Jim Coudal spoke at the GDC/BC Salazar Student Awards on June 1. It was pretty good. His design firm, Coudal Partners, has this new philosophy: to do less work-for-hire and more work for themselves.
An example of work-for-hire is creating a brand identity for a major corporation. You get paid for the work—once–and you’re not involved in its process (or revenues) again while the corporation may benefit from the identity for decades. Jim said he wanted to stop that, or at least reduce his firm’s dependency on it.
Two examples he gave of working for themselves were creating Jewelboxing and The Show. In the former they saw a market for a better DVD package design so they started selling their own. In the latter they saw a need for better live performance CDs, so they created a company that masters, designs and packages that, too.
Part of the process behind his company’s evolution (which has proven successful for them) as I understand it was to work on, buy and sell projects and products they liked as individuals. Then the question in 2002 or so–Jim asked aloud to the 50-odd crowd of students and designers—was where could he find an audience that’s into the same things? The answer had been there for years at his company’s website / blog / art-and-design link-up centre. There were thousands of people visiting everyday because they—dang yo—obviously like the same things Coudal do.
He didn’t actually say dang yo. But Jim presented everything super down-to-earth, open and clear. Not a PowerPoint slide in sight. What I really respected was the way, when he would start answering questions about a design he’d done as a metaphor for process, or insert a Web 2.0 buzz word, he’d catch himself and say Nah, it’s not about that.
In between quarter-jokingly telling us to fire our clients and start working for ourselves, Jim stressed something else I tend to hear from a lot designers these days: the importance of good writing. Man, I love hearing that, not just because I have a minor in the subject…well no, mostly because of that. He said it’s the “sign of an organized mind” and I must agree it’s pretty scary some of the writing levels I see among my contemporaries. Jim has a background in Art History, too. Man, my five years at UVic feels more justified than ever.
Some other points I took home from Jim:
- Coudal.com is an ongoing experiment in web publishing, something I always remind myself about my own site.
- Their design process is subtractive, not additive. Everyone gets together, brainstorms, goes away, comes back with ideas and sketches and then its a rigorous session of remove remove remove
- Don’t set goals for the person you are, but the person you will be
- He doesn’t hire so much on talent as on taste. Good taste is more important than good Photoshop skills.
And now some photos:
Entrance to the Vancouver Film School, where the event was held.
Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, BC Chapter.
The student-designed poster for the Salazar awards. The petal entry forms are removable.
Me and Jim Coudal. He gave out free samples of JewelBoxing.
Me in the Coudal Lock.
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