1) Get familiar with job market. Do a research about graphic design employment. Find job advertisements as much as you can. After that, you may have some idea about the job market. see BPOVIA’s advertisment at http://www.bpovia.com/

2) Be careful of your cover letter and resume. The list of your education, working experience and personal detail is not enough for your future employers. You need the cover letter to fit the particular job you applied. In this letter, you should highlight your personal ability and how you are able to meet the demands of this job.

3) The techniques of your résumé’s presentation. According to the research, most people only can remember the first and last things. It is good ideas that have a nice beginning and a deep impression at the end.

4) Clear and define your career options. Make sure what kind of jobs you want. You want a full –time job or want more experience before you can a real full-time job.

5) Think about your personal website. It is not only a website. It may be able to help you communicating with other designers even with professionals. Also, the website shows a part of your personal ability of design.

OK, you already have some ideas about how to get a real job. Find more tips, please see tomorrow’s post: ‘Ten Useful Hints for Getting Your First Job – Part Two – BPOVIA’

BPOVIA doesn’t want to say how important the client is for your business. In Graphic Design industry we know it is very difficult when dealing with clients. BPOVIA‘s graphic design’s staff tried so hardly but clients are not satisfied easily. You need to speed plenty time, resource and energy to satisfy their wishes or demand. You always listen to their blames but you can’t complain. Eh…are you thinking about your valentine? Yeah. How similar they are! In this blog, BPOVIA will tell you some detail on how similar with your client and valentine.

Clients: in the part of the clients, you’d better change your state from time to time to enable them know the proceeding of your job.
Valentine: your love also should know the place you are going and the work you are doing.

Client: clients have the right to occupy part of your time. However, when you are encountered with more than one client, it is difficult to satisfy their requirements for they always ask you to spare most of your time to do their tasks.

Valentine: it is also true with your love. She always want to occupy the utmost time and attention of you to keep her company.

Clients: in the most cases, it is your fault if you do something wrong, even though you did it according to what the clients exactly asked.

Valentine: So with your love. You are always the person to be reproached in a quarrel with your love, even though the fault is at her.

Clients:  it is commonplace that clients always be doubtful of the graphic design. So they will use any tools available to check whether it is original without considering the fact that this practice will affect the designers.

Valentine:  so with your love. They are always curious about the contact person in your phone.

]]> http://www.bpoviagraphicdesign.com/bpovia-will-tell-you-the-similarities-between-your-girlfriend-and-client-pay-more-attention-to-them.html/feed 0 http://www.bpoviagraphicdesign.com/expending-your-graphic-design-business.html http://www.bpoviagraphicdesign.com/expending-your-graphic-design-business.html#comments Tue, 18 Jan 2011 08:31:17 +0000 leah http://www.bpoviagraphicdesign.com/?p=320 Here are three reasons why BPOVIA thinks you should be careful before expanding your graphic design business.

1. Bigger the business, more the mistakes:

“Bigger they are, harder they fall”… you must have heard of this saying. Let BPOVIA Graphic Design Service Team explain this saying in light of business expansion. There are more chances of failure when your business horizon expands to newer realms. For example, you decide to expand from logo designing to business card design, stationery and web designing. You are more prone to make mistakes as the process becomes more complex. So, be prepared for big blunder with a big set-up.

2. Divided attention from your design forte:

An important skill that leads to delivering effective and personalized services is specialization. Not all graphic designers are jack of all trades. For instance, some act at logo and identity designing, some are masters of logo and identity designing. Your attention is divided among the various services that you start offering when you expand your design business scope. As such, you fail to give best of yourself and deviate from your design forte.

3. Overload makes you a workaholic.

3 clients are screaming for a stationery design…5 are waiting for a logo design…7 are in line for a web design and all have almost similar deadlines. After expanding without preparation, this is a scenario may face. You would eventually become a hardcore workaholic due to not being able to face so much of workload. It is not every designers bag to handle too much of stress.

To sparkle your celebrations, therefore, BPOVIA thought the best thing we could do is to compile some breathtaking firework shots for you guys. These fireworks announce the arrival of a New Year, with striking colors, sparkling lights, exceptional shapes and loud blasts. These beautiful multicolored fire explosions always add to the festivity and happiness of every occasion. But it’s the last day of December that you get to see the most dazzling fireworks. You can tell how New Year is welcomed and celebrated all over the world from the stunning compilation of firework photography below recommended by BPOVIA Graphic Design Service team.

So, it is time for BPOVIA to stop boring you guys and let you enjoy these beautiful and spectacular firework photos. Don’t forget…sharing and commenting for these splendid pictures won’t harm the environment!

