As an illustrator, I asked a local graphic designer, who just moved to Montreal recently, about any advice for me relating to the field and she suggested the book “How to be a graphic designer, without selling your soul” by Adrian Shaughnessy.
An excellent book, although it is geared towards graphic designers and their desire to run a studio and deal with clients. However, a few thoughts came across my mind and I thought I’d ask some of you here.
1) He mentions that communication is important and that making a pitch helps create a rapport and saleability of our work. How would a deaf designer or creative professional deal with that?
2) Should deaf creative professionals run a studio business with other hearing people, or are we better off freelancing alone in our home office? In other words, the author says that those who run a studio have a more open system of sharing resources, feedback and solving problems with pressure from clients as the only thing to deal with…while working alone has a huge benefit of doing your own thing but discipline is very difficult to maintain.
3) Should deaf creative professionals get an agent or rep for their work? Or should we go at it ourselves dealing with clientele at the risk of getting BS-ed by them? What happens if we cannot find a local rep or agent and are forced to do this ourselves?
Right now, I have one local art show next month to exhibit my illustrations and then another one next March in a popular nightclub. This way, I can market myself through the ‘underground’ and hope the use of word of mouth would be an effective viral campaign for me.
Although, I still continue to do my other freelance work and am almost done with the book cover illustration that’s been in the works for some time.
I emailed the author and got his response:
“Hi Adam
Thanks for your email. And thanks for your kind words about my book, I
really appreciate it.
Funnily enough, I once employed a deaf designer. I was asked by her
university to give her employment for a few weeks after she had graduated.
I interviewed her and found her to be a bright and engaging person. I sensed
she had plenty of inner strength. Her name was Sue.
Her work was ordinary; neither bad nor good, merely average. Nevertheless, I
was happy to take her on for a month. She lip read, and although her spoken
English was hard to understand at first, it soon became easy to grasp what
she was saying. There were no problems with her failing to understand what
was said to her.
At that time I also employed someone who had a profoundly deaf brother, and
I noticed that she was much better at dealing with Sue than the rest of us,
who were over cautious in our approach to her. As the only one of us with
experience of dealing with a deaf person, she dealt with Sue in an entirely
natural and unpatronising way.
So I think there is a lesson here: people have to learn to adjust to working
with deaf people, and I think many of us do it badly.
I wonder if it might help if you confronted this head on and said to
employers - look, I suppose you think it’s going to be difficult dealing
with me, but it’s not. I can be treated just like anyone else. I don’t need
special treatment.
This may sound simplistic - but I learned a lot by employing Sue. I learned
that people change when they have to deal with people with physical
disabilities - and they don’t need to.
My final thought is that if your work is good enough you will succeed. I’m
sure the barriers you encounter must be discouraging, but they are not
insurmountable. I also know one or two illustrators who conduct all their
business via email. I know this goes against my advice to build up good
communication with clients - but email can be an effective way of
communicating too.
I will continue to think about the issues your email raised, and if anything
else springs to mind, I’ll let you know.
I hope this helps.
Kind regards
Adrian”
Has anyone had those experiences?
November 25th, 2007 at 9:22 am
woot the responces work again!!
ADAM!! adrian got back to you thats so cool, Keith my Fiance has this book and iv flipped through a few pages and have found those few pages to be and outstanding insight! Adrian writes in a way that is open and honest, with some humour! He is right tho in his responce.
He said that if your work is good enough you wont need to try to prove yourself over your deafness, I agree, I think its imperitive that your confidence in yourself grows, because your art is very good, Iv seen it and there is a large market out there for that type of, if I may call it so, ‘Cult Art’, and its cool
my responce to your questions, from someone who is a HOH artist and photographer myself, 1: communication is important, of course it is, this doesnt just mean speaking or talking to your clients adam, I see this with Keith (My fiance is a graphic designer full time employed for a multinational agency) and you need to communicate in more ways than one, ie. Flyers and posters advertising your skills and examples of your work, business cards, a website, emailling a database of peers and businesses to make yourself known, mass text service, things as simple as sending previous people you did work for, a christmas card made and designed by you… all these things help in communicating your skills and work to people, it doesnt just mean picking up the phone.
Another thing im adament on is, approaching people and businesses first hand, face to face, walk into a place and book an appointment, make known that you want to talk to the creative director and then when you go in, shake hands, introduce yourself, and sell yourself and your work skills, this way they can see that your face to face communication is not a problem at all. Tell them straight out about your hearing difficulty and put them at ease that you experience little or no problem in meeting and relating to people.
2: Should deaf creative professionals run a studio business with other hearing people, or are we better off freelancing alone in our home office?
am… why not?? it makes no difference, you could go it alone, but speaking from experience through Keith, its not easy weather you have full hearing or none!! having helping hands and different aproaches and different points of view in your office helps a whole lot. Instead of you having one road to take on a project, other people help put other ideas in there and you could have a whole host of different things and ideas to go on one project!!
