What are the Experts Saying – Business Foundations Week 1: Part 2

The second part of the lecture was another interview with Gem Barton – author of the book Don’t Get a Job, Make a Job – How to Make IT as a Creative Graduate. Similar to the previous interviews, Barton was asked about her experience when starting out as a designer as well as what advice would she give to design graduates starting out in the field.

It was a very informative interview and numerous valid points were brought up. Honesty and patience are two fundamental traits all designers need to have if they their plan is to run their own studio. Starting off by being honest with yourself and understanding where you are standing at that point in time will help in planning better the way forward. She gives a list of five general steps that are worth noting, not only for sole traders, but to anyone willing to build a good career experience in design. These are:

• Work hard;
• Take time to analyse any failures;
• Be brave, take chances and believe that good things will happen;
• Take care of your emotional intelligence at all times;
• Have meaning.

They may sound generic; however, the above points can be applied and even build a plan that go around them. One can see that the above points centre around the self – they are what you can do as a person and the rest will follow unlike many ‘how-to’ articles were they tell you, send emails, and write such-and-such terminology and buy domains and things like that.  In addition to the above, Barton talks about the idea of collaboration, but again links it to what a person can gain from it. Through collaboration, one can definitely acquire new skills. In fact, according to Barton, trying to learn new skills for the other collaborators should be something anyone should strive for. Also, she points out that through collaboration, there is room for better ideas, hence better end products. The latter is something that was also mentioned in the other interviews.

Another interesting point made by Barton was that of your ‘personal brand’. Quoting Jeff Bezos the personal brand is “what people say about you when you are not in the room”. However, she elaborates on this by saying that is one “reverse-engineers” that concept, one can work on the personal “brand” hence forming a desirable reputation.

An interesting interview indeed. Concise yet informative. I need to start looking at some business models and “about” pages of some established design companies to get on working on this first week’s workshop challenge.