Peter and Paul

Peter and Paul have chosen me for the decoration of a wall in the new Leeds Arts University building. It's very exciting to know that my work is worth to such an important brief, where thousands of students will be able to see every time they go to University. It's a great opportunity to leave a mark behind after been living in Leeds for the last 5 years. A good culmination of a lot of work and learning.

Glad that Peter and Paul have given me this opportunity and super excited to see the final result. It will be great in the future to come in and see my work as part of a bigger piece of work.

Books, books, books

Every year I've made a list of design books I've been buying, and this year has been a very good year for the book industry thanks to me. All these books are recommendations from designers I follow or know and the kind of content I'm really interested in.

Since I'll be moving back to Spain in July, I wanted to get as many books as possible. The reason is that many of these books are not translated or sold from Spain, so shipping costs can get very expensive. I thought it'd be best to buy the books I always wanted to buy plus recommendations from friend designers and people I admire. These are the books I've bought between September 2017 and March 2018.


Modern Design:

· Helvetica Forever: Story of a Typeface - Lars Muller
· Logo Modernism - Jens Muller

· The Best of Brochure Design 7: v. 7 - Wilson Harvey

· 30 Years of Swiss Typographic Discourse in the Typogra Sche Monatsblatter: TM RSI SGM 1960-90 - Roland Fruh

· 100 Years of Swiss Graphic Design - Christian Brandle

· Ornament and Crime - Adolf Loos

· Logotype - Michael Evamy

· Grid Systems in Graphic Design - Josef Mülller-Brockmann

· Josef Muller-Brockmann Pioneer of Swiss Graphic Design - Lars Muller

· Why a Man Should be Well Dressed - Adolf Loos

Typography:

· How to Draw Type and Influence People: An Activity Book - Sarah Hyndman

· Why Fonts Matter - Sarah Hyndman
· Helvetica: Homage to a Typeface - Lars Muller

· Type Matters! - Jim Williams

· Detail in Typography - Jost Hochuli

· The New Typography - Jan Tschichold
· I love Type 07 Helvetica - Victionary

Design of Business:

· Brand Dominance: How to Create a Disruptive Social Brand - Aaron Pierson

· ZAG: The Number One Strategy of High-performance Brands - Marty Neumeier
· Nice to Meet You Too - Victionary
· Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action - Simon Sinek
· Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose - Tony Hsieh

Business of Design:

· Know Your Onions: Graphic Design: How to Think Like a Creative, Act Like a Businessman and Design Like a God - Drew de Soto
· It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be - Paul Arden
· 101 Things I Learned In Business School - Michael Preis
· Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers - Alexander Osterwalder
· Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert Cialdini
· Creative Strategy and the Business of Design - Douglas Davis

· The Win Without Pitching Manifesto - Blair Enns
· How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

· Guerrilla Marketing - Jay Levinson

· Damn Good Advice - George Lois
· 7 Strategies For Wealth And Happiness - Jim Rohn
· Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want - Alexander Osterwalder
· The Compound Effect - Darren Hardy
· The Decision Book: Fifty models for strategic thinking - Mikael Krogerus
· The Power of Self-confidence - Brian Tracy

Others

· Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition (Design Briefs) - Elam, Kimberley

· A Dictionary of Color Combinations
· Psychology of colours - Eva Heller

Books I might buy before the year ends:

Pricing Creativity - Blair Enns
Core Kit - Chris Do
Client Objection kit - Chris Do

Featured at Doméstika for the second time and the archive

A competition project I did for Leeds Arts Uni sustainability activities has been featured on Doméstika (Destacado = Featured) on Friday the 23rd of March.



Being featured is very positive. It gives an extra value to the work produced as other creatives with similar critical thinking and criteria give some kind of recognition to my practice, which is always positive when it comes to getting jobs and starting relationships with clients or agencies.

This event as well as others that have been happening for the last 3-4 years have been registered in a section on my website called "archive". This is a space used to recollect featurings, press mentions, important events and anything related to my practice as a graphic designer.

