Who doesn’t love the sound of ‘a new year’? For me, 2015 brought new experiences and accomplishments, and I like to acknowledge wins as well as set new goals each calendar year. The new year can bring a fresh start and provide optimism and momentum, and reflecting helps sustain that momentum throughout the year. After the holidays, I like to reflect upon the previous 365 days and identify what I did well and what I’d like improve upon.

Speaking

In February 2015, I joined my local Toast Masters chapter, a group dedicated to teaching public speaking and leadership skills. I enjoyed this new opportunity, and after a few months, I became a club officer. Toast Masters has taught me to speak confidently and effectively in front of an audience, and I used those new skills in a talk I delivered to a small group of professionals in my hometown. Communication is key in both professional and casual settings. Joining Toast Masters was one of the best decisions I made in 2015. Join Toast Masters.

Writing

Before 2015, I didn’t consider myself a writer. Sure, I’d written the occasional blog post, but not consistently, and my words weren’t read by more than a few people. In 2015, however, that changed. In 2015, I wrote more than 50 articles, averaging around 2500 words each, primarily about design. I also managed a mailing list which allowed me to share my articles and build a relationship with a focused audience; as a result, my writing has improved and has been published globally. Writing about what I know and care about has helped me foster a supportive network of talented professionals.

Reading

In high school and college, I was not a reader (thank you SparkNotes), but in 2014, I began reading self-improvement books, and in 2015, I read and listened to more books and audiobooks than I ever have. I read about discipline and habits, self-improvement, strength training, design, writing, focus, balance, prioritizing, business, finance, and to help me relax, I read fiction. I made my way through nearly 70 books this year, and I am inspired to continue this practice in the new year. For the busy professional like me, Audible has been a life-saver. Try Audible for 30 days — free!

Charity

I was more charitable in 2015 than the previous year. It’s easy to become distracted by our own needs, goals and obsessions, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to neglect others. This year, I did some pro bono design work for clients who wanted my help but couldn’t afford it. I was charitable by purchasing and assembling adoption kits for foster children. I also donated money to aid in the building of a school and playground in Laos, and I helped plant trees in my local community. You don’t need to be wealthy to be charitable. Even your time is valuable to those in need. You can help build schools here.

Fizzle

Hoping to build an online business, I joined Fizzle.co in January 2015. From Fizzle, I learned how to: build websites and email lists, write copy and build launch strategies, build a minimum viable product, pitch ideas and sell services, network, understand businesses and how to take action. Fizzle is a community of awesome, like-minded entrepreneurs who help you build your business. In addition to being the most affordable online business education you’ll find, Fizzle has a supportive community to keep you accountable. My participation earned me the title of ‘One of the Top 25 Indie Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2015’ by Fizzle.co. Try Fizzle free for 5 weeks here.

Freelance

I began freelancing in late 2013; eight months later, I left my full-time job at Felt Bicycles and moved to PA. 2015 was the first full calendar year I spent being self-employed, and that has been both difficult and uncomfortable at times. It has, however, been gratifying and I’ve learned more than I thought possible. I wrote many articles about freelancing in 2015 because it was the source of both frustration and joy for me. I enjoyed helping other less-experienced designers with freelancing. If you’re looking for design help, here’s 7 Reasons to Hire a Freelancer. If you’re a freelancer, here is How to Find Freelance Clients.

Recovery

In November 2014, I injured my back which resulted in 2 herniated discs in the lower lumbar region of my spine. This is a serious injury and almost always leads to permanent damage. I spent the first half of 2015 working with general practitioners, physical therapists, chiropractors, internists and orthopedists with very little improvement. All of these doctors recommend that I stop weight training to avoid further spinal injury. Out of frustration, I formulated my own regimen of healthy, corrective habits and smart lifting and now six months later, I’m pain-free, much stronger and less likely to re-injur my spine. This was a long and complicated issue to treat, and recovering from a back injury was one of my biggest accomplishments of 2015.

Health

When I graduated college, I weighed 130 pounds (59 Kilos) and was 5’10. I was unhealthy and had a poor diet. From 2012–2014 I gradually got stronger, began weight training and learned how to eat for an athletic build. For much of 2015, I did not exercise as my doctors had advised me not to, but now that my back is mostly healed, I’m back in the gym. My current regimen consists of weight lifting 5 days a week with 15-minute cardio sessions and 30-minute cardio sessions Saturday and Sunday. As a result of this routine, I’ve never been more satisfied with my physical health and by being active daily, my optimism, energy and quality of work have also increased. I’m following Kris Gethin’s 12-week Muscle Builder program and highly recommend it. With daily videos, nutrition and exercise plans, it’s one of the best free programs available. Check it out here.

Interests

I have a degree in industrial design, and as a freelancer, I have mostly solicited industrial design services. Although I have enjoyed helping clients design new products, this past year, I found a new passion in CGI. I recently wrote an in-depth article, Everything Business Owners Need to Know About CGI in 2016. As a photographer with experience in marketing and product design, I discovered a niche, and I offer clients high-end photo-real imagery and animations of products (even ones that don’t exist yet). This CGI is often used to win investor capital, build effective presentations, speed up product development, improve crowd-funding campaigns, websites and e-commerce. The highlight of this new interest was when one of my images won an award. I plan to focus on this more in 2016.

Focus

I’ve always been able to juggle many interests and priorities because planning and follow-through have always come easy to me. However, being a high-acheiver means that I get frustrated when I don’t progress quickly or compete at a high level; unfortunately, there isn’t enough time in the day for me to accomplish everything I would like to. Fortunately, this past year, I learned to focus. I stopped pursuing multiple interests and poured my time into priorities. Reading a book called The One Thing taught me how to accomplish more by focusing. Read my full book review here. If you want to make serious improvements on your work, career or life as a whole, read The One Thing and learn to focus.

