Relevant links:
The Sparrow on Facebook
BrewDog 

Number 10
Supersonic – Visuals for Music

The range of visual styles, experimentation and playfulness in this book is fantastic. It’s full of work by top design agencies and individuals. It’s a great visual reference book and for anyone interested in design inspired by music this is probably one of the best.

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Number 9
Josef Muller Brockmann

One of the twentieth century’s most important graphic designers, the Swiss-born Muller Brockmann is the father of functional, objective design and an influential figure for generations of designers around the world. Buy this book.

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Number 8
Graphic Design as a Second Language

I bought this book immediately after I went to a lecture by Bob Gill. The lecture was a total inspiration for me as a student, Bob was witty, enthusiastic and gave a great insight into both his thinking and processes. He is legendary graphic designer who setup Fletcher, Forbes and Gill (the forerunner of Pentagram). Not sure why the book is so highly priced on amazon but if you find it cheaper get it bought!

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Number 7
Otl Aicher

Otl Aicher was an inspirational designer and philosopher of visual communication. He aimed to integrate design and family life at a place he named “autonomous republic of Rotis”. This is a book that’s both a great visual reference and brilliantly written, highly recommended.

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Number 6
Japanese Optical Art

This a very playful collection of Japanese Optical Art and I would highly recommend getting hold of a copy of this. It’s another old publication but one that in my opinion doesn’t look dated. The visuals have a purity to them which stands the test of time. Each page explores new possibilities and I’ve found it a great resource time and time again.

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Number 5
The Art of Looking Sideways

Most people I know already have this one, it’s a classic. Alan Fletcher (“the most highly regarded graphic designer of his generation, and probably one of the most prolific”) was a graphic design genius and this book is full of great ideas, references, sources of inspiration and ways of looking at things differently. I also think his handwriting is beautiful.

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Number 4
Symbol

For me, this is the modern day version of Trade Marks and Symbols (my number 1) – this is more comprehensive in terms of content. The symbols are divided into Abstract and Representational forms and the index is organised by designer and by sector. When using this book I’ve found it really easy to navigate to specific types of logos quickly.

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Number 3
American Trademark Designs

In a similar way to the Yasaburo book mentioned further up the ranking, this is fantastic visual reference book, especially useful when designing brands and identities. This is organised into different sectors, and although the content is old, the examples are beautiful and completely relevant.

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Number 2

Thinking With Type

Ellen Lupton really covers just about everything with this one, this is the definitive book on how to think and use type effectively. I find myself going back to this book on a weekly basis, it’s basically the bible on type for me. Buy it and enjoy it.

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Number 1

Trade Marks & Symbols – Volume 1: Alphabetical Designs

This is my all time favourite from a visual reference point of view. Particularly when designing logos/identities this book provides a wealth of exploration into letterforms and combinations of shapes/forms.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this selection. If anyone has any recommendations, drop me a line or post a comment!

I must admit for being an absolute sucker when a pitching opportunity comes along – I can’t help but think of the possibilites for new ideas, new clients, new business revenue etc. As a fairly new business looking to grow I’m constantly on the look out for ways in which to pursue new and interesting design projects. I tend to forget the other side of pitches – the risk of not getting the business is extremely high, the time spent is usually free of charge, and a considerable amount of the time the client already has an existing agency/designer in mind (more on this later).

Since setting up this year EVERYDAY SOMETHING have been involved in 3 pitches which were all unsuccessful. The pitches covered branding, a huge website redesign and also the development of an existing brand. The pitches would’ve equated to over twelve thousand pounds worth of business. Personally, I have a terrible record at pitching (I have been involved in 2 pitch wins since the beginning of my career as a designer). With this in mind, following the most recent pitch loss I decided to write this post and re-evaluate both my stance on pitching and my general plans going forward. As a general rule (and from my own personal experience) designers hate pitching, so below I’ve tried to look at the positives:

Positive things to take from pitching
—The process of putting pitches together actually seems to help with the generation of strong ideas. Having to rationalise and explain an idea or concept and sell it in to a potential client pushes you to present the strongest idea and make it as clear as possible for someone to understand. Pitching forces you to communicate as succinctly as possible, so I see this as a positive.

—Pitching exposes you to potentially huge possibilites – this is the temptation factor. If I had been successful in all the pitches I’ve been involved with, would I be writing this post? I think not. Winning them brings new business, new clients, exposure and revenue for your business.