Courses

During this year I've been doing different courses online. Strategy in naming with Ignasi Fontvilla, editorial design with the legend Oscar Mariné and branding and identity with Saffron consultants. Soon, I'll start another one in art direction with Adrián Somoza and a UX masterclass with José Caballer. They will be combined to produce a brief to challenge myself, as I've been doing with the other courses.

The intentions with these courses are not only to find work to do for uni or to learn new skills. The work produced for this courses is reviewed by the designers in question, and that's a good opportunity to make them see my work and keep expanding my network to the people I really admire.

An example of this is the course I did with Ignasi Fontvilla in naming. This course allowed me to expand on certain points in my dissertation for COP, and I submitted one copy to Ignasi when it was finished. He not only read it, but gave me detailed feedback and put me in contact with a graphic designer that is aligned with his way of working.

Online Portfolio

During this year, almost every project I've done for the university has been uploaded to my online portfolio. This is due to the fact that I have been carefully choosing my briefs so they could add value to my portfolio in one way or another.

The process I usually follow is:

1.- Upload the project on Behance. Once this is done, it's automatically uploaded to my website (thanks to Myportfolio). All I have to do is adjust the order it's presented on the layout and a couple more aspects.

2.- From Behance, the project is shared on Twitter, Facebook Page, LinkedIn and Instagram. On Instagram I normally do a series of stories and publications with a link to the project in the bio. On Facebook, I also share it with the groups Tiquismiquis, The Designers League or Logo Geek if relevant as well as the Discord chat I'm running, Designers Creed. Those platforms that are not mine, I normally talk about a different issue and show the project as an example. That way people can relate to it easier and it's not pure self-promotion, but the fact that I'm sharing my project is justified. For example, this last project was accompanied by a reflection of how some projects one thing is gonna smash it and nothing happens vs projects that seem quite average and gives us better results.

3.- Upload the project on Doméstika. This platform doesn't have as much activity and users are not so willing to like projects (UI might be a problem with this), but it's a good way to promote my work in a Spanish speaking community. I have been featured twice there, which is also something interesting to add to the CV or mention in an interview.

Following this process with every project has allowed me to reach more people, make new friends and get placements.

Using LinkedIn to get placements

I spoke to John Watters about how difficult is being to get placements at a studio. He generously made a list of people I could get in touch with.

First I got in touch with people in Leeds and surroundings. I messaged a few individuals and then I met Elliot from Propaganda, who gave me another list of people to get in touch with as well as he took the time to speak to those people. He's put me in touch with studios and agencies that regularly take students for placements as well as good people in the industry he thinks is worth to get in touch with.

I contacted them and there have been only a couple of replies, telling me that unfortunately, they are too small and busy to have me in. On a good note, they said I'm doing well and all I need to do is keep trying. These are the studios/agency I've contacted in the last week:

Seesaw Agency
OurCreative
Oslo Agency
MapCharity
Common Room Design
Design Something More
We Are Golden
Thompson Brand Partners
Home Agency

If local studios don't respond I will have to have a broader scope and try to get placements elsewhere. It'll be expensive, as I'll have to find accommodation for two weeks, but I don't mind if the reward is learning from a good design studio. It's an investment, after all.

Someone mentioned that what caught their eye the most is that I met Chris Do. I decided to make a publication with pictures of me with him and a little thought about our meeting and the lessons I've learned from him. The publication got viewed by many people, as Chris Do recommended it. Many likes and thousands of views quickly piled up. Many people connected with me on Linked In. I looked amongst the likes to see if I could find someone in the UK or Spain. There were some interesting contacts to make, so I grew my connections a little bit.




Days later, this post managed to get more than 50 likes and 3000 views. This resulted in more visits and attention to my profile.



I took this chance to share my last project, which got more attention than the usual (which is a couple of likes). This time the post got much more attention.

I like to keep track of who likes my projects. One of the likes came from the creative director of LazenbyBrown in York, a branding agency.

After 7 months of occasional mails, e-mails, postcards and all kinds of approaches I decided to do this one different. Just a couple of days before this happened, Matthew Encina from TheFutur uploaded the following video about how to get in touch with people online in the most efficient way.

 

He explains that the process can be summarised in 4 steps: be genuine, be curious, add value and go for the ask. That's exactly what I did with Mat, and after 3 messages on LinkedIn I managed to get the placements that I struggled so much to find. I covered the name of the company as the picture could be found alone online.