1. Thinking outside-the-box:

Why should someone hire you when there are loads of logo designers out there? Ever wondered that? You need to explore innovative ways of designing since the competition is so stiff in the logo design world. You also come up with clever ways of getting more clients when you think unconventionally. It is thinking out of the box that makes a successful logo designer stand out from the ordinary ones, like the designer at BPOVIA Graphic Design Service Team.

2. Excellent Communication:

BPOVIA realized one of the skills that many designers lack in is effective communication. Most certainly you will face difficulties in you design career, if you were busy taking design lessons and avoided your business communication classes. In negotiations, handling criticisms and getting the ideas across the clients, communication in logo designing helps a designer out. You will never be able to convince clients that your design choice is the right one for their business without proper communication.

3. Unlimited Endurance:

Dealing with cynical clients is the hardest part of being a logo designer. You should remember that customer is boss no matter how wrong you think the customer is. This is a quality valued by BPOVIA Graphic Design Service Team. After all…Patience is virtue! To endure client criticism, you need to develop the skin of a rhino. You should learn to extract positive aspects from the criticism instead of getting annoyed. Criticism help you grow as a logo designer. Eventually you will see that.

Why Have a Method?

It can be helpful to have a design method when working in an environment that requires lots of creative production in a short time, such as when working on the web. You can refer to a method as it is simply a set of steps that you can refer to, without the need to consistently recreate the path. Here is the tool which BPOVIA would believe can be liberating in three ways:

1. You don’t have to make sure that every step is covered by it. You can be a chef in no time by just following alone!

2. It enables you to make your deadlines while allowing you to be consistent in your creative process and make your clients happy.

3. Your clients know that you’ve actually given thought to how you are going about making what they’ve entrusted you to create if you have a documented process. And…

Step by step, In depth

Focus The Concept

BPOVIA knows some designers often forget to do this. Without any real idea of what on earth they’re trying to say they dive into a project. A noun and a verb is the most focused version you can give to a project. What is the thing and what you should about it?

From the experience of designers at BPOVIA Graphic Design Service team, things can be set off in the right direction through a simple sentence and predicate applied to a project. But never get hung up on it. You don’t want to let your project get bogged down for the lack of a set-in-stone focus. A wiser choice would be declaring a focus that you can live with for a certain time period (… 8 days? 8 month) You can always revisit and refine this focus as the project continues.

Gather Supporting Materials:

What do you have in your disposal to communicate, inform, educate or perform? BPOVIA suggests you conduct a survey of all materials from your clients. Get more materials. Find out what graphic and colors they are using and what the competitors are doing.

Here are some items you should get: texts, magazine clippings and newspapers articles, press release archives. Watch and listen to the TV commercials and video commercials. Look at the stationary, the business cards, envelops of your clients and their competitors as advised by BPOVIA designers, and similar tier distributor in other suppliers, customs and markets.

Collect all the things you need and figure out what more the clients would love to have.

Establish the Style

A style is a thing you use to hit the target like a tool. Think about what the colors mean and the kind of colors you want to use. Think about the pace that attracts to your audience, the pace that attracts your audience, the words that communicate to them, and the imaginary that supports your focus. Don’t forget to consider the cultural references and landmarks that establish a common sense between you and your audience.

You are going to want to produce some printed publicity materials at some point, whether you are promoting a gig, running a weekly club night, marketing a radio station or selling a drinks promotion. BPOVIA has served clients who came to us with different needs.

Some unions call on students studying a graphic design course, while others benefit from full time design staff.

A new publicity or ents may find themselves with a project to promote and an empty piece of paper, but it’s nothing uncommon.

If that’s you, here are tips from BPOVIA designers which provide some starting points and can help you create some effective publicity print.

TIP 1

There are two main dimensions in your publicity print:

You have two main things to think about when planning your publicity print – ‘creative concept’ and ‘mechanics’. The former means  the kind of images and words you will use to sell your event, and the latter the types of publicity you will print such as badges, posters and flyer.

TIP2

Come up with your ‘creative concept’ first

Your whole publicity campaign will be based around the ‘creative concept’. It can be manipulated into all sorts of publicity material once you have come up with it – whether that be a flyer, magazine advert, postcard, sticker or whatever. There are two things your creative concept needs to be doing – catching the eyes and selling the show.

TIPS 3

Make sure your ‘creative concept’ is eye-catching

People have developed the skills ignoring ads as they are so used to having advertising trust at them – on TV, in magazine, on notice boards, on buses, everywhere. This is called ‘poster blindness’ by some people. In most colleges where notice boards are packed full of posters and notices this is particular true.

