In this post, I’ve attempted to share the tips and advice I was looking for in the final year of my degree. There’s a lot more I could add to this; I don’t think I could put comprehensive advice into one post. It’s relevant to students doing their degree now, to new graduates, and to graphic designers early in their career.

When I graduated in July, I found that the advice on the web for job-seekers in graphic design didn’t come close to fulfilling what I was looking for. That’s because graphic design, as a discipline, is changing a lot. I don’t believe it’s just about web and print design anymore. Technology is changing things fast, and it looks like it’s only going to accelerate. In addition to graphic design being a changing discipline, the infrastructure of jobs and employment is changing. So I found it particularly difficult to find some really useful and relevant advice meant especially for new graphic designers.

While you are doing your degree, it’s helpful to see it for what it is: a means to an end. The end is getting a job (this includes further academic research, which also leads, I hope, to some kind of employment, in a university or elsewhere). Getting a job is just the beginning. It’s easy to lose track of this when you’re working for your degree; three or four years go by extremely fast, and before you know it, you’re plunged unceremoniously into the cold water of the real world.

The real world is tough, and sometimes cold, perhaps especially tough for graphic design graduates because the market is saturated, competitive, and hard. There are more qualified graphic designers than there are vacant jobs. There are things you can do in preparation to make the transition less painful.

Here are some things I wish I’d known:

1. Despite what everyone says, your attitude is the most important thing (more important than your portfolio)
OK, a good portfolio is important. Make sure you pick your best pieces, and display your best pieces professionally. However…

… cultivating a good attitude is more important than a good portfolio. Mentally prepare yourself for hardship. In job interviews, expect rejection, and be humble and persistent. If you’re humble and persistent, you can work through most rejection and small failures; with hubris and pride, you will find the process dispiriting and get discouraged faster. Only the lucky few get jobs soon after graduation, and it doesn’t have much to do with talent. A good portfolio helps get a job, but having a great attitude will see you through rejection, and help you through other stages in your career as well.

While you’re still studying for your degree, try not to care too much about your grades. Use the time to explore your interests within graphic design to the end of the web and beyond. Aim to learn.

2. Pay attention to the industry outside your graphic design department
I found that my university department had a very strong and specific graphic design philosophy. This is one of the things that makes Reading a great place to study graphic design. But I think this has pros and cons.

It’s important not to forget the big picture: the creative industry as a whole. Think really carefully about what you’re interested in most. If you’re more interested in images, photography, and illustration than typographic book design, then find a way to learn about this interest outside of the studio. Learn what you can on your course, but remember that your university department is preparing you to join a large, multi-faceted, changing industry.

Finally, realise that feedback is largely opinion: someone marking your work is one individual, someone else may respond differently.

3. Be proactive in learning during and after your degree
You are doing a degree to learn. When you are doing a project, if something in particular interests you, for example, coding the HTML of a website, explore this interest further. Read as much as you can about coding a website in CSS and HTML. Take your interest as far as you can. Find out what the recent developments in website design are and follow them closely; aim to be an expert.

4. Treat project briefs like exams
Read the project brief ten times. Make sure you really understand what your examiners want from you. Scribble all over them and underline words and phrases. If it’s a vague brief, as briefs in your final year will be, try to narrow your ideas down to about three or four. Save every good idea you generate to put into your work-file.

As you work through project briefs, ask for feedback from as many people as possible. Extensively research all of the explicit and implicit questions in each practical project, and learn as much as you can from each one.

5. Try not to get too focused on what your classmates are doing
It’s important to answer a brief in your own voice. At the same time, get feedback from as many people as you can. Try to identify your specific skills and strengths and work to them.

If your classmates get jobs faster than you, don’t let that get you down; just keep trying.

6. Don’t pigeonhole your interests too quickly
Think about what you enjoy doing most, but don’t try to limit yourself. For example, don’t apply exclusively for editorial/magazine design jobs. It might not be until after you graduate that you work out what you’re really interested in doing.

Aim to try everything and find out what you like the most.

7. Relax and be yourself in job interviews
I’ve found that employers have sharper sight than you do when it comes to knowing what you want. So in an interview, relax and be yourself as much as possible. Try to work out if you would genuinely like to work for them. Interview your employer as much as you are interviewing them.