Matthew Encina's process was super efficient. I PM him thanking him, shared the story on The Designers League getting more than 54 likes and more attention to my project.

We agreed that I'll do placements with them, spending 2 days in the studio with them and the other 3 working from home. Soon after our conversation, they made it official on Twitter and Instagram.

We're delighted to welcome @AlejandroZorita on placement in our studio from April onwards, guys got some skills #RawTalent #Typography #NextGen pic.twitter.com/ih6opDI6na

— LazenbyBrown (@LazenbyBrown) 24 de marzo de 2018

We're delighted to welcome @alejandrozorita on placement in our studio from April onwards, guy's got some skills #RawTalent #Typography #NextGen

A post shared by LazenbyBrown (@lazenbybrown_york) on Mar 24, 2018 at 11:44am PDT

Priyesh: Alumni at Two Times Elliott

After doing a follow up of the Pentagram application with the original poster of the job position on Linkedin, I found out that I wasn't shortlisted. I spoke with John Watters about this and he recommended me to talk to Priyesh, alumni working now at Two Times Elliott. A studio I admire.

I messaged Priyesh and he has been very nice to me. With long messages full of useful information, we've got to talk about my work and he told me he was going to pass it to the creative director. I asked him for some feedback about it, if it's professional for him and if it is the kind of work they see in a strong application.

After some days, Priyesh got back to me and said that unfortunately, they are not looking for anyone at the moment. He said he had a look at my site and saw some nice work and recommended me to show my work physically as much as I could. I thanked him for everything and asked him to get in touch if he heard of any opportunity around.

Creative Director from an ad agency contacts me

An agency in Spain contacted me through Instagram as they were looking for a freelance to help them out in one of their projects. I thanked them for getting in touch and offered a phone call, but they decided to keep the conversation in the private message system of Instagram.

There were several contradictions in their speech that made me suspect they wanted the cheapest choice and that they didn't really know what they were looking for or doing.

They explained that they are a small growing agency. They are 3 in the office plus 3 freelances mostly dedicated to IT and web design. The first comment that stroke me is that they said how important is publicity and design for them, but even it's even more important the communication, concept, idea. This stroke me for two reasons: the first one is that they are looking for someone who merely does design and they are lacking of the vocabulary to articulate themselves. What I think they meant is that strategy is what drives their practice and the design is a result from it.

They explained that now they have two big clients: one with more than 800 employees and another one is a digital magazine from the USA. They said they were looking for a freelance to help them with both projects, which contradicts what they said in the first place. They only needed a freelance for one project. Now, this is not a big deal, but it made me think they don't have very clear what they want.

I told them that it was all right, that I can help. That I would like to know more. But since I was sensing that something was dodgy, I asked if they had a budget in mind for a freelance. They said that of course, but, in their own words, what they are doing with me now they are doing the same with other designers that can fit in their agency to know them better, because their intention is to see who can stay with them as a full-timer. That's why they don't speak about money yet, because they don't know who are hiring. This made no sense. Their budget is static and whatever the range is of what they want to pay to a freelancer is the only thing that varies from designer to designer. In my experience, if an employer doesn't talk about money openly and they want you to engage more or to go to a series of stages just to find out how much you are going to get paid, it's probably going to be the bare minimum. And when an employer has that attitude, I don't think I will be a good fit because I don't think my work is going to be valued and all this selection process (which is more to see who engages more with them for less) is going to be a great waste of time for everyone.

I answered that I understand, that it seems they are very busy and dealing with a lot of work. I know what that's like, and the last thing I wanted to do is to make them waste time and that's why I'm asking straight forward. They thanked me and said that I could submit them an estimate of how much it would be to design 150 pages, 80 of them images. This was the definite proof that they had no idea what they were on about. As an agency, they should know that the physical aspects of design is not what gives value to a piece of design. I told them that I don't have any problem in submitting an estimate, but I didn't have the information I required. I don't know the client, and I can't charge the same quantity to Nike or to the school of my neighbourhood for a magazine. But still, I wasn't the one charging the client. I said that I'm sure they have an agreement with that client and I imagine they know how much they have in mind to spend on hiring a designer to help them out. I also told them that agencies normally hire freelances on an hourly rate basis, as they seemed completely lost to me.

