Recently, we took part in Pecha Kucha Boston. Pecha Kucha is a creative lecture format/event that gives a handful of speakers 20 slides and just over 6 minutes to give their pitch. When it was our turn to take the floor, we unveiled not only a bit about or “number one hit single” project Anyone Can Swiss, but the concept of how designers can use “Our Design” to become the new Rock Stars.

Our Design – Working Theory

Our design simply means, all of us: designers, architects, painters, electricians, programmers, taxi drivers etc… Design is no longer limited to single fields of study. It can’t be. If designers are to continue to be meaningful and valuable to the world, they must multi-discipline themselves. It is already difficult enough to convince your clients why design cost money and takes as much time as it does.That’s why, with the Our Design method of working, return on investment is 100% a priority.

The key is to understand and communicate to your client, that design is more than just the planning, graphics, and final tangible object. It is the shaping and influence that you as a designer have over the entire project. From planning and production, to post quantitative and qualitative analysis. You know, the numbers that show your client what you did, actual worked! Otherwise, your just ‘pissing in the wind’ as the colloquialism states.

By first logically analyzing all the connections that come in contact with a project, a designer can find new or ‘un-orthodox’ resources for greatness that may have been overlooked in the past, due to a narrow field of vision and study.

By implementing the ‘Our Design’ method of working, and by learning and applying as much knowledge and skill, to all of the projects you work on, the more value you can bring to the table. The days of the ‘lone-gunman’ designer are over. One mind could make a project work, but many minds, working collectively, can make more than a splash. They can make every project a “Number One Hit Single”.

The Beatles were more than musicians. They were a machine. Turning out Hit Single after Hit Single. It was not the vision of one person, but a collective vision (even in the years after the White Album).

Designers are the new Rock Stars

Do I hire a designer that just does front end? Or do I hire a designer that does front end, back end, and understands social media?

Our design is not just a design process, it is a fundamental shift in the way things have been done in the 20th century. The web and hardware technology have not only opened up new avenues for designers, but have dramatically increased the rate and efficiency that people learn and absorb information. It has also, very quickly, changed the way and rate in which humans communicate.

The days of copy cameras, paste-ups, and type foundries (of physical type as objects), are extinct. We all know, however, that technology does not make you a better or worse designer. It can however make you a more efficient, well rounded designer, and thus, possibly, more valuable to a client.

Designers now have the tools to do a great job, fast. One could say that the availability of the tools to the world (Adobe Products, Typefaces, Etc…), has caused a transparency effect in the world of designer. Now, anyone can access the tools for free (legally or not. That’s an ethics question that is unstoppable). Of course, you have to know how to apply design thinking to the tools to make them work. But the point here is, there is less Magical Mystery to the end user.

Part of the magical secrets of the designer have been revealed, and so, some may say designers must work harder. Well, maybe, it depends on the designer. But one factor is true: Designers must work Smarter, Faster, and More Efficient to deliver a killer product every single time. The way to do this, is to be aware of trends, technology, and the way the world operates. We learn a lot just by watching someone on YouTube or Google something that we want to know. Its safe to say that someone out there has already covered the topic in question. Its free, so go get it!

Our culture is now running on a fast, and ‘in your face’ foundation. Text messaging has replaced phone calls and blogs have killed print news. Designers must constantly be making new connections that can keep their clients running 200% above the rest. “Hit Single” projects can be your fifteen minuets of fame, over and over again, each time bringing in not only notoriety, but new contracts and revenue.

Note: This is in response to “Letter from AIGA’s incoming president” from AIGA National
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/letter-from-aigas-incoming-president

Firstly, Don’t get me wrong. I have had some great times working and planning events with the AIGA. The Boston crowd is a great one. I was a student member for two years, and then I lapsed my membership when the dues went up. Typical story.

After reading the letter from newly elected AIGA President Debbie Millman, I was both relieved, and well, let-down. The buzz words were there that enticed me to read on (facebook, connection, transparency etc..). But when I got to the end of the letter, I noticed a few things that jarred me. Here are my comments on each section of the new AIGA initiative:

The Connectivity Initiative

This initiative boasts that “a revolution” is happening! Quick! Gather your vintage, socially active posters, and unite!! – Well, when I think of the typical AIGA fashion sometimes that is my first thought. But really, if you are a working designer right now, this is not news to you. You probably found this post by checking your Facebook or Twitter. There is a new communication structure in the works that is to be “progressive, authentic and meaningful”. I am hoping at least that what ever it is, can be proven to be effective for jobs, and useful before people buy in. There is no more “trust me” source any more in this Twitter environment we live in.