If you are promoting an event featuring a recognized band, actor, comedian or DJ, then a simple person of that person is highly recommended by BPOVIA. A montage of pictures of artists you promote can also be effective if you are promoting a montage.

Familiar images or a parody of another advertising campaign can also be used as a way of attracting attention. These can work, but don’t forget to get the permission from whoever owns the imaginary if you are using someone else’s imaginary.

BPOVIA Graphic Design Service team has seen sometimes a series of cryptic posters which are apparently linked, but which only make sense when you see them all. They may have less immediate impact, but these can be effective and get people talking.

When thinking about poster design, a useful device is to glance at crowed notice boards and see what you focus on first. What you are looking is eye-catching at BPOVIA. Is your design going to compete with it?

‘Old habits die hard’ is an old adage. If prolonged, bad habits develop to your second nature. People like graphic designers possess certain effects on their clientele. Designers at BPOVIA are always told that what really influences your client is the HOW you go about performing your work, not only the quality of work.

It is imperative for graphic designers to understand the personality of the clients you are dealing with. This allows you to get use to their behavior and connect with them properly. Graphic designers have to avoid certain practices as they affect their relationship with their clients directly. Following are some of the harmful habits graphic designers should be aware of:

The Bossy Attitude

From our experience BPOVIA can tell some graphic designers like to follow their own terms and conditions and take matters in their own hands. These are the people who perform the graphic design project with an extremely domineering attitude. They don’t have to feel the need to take any feedback from their clients while selecting all the design elements themselves. Simply put, they act over confidant.

Results:

If you are one of the designers who try to solely dictate the terms of the project you’ll end up losing clients. Not listening to the clients proposals would end them in dissatisfaction, since every client wants his work to be tailor-made according to his wants and desires.

Over-Confidence

Over-confidence is another bad habit that some graphic designers exhibit. BPOVIA Graphic Design Service team knows confidence in your capacity work is a good thing, but you can land in trouble through being too confident. Showing too much casualness and non-chalance to work is harmful to graphic designers. It is when you try start to take everything for granted that things turn bad for your professional health.

Results:

One must act professional since graphic design is a proper profession. For your clients BPOVIA believes that over-confidence and casual attitude is a real turn-off. They expect a professional attitude when they approach a professional graphic designer. If you want to make your clients think they have come to the right place, then stop acting over-confident.

Sloppy appearance

When it comes to dressing, yes BPOVIA Graphic Design Service team knows that graphic designers mostly prefer casual and informal attire. But you know too casual has a degree? No doubt torn jeans are fashion, but maybe suitable for college days? You need to avoid sloppy appearance when you are entering into the professional level. Do you still think you can get clients by wearing wrinkled and torn clothing?

Results:

Appearance matters in the professional world. Make your first impression count as you never know it may be your last…Clients are given a negative feeling when seeing designers in sloppy appearance that their project might too end up sloppy.

A Bad Brochure Is like a Bad Breath.

People will avoid you, or in this case, your company, but they won’t tell you what is wrong. BPOVIA knows this can be sad, but your brochure will go straight to the trash, along with your phone number.

You won’t realize that you have done more than just wasting your time and money till that happens. Without even getting a chance to get in the door, you turned a prospect into a permanent no sale. BPOVIA isn’t quite sure if it’s worth it if you have saved a few hundred dollars on producing your brochure.

Cheap looking or badly done brochures would reflect badly on you, your products and your company. Do not scrimp. If your company economizes on a brochure, it may also be considered to be scrimping on its products.

Your Brochure Should Not

Attempt to be a comprehensive technical that details all your product specs. It is not a price sheet listing special sales items and the like. Designer at BPOVIA Graphic Design Service team have worked on sheets that have completely different requirements in purpose, look and design.

Companies often end up with a confusing, disorganized mess when trying to combine these functions in a one piece all things to all people. While you can tell if your brochure is hard to read, it cannot. This could reflect a confused company to a prospect. Ever heard about K.I.S.S.?

BPOVIA has often seen an acceptable combination of both in a presentation folder. One pocket holds your corporate brochure, the other holds price list, special deals, sales sheets and the like.

DO NOT Do This….

A major Canadian Bank produced a series of “Advise to Small Business” booklet to hand out to prospects. They supplied every branch manager a quantity of these brochures. However, if they actually gave out the brochures they actually get charged under the bank’s accounting system. The result? You can guess it. Lots of these branch managers refused to give out the brochures out and stashed them in the vaults.

Don’t let your brochures and advertising materials wasted sitting in your room, get them into the hands of your prospect.

Check the Trunks of your Sales Rep’s Cars

BPOVIA has seen more than once expensive sales materials only get as far as the sales rep’s car trunk and stuck there. Be sure they are giving it out as intended.