8. Academia and graphic design
Graphic design is finally gaining credence in the academic world. There are some great MA degrees at Reading in history and theory of graphic design, and some other MAs that meld the academic with the practical (for example, a MA in Typeface Design also requires a long dissertation). The RCA has an interesting research unit called Design Interactions.

That said, a lot of interesting research is done outside universities. But I think that typeface design, for example, requires supervision and support from experts.

9. Inform yourself with smart magazines, books, and of course, blogs
A basic staple for design culture is:

Eye Magazine, the International Review of Graphic Design. Founded by Rick Poynor, this magazine is the strongest argument for print available. The sentences are as well-crafted as the pages. The articles are generally smart, well-written, and thought-provoking commentary on graphic-design related issues.

Design Observer, similar to Eye Magazine, but without the delicious smell of ink and the smooth feel of coated paper.

Typography Papers The publication is beautiful, inside and out. I’d recommend this to any smart, thinking, curious person. “This occasional, book-length work is edited and produced at the Department of Typography, University of Reading, and is now published by Hyphen Press. It publishes extended articles on its subject, exploring topics to the length to which they want to go. Its scope is broad and international, its treatment – serious and lively.”

In addition, I’d recommend TechCrunch for technology news, ReadWriteWeb for tech and web trends and occasional very interesting articles, and Publishing 2, a very smart blog written on the theme of technology’s impact on media.

Wow, it has been an interesting half-year! Six months ago I decided to move to Brighton, which has turned out to be the best impulsive decision I have ever made. I moved here jobless, mainly friendless, and totally terrified, but I think things have worked out pretty well.

On Monday, I’m joining Future Platforms, which I mentioned a few posts ago, so tomorrow is my final day at Cactus Language. Cactus, incidentally, is a wonderful place to work, and I will miss it and my colleagues a lot — check out their blog — their passion for what they do oozes off the page. Moving into mobile will be an interesting journey, and one I’m really looking forward to. Mobile, as I’ve said before, has a very strong appeal to me for a lot of reasons, and I’ll no doubt be writing on more mobile-related theme over the next few weeks and months. I like it because I feel it’s nascent, it’s gathering momentum, and there’s a lot of room for development and change, a lot of room to experiment and apply theory.

When I visited Brighton for the first time in early September, I loved it. I was briefly conflicted, as I had already set my heart on moving to London; but this was quickly displaced by the jealous feelings I started to feel towards people already living in Brighton. I’m not sure what it was initially: the sea air, the positive ‘vibe’, the endless cafes, Banksy, visiting the Laines for the first time (full of the most exotic street signage I’ve seen, must blog it), the paradox of hippies and tech-geeks living side by side, vegetarians with iPhones. You can walk down St James’s Street in pyjamas and nobody would blink an eye. That’s not to say people are badly dressed: in general, people are as style-conscious as they are in London, but without the bitter snobbery. There’s an aura of ‘anything goes’, you can wear what you want. People are cool, and people don’t judge.

So, that was it. I moved to Brighton, about a week after I had visited for the first time.

Brighton is more bohemian, exciting, and liberal than Oxford; and it has more individuality, spark, and character than Reading. Admittedly, that’s not difficult in both cases, but this place is like nowhere else in the UK. It’s a place people feel lucky, it’s a place where people willingly get stuck. I spent my first night in Brighton sitting on the beach with strangers around a campfire. They were singing, spinning fire, dancing, drinking. Someone was playing a drum. Everyone I spoke to seems to have visited Brighton for a day… 17 years ago, and everyone seemed to be from Russia, or Finland, or Italy, or somewhere else.

Another thing that attracted me to Brighton was the technology community. I can’t really stress how great it is to be surrounded by people who are working in the same field as you, or closely related, and to be around people who are genuinely, seethingly passionate about what they do. There’s a real thriving community here that I love. I felt like a geek at university, but I am always outgeeked in Brighton. Another plus is that here, you are never more than 10 minutes away from a free Wi-Fi connection (thanks to looseconnection.com, and forward-thinking cafes and pubs). The beach itself was also a reason to move: living by the sea (I am 2 minutes away from it) is wonderful, and something I’ve never experienced before.

