Why not Utah?

I have to admit that it is a sacrifice for me to live in Cedar City. I could potentially make a lot more money if I moved into a larger city. Other artists have given me professional advice to move out of Utah and go somewhere where I can do better work. So why am I still here? The answer is simple... I love it here. Although I am passionate about design and I love my work, my philosophy is that I work to live not live to work.

With that in mind you can imagine that I was excited when I heard that Forbes named Utah the best place for business. It seems that Utah is beginning to make a dent in the business world. Recently Adobe announced that they are setting up a branch here in Utah. Adobe Vice President and General Manager Brad Rencher met with business owners in Utah to encourage them to keep innovation going. "Innovation has no zipcode" he said. (Here is a link to the full article: http://utahtechcouncil.org/UTC/ArticleList/Press-Releases/SingleArticle/-Innovation-Has-No-Zipcode---Adobe-Executive-Brad-.aspx)

There have been some epic business failures here in town but there have also been some innovative and successful companies that have made Cedar home base. So why not us? Why not Cedar City? I believe that Cedar has an incredible potential for business and growth.

For those who are still doubting, here is an incredible little video about business in Utah:

Artists are bad at business—Dispelling the myth!

I've had plenty of friends that have graduated in business school. Some of them have gone off and started their own businesses or work for financial companies, most of which I still don't really understand what they do! These friends get very excited about things like investments, financial projections, tracking cash flow and expenses, etc. It takes about .003 seconds before I feel like taking a nap to get away from these awful conversations. Because of experiences like this I've grown up thinking, "I'm not a business man! I'm just an artist and I'll never get into business!" Most of us right brian, creative oriented thinkers just do our thing and let the so called smart people run the world right? WRONG!

I still suck at crunching numbers and I still don't really know what it means to make an investment projection or whatever but I now own two businesses and both are growing and becoming more successful. Sure I don't make much of money from either one but there is potential. So the golden question is: What changed? Well... nothing.

I'm still just a creative right brained artist. My primary role as a graphic designer is to find visual solutions to problems. I have to figure out how to communicate a million things including something as intangible as the very essence of a business and put it all into a logo that needs to be read and understood in less than a second. In short, creative people are problem solvers. This quality is essential in creating a successful business.

A great example of this is a friend of mine named Jason that recently started going to college after years of doing odd jobs and maintenance work. He is a creative person who thinks quite a bit like I do. His brother somehow became interested in cooking pizza which led him to learning about hand build, wood fueled pizza ovens. They got together and built one and decided to take it to a local fair to sell pizza. The pizza was excellent and people loved it. His brother moved away and is still interested in pizza but Jason took the idea to another level. He continued to work on the idea of selling wood fired pizza to help pay for school. Jason considered all of the problems that they had when he sold pizza with his brother and spent the time and effort to develop inexpensive solutions to these problems. He has now created a very successful business in Cedar City selling affordable (and in my opinion the very best) pizza from the side of the road. It is called the Pizza Cart. It is simple and it fills a niche that nobody else thought of. People rave about it and they have a very loyal customer base. Jason simply used his creative thinking and his skill in working with his hands to create an incredible business. Many others with more business experience have come to town making pizza and failed.

There will still be many things that creative right brianers need help with like crunching numbers. Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses but starting a business is more than just knowing about how the business world works. It is about having a vision. It's about taking a product and making it function the way it should. It's about good design.

Know before you hate

This semester I have a studio lighting photography class. We will be learning all about different types of lighting set ups and what works best for different contexts. Today we brought in samples of photos in which we liked the lighting. One person brought in an image of some flip flops with some flowery designs around them from some kind of advertisement. The teacher looked at it and said, "I don't think this is a real photograph. I'm pretty sure this is all CGI (Computer Generated Images)." One of the more outspoken class members exclaimed with some bitterness, "I hate graphic designers!"

Now it may be true that a few designers out there work with CGI software but the the popular belief is that someone who manipulates images using a computer is a graphic designer. That is far from the truth. Designers are communicators. Rather than communicating with our voices we use visuals to communicate. Digital imaging DOES NOT EQUAL graphic design! Some of the greatest designers right now hardly touch a computer. Most of the work they do is done by hand and then they pay someone to digitize it so that it can be mass produced. Some designers spend tons of time on the computer but that is not a requirement. You are free to hate us but before you hate please know who you are actually hating.

Guide to Hiring a Designer