Building your design business: product
Bernadette Jiwa continues her three-part series on ‘Building your design business’.
Selling design is very different from selling tall skinny lattés, boxes of cereal, or tubes of toothpaste, unless you own a logo warehouse that is. Great design is not a mere commodity and this is what makes differentiating your product a challenge at times. As a designer would you want it any other way?
Many designers struggle to define their product because it is more than just the sum of its’ parts, logo, website or layout. Your product is something pretty special. You give form to ideas. Your ‘art’ is the ability to take something abstract or imagined and create the visual connection which helps the world to make sense of that idea, product or company. Designers are the conduit between the imagined and reality. You are not just selling logos, identities and websites. You are enabling your client to tell their story better.
It doesn’t matter what product you choose to market there are three steps to understanding the placement of the kind of product you want to sell to the type of customers you want to attract.
1. Understand yourself
What do you love to do?
Why do you do what you do?
What do you care about and believe in?
What are your strengths?
What are your weaknesses?
How can you best play to your strengths?
How will you mitigate against your weaknesses?
Who do you want to work with?
Which designers do you admire and why?
How could you emulate some of what they have done to become successful?
How are you different?
What will make you better?
“You do better work when you believe in what you do.”
— LEE NEWHAM
2. Understand your target market
Who is your ideal client?
Where will you find them?
How will you reach them?
What drives them?
How do they choose?
What communication channels do they use?
How can you nurture professional relationships?
How can you package your product to meet the worldview of the audience you are trying to reach?
What are the tools you will need to create a presence in your chosen market?
Are you designing for everyone or perhaps creating things that some might dislike?
Are you asking people to switch to you or are you creating a whole new market?
Why would I buy from you and not the designer who ranks in the top ten in Google?
”It’s not a matter of who can benefit from what you sell. It’s about choosing the customers you’d like to have.”
— SETH GODIN
3. Understand how to differentiate your product
What story does your product tell?
Does your story really define what you do?
What makes your design stand out?
What makes your work blend in?
How is your product different?
How is your service special?
Are you delivering on your promise, original, unique, timeless, flexible, enduring?
Can you create a new market and do something that hasn’t been done before?
Can you reinvent something that’s already been done and do it better?
What is selling right now?
What’s not selling today that could sell if it was marketed in new ways tomorrow?
Could you produce something that’s scalable?
Is it possible to create scarcity?
What makes your product remarkable?
Does your design start conversations?
If not how could you make that happen?
“It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be.”
— PAUL ARDEN
Designers have the privilege and the power to change how people feel about an idea. Your work not only influences others to make a myriad of choices each day. It moves people. Your product breathes life into ideas. You galvanise, captivate and woo. I can’t think of anything better to market.
—
The ‘Building your design business’ series:
1. Perceptioning (published earlier)
2. Product (this post)
3. Promotion
(to follow)
Bernadette Jiwa is an Australia-based brand and marketing strategist. You should follow her on Twitter.
Video of the Plumen bulb courtesy of Plumen.
19 appreciated comments, click here to add one
natasha
Another great post! I do agree that if you believe in what you do, it will be a success. It is also super important to understand your target market when creating a design. Again, great post!
Nov 16th, 2010
Bernadette Jiwa
Hi Natasha,
Thanks!
Your clients must think you are gold.
Nov 16th, 2010
Aaron Crafter
Kind of ‘Thoughts worth Thinking 101′ post, but still very useful – i love when others can put to words things than poeople generally know, but somehow seem to forget, Makes it a really nice reminder – so thank you :)
Nov 16th, 2010
Bernadette Jiwa
Thanks Aaron.
Sometimes we are so busy trying to look great we forget why we wanted to be great in the first place.
Nov 16th, 2010
Alban Selamaj
Well said. In a sense, we are our own clients and those are some of the questions that we constantly ask ourselves to improve our brand.
Nov 17th, 2010
Bernadette Jiwa
Hi Alban,
Yes, it’s pretty hard to do your best work, evolve and grow if you don’t have an understanding of your business in the first place.
Nov 17th, 2010
lee newham
Yes, another great post Bernadette. Thanks for the quote by the way. The cheque’s in the post ;-)
Nov 17th, 2010
Bernadette Jiwa
Hi Lee,
Thanks!
Thought you’d like that one. Seriously though it’s not a bad ideal to aspire to.
Nov 18th, 2010
Chris Beauchamp
Really, really excellent post, especially this part:
“Your ‘art’ is the ability to take something abstract or imagined and create the visual connection which helps the world to make sense of that idea, product or company.”
Thanks.
Nov 20th, 2010
Bernadette Jiwa
Hi Chris,
Thank you for the lovely comment.
I see from your website you are creating fantastic visual connections.
Nov 20th, 2010
Alexis Gabriel
What a great post, like you said, sometimes we forget the pretty basic stuff.
I was thinking in translate the whole series in spanish for my blog, If you don´t mind of course.
Nov 30th, 2010
David Airey
Hi Alexis, that’s no problem if you want to translate to Spanish. As long as you give Bernadette credit and link to her site (etchd.com).
Nov 30th, 2010
David Airey
Oh, and link to the original source, too. Cheers.
Nov 30th, 2010
Bernadette Jiwa
Thanks David.
Hi Alexis,
Glad you found the post useful.
The last in the Building your design business series will be published soon so it might be an idea to wait until that’s live.
As well as adding attribution links it would be great to have a link to your Spanish re-post in the comments section of the final post.
Nov 30th, 2010
Alexis Gabriel
Thanks Bernadette & David,
I’ll be waiting for the last article, and don’t worry for the credits. Cheers.
Nov 30th, 2010
Bernadette Jiwa
Hi Alexis,
The last article is now live here.
Hope you enjoy that one too.
http://www.logodesignlove.com/promotion
Dec 1st, 2010
Alexis Gabriel
Thanks Bernadette,
I’ll start to work in them in a few days.
Dec 3rd, 2010
Bernadette Jiwa
Great Alexis,
Thanks!
I’ll look forward to seeing them, if not understanding them :).
Dec 3rd, 2010
Alexis Gabriel
Hi Bernadette,
It took me more than I expected, but here is the second article of the series. Thanks and cheers.
http://rafterup.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/producto/
Dec 16th, 2010
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