Use an Action Method to Dive Into Someone Else’s Project
It’s not easy to get carried away with someone else’s project. If you’re trying to generate interest in a job you don’t like, try immersing yourself in the mindset of the people in the room.
As graphic designer Michael Bierut explains, when you’re working on a project (especially if you’re a freelancer), you often have to invest in someone else’s work. You may not even have anything to do with it. If you don’t have a stake in the battle, you might not care. To overcome this feeling, imagine that you have someone in the room who has the chips on the table. Think how they see it. Study what everyone else is researching, even if it has nothing to do with your job.
[S] Omeone says you want to do signage for the New York Times? … [To] get the job done properly, I need to talk to the editors, I have to attend the front page meeting where they decide how page one will be laid out .. …
If you just have an RFP where a customer says we need X, Y and Z, it’s actually just a shopping list … It’s like saying I need pants and a shirt. But then where are you going to wear it, how much are you going to spend? I will put you in front of a mirror, and you will feel like one of those who can wear these clothes.
Therefore, going to all these meetings, if all I cared about were the fonts or the colors, I would sit, fidget, thinking, “Why am I here? It’s boring “. Instead, I thought, “I can’t believe I’m here, I can’t believe that even without taking a journalism course, I’m actually sitting with the New York Times’ top editors, and I’m the first to know. the civilian does what will be the story in the first column on the left in tomorrow’s newspaper. ” I had instant excitement.
By doing these exercises, you can better understand the mindset of the people involved in the project. The more it looks like your own, the more likely you are to find suitable and useful solutions that resonate with the people in the room.
Michael Take On How Graphic Design Can Do Anything | Fast Co. through 99u