They said that they understand and that they needed to study everything to see how much they can offer (which is what they should have done in the first place). They thanked me for my time and told me that they will keep my contact at hand, to which I thanked them.

I posted this conversation on The Designers League and they told me I did the right thing. That they seemed too new in the game or that they wanted something else. I tend to think it's the first case.

Over the course of this conversation it might seem that I was over suspicious and being condescending. It's difficult to translate exactly word by word and the intentions that were felt in every line, but I tried to make myself perceived in a professional way instead of saying yes to anything they had in mind for me to do. The dangling carrot of "you might get a job if you are the right fit" was not a good start from them, but I just pretended I didn't read that. They don't need to give me that kind of information if it's true, because it feels that they are trying to convince me to work with them, and that shouldn't be the case. They should be presenting themselves as an interesting agency to work with.

Also, when I visited their website, there's only a couple of paragraphs of text and one of them is only Loren Ipsum. They were making really hard for me to be open to whatever they had to offer. If they don't care about how their website looks, I don't think they'd care too much about a freelancer.

The Future is Coming to London 2018

On Saturday 3th of March, I took a train to London to meet my two design heroes: Chris Do and José Caballer, two American designers that are doing a tour in Europe delivering talks and workshops. I took the chance to give them a copy of the dissertation I wrote for COP, as they inspired the theme as well as my current practice.

But not only they were there. Emma Sexton opened the day with a talk titled 'Lessons learned from starting fires', where she shared her biggest mistakes in the design industry and what she learned from them. Then Sarah Hyndman, the author of the book 'Why Fonts Matter', gave a fabulous talk about the vocabulary designers should use with clients, how typography is very musical and the kind of unconscious associations that go on in this regard. Her presentation was so clear, engaging and simple to understand that I bought her two books afterwards.

Aaron Pierson gave a great talk about the benefits of niching down and finding your vector in order to find better clients. This can be done through niching by industry, capabilities, and prices. We did a small workshop that would help us to understand these concepts better. Afterwards, I spoke to him about how to initiate the process of discovering a client and lead them to the payment and how to become a strategic partner for them instead of a one-time service provider.

José Caballer is a UX designer that has an understanding of UX almost to a meta level. He explained that we introduce ourselves to relate to others, and the more someone talks about themselves the more they think they know us. In a quick workshop, we helped someone else as a group to define what the UX of his personal brand should be like. He kept repeating that designers are the new shamans/wizards/alchemists, and pointed out the importance that we have designing the future.

Last but not least, Chris Do. My favourite designer of all time. The person I look up to not only gave a great inspirational presentation but also was there to talk to everybody and to share some time with us. He spoke about many things that are normally important in his videos on Youtube: how to become a master debater, how to challenge common sense, mind games, how to charge based on value (including role-playing), how to be more confident, help clients to know who they are, how to fire clients, dealing with rejection and many other things that were coming up in his talk, as he made the talk in such way that we could choose how it would go.

A London based creative shared with me this article he wrote, which is a summary of the different presentations.

Trip to New York

The trip to New York was not only a great opportunity to visit Mike Perry studio, Stink Studios, and museums but also to learn from such a different culture, its architecture and other aspects of everyday design, like the cars Americans drive.

The visit to Mike Perry was a good example of the modern hippie and hipster Brooklyn. Their practice little had to do with my interests, but that didn't make it any less interesting. On the contrary, their studio was carefully designed and it was really nice just to be in there. It felt like a very good place to work at and it was noticeable that they have taken the time to have such a nice place. Their experiences were also very enlightening, like how it is to run your own studio and how it affects your personal and professional life. They also gave us a folder with different magazines, publications, and posters.
Stinks Studios is an agency also located in Brooklyn. We had the chance to have a long chat with the person in charge of hiring and also another employee that is an art director. They were really nice and open to everything we asked. I got interested in knowing how important it was for her to find a designer that cared about the business side of design instead of being only focused on practice. She said this was a very good question, and that she always tried to find the balance when hiring, that she doesn't want someone who is too focused on the commercial side or someone that only designs for their portfolio.
I also took the chance to visit the museums of Guggenheim and the MoMA, being this second one more aligned with my interests and passions. In my opinion, the best exhibition was the one of the photographer Stephen Shore, who reflected in a unique way the American-ness of many places and models. Bought a book of his work at the museum, which was designed following modernist and minimalist guidelines. Also bought a book of the art deco in New York at the MET shop.

