10. My Top 10 Design Business Failures - HDC

Speaker
, Principal Designer


Description
When starting out as designers, we struggle to learn the fundamentals: layout, typography, the latest version of Adobe CS, and so forth. What's most missing from our ongoing education, however, is an understanding of what we can do to ensure that our daily design work also generates us profit as a business. Client service, project management, bookkeeping, and other necessary skills are rarely covered as part of any designer's education—and we're often too deep in our daily work to do any of them really well. David Sherwin from frog, a global innovation firm, will take you on a whirlwind tour of everything he's ever learned about being both a designer and a design businessperson—born from the top 10 business failures he's experienced over the course of his career.

In an hour full of examples from both the interactive and print design spaces, David will answer such questions as:
  • How do I deal with client politics?
  • How do I effectively estimate and structure projects for success?
  • How should I consider the financial health of my business? 
  • How do I best negotiate with a client? A vendor? A designer? 
  • How do I gracefully recover from errors on projects?
No matter whether you're a designer, a principal of a large firm, or working in-house, this talk will immediately help you better manage your daily design practice. David will share practical philosophies, methods, and tools that you can take back to work and start using immediately to make your business run more smoothly.