Category: Creative

The career of a modern designer.

      

Sitting in a kick-off meeting, little tedious, sometimes steals your energy. Simultaneously reading email, IMing, listening to the client, giving feedback. Occasionally thinking how lucky I am to be in this room, in this conversation, & what/who we’re designing the software we’re creating. Don Draper now builds software for a living. Clicking through the email subscriptions and discovering a conversation about why they’re doing software vs. advertising. nice. These are the small points of validation when you think your life/career works more like a series of winding rivers, and less like a decision. http://www.fastcodesign.com/3025950/why-i-left-advertising-to-become-a-software-designer There are some great gems in […]

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Creating an “Architecture of Participation”

      

This past Thursday I was fortunate to hear Bill Taylor of Fast Company speak at the Charleston Chamber of Commerce annual event. There were a lot of components to his talk that sounded like the culture we’ve created Sparc. The phrase that caught my attention was the “Architecture of Participation“. There have been many times that I’ve thought of gathering the right people in a room as being an “architect” of people. My friend Taylor seems to be an expert at that. Or when my developer buddy Josh “architects” a solution by knowing what technologies play well together & essentially […]

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What are we designing?

    

One recurring theme as I watch the way our team works: the fine balance of  design philosophy (why) vs. Get-Shit-Done attitude (how): Are we just copying what we see? As designers, are we more often emulating what we see around us rather than “designing” or creating something new. Is it the job of the Artist to be “original” and the designer to emulate? or does the designer constantly look for opportunity and create smaller shifts as they observe. If an artist is large jumps, is “design” a series of smaller responses and shifts over time? Would a client understand something they’d […]

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How design & marketing help make software successful

  

How do you create “successful” software ? The first ingredient is having a vision. Something you’re passionate about. And how that vision is vetted, digested and eventually executed on. Digesting that idea into its essence and creating a minimum-viable-project plan that can be developed. The second ingredient  having the right team: a great client, project management & requirements, a group of dedicated developers and designers aligned to the seeing this vision succeed. Executing on this plan through Agile software development & launching the beta software. Sparc has done dozens of projects internally & with commercial partners. We know how to design […]

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3 rules for solving problems

  

Quick thought that should be incorporated into a bigger post someday. I came to “design” through an education in Architecture. Little unconventional, but there were several messages that were imprinted early on, and I still come back today. 3 rules for solving problems. Something that stuck in my mind like glue from my first year of study was our professor Jay Stoeckel’s mantra: when you get stuck on a problem, change one of the variables. By changing either media, scale, or concern, you can often solve the problem that’s stopped you. Change Media – getting away from the computer for […]

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