When I was younger, I worried about the implications of having a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree opposed to a Bachelor of Science might have on my career. Would I be pigeoned-holed into being a designer all my life? Were countless beatings at the hands of mindless AE’s to become par for the course? As strange as those worries seem now they were grounded in the reality of my situation. Partly a combination of time and location, my vision was impeded by colleagues, friends and bosses.
I have been in New York for nearly four years now and have grown beyond even my own ideas. Mostly thanks to my BFA because without it I would have not been able to continuously assess, adapt and adopt to every situation thrown at me.
Assess - In art school, we learned to begin all our projects by using your artistic sensibility to assess the overall picture and begin to visualize different solutions. By taking a creative top-level strategic look at our problems we began to form a different type of thought. In sharp contrast to regular schools where you learn to only focus on one solution to most problems we learned solutions are not limited only by the mind’s capacity to develop them.
Assessing current events and thinking outside the box to offer up an easy solution.(circa 2000)
Adapt - Being made to constantly switch applications and learn to adapt to changing technologies at a sometimes dizzying pace readied me for this new changing economy. HTML to drawing and reading we constantly were honing skills that would help later on in adapting to different situations
This started as a sketch of the Lighthouse and evolved into a full scale rebranding.(circa 1998)
Adopt - Sometimes in the name of good design and others not so good design, we were always experimenting with new technologies and adopting it as part of our visual solutions. Being early adopters way back then made it all the easier to learn about influence and changing models of influence on the internet.
Some of my first email blast using HTML emails. (circa 2000)
Almost six years out of school and working now, I can finally say that I made the right choice pursuing my degree in Visual Communications. In the current economy, value is placed on creativity, problem-solving and being able to set oneself apart from a crowded field of normal thinkers.
Interesting data from an Emarketer email on Friday, states that 9 out of 10 online buyers read reviews before making an online purchase decision. The data was compiled by Power Reviews and the e-tailing group who surveyed over one thousand buyers. The survey members also said that they read between 4-7 reviews while deciding what to purchase.
What does this mean to web managers, marketers and businesses alike?
That consumer are becoming more powerful every year. They are increasingly looking to the internet for answers and other digital citizens reviews are the currency they value. Opinions are everywhere on the internet; blogs, boards and search results are being seen by average consumers who trust this content. And as this content level rises, reputation will become the driving differentiator to whether consumers buy product a or product b.
By starting a dialogue between you and your customers the lines of transparency are opened up. You will reap the benefits of an empowered consumer. That value is two-sided and you will learn as much from the comments as the people making a purchase decision who stumble upon them. Additionally, the CRM benefits are tremendous as you continuously refine your service or product these comments.
If you are building, redesigning or planning a new e-commerce site user reviews and community will become important aspects to any plan and these numbers only reinforce the growing importance.
I have been reading quite a few blog posts lately discussing self-branding. And, in the world of social media and fragmenting media models it’s important to realize the breadth of our brand online. A digital trail of “brand you” is everywhere–from Google SERPs to social networking profiles.
Due to this increasing lack of control over one’s digital image, I started to think about my real image as seen by the outside world, and whether that image aligned with my own thoughts and digital interactions. In a highly unscientific study, I asked a few friends (some who know me well and others who know me casually) to suggest five adjectives that they felt described me. Their answers represented an interesting range of ideas with some overlap. Here is a list of the adjectives I received from my subjects:
Subject #1 - Creative, Conversational, Inquisitive, Immature, Selfish
Subject #2 - Driven, Consumer, Abstruse, Elusive, Charming
Subject #3 - Cultural, Particular, Confused, Smart, Inquisitive
Subject #4 - Funny, Stylish, Happy, Flirty, Cute
Subject #5 - Creative, Driven, Intelligent, Hard-working, Flaky
The interesting takeaway here is that each subject has a slightly different idea of me, but overall, their descriptions do reflect me. The pattern that emerges is of a creative, self-driven, and fun person. The results are not quite what I hoped for but I think with a new year it’s a good start and gives me a solid place to start improving.
If you know me I would really appreciate your input. What five adjectives do you think describe me? Please use negative or positive words to help with accuracy.
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