Welcome to the first set of the 25 secret rules in design and advertising. Each wednesday for the next five weeks I’ll be posting the next set of rules. If you can identify with these rules, or if you have come to deviating insights, please share your experience with us!
Set 1: 5 Basic Rules
1. Creativity is nothing. (Without skills)
Some people are born creative. They slop over with insightful bubbles and always come up with a brand new and ground-breaking idea. But what makes a creative person a good designer?
What matters is your ability to produce. Creativity alone is highly valuable, agreed, but what if you can’t turn it into someting of true value?
Take a look at the advertising industry. The classic creative team consists of a Creative Director (CD) with at least one Art Director (AD) and Copywriter (CW). Now - how exactly did the CD get his job?
In general, he ascended from one of the latter positions. He can only do his job if he knows how to get off the pot - in other words, he has to know how to channel his creativity. That’s why this is rule number one: Without skills, creativity means nothing. But let’s move on to the 2nd secret rule of design:
2. Ideas are everything. (With the proper inspiration)
When a new task arrives, we can’t always rely on our natural ability to come up with a great idea. Sure, we may have a bunch of ideas whirring around in our head, and we start putting them down - but what if we find out that they don’t turn out the way we expected? And what if we have a blockade and no ideas at all?
In these cases, we have to undertake steps in order to come up with an idea. Naturally, an idea can’t be forced. How often did you sit and wait for it to come, but nothing happened?
What we can do is vitalize our minds by opening the door to inspiration. We can do this in various different ways, at the desk as well as outside. Sometimes, taking a walk helps free your mind, or getting together with friends. There are various techniques to get inspired, and you may already know one or two of them.
3. Your computer is your most important tool - right AFTER your brain and a blank sheet of paper
Your brain does all the work, not Mac or Adobe. It’s always better to have a plan before getting started. It’s like “normal” life. Read How to design better and faster than trial & error, and The Sheet vs. The Screen.
4. Valuable resources are a grave necessity
Do you know how much time you’ve spent searching for a photograph or image to use in your designs, in total? If you’re not lucky enough to have a photographer you can work with, or if your client’s budget doesn’t allow custom photography, you’ll need a great deal of valuable photos, illustrations, and even video at your disposal.
Stock sites do a great job here. There are lots out there, however only a few ones you can consider truly valuable. Prices are from free to over 500 $ for an image. While free sites usually don’t have the quality, and you should consider setting up a shooting before paying 500 dollars for a photograph, there are some excellent sites around where you can get high-quality images for 1$ each, royalty-free.
For that, there’s no way around iStockphoto.com. They claim to be the world’s busiest image market. Other good sites are Dreamstime.com, 123rf.com and StockXpert.com - check these out as well.
5. Everything you do has been done already
Do you know Ads of the World? It’s a teriffic website posting creative advertising daily. The community has the chance to comment on every ad. If you take a look around, you’ll quickly discover at least one community member commenting with a single word: DONE.
That can be quite amusing. Considering the fact that the majority of ideas in advertising has already been done in one way or another, I tend to *cough* smile at these fellas who are spooking around in the forums and enlighten us with their “done” on every single page. Who can say what’s an original idea? There’s a thin line between inspiration and plagiarism, I agree; but sometimes, a splendid idea for brand A is based on a great idea for product B which has been adapted from a wonderful idea for service C. It depends on the adaption. Opening Vogue or GQ and seeing the exact same ad for 10 different fashion brands on the first 10 pages - done, done, done! Building on a great idea and creating something new, wonderfully creative and beautiful for another brand: well done.
What do you think about this?
Next week’s post will be about the 5 Rules of Composition. To stay posted, subscribe to our RSS Feed.
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This is a very nice row! Thank you for this posts. It sounds very interestin to me because I started as graphic designer on my own and I am looking for every info that I get. Thank you for your great work! I am looking forward for the next week post!
these are great cant wait for the next ones
I tried the stock sites you name and they are pretty cool
for my own stuff I still use free sites like sxc tho
but its hard to find good stuff on those
maybe you could put in a list of free sites how bout it?
Nice start to the list. I look forward to the rest!
I agree with Michazastic about a list of ‘time saving resources’. I would also like to know more about #2, finding inspiration.
@ Estefania, you’re right, in the creative business, it’s imperative to learn more every day and know about what the others are doing. Stay inspired :)
@ Michazastic, free sites are very useful for personal designs, and for practice. If you look deep enough, you can find some gems there, too. We’re already working on this subject, so check back soon!
@ Matthew, I think that’s a great idea for a new additional post for next week! In other words, thanks for the inspiration :)
Great post, very true.
Regarding point 3, it is actually scary to see how people rely on automatic tools and call it creativity. In fact seeing Win Crouvel saying
Inspired me to say that If one can’t design without a computer, then is no designer at all.
Great stuff! I’m an istockphoto junkie. They’re not great for everything, but you can’t beat the price, and depending on what you want they really do sometimes have some exceptional imagery.
The “Done” thing is so interesting. As a creative, you always want to do something innovative. But frankly, as a businessperson, you want something that gets results, and “done” can be the exact right recipe.
Rules are great, but no rules are absolute. The greatest designs are often complete violations of the rules. In fact, that’s what sets designers apart from craftspeople.
I have turned off much of the “Web 2.0 design” noise as Web 2.0 has nothing to do with design at all. There are imitators of designs for Web 2.0 websites, but those who did the actual innovations would not repeat the same techniques on their next website. They would instead look to do something entirely novel again.
So, share your rules, but don’t expect me to follow them.
@Grant Czerepak - It is true that te web-2.0-look followers are pretty much that: followers. The people who came out with the ideas that were called web 2.0 design are busy designing newer things.
Yet, it is difficult to reinvent yourself too often and also design has a large cultural factor, so I truly believe it is possible to be creative within the Web 2.0 trend, just as designers managed to be creative within the Art Nouveau trend a century before.
@ Grant Czerepak
I agree, no rule is absolute. Especially in the creative business, where the nature of our job challenges us to find new ways of doing things every day. That’s why we call these ’secret rules’, they are meant as general guidelines that work very well for us. They can help boost productivity and make things easier and faster.
I also fully agree with you and Guilherme on the Web 2.0 “trend”.
Hi,
This is really inspiring. Especially to me who’s trying to penetrate the industry as a designer. I’ve been designing for almost 4 years now, but not professionally. you can see my stuff in my online blog: http://iampaosterworks.wordpress.com
Again, thank you for the entry. This will be handy for me. =)