The Inclusivity Initiative

You can imagine our understanding of Debbie’s point about multi-disciplined designers feeling out of sorts with the AIGA. For a while there, we here at Dirk+Weiss felt that way. But however, only recently, have our view points changed about this topic. I feel, at least in the Boston chapter, that the need to embrace all viewpoints of design has come from a dwindling membership and the need to be unique in a print-less environment. It is great to see that AIGA National has started its 21st century emergence (even if it is nine years later), but I get the feeling that its still, just too slow of a process, and there is a lot of catching up to do (and fast).

Also, I have had a long standing gripe with AIGA’s perspective of students or recent graduates. Students are commonly overlooked by AIGA as real designers. But in reality, students are the future of this profession. They will be in the next wave of industry trends. Even in Deb’s letter, there is a feeling of catering to the thirty and over crowd. Just because someone has recently graduated, or is about to, does not make them a less valuable member of the design community.

Let’s see some student board members!

In the 20th century method, junior designers became senior designers after having much “experience”. Well, experience never hurt anyone in any field, but the playing field has changed remember. In the 21st century method, that same junior designer has probably been laid off, and is now creating a web based company, and some sort of viral mechanism to promote their venture. Why? How?! It’s simple. There are tools out on the web that allow almost anyone to do this and enable it to be seen by the world.

AIGA needs to become one of those tools. A viral, job-getting mechanism. This means they need to pull the trigger on more situations. I have noticed in my dealings with AIGA, that pulling the trigger is rare sometimes.

Oh yeah, “Break down barriers by 2014″? again, too slow of a process. In today’s time management arena, six months is long term, and technology is king. Predicting and strategizing a whole nicely packaged plan for that long away is overly ambitious, I think, for AIGA, or any company/organization. The real solution here is to get the AIGA vehicle up to the speed of not only its members, but to non-designer folks, you know, your clients. Then, when at that speed, determine how far ahead to look and plan.

Advocate the AIGA Mandate

A new mandate is a great launching pad for new things. But, I had no idea there was an AIGA mandate before I read Deb’s letter.Hmm…

“As a result, we have adopted a bold new course for meeting our mission “to advance designing as a professional craft, strategic tool and vital cultural force.”

The official new mandate can be found here.

Still, I hear nothing about how AIGA would like to help get you jobs. Designers understand their ‘craft’ and ’strategy’. In this economy, AIGA needs to be more than an “Inspirational Resource”, and actually help promote designers to non-designers.

How about this for a new AIGA mission: “The goal of AIGA is to promote the value and effectiveness of designers to the world”.

We here at Dirk+Weiss are active participants with AIGA Boston (although not members). The trend it seems is now from the ground up, rather than the top down. I feel that chapters are becoming much more independent, and almost competitive, with each other. A great, and healthy point. We feel that progression is happening, and love seeing it happen. Even if it means pushing all the right (or wrong) buttons.

Overall, all comments aside, we would like to say good luck in your new endevaur, we’re rooting for you AIGA.

Join Dirk+Weiss and AIGA Boston at Pecha Kucha Night. July 22, 1009 @ 6:30pm. The goal of these events is to talk about ‘our’ design work, in a setting that is comfortable and not pretentious. Come support all the speakers and Dirk+Weiss at this open forum type event. Each speaker is given 6min and 40seconds to talk about what they do as a creative professional.

Our topic will include designing for now and the power of interconnecting design concepts with smart technology. For more information: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/cities/boston

What is Pecha Kutcha?
“Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown, without having to rent a gallery or chat up a magazine editor. This is a† demand that seems to be global – as Pecha Kucha Night, without any pushing, has spread virally to over 100 cities across the world. Find a location and join the conversation.”

The “Now” way? Don’t you mean the “New” way? Actually…no. In a Facebook and Twitter environment, the New way is already old.

No matter how you spin it, a small business, is a small business. It’s tough enough out there, and the days of the top-down approach are over. So what do small business have at their advantage? The ability and directly connect with clients and customers, without the need for bureaucratic hurdles and expensive salaries.

New Way? Now Way? Old Way? Lets first clarify a few points, crucial to the success of not only this article, but the future of the small business.

The Old Way: A small business becomes dependent on and trapped by a limited marketing strategy. Yes, in the days before the great internet, there was only News Papers, TV, Radio and the occasional billboard. It was a constant uphill battle to get your service in-front of your audience. All theses methods, plagued with an instant expiration date, and a lack of realtime, qualitative results.

The Now Way: Forfeit expired media for targeted web and mobile advertising with quantifiable numbers, to maximize your Return On Investment. We can try to predict the next trend, but we can only be sure of the now moment. You must be willing to come to terms with the following: print media is dead, radio is useless in a visually stimulated society, and TV is way too expensive and noisy for the little guy.

