There’s an old joke that asks “what’s the difference between and artist and a designer?” Answer: “Designers get paid for what they do”

In some ways a better (although less pointed) answer might be “art is what you do for yourself and design is what you do for others”. We run across this all the time when evaluating potential Creatives (our term for those folks who can work magic with pixels) and sometimes have to explain the difference to them. How much harder is it to explain the same concept to potential (or existing) clients? True story: We had an existing client that was starting a new non-profit foundation and needed a logo to represent and symbolize its mission. The person in charge had mocked up a busy, unfocused attempt and was looking for input. Our creative director took a few hours to make some rough sketches and put together a rather nice response, pointing out (among many other things) that logos with lots of text typically don’t work well. Blown up to fill a computer screen things might be legible (although no more desirable). Shrunk down to fit on a business card? At best, it might disappear completely. (This one didn’t-there was just a mass of vague haze surrounding the graphical elements) She also put together a small primer on the science (so to speak) of logo creation. A couple of days went by before we received a response from the stakeholder thanking us for our time, but he preferred his logo to any that we had come up with. No skin off our nose, although the last sentence in his email really set us back. “After all, I attended a Photoshop class last year and I don’t think it’s that hard“.  Well shoot, if 15 years of experience can be replaced by a single class-we’re going about this all wrong. Heck, I watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy (not really) last week and feel qualified to pick up a couple of scalpels on the way home from work. I’m not talking major surgery, but I’m pretty confident I perform a relatively minor procedure like remove my cat’s appendix or something. How hard could it be? If I get stuck, there’s always Wikipedia to help me finish things up.

What’s the difference? (And no, my cat doesn’t get a vote) Here’s one partial theory-(please feel free to add your own)

We’ve all been doing “art” since we were 2 years old. Our parents praised our results, put things on the refrigerator with magnets and generally did all they could to build up our fragile self-esteem. We took pottery classes in college and although it wasn’t nearly as easy as it looked on TLC, every once in awhile we’d come up with something that looked pretty good. Would anyone pay us for anything we did? Not the point-we were pleased with what we’d done and that was enough-kind of like our would-be logo designer in the illustration above. With experiences/affirmations like these floating around in our subconscious, is it any wonder we think we can turn out good design work?  Isn’t that the part of the problem – not seeing the difference between “art” and “design”?

Look, I think artists are great and am glad we’ve got a world full of ‘em. I just know that I don’t want Georges Seurat designing the website for my legal firm or the business collateral for my mortgage company. Those things are not for my edification, but for existing and future clients. They don’t give a whit about my personal taste, and just want to be able to identify/connect with my specific products and services. Good design does that, as it supports and amplifies what we’re trying to market rather than compete with it-and that’s not something you can learn in a 1 hour Photoshop class…

This is just an initial post to get the ball rolling and let you know what kinds of posts you can expect to find here. “Behind the curtain” refers to Group23 news specifically, new team members, company outings, client updates and anything that’s remotely connected with us and our business. For example, if we were to be moving our main office to new digs in old town Orange (Ca), this would be where you’d hear about it first.

We’re moving our main office to new digs in old town Orange (Ca).

Yup-it’s really happening, and we couldn’t be more pleased and excited. Nothing against our old location in Anaheim, but it was a little too “corporate” for the ‘creatives’ taste. Our new location will provide a more stimulating work environment, while also allowing for walks to downtown Orange with its eclectic collection of unique restaurants for special lunch meetings. I grew up in Orange (many!) years ago, but it wasn’t until fairly recently that I saw this area for the college town (Chapman University) that it really was. The energy, the vibe, the feeling in the air that not only was change expected and anything was possible, but that it was welcomed and eagerly sought after. The knowledge that something was going to happen, even if it couldn’t be predicted with any more certainty than selecting the winning SuperLotto Plus numbers.

So there you have it-a little tipping of our hand, but rest assured that we’ll be providing more details after the move is officially made.