Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

A warm welcome to you dear reader! If you have not already, why not subscribe to my RSS feed, or get my latest thoughts on Industrial Design in your Email Inbox for free?

Thanks for visiting and please keep in touch? ~ D.T.

Wishing all readers a HAPPY 2009!

Wow oh wow. Three full years of me being online and ranting and raving about everything industrial design! I have to say it was a bumpy ride from the start and while looking back to see how I can improve I have to say that my older posts were really poorly written. Hopefully the posts are a lot better these days?

With the constantly evolving nature of the Internet, and perfectly reflecting the growth of an individual, I thought it is about time I update this website. This update is also significant as it represents my transition into my 4th year of blogging and also some changes in my personal career goals.

Also dear reader, I have also taken your feedback, synthesized it, and used the best ones that gel well with my goals for this website update. So I like to officially announce the new look Design Sojourn Version 4.0 that contains a number of significantly new features and changes. They include:

1) Full RSS Feeds
This is has to be one of my biggest reader requests to date. The reason why I never had full RSS feeds because I kept on getting my copyrighted content stolen by SPLOGS or Spam Blogs. So I decided to turn down lots of requests my Full Feeds. However recently I better understood my reader’s requests when I got really irritated when sites I wanted to subscribe to did not have full feeds. So I concluded that my readers, whom are so inclined, would feel the same way. Therefore I had to weighed the Pros and Cons of readability vs. thief of content. As my readers come first, I have decided to give full RSS feeds another try and see how we go.

Oh, if you are reading this post by RSS, please do come and visit the site (DesignSojourn.com) and let me know how you feel about the new look?

2) Featured Story
One thing that I noticed on Design Sojourn is that my featured design articles often need some extra time on the front page before I get feedback. Sometimes on a productive blogging week my newer posts tend to bump these design articles off the front page. Not good as I do I spent quite a lot of time crafting these Design Articles. Also with a few reader emails and comments telling me how they missed this and that article, I decided to create a “Featured Article” section up top. This allows me to keep certain articles around a little longer so that I can get additional feedback or comments.

3) Favorite Stories and other reformatting
Occasionally I create Design Articles that receive heavy traffic and lots comments. These “reader favorites” are also often significant posts or articles that really define what this website is all about. Therefore under the “Featured Story” bit I have created a Favorites section for all such defining posts.

The discerning reader would have noticed that these post “chicklets” used to be in my sidebar. But with this new placement, I have the opportunity to reformat other elements, such a a new Twitter cell and creating post excerpts. Overall I think the new blog design has now a better hierarchy and a comes together in a tighter package.

3) Less Ads!
Recently Design Sojourn got featured in a local Marketing magazine. That was cool. What was not cool was the screen shot the magazine took had a butt ugly 480×60 Google picture Ad slot in the area below the post title. Arrgh, never again. Readability and Image before anything else in design. So out that ad slot went.

4) New Blog description and focus!
This blog was and is about “How to do Good Design and Create Clever Products”. Lots of tips and tricks on how a designer can do his/her job better. A year or two ago, I added “Mastering the Business of Design” to the end of the description. This reflected my move towards design entrepreneurship as well as focusing on the ’selling” aspect of design.

As my blog evolved, my passions moved in the direction of strategic design. I think I have always been a very strategic thinker, it just took a awhile to manifest as I believe I had to acquire the skills first. True to the name of this blog, mine was really a design journey.

Therefore simplify things and make the focus of this blog more meaningful I have revised this Version 4.0 blog discription to a more simple “How to master the business of strategic industrial design.” This brings a lot of clarity to this website and also really reflects what I do in real life.

On a personal branding note, this refocusing should be done anyway as more often than not sites like these are can be instrumental in your career as it has been to mine.

5) iPhone viewable
Not much to say here, but if you visit me via your iPhone’s Safari browser, my Wordpress backbone should auto detect that and reformat the site to fit your iPhone. I think it should work for any mobile device as well, but I have not confirmed that.

6) 500 Posts!
I like to end this post a little nugget. According to my Wordpress meta stats, I have written 500 posts! 500 posts, now that to me is amazing! So this would be my 501st post, and how apt, seeing this is my first post for the new year and all.

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I had planned to update a lot more stuff, including a new color, logo and perhaps even a brand new theme. However I was not able to find a theme that I was happy with nor a color that made sense to my personal brand. At the end I decided not to go for a theme change, however I still think I will take another look at a color and logo refresh. So do stay tuned to that!

I like to personally thank you for being part of my design sojourn or journey, and I hope you will continue to enjoy being part of my process as much as I will be sharing it with you! I look forward to all your feedback and still continue tolove receiving your emails. Please keep in touch?

Hat Tip to Pat Law and David Airey for their feedback during my redesign of this theme.

