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Coroflot's Creative Seeds Blog

A blog dedicated to creative work: How-to's on finding design work and creative recruiting, advice on what leading designers are looking for, and showcases of great work from Coroflot portfolios.

How to Get an Entry Level Job or Internship, v2.0September 18

We've had a ten-point "how to" for internship-seekers posted over at Core77 for a while now, but have lately realized that with all of the changes in the creative professions and the communications landscape--online in particular--many of the best avenues for finding work today weren't even conceived of five or six years ago. To that end, I've been tasked with re-writing our "How to Get an Entry Level Job or Internship" article, with a special focus on utilizing online resources and digital media. If you, like many readers, are a recent entrant into the land of creative employment, read through this one and tell us what you think. If you've recently completed such a search, read through and tell us how you did it.

Nearly or recently graduated and looking for your first big break? The right internship or junior level job can be the gateway you need into the thrilling world of design! Follow our simple ten step program, and you'll be well on your way.

Research

1. Make some decisions about what you're looking for.

If you've been staying current in your particular branch of design during your studies, then this should be the easiest step. Start by thinking about firms and/or cities where you're interested in working, paying special attention to recent work that's been produced there. Magazines, websites, book

Playing it Safe: Contract Basics for Freelance DesignersSeptember 3

Do I need a contract?

It's a reasonable question for freelancing creative professionals, especially those of us just starting out, or doing a little work on the side. The ordeal of tracking down and retaining clients, after all, is complicated and time-consuming enough, and The Law a confusing and foreign construct. While many small consultancies (and most of the larger ones) will have clear sets of legal guidelines for entering into any kind of work agreement, lone freelancers frequently sidestep the whole issue, trusting in their personal client relationship to derail any potential disputes.

To the uninitiated, it may be unclear why a contract is such a big deal in the first place. To help answer that, I sought the advice of Joe Makuch, a patent attorney at Marger, Johnson & McCollom, a Portland law firm that's been handling Intellectual Property (IP) and patent law since the 80s, for companies like Samsung, Pixelworks and recumbent bike builder BigHa Cycles.

The most immediately useful aspect of a contract, it turns out, is the degree to which it dispels uncertainty. A chat and a handshake are comforting, but it's remarkable how many slight differences in understanding can emerge once you start writing them d

What Do You Look For in a Designer? : Jason Bacon, UNKL / Big-GiantAugust 13

1. What do you look for when hiring a designer?
Balance and diversity. Obviously the work has to be great, but so often we meet designers who are very one-dimensional, and don't have the ability to talk about their work or sell themselves. In the end, being a designer is about selling your ideas, whether you are selling your ideas to clients, your peers internally, or to a creative director.

If I had to pick between someone who is an unbelievable designer but can't interact with people or talk about their work, and a designer who is good, but incredible with people and can sell, I'd pick the latter. In the end the work needs to be absolutely solid; however in a studio our size we need a highly versatile staff, and because we spend so much time together, chemistry is very high on the list.

2. Is there a particular "tell" that signals a good or bad fit?
I think the biggest tell for a bad fit is when a designer piles on a ton of excuses while running us through their work, or frames up a project with a comment about how bad or difficult the client was, or how stupid the project itself was. It happens a lot more than it should. I think you can identify challenges within a project, but good designers know how to turn negatives into positives. Sometimes limitations can be a blessing, and showing you have the abili

Staying Creative, As the Only CreativeAugust 11

What's the best environment for getting creative work done? For such an important question, it's maddeningly difficult to answer objectively. A more succinct version, from a pragmatic point of view might instead be this: under what circumstances have creative professionals gotten the most work done?

That one's a little easier to address--though still tricky--and in conversation with working designers the answer is most often: "When I was in studio, back in school."

Funny to think that, for all its cobbled-together insanity, the academic studio still represents the most productive space in many of our working histories. When most of us imagine an idealized creative work environment, what we come up with often resembles the bullpen of our school days: a large-ish room full of feverishly working colleagues, chaos, and creativity. Sketches and models and reference materials spread across every tabletop and wall, up to (and sometimes including) the ceiling.

Few of us did the best work of our careers in these spaces, but we did put in incredibly long, impassioned hours there, and joyfully so: something about that environment seems to bring out an energy that we might spend the rest of our careers trying to re-attain. The thrill of learning and exploring certainly has something to do with it, but the element most responsible is a

The Clever Creative, Languishing in the Genius TrapJuly 15

photo: FatMandy

The single most effective way to improve your prospects as a creative professional is to improve your creative skills.

Despite the millions of words of advice and discussion that have been traded on the web over the years about how to market yourself, that sentence is almost certainly the truest, most useful advice you're going to find.

As creatives whose jobs are tightly intertwined with marketing, branding, and other forms of perceptional influence, it's often tempting to focus more on the sizzle than the steak, even (or especially) where our own skills are involved. To a degree, this is useful, as the problem of the talented professional who never scores the right job due to poor self-promotion is a very real one. It's my suspicion, though, that the opposite is more pervasive: the designer, illustrator, or creative director who believes an improvement in self-marketing will always yield greater rewards than simply getting better at what he does.

There are a couple of explanations for this. The first has to do with this tendency among creatives to hyper-focus on marketing; we are, after all, frequently asked to take a weak concept and make it as appealing as possible, through adjustments in