that if we are to succeed in bringing up the next generation in a world that habituates building properly structured documents (using styles, headings, proper typography, templates...) from the get-go, then we’d benefit from keyboard layouts that make it easier to do so.

Perhaps dedicated keys would even be the precursor to the evolution of the alphabet: a word-breaking hyphen deserves to have a different symbol than the hyphen we use in the midst of a compound word. And the thin space that used to differ in width from a word space, and that also ensured that “Dr.” and “Seuss” always remained on the same row of type, deserves to make a comeback as HTML increasingly finds its elegance.

So here’s to kick-starting a move back to these essential typographic details, for the good of aesthetics, of understanding, and of universal design. Here’s to the return of the discretionary hyphen key, and the thin space, and dedicated open and closing quotation marks.

What other characters do you think are most missing from the English keyboard? And which could we do without?

It’s never been more challenging to land a design job. Competition is fierce—especially for fresh-faced newbies with shiny new portfolios tucked under their arms looking for their big break. Where does one even start these days?

You’ve heard that it helps to get to know people and make your face recognizable, but how do you get the attention of a time-strapped manager of a design firm, ad agency, or corporate marketing department? How do you demonstrate what makes you special?


Below are a few common assumptions, and some challenges to those assumptions. They aren’t meant to be scary; rather to show you that it’s about much more than your portfolio.

Assumption #1: You need to show your portfolio to art directors and creative directors at thriving design studios.

Reality: Unfortunately, the people you really want to work for probably—no, almost definitely—will not have time to meet with you. Think of them as the highly guarded tower at the top of a huge castle: you have to get through many guards and levels before you reach the top. Do this by making industry friends and alliances. Take your focus off of simply getting a job, and get to know people for the sake of getting to know awesome people. Your authenticity and genuine interest will eventually lead you to meeting the leaders you wanted to know in the first place. I cannot tell you how many times I've offered opportunities or referrals to young grads who I got to know as GDC volunteers.

Assumption #2: A clever self-promotion piece is required to break through the clutter.

Reality: Gimmicks rarely impress anyone, contrary to what many instructors tell their design students. And if you are perceived as making trendy work because you think that’s what design is all about instead of actually being able to provide real world solutions, that can be a turnoff. Instead, flaunt a project with a strong idea and strategy and combine it with thorough process, good typography and attention to detail and results. But don’t take yourself too seriously: relax and let your personality and genuine interest in the company shine. That said, occasionally a really well-conceived leave-behind or mini portfolio sent as a follow-up after meeting a young designer—too good to throw away—inspires me to consider them when an opportunity presents itself.

Assumption #3: Your portfolio and a well-designed resume are crucial to open doors.

Reality: Admittedly, this is true, but stop thinking of them as extensions of you and start thinking of them as standalone pieces. Your portfolio should speak on your behalf when you’re not in the room, so make sure it includes context via case studies: objective, approach, process—the stuff that demonstrates strategy leading to tangible results. Put yourself in a business owner’s shoes: what would convince you that the applicant is capable of solving problems, producing results, and ultimately making you money as part of your team? Resumes are for applying to Starbucks. If you don't have a personal brand expressed online via Linkedin, About.me, or your own domain, then you’re missing the ticket to the dance. And don’t spew dumb shit on Twitter and Facebook—if you post personal drama, drunk photos, inappropriate "selfies" (a la Rihanna), or hateful slurs or rants, that says heaps about how you will behave or fit within a team. Create multiple portfolios including your own website, Behance, Cargo Collective, your GDC profile, and even your personal Facebook page! Personality, behaviour, and personal network trump a diploma and portfolio every time. The applicants that stick in my mind were those who were confident (without being arrogant), doggedly determined (without being stalkers), had a spark in their eye, and followed up after first or even second encounters.

Assumption #4: You must communicate what’s unique about your design process in order to differentiate from the competition.