I’m beginning to sound like Julie Burchill. I wish, she communicates the Brighton thing much better than I do…

I’ve been following Twitter and watching the SXSW conversations unfold in the last few hours. Many have been focused on Sarah Lacy’s interview with Mark Zuckerberg, which are mainly negative. There’s a really interesting write up on the interview at BuzzMachine.

From Jeff Jarvis’s write up of the interview, this is the most interesting bit to me:

He [Mark Zuckerberg] says that Facebook is working on a universal need: connecting people who want to communicate. He says that someday everyone on the world will be using these tools. “It may not be Facebook.”

Interesting. Facebook will need to evolve, as I think that branding and advertising will only obfuscate a communication tool. I think that if Facebook really wants to “connect people who want to communicate”, it needs to be as invisible as possible, and it needs to be open as possible. I want to easily sync my contacts with my address book, my phone, etc. I want to take data out.

Transparency in social networking: a good analogy would be plain typography, or the principles set out in Beatrice Warde’s ‘The Crystal Goblet‘: basically, that printing should be invisible, so that words and ideas can be read and understood as clearly as possible. A real communication tool must give privacy, yes, but also transparency and flexibility.

I have just finished reading the story of boo.com, ‘Boo Hoo: $135 million, 18 months… a dot.com story from concept to catastrophe’, by Ernst Malmsten et al.

From any perspective, it’s quite a read, and I would recommend it to anyone based on its thrill factor (“reading [this] has the fascination of watching a high-speed car crash in slow motion”) and lucid, readable prose style.

Boo.com seemed to be a web 2.0 site before the world was ready for it. Tristan Louis argues this in a blog post (about two screens down the page, titled ‘Was boo.com the first web 2.0 company?’). If Boo.com had launched the same way in 2008 as it had in 2000, it would have stood a better chance — widespread broadband alone would have helped significantly with the website’s problems — but it’s hard to make excuses for the excessive spending of investors’ money. Frugality is quite topical right now: reading the story of boo.com side by side with the recent discussions about dollar-stretching in startups is quite a contrast.

It’s easy to see how boo lured interest from media and investors: the story is both romantic and convincing. Founders Kajsa Leander and Ernst Malmsten were friends from childhood, millionaires from their previous internet book e-tailing success bokus.com; and one founder was a former fashion model, the other, a poetry critic. Patrik Hedelin was the third founder, whose role was played largely out of the media spotlight.

One thing that really interests me is the level of thought that was given to the site philosophy and emphasis on “more than a brand — boo is a lifestyle”. The branding was carefully applied across the site, with visitors depositing items into their “boobag”, mixing with other shoppers at the “boo party” (encompassing a forum and chatroom), and reading their fashion and style magazine, Boom. The design of the site itself was ahead of its time: it used the rounded corners which feature as part of the standard branding of web 2.0, a rounded logo typeface, and bright colours.

Miss Boo, the character introducing visitors to the site, was anything but a one-dimensional cartoon: her personality, looks, history, and ‘voice’ were given careful consideration and thought. Unbelievable to me, they booked Eugene Soulemain, the world’s top hairstylist whose clients include Hollywood A-list actresses, Prada, and Louis Vuitton, to advise them on Miss Boo’s hair.

The depth of thought they gave Miss Boo is amazing to me, and perhaps symptomatic of the rather too-visionary nature of its founders (come on: booking the world’s top hairstylist for consultation on a website character? Is it a joke?). Focus on their business model, and being accessible to all users, would have been a better idea. Immediately after the site’s launch, there was a bug preventing Mac users from purchasing items. Unfortunately for boo, a lot of journalists used Macs, experienced this bug, and negative reviews flooded in.

It is intoxicating to learn how seriously boo took its brand, and how much money they managed to raise, and subsequently burn through, to build it. I felt a bit drained by the end of this book, and feel that as a model, the failure of boo at least leaves behind a lot of lessons.

View an archived copy of boo.com here

Another interesting read about boo

Boo on Wikipedia