Design Currency: Understand, define, and promote the value of your design work

Design Currency: Understand, define, and promote the value of your design work

Released June 2013
Publisher(s): New Riders
ISBN: 9780321844927

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Book description

The world needs beautiful design. But aesthetics are inherently subjective. In Design Currency, authors Jenn and Ken Visocky O’Grady show you how to frame the value of your design work in terms that your business partners will both understand and respect. An actionable resource, Design Currency empowers you to do your job with less pushback on aesthetic decisions, encourages earlier involvement in the creation process, and makes it easier for you to justify your fees.

For a designer, understanding how your work creates value is essential to growing your business and building better, more profitable relationships. Those relationships are easier to initiate, establish, and retain when you can clearly explain how your capabilities meet your client’s needs. This book shows you how to do exactly that.

In Design Currency, you will learn how to:

  • Leverage traditional design skills in new ways

  • Measure the value that your design work brings to a project

  • Articulate that value so that you can position yourself as a partner in the development process

  • Charge what you’re worth and prevent your job from getting crowd-sourced or out-sourced

  • Generate business value by better identifying audience needs

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication Page
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Introduction. Why This Book?
    1. What’s Your Design Worth?
    2. Use It!
  6. Section One: Understand Value
    1. Chapter 1. Understanding Market Conditions
      1. The Sky: Not Falling
      2. New Opportunities
      3. Quick Tips
    2. Chapter 2. Understanding Your Skills
      1. Your Preferred Qualifications
      2. Visualize Your Abilities
      3. What’s Your Letter Profile?
      4. Quick Tips
    3. Chapter 3. Understanding Your Services
      1. Hard + Soft Value
      2. Defining Value by the Project
      3. Hierarchies of Value
      4. Quick Tips
  7. Section Two: Define Value
    1. Chapter 4. Defining Metrics
      1. Setting Metrics: Return on Investment
      2. Setting Metrics: Cost/Benefit Analysis
      3. Money Isn’t Everything: Metrics Beyond the Benjamins
      4. Making the Case: Numbers in Context
      5. Time is Money: Embracing Metrics Without Draining Creative
      6. Quick Tips
    2. Chapter 5. Defining Business Impact
      1. The Value of Design Factfinder Report
      2. Design Effectiveness Industry Report
      3. The Economic Effects of Design
      4. Start Spreading the News
      5. Quick Tips
    3. Chapter 6. Defining Your Audience
      1. Person First Design: A User-Centered Approach
      2. Getting to Know You: Tools for User Research
      3. You Need a Plan: Integrating Research with the Design Process
      4. Logic Models: Visualize Your Process
      5. Lost in Translation? Making Sense of Data
      6. Borrow from Example
      7. Design Alchemy
      8. Quick Tips
  8. Section Three: Promote Value
    1. Chapter 7. Promoting Real World Solutions
      1. Babington’s English Tea Rooms Rebranding
      2. Beltline Bike Shop Brand Makeover
      3. Konjo Initiative
      4. M-Savers Budget Grocery Rebrand
      5. Modeling Customer Experiences: Deconstructing the Textbook
      6. MiWay Transit Program
      7. MyBurger Reinvention
      8. Open Doors Academy Rebrand
      9. “oHIo” Retail Collateral
      10. Summer Challenge for Business
      11. Vuly Trampolines Rebranding
  9. Featured Practitioners
  10. Photo and Illustration Credits
    1. Chapter 1
    2. Chapter 3
    3. Chapter 4
    4. Chapter 6
    5. Chapter 7
  11. Bibliography and Additional Resources
    1. Bibliography
    2. Additional Resources: Professional Organizations and Websites
  12. Authors’ Acknowledgments Cheers!
    1. About the Authors
  13. Index

Product information

  • Title: Design Currency: Understand, define, and promote the value of your design work
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: June 2013
  • Publisher(s): New Riders
  • ISBN: 9780321844927