Reality: Nonsense. There’s virtually nothing you can offer that will be particularly unique—unless you specialize, but that’ll come later in your career. Think about it: the most unique thing about you is YOU. So own that. Add to that the specific work you have done, whether it worked or not (be honest), and back it up with what your colleagues, partners and clients say about working with you. That’s all you are armed with. Don’t waste time trying to describe or illustrate how special your process is—focus on you. Maybe even kill your portfolio and move towards comprehensive case studies. That way you can prove that you know how to make design solutions work and not have to struggle to prove that your use of typography is revolutionary. The best portfolios I've seen include research and sketches that shed light on how a designer created and produced the clever ideas, expressed through visual language.

Assumption #5: You must take every opportunity you can get—even if they’re not a good fit.

Reality: Avoid trying to please everyone. Yes, it can sting like crazy when you work hard to convince a new client or prospective employer to like and trust you, only to have them go with somebody they like better. However, try not to get too emotional about it—there will always be other doors opening. Take rejection as an opportunity to listen and understand where you may have gone wrong, and improve on those issues next time. Also, the sooner you realize that your job as a designer is one of listening, clarifying, gaining consensus, and translating—not just picking fonts and Pantone colours—the faster your brilliance will shine through. When you do get that job, work hard on being outstanding in a few particular areas, and create solutions based on approved language and concept. Then emphasize that process in your portfolio to explain how you arrived at the pretty solutions.

Will your portfolio express enough to a potential employer when you’re not in the room? Share your tips or tricks others might consider as they face gaining employment in this competitive industry.

Mark Busse is a founding partner and managing director of the Vancouver-based strategy and brand design firm Industrial Brand, a past president of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada [B.C. Chapter], and a design writer and educator. You can follow him on Twitter at @MarkBusse

So friends, it’s 2013, and Joseph Kony is still at large. More likely than not, you hadn’t heard of Kony before 2012, and then this past year he came to your attention via the most rapidly viral social justice campaign in human history. The virality of this YouTube video itself was huge mainstream news worldwide on its own, accompanied by an excellent designed campaign of collateral: a great example of how we now live in a world where everyone is a designer, a communicator, a message. And yet....

Number of views for Kony 2012 video in 2012: 96,033,780
Number of warlords named Joseph Kony arrested in 2012: 0

And yet, here we are in 2013 and the failure of the goal of that video (to arrest Kony by December 31, 2012) did not even make a blip in mainstream media. The most viewed do good video in human history, which itself pushed the bounds of the technology and reach of design for the social good, yielded unprecedented good intentions and outpouring of interest around the world...and yet, for whatever reason, failed to deliver on its stated objective.

What do we learn from this?  We have to stop being naive, both as designers and consumers, that messaging alone can save the world. As we embrace the power of design to help create our best civilization yet, we must persist and follow through, not just with graphic design, but with the design thinking and tactics that will finish what we start. We must be relentless in the pursuit of a better future.

In the film Casablanca, Rick says to Laszlo, “We all try. You succeed."

Designers can be unstoppable. This year, be Laslzo. Be unstoppable.

New Year’s resolution for 2013: Don’t just try to do good...get it done.

The purpose of this column is to challenge some of the assumptions that many young designers and future firm owners may have entering this profession. If I can help a few of you avoid learning even one or two of these lessons the hard way like I did, I’ll have met my goal. Here are some of the most important lessons I’ve learned after 15 years of managing a design firm, in no particular order.

Pretty isn’t always the best choice.
It took years of running a design business to realize that making the right choices to solve business problems doesn’t always result in the prettiest aesthetics. I now derive more reward from creating solutions that help my clients succeed, than from creating exquisite graphic masterpieces that I’ve tweaked endlessly in ways the client or audience would never notice or even care about.

Ideas are a dime a dozen.
I’ve heard the phrase “a high tide floats all boats” my whole life, but it took a long time before I really understood how it applied to myself and to the industry. Don’t cling to ideas, methods, resources, or anything else you think might give a competitive advantage over the other guy. I learned that sharing my experience and knowledge with peers—I call this ‘coopetition’, a hybrid of cooperation and competition—only makes the whole industry better, and giving ideas to potential clients as gifts of insight into their situation only makes them want to work with me more. Ideas are a dime a dozen—it’s execution that sets me apart as a designer.