Changing attitudes
As I said above, I’ve always been a sucker for pitching. At the same time I’ve always respected people who don’t pitch or give ideas away for free e.g. edenspiekermann_ Their attitude is one that I wish we all had, perhaps we could form a non-pitching alliance? It’s also worth checking out No Spec a site dedicated to educating the public about speculative work. It’s all kind of relevant, especially with the amount of protesting currently going on in other sectors, maybe as designers need to actually start standing up for ourselves and our ideas? If more of us did have this attitude we would more than likely to add value to ourselves, our businesses and ideas. Should we just accept it as part of the industry? I’d like to know what others think. My opinion and attitude has been changing with each experience I have had, in particular, the last pitch I was involved in really made me take a step back and evaluate…

A recent experience
I was made aware that a local arts organisation had posted a tender online for the opportunity to develop their existing brand. I took a look at the brief and budget, and decided that it was worth spending half a day (as that was all I had in down time from other client projects) putting the tender document together and coming up with some relevant ideas for the cover. As it was an open tender, I knew there were probably going to be a large number of submissions from local designers and agencies but I didn’t let that deter me (did my ego get the better of me?). I confidently put together a couple of concepts that I felt were relevant to the brief. I submitted my tender a week early. I waited to hear if I had made the short list. I didn’t. The response was, ‘we liked the sense of fun in your work’ and, ‘we received over 50 applications and the standard was extremely high…but have decided not to shortlist your proposal on this occasion’. Same old story.

A friend who’s a designer also pitched for the work and failed to get through to the shortlist. We decided on a ‘show and tell’ to each other of our presentations and ideas. Between us we felt we had some strong ideas that were both relevant, original and visually interesting. But that didn’t matter as they’d chosen not to shortlist either of us – our ideas weren’t what they were looking for.

Then we started to think of the numbers. If 50 people spent on average half a day on the pitch (I’d say this is a low estimate)  - 4 hours x 50+ applicants – that’s over 200 hours of design time allocated to this tender, FOR FREE. Then we looked at the amount of ideas generated. If every applicant submitted 2 ideas then that’s over 100 free ideas submitted to the client. These numbers start to show how ridiculous the pitching process can be (especially in an open pitch situation). All this time, energy and effort done for free – in a time of economic struggle! It seems incredibly lazy of clients – and rather inept of us as designers that we let this happen.

Then there’s the other side of the pitching coin. This is the main reason for my change of attitude…

Accepted practice
It’s widely accepted that in many pitch situations, the client already has a designer/agency in mind before they’ve even seen any ideas. Whether a client has to tender work out in order to get funding or not – the practice of wasting every other design agency’s time and putting them in a situation they never had any chance of being successful in is ridiculous and as far as I can see, illegal (although I have no idea how you could go about proving that a client had actually done this).

It’s for this reason (you couldn’t prove the bad practice on the clients’ part) that I have every intension of avoiding free pitches altogether and aim to spend time on more pro-active, confidence building, mind expanding activities (see below).

Alternative plans for the future
—Self initiated and art based work – I currently undertake self initiated projects (see here and here for a couple of illustration based pieces) and art based projects (see here and here) as it’s usually to satisfy a personal theme or idea that current client related projects can’t do. I also find that I usually learn something from these type of projects and use elements in client based work. Therefore there’s a great deal of value to be gained from just ‘doing’.

—Guest blog posts by my peers, mentors and experts on business and design. I am no business expert, I’m a graphic designer attempting to run a design business, so I’m aiming to get some people on-board with more experience and knowledge to share.

—Case Studies showing the success of graphic design projects undertaken by EVERYDAY SOMETHING.

—Not participating in any free pitches (if you catch me pitching, tell me to stop).

—More blogging in general across design, art, business, good practices etc.

Discussion
I’d love to get feedback from anyone else with regards to what they think of the practice of pitching, alternative ways of generating business, and any general opinions on pitching. Please comment below!

Relevant links
No Spec
edenspiekermann_

This has never happened before – the client deciding to go with something they’ve designed themselves over something they’ve commissioned. Doubt sets in, and you begin to question whether you have failed as a designer. You feel you’ve answered the brief, you’ve delivered something original and relevant but something must be wrong. After watching this video you realise that you can’t think like this – this is a business and whatever agreement you have with the client needs to be adhered to. In this case, they’ve signed off costs relating to the work that has been submitted.

One thing that has come from this experience is the importance of contracts – they help you and the client and they make sure you don’t lose out when/if weird things happen.

Below: part of the unused identity.

A number of guitars were made and given to artists to illustrate. A preview exhibition will be held at Dock Street Market on the 22nd October.