Working with a mix of people is less boring, and they do give you that kick in the arse you need when your motivation is lacking!
also, an office of graphic designe is more readily recognised as a single person on their own. Personally starting out, I would recomment you to get yourself into an office based invironment to gein experience and then if you feel you would go it alone, go for it
3: Should deaf creative professionals get an agent or rep for their work?
I have no idea what you mean by this, iv never heard of an agent or rep for graphic design. just because you have a hearing difficulty I dont see the difference between you being a graphic designer and someone with full hearing being one. If you have the skills and technology and basic ability to confront people, there is no reason for a rep of anysort.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Lette,
Thanks for the feedback. To begin, I agree Adrian’s book is wonderful and has some excellent points, coming from a British perspective of that particular industry but it does apply to international standards. However, it is geared towards graphic designers who work in-house at a studio/agency or freelancing at home. But I’m an illustrator, not a graphic designer to which I could do the latter to some degree but not as a specialty.
I’ll be honest. I was shocked and surprised to hear Adrian having hired a deaf woman into his company because this was unheard of. Of all the prominent designers and agencies, she was not mentioned. And I thought I was going about it alone.
You’re lucky that Keith works for a multi-national design company and has the experience to back you up in case of anything. You have that advantage. He’s capable of critiquing your work from a corporate perspective, perhaps.
For me, I’m more comfortable working in my home studio and it’s the only thing I can afford for now, after all, I had moved 7 months ago to a small college town, remember? For some reason, some of the creative design firms here tend to have a false sense of snobbery/elitism.
Now if I had the money, I would kill for the ultimate studio space high up in a castle or keep. And I do agree with Adrian regarding the work that should speak for itself rather than my deafness. That’s always an important thing to remember but sometimes, I have to be careful and think how am I to present myself in interviews so they won’t use my deafness as an excuse to not hire me. Even though, I always mention my hearing-impairment in the beginning and that interviews are very, very rare for me these days, especially living in Vermont.
I have had about two informational interviews just to get some ideas and direction but it’s the most I could go for now. Maybe in the future I will do that with one or two more design firms.
I just work from home and use e-mail as my means to communicate with clientele from out of state or locally. If it’s the latter, I do this face to face when I can. But I have not tried my Sorenson video phone with anyone with a web cam yet which would be a very effective tool.
Regarding websites and marketing material. I use two things: 1) My website 2) Business cards. They both are synonymous with one another with designs that relate to each other as a connecting factor. I have recently installed JPEGs of my illustrations into my iPod Touch, using it as a digital portfolio ‘on the go’.
In a way, I’m starting from scratch of sorts ever since getting out of homelessness (trust me, it’s a very degrading experience) and have about 2 clients from out of state and 2 more possible projects here locally (one t-shirt design for a deaf organization for skiiing and the other is photography).
(Oh and 1 more local client who’s a graphic designer and she wants me to do some sort of logo design for embroidery purposes..it’s a personal project)
I would like to do more work relating to Juxtapoz magazine, Creep Machine, and a few other places that cater, what you call, ‘cult art’. And discipline is not always easy so I have to do that myself. Sharing a studio is not in my budget for now and probably not possible because there are not a lot of illustrators in this state that do work similar to what I do.
This is why I go to art shows/galleries a few times a month just to see what’s out there.
As for an office-based environment to gain experience…I’ve been trying to do that for many years and have not gotten the job (tried to do entry level production work to complement and support my freelance work). I thought of internning, but the biggest problem is….I’m 35 (I don’t look the age, I’m told many times).
It seems that it takes too much energy and time for me to go after production jobs when I have other projects to deal with. Plus, I have to re-learn software or catch up with technology again. I worked with a vocational rehab counselor to help get me set up with the internships or entry level jobs, but it’s not working. And I know that, despite her professionalism, companies shy away from the agency she works for.
So, I have to keep her out of the process because she’s not entirely familiar with the design/creative industries and may need a rep/agent. A rep/agent does the ‘PR’ (public relations) and hunt clients for the illustrator/artist (sometimes designers) and they take a particular cut of the percentage. The problem is…there’s almost none of them here.
The reason I mentioned an agent/rep is because they’re trained to talk shop and sell your services and sniff out BS clients who may be a waste of your time and money. Especially if you have a client and they’re trying to ‘lowball’ you with the attempt to get you do work for cheap or without a contract. They are out there and sometimes we have to be very careful to pay attention to what they’re saying or else miss out on the details and be conned.
Also, be careful to go to guru.com. There are some BS clients on this site trying to get you to do ’spec work’ which is unethical. I’ve dealt with it twice, despite the fact, that I got paid a few times. It does’nt always work out to my advantage because of too many creative fighting over the bid for the project.
I have to make connections to do some networking as the only way to get around. I know MySpace is a good way but it is not always effective due to spam mail and viruses. It’s also unprofessional, in my eyes despite the free cost of it. FaceBook, so far, has been very stable compared to MySpace.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:36 am
I wouldnt go hear any of those free web spaces, myspace, facebook , bebo all of them are just a social networking tool for teens as far as I can see, I think your best bet would be to stick with your website and upgrade it regularly and have it in a way that desplays all your varying types of skills, as far as I know ur site has all this already, so happy days
November 26th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Agreed