Project management is as important as design skill.
For years, we thought we could oversee production management in our studio ourselves. But even with years of production management experience prior to launching my firm, it just wasn’t realistic, and asking the designers to manage their own production led to chaos and disappointed clients. Never again will I underestimate the need for a carefully crafted production system, managed by experts equipped with the proper tools.

Full-service is foolish.
After chasing any work we could get and using rhetoric like “full-service design studio” to describe our offering, we realized the benefits of specialization. This doesn’t mean because we specialize in branding and corporate identity for professional services companies that we won’t take on a packaging project if the opportunity is interesting, but it makes marketing ourselves easier and allows us to avoid competing against a multitude of other firms where price becomes a driving factor.

Consensus is king.
After years of wasting time redoing work the client “didn’t get,” it became clear that consensus is crucial—especially with multiple stakeholders, each with its own opinions and agendas. By showing moodboards, styleboards, and sketches early and often, and having the primary contact sign-off to establish agreement at every stage, we save everyone time and money and also learn what each party really means by the language being used. Also, by including them early in the idea process, clients feel as though they contributed to it, thus owning the idea and supporting it later during production and launch.

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.
Who you’ll partner with, how you’ll grow, who your clients will be—the decisions required to run a successful firm are innumerable, and everything is constantly changing. As romantic as owning my own business may have seemed, I soon realized that the buck really did stop with me, regardless of how uncomfortable or tedious the task—from firing someone, to managing the books, to even buying toilet paper for the office.

Shut up, listen, and get on with it.
When I was a young designer I developed a bad habit of filling in silence with rambling diatribes about stuff I thought was important, interesting, or clever about my design solution. But like how a good joke shouldn’t need an explanation, a good design presentation should be succinct and the work should mostly speak for itself. While they may work for Don Draper, theatrics typically don’t work. Most of our clients respond better if we just ask smart questions and then shut up and let them do the talking. Being prepared to explain in detail is good, but succinct presentations not only demonstrate confidence, they allow time for discussion—where you’ll get another chance to listen.

Who you work for can be more important than the work you do.
Starting out, we felt we had little choice but to take any opportunity that came along until we built up our credibility and portfolio. In hindsight, I wish we were as picky about clients as they were about us. “Remember, you are defined by your clients,” said advertising legend Dick Lord. That warning never rang more true than after taking on clients who not only were not enjoyable to work with, but who also proved to be shady businesses or producers of products we didn’t believe in. We now use a carefully considered set of criteria that we review every year to help guide us in taking on clients.

“Follow your passion” is terrible career advice.
Like many, I was encouraged to “follow my passion” and hence left a terrific job to start my own design firm, only to realize years later how much work was required to survive, let alone succeed as a business owner. If you’re as lucky as I was, you may eventually find your passion in the work itself, but it’s called “work” for a reason and you shouldn’t feel entitled to enjoy it all.

Profit can be defined many ways.
I’m not getting rich quickly and I don’t think I’d recommend my career path for anyone motivated by money. We are experts and deserve to be paid for our services, but money is only one method of payment. Be cautious of offers of ownership or deferred profit sharing (they’ve never worked out for us), but remain open-minded to creative payment alternatives that could be beneficial. We’ve agreed to a trade of services, products, discounts, in-store credit (great with restaurant clients), and even use of a client’s vacation home as payment for our services.

Word of mouth is a terrible marketing strategy.
Many designers I know have viewed ‘marketing’ as a dirty word, instead relying on referrals to bring in new clients. And many more have aimed outbound communications efforts at their own industry instead of the communities in which their clients reside. I don’t even want to tell you how those firms have suffered during the last few years of economic turmoil. Brand building, marketing, and communications are crucial to running any sustainable business.

I started in this business a bit late, and the end of my career is already in sight, and frankly, I wasted a lot of time, energy, and money doing things the hard way. The above are just a handful of the lessons I learned through trial and error. I’m sure there are many other lessons worth discussing; if I’ve left out any major points, please let me know in the comments below.

Mark Busse is a founding partner and managing director of the Vancouver-based strategy and brand design firm Industrial Brand, a past president of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada [B.C. Chapter], and a design writer and educator. You can follow him on Twitter at @MarkBusse