Pentagram job application

There was a rare job opportunity from Pentagram for junior designers for a period of 3 to 6 months. I saw it but didn't think I would have a slight chance.
The next day, John Watters private-messaged me through Linkedin to inform me about this position. This got me thinking that if someone else thinks I might be the right person for such position, it's because maybe I am. I got to work on the application straight away. I've had templates for my Cover Letter, CV, and portfolio, so it was a matter of updating them. I used John contact details for him to be my first reference. He also took a look at my cover letter and helped me to improve it. This is a link to the application I made. Unfortunately, I didn't get to be shortlisted. I thought it was a strong application as I fitted in the description of the person they were looking for and pointed it out very clearly in the cover letter. Also, I showed awareness of what Pentagram does, how I would add value to their practice and I also included a piece of work that was inspired by a poster Michael Bierut designed. It didn't work out in the end, so I need to keep trying. I asked if I could receive some feedback on my application.

Postage time

The publication and a couple of dissertations were prepared to be sent out to different places for different reasons. One copy was sent to the studio Alphabet alongside a copy of the dissertation I wrote for COP. This was to thank them for being such a great help and inspiration for it, taking the chance to let them know more about me and see if they finally offer me placements or recommend me to another studio they consider interesting. They replied with an e-mail thanking me for sending that to them. Tom Ludd, a designer at the Agency TK and an admin of The Designers League in the offices of Leeds, posted on this group that they were hiring a bunch of different people for different positions. I asked him directly if they were looking for an intern, to which he replied to submit my portfolio. I gave him the link to my website and he said he would try to put me first. I submitted a physical copy for him to the agency so they could know more about me. He received it and told me that the creative director liked it. Something interesting is that when I said that it seems that is harder to get placements/internships, he replied "Yeah, because a full time job enables companies to make money from you and are a long term investment". Another copy was sent alongside a job application for a junior designer position at Pentagram in London. The application was online, and I was recommended not to submit anything physical due to the short period of time there was. Even though, I still submitted it paying the quickest postage and informed of it to the person in charge through Linkedin. If it doesn't get there on time, that's not a problem. But if it does, it might increase the chances of getting that position. There are more details about this application on a separate blog post. La Escalera de Fumío is an advertising agency in my hometown, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. I had the chance to meet them during Christmas. They told me to keep in touch and keep them up to date with my work. I submitted a copy of the publication in Spanish for them. While we were speaking about it when they received it, I told one of the partners that I'm planning my next months and asked him directly if there's a chance for me to be a designer in their agency. That I would love to bring everything I've learned. He was very honest and told me that the year is looking good and they are planning to grow, and in case of needing a designer, they will considerate me. The last submission was for Ignasi Fontvila, a naming expert based in Barcelona. I didn't submit a publication to him in this case since he is not a designer, but just a copy of the dissertation to thank him for the course I did with him in naming, which taught me a lot of principles and considerations in branding.

Publication's performance on social media

Studio Brief 1 was a great opportunity to create something that made myself a bit more interesting for other creatives and studios to increase the chances of being considered for hiring. The project was uploaded to Behance and linked to other social media, like Facebook or Twitter. Since I got quite some feedback from The Designers League, I published the link there to thank the community for helping me out to create it. The response was unexpectedly good and it became the most popular project on Behance to this date with many positive comments about the design and the presentation. The project was also uploaded to Doméstika, a Spanish speaking platform similar to Behance. It has forums, courses, and many other features. On the same day the project was uploaded, it was spotted by a crew member who featured it, increasing its exposure. Thanks to this project only being on digital platforms, for now, I've been able to meet new creatives with similar interests. It has also been a great boost of confidence and motivation to make things better and keep working hard.