Design Work Life: Cataloging Inspiration Daily

Another ses­sion I was excited about was the one given by David Schimmel of And Partners here in New York. I’ve always admired their work so I was excited to hear what he had to say, espe­cially about this topic in par­tic­u­lar — how to get the projects you want when you don’t nec­es­sar­ily have the expe­ri­ence to back it up. He gave a great talk and pro­vided quite a bit of insight into how they have gone about find­ing busi­ness from the begin­ning. He left us with this basic list of how to’s…

How to even­tu­ally get to do every­thing you want to do:

1. Establish a plan, set clear goals for yourself
2. Start small: build a col­lec­tion of small/medium size prospects
3. Think strate­gi­cally about the projects you take on: how can they be lever­aged later?
4. Say no: you can­not be every­thing to every­one, make deci­sions about the work you choose to take on
5. Price projects com­pet­i­tively, but also allow your­self to make a profit
6. Promote and mar­ket the work you do: toot your own horn or no one else will!
7. Regularly sub­mit to annu­als and competitions
8. Intensely look for work while you’re busy and market/promote your­self while you’re slow
9. Don’t under­es­ti­mate the impor­tance of human con­nec­tions. If you’re not a “peo­ple” per­son, make sure you team up with some­one who is
10. Consistently prospect new oppor­tu­ni­ties and re-assess your strategy/plan to reach your larger goals (back to top)

One thing that seems to stand out about them is that they do A LOT of self pro­mo­tion. Many of the paper pro­mo­tions they’ve cre­ated, for exam­ple, have been col­lab­o­ra­tions between them­selves and the paper com­pany, one exam­ple being Punc’t (images shown below).

Schimmel is a mas­ter net­worker, get­ting his name out there early and often — with both the design com­mu­nity and his busi­ness prospects. Definitely some­thing I know I need to work on myself, so I it was great to hear how he went about the whole process.

There were too many amaz­ing work exam­ples to choose from in the And Partners port­fo­lio, so below are just a cou­ple I admire.

B-Hive Productions

Guy Carpenter