Bono Glasses by killkenny

That’s right everyone just wants to be a Design Superstar? Oh really? No the fact of the matter is, when all else is equal, Superstars get hired, and boring designers don’t. The main difference between the two? The Superstar has the ability to sell his/her brand of design and if you want to be a Superstar, correction, a hired designer, you should seriously consider doing the same.

A designer’s guide to self-branding

Of all the professions out there, I think there is no other one that can benefit from “self-branding” as much as a design professional. That is because it is a profession that is almost solely driven by talent. The equation is very simple, in design it’s not about how many certifications or affiliations you have, but what gets you ahead is the quality of your portfolio as well as your plain raw talent.

Before we go on, you might like to take a look at the basics of “self-branding” or what Tom Peters calls “Brand you“. Smart guy that Tom, he has been talking about it since 1997. Briefly, in a world where the consumer product market is so saturated and most products are essentially the same, the only proven way to get ahead is by branding. Not only just about branding of products but a holistic 360 degree effort including everyone else in the process including the design agencies used to create such products.

Drawing similar branding parallels from the consumer product industry, we are our now well past the new millennium and into a knowledge economy driven by talent. Competition within the talents for the top job is very high, and logically the only way ahead is by the talent branding themselves in some way. You see the crux of the matter is, every single positive influence adds up to putting you ahead and a personal brand is one big factor.

1) Do a SWOT analysis on yourself.

Remember the design methods class you fell asleep in? Well its a pity, especially since no one told you that a SWOT analysis could and should be done on yourself. Just like a company and its ability to generate revenue, I encourage designers to see themselves as a “business entity” that can generate income as well.

Therefore you need to identify your own Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities (to apply your strengths) and Threats (to your weakness) as a designer. So that when faced with the question of what are your strengths, you should never have a problem. Finally it is always good to have a short, medium and long term plan for yourself and career. It shows prospective employers what you want to do and that you have a vision for your future.

After you have listed all these points, you now have a list of keywords that can be the bases of creating your own personal brand and brand values.

2) Get a hair cut.

No seriously. I believe you are what you design. Many people get insulted when they are told they need to dress like a “designers” to be taken seriously. They figure that its a rude comment and encroaches in their personal style and space. That is further from the truth. Just like a consumer has only 3 seconds to size up a shelf of products, your prospective employer will size you up in that same amount of time.

In any case its pragmatic. Simply, that first impression is the most important. You will be surprise of the amount of control you have if you understood the stereotypes people associate with designers, and by looking like one you can use that to your advantage. Just don’t turn up for an interview in a beanie.

So carefully use your Strengths you have identified in Point 1 to style your own look. Your hair cut, sense of dressing, your watch (for guys), shoes (guys and gals) are all clues to a picture that you want to paint of yourself. It’s all part of your personal brand and something that should be part of your physical presence when you walk into a room. Remember every single positive point counts.

3) Buy your name as a dot com

I cannot begin to tell you how important this is. Not only for identity protection, but what you want is to turn up at the top of a Google search if a prospective employer or employment agency is doing research on you. As the Internet gets more and more integrated in today’s business world, the chances of you getting Googled is very high. I know I do it all the time.

4) Re-Brand your Portfolio

Now that you have identified your personal brand “keywords” and objectives in your design career, its time to “re-brand” your work. Just like a company’s branding initiative, you need to ensure that the documents you leave behind reflect your personal brand as well. Your portfolio, name card, resume, and perhaps that website design needs to reflect this through and through. This is especially important if you are putting your portfolio online.

On a slightly different but related note, do you then create a personal logo or monogram that reflects this personal brand? Personally, my feeling is don’t do it unless you spend some serious time working on it and that it looks good according to everyone who sees it. Most of the time I find personal logos or monograms very ugly and not well considered. A clear name card with just your name in a suitable font is good enough. But at the end of the day if you decide to create a personal logo, do ensure it reflects your personal brand values.

5) Start a blog

Now that you have a website that show cases your design work why not start a blog? The reaction on this, at this point in time, is mixed. There have been instances that people were fired when employers did not like what was written on their employees blogs. But these cases are rare, and if you keep your blog away from office politics you should be fine.

A great reason for starting a blog is to have your “voice” behind your work. Many times you can’t tell a designer’s personality by just looking at the work. But if you are able to share your thoughts, you will be better positioned as many employers often feel that they just don’t have enough time to determine an employee’s personality during those few interview sessions. Another great reason for a blog, is that it allows you to connect with other designers through the posting of your thoughts and by responding to comments left on your blog.

6) Join design networks

Get out there and market yourself! There are tons of great portfolio networking sites like Behance and Design Related. Just sign up, post your work, make friends, ask and respond to comments. Don’t forget that discussion forums on design are a good way to network with other senior designers as well.

Finally, don’t underestimate traditional non-design social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook as a means to share your work and network with other design professionals.