The now way for marketing your small business lies in creating targeted web campaigns that can directly reach the most potential customers. People have given up newspapers for mobile devices and websites, and TV for streaming video.

We are living and working in a “now and free” society. We are also living and working in a recently escalated, highly interconnected, world.

The old way suggests that Business owners and established brands are up above, pulling the strings of its consumers. The “Now” way suggests that consumers drive the way established brands move and evolve. Hence, from the ground up instead of top down. The small business has much more of an advantage with the “Now” metohd, as the distance between parties is greatley reduced, and overall costs considerably less, if not downright free.

Above: 31 results since I started searching? I did my search only 10 seconds previous. So at 7:30am EST, that’s about 10 tweets per second I have access to. Amazing.

The recent events in Iran have be a testament to the importance of social networks in the lives of every day people. Today, even The New York Times, “America’s Newspaper”, has reported on the overwhelming trump of sites like Facebook and twitter over traditional media outlets for Iranian Election News.

Why? Well, we know the printed media is yesterdays news, and TV media is faster, but not as fast or efficient as the internet. Social Networks have proven king.

As the Iranian government is desperately trying to block various websites that election protesters are participating in, its proven to be too big of a beast to tackle. The people have even threatened to overload the servers of government websites by bombarding them with web traffic.

What is the method here for beating the censorship? Twitter, Facebook, and other pop-up websites, have there own code written that allows a web programmer to build a website, or mobile application, that can access the said social networks content. These Application Programming Interfaces are free to access, and can be installed on any server. Thus the issue for Iranian Government blocking one site after another.

It is a true viral mechanism, and the more you tell them ‘no’ the more it inspires them to move forward faster, smarter, and more efficiently.

If you do frequently watch cable news, you have probably seen the ever increasing competition squabbles between networks about amount of coverage on a certain topic. One network blames another for lack of coverage to adhere to an agenda. Its no surprise really, with the use of social networks and the impact they have. On social media, you don’t deny your agenda or bias, you just create a Twitter tag or handle to organize it, thus creating complete transparency. Less money spent, more eyeballs for content.

It is a “Move up, or Shut Up” for traditional news outlets, and the Iranian Election is defintaly a big win for social media, and one for the record books.

If you have not already seen our smash hit site AnyoneCanSwiss, please do check it out. In the first 48 hours, 11 thousand unique-visitor, poster submissions, we’re collected and shared on Flickr. And now, AnyoneCanSwiss, is going mobile.

Here at Dirk+Weiss, we have created a new iPhone app that takes the concept of AnyoneCanSwiss, and makes it mobile. In the next few weeks, you will be able to download your own Swissmaker 2.0 App to your iPhone from the App Store on iTunes. And did we mention, its totally free!

The app will not only make instant Helvetica posters, but will allow you to save the posters to you photo library on your phone. From there, the possibilities are endless! Email a poster to friends, or set one as your phone wallpaper. If any other app on your phone can access your photo library, it can also access your posters.

Also included with the launch of the Swissmaker 2.0 iPhone App, is an advertising model that can connect interested brands to a niche viral market. This process of co-branded advertising is a no-risk model in you only pay for the views you receive. If you our your company is interested in co-branding with AnyoneCanSwiss, send us a message.

Join the AnyoneCanSwiss Facebook Group for early tidbits!

In this video, Jason is speaking about how people use the web now, and mentions some stats from an “internet usage” study that was released. Always great to see how Jasons knowledge aligns with our practice and usage of marketing across social networks.

Very interesting: “Is social media being used more for communication or entertainment or both?”

Shane Fitzgerald is a senior studying sociology and economics at University College in Dublin Ireleand. Shane carefully crafted a quote of a recently dead musician on the musicians Wikipedia page. The quote was indeed fictitious, and was printed in prominent newspapers in England, India, USA and down under in Australia. A few weeks after his posting, he notified the newspapers that the quote was a fictitious fabrication, and part of his studies.

So what have we learned? People will sacrifice exact information for instant news, if not viral news. This is much the reason why newspapers are in the state they are currently in.

Everyone uses Wikipedia, including newspaper journalists.

And we still are, but different.

After some great brainstorming and critically mapping of our original business model, it became instantly clear that what we were doing for our clients was more than just design and programming, and was more in the Marketing arena. We were always trying to find what field exactly uses graphic design and technology combined. Our solution was to re-structure our business model and brand as a fully capable, creative marketing agency.

If you follow our blog, you know that we know, transparency is king. Just like our advice we give to our clients, we applied to Dirk+Weiss. The cases are real, the videos are real, results are quantifiable and we can help make you money. Enjoy.