7) Win design awards

While its not the end of the world if you don’t win any, I always say you have nothing to lose by entering, and winning one gives you eternal fame an glory. Well not entirely eternal, but it is a great marketing tool for yourself and a confidence booster to be able to know that your work has been recognized by your peers.

8) Don’t oversell

At the end of the day, you need to be careful of all your different tools that you can use to sell yourself. The important thing to do is not use the wrong tool for the job and worst still end up by looking like you are overselling yourself. For example, don’t bombard people on your social network with every single job you did in your 15 year history as a designer; leave that for your resume. Don’t stick all your beautiful high resolution images on your portfolio website making it hard to navigate, just leave that to your face to face meeting instead.

9) Do good work!

Always, I say ALWAYS do good design work. Even if you hate your job or your boss or the project, make sure that it is the most beautiful design you can make it be. A good reputation is hard to build, and it is just too easy to lose.

10) A different take?

I like to close this post by getting you to check out a few tips at Fast Company’s 2004 update of Tom’s Brand-you Article as a different, more corporate, but relevant take on this issue of Self-branding.

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As you can probably guess becoming a Design Superstar is not easy and requires a lot of hard work. It does not happen overnight nor is it something you become. What it is, is that it requires is time before it can happen. Simply because with time, you will do good work, acquire more knowledge, build an interesting portfolio, rinse and repeat, again and again. Best of luck in your design career!

Know thy enemy and know thyself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know thyself but not thy enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not thyself, wallow in defeat every time. ~ Sun Tzu

Well in our case it’s not really the enemy but our competition. From our last article, we know a little branding goes a long way. But it’s not only about differentiation, which means to be different, what we need to now is to have distinction, which means to be better. So we need to study our competitors in the web 2.0 world and their branding standards they subscribed to.

Thanks to Uniquely the epitome and The Font Shop.

This is an absolutely amazing collection of all the best web 2.0 logos out there. Well it looks like the Design Sojourn logo still needs a lot of work, or does it? At least now we have a much better idea and direction on where to go.

The big question really is to follow or not? Its seems the Web 2.0 logos today all have a similar feel and you can easily create your own if you follow this list:

1) Bevelled edges



2) “Chicklet” or rounded corners



3) Bright colours or a range of complimentary colours



4) Glossy highlights



5) Clean fonts



6) Drop shadows



7) Ground and horizon reflections



8) Gradient fills

So do you want to differentiate or have distinction, follow or innovate? I’ll leave that to you to decide.

I always though that Tom Peter’s “Brand You” idea was a great thing to do especially if you want to get ahead in today’s ultra competitive work environment. I do know the power of a brand and know what it can do for you. Thus I like to encourage you to consider branding yourself as well things you touch and activities you are involved in.

Imagine creating a good looking resume that stands out? Imagine personal name cards so interesting that it the keeps you at the top of somebody’s memory tree? Imagine creating a personal website that gives a visitor in a blink of an eye an idea of everything you stand for?

In today’s blogging environment, a blog is often viewed as an extension of yourself and thus should be branded as well. Furthermore having an atrocious MySpace layout may be acceptable for a teenager, but it’s a big no no for a professional.

So what can branding do for you?

I’m not an expert in branding, but by branding you or your blog is about creating an image that can go further and permeate into more places than you can imagine. Think karma, think soft selling, and think of what comes to your mind when I say Coke, Apple, or IBM?

As you can see “branding” yourself can go a long way. So now what exactly is a brand?

A brand in our case, modified from Wikipedia:

“A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to you. A brand serves to create associations and expectations among products made by you. A brand often includes an explicit logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols, which are developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality.”

Right so how do we do it? One good and simple way is to create a personal saying, logo or symbol and market it. To do that you need to first create a personal Mantra. Like Guys Kawasaki’s “Corporate Mantra” from his book “The Art of the Start“, you need to come up with a sentence, in less than 10 words, to describe what you are or what you do.

For example at this Design Sojourn Blog our Mantra is “How to do good design and create clever products”. Now that this is clear the next step is what is that one keyword that describes everything you do? What is brand essence of yours? Ours is simply “guiding design”.

So now we need some way to communicate this. Well in most situations you could just use the Mantra or even your brand essence as your end point. But in our case, as we are about design, we have decided to turn it into a logo.

“Guiding Design” is also really about a process and a sojourn, a journey. The design process is not only chaotic but its also has a narrowing objective of finding the right solution for your set of problems.

Also we opted not to create a symbol but settled on using just a word. This is because in reality a process is intangible and we felt no symbol could represent it best but the word itself. Thus we used the text in a chaotic freehand font that is modified to taper into an “end point”.

The logo is not perfect and I’m still working on it, but I hope this post illustrates my thinking process and helps you know how to do it. This is really because all these authors of business books tend to talk too much about the “why” but very little about the “how”.

Good Luck on your branding adventure and please do leave me your thoughts!