2016

So, what’s in store for 2016? Despite 2015 being a big year, I can tell that 2016 is going to be even bigger. I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve for the upcoming 365 days, so join my email news letter to learn what comes next.

How was your 2015? If you happened to write a review, share the link with me over on twitter. Thanks for being part of my network and I wish you an epic new year!

This article originally appeared on LinkedIn

If you’re a designer or work with designers, I’ve no doubt you’re aware of the many niches within the field of design. Many are familiar with graphic design, architecture and fashion. However, some job titles when shared receive more head scratching and replies of “What’s that?”.
For example: (in no particular order)

• industrial design
• digital design
• product design
• concept design
• experience design
• 3D design
• CAD design
• communications design
• technical design

Most designers have a basic understanding of design principals and can more or less speak the same language and tend to be fairly flexible when it comes to creative problem-solving. However, the reason each niche exists has to do with competition and tools.

Competition

As businesses mature and industries age, fewer and fewer breakthroughs occur and fewer stones are left unturned. Progression happens through evolutions and continual refinements of existing products or services. As the cost of technology decreases and the quality of our tools increase, our expectations and standards also raise. With markets becoming saturated with competing products and services, the desire to achieve excellence in every aspect of a business has never been so high. In order to create premium products and services, the most talented and driven employees must be hired and inspired to achieve greatness as individuals and as a team. Instead of hiring a generic designer and tasking him or her with web design, graphic design, marketing and product design as needed, businesses choose to hire specialized designers who are responsible for each design role within the business. In other words, would you rather have an olympic track team comprised of general athletes, or a team of dedicated sprinters, shot-putters and pole-vaulters?

The first major reason niche designers are needed is because the high standards of today’s companies require teams of highly-skilled individuals to create the best products and services possible.

Tools

The second major reason niche titles exist revolves around the tools used by designers. May teachers can get away with using the Microsoft Office Suite, which consists of mainly Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Therefore, the argument can be made that most primary, secondary and many post-secondary school teachers need only set of tools to do their work. In contrast, there is no all-encompassing software that allows all types of designers to do their work. Yes, Adobe makes a wonderful suite of products, much more expansive than The Microsoft Office Suite. Though many designers are expected to know their way around Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, most designers rely on specialized software that has a very steep learning curve.

For instance, web designers often need to know one or more coding or scripting languages to allow web applications to function properly. Industrial designers are expected to know 3D CAD packages that enable manufacture of products such as SolidWorks, Alias, Rhino, Fusion360, ProEngineering and more. Concept designers often need to be able to create digital paintings as well as be able to model and render using programs such as 3DS MAX, MAYA, Cinema 4D, Zbrush, MODO and others. Some 3D designers specialize in visualization and focus on a combination of rendering and animating and use programs such as KeyShot, Octane, Maxwell, MODO, Nuke and more.

Just like the duties and skills of a designer are seldom concretely defined, the tools a designer uses are partially personal preference and partially defined by the employer or client’s required outcome. The issue, is that each of these specialized softwares mentioned above can take a person years to become proficient in. It is unrealistic for a designer to become a professional-level user of many specialized software packages early in his or her career.

The second major reason niche designers are needed is because of the steep learning curve and time-consuming aspect of learning highly-specialized design software.

Clarity

Now that we understand why these niche designers are needed and the purpose behind so many highly-specialized titles given to designers, the point of clarity must be addressed. Often times a designer’s role is defined and well-understood within a business. From my experience, the issue of definition arises between those within and outside of a business.

The specific instance that lead me to write this article happens to revolve around the careless use of the title Product Design. My goal here is not to argue semantics, but to lobby for greater clarity and care when using the title Product Design. For all intents and purposes, product designers assume responsibility in both the function and aesthetics of physical products.

With digital devices and programs such as apps and web-based applications we are spending more and more time every day using some form of computer and some form of application or program. Many tech companies have taken liberties in calling these apps or programs ‘products’. Each company may have its own reason for this, but it seems like a conscious decision to call computer programs products or digital products in order to humanize the technology. Psychology tells us that as people, we like to relate to things that are familiar and human (as opposed to alien and inanimate). In addition, the term product seems to have a greater degree of tangibility to it. And when it comes to parting with our hard-earned cash, we’d rather receive something tangible.

The Issue

Where all this leads is a harsh reality that can lead a traditionally-trained industrial designer such as myself to question whether or not he’s living in some post-apocalyptic world in which no thought is given to the careless use of the term product design and the action of such can go completely unpunished leaving those seeking design work reeling in frustration at the complete misuse of the term product design.

I hereby, on behalf of all the industrial designers and product designers in the world would like to make a motion that companies who wish to employ designers for their digital products use titles more accurate (and thus more descriptive) than Product Designer.

Some alternatives to consider: App Design, Digital Design, User Interface Design, User Experience Design, Program Design, Digital Product Design, The Dude, Zeus Almighty.

Just please, for the love of all things design, stop using the term Product Design for anything other than Physical Product Design.

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Also, you may like one of my most popular posts:
Industrial Design vs. Product Design

You’re a designer and you’ve got a badass website. On that badass website lives your badass portfolio (or some semblance of one). But is your website really as good as you think it is? Let’s run through the anatomy of a portfolio site that’s perfect for your purposes.

Before getting to the actionable checklist you’re probably anticipating, we need to discuss a few things. You’re a designer, which means you’ve spent more time than you’ll ever admit to choosing your website’s typeface. You’ve asked your significant other to verify that the spacing between the navigation links is perfect. Three or four times. Oh, and don’t get me started on the logo you designed yourself when there were one-thousand other important things to do. However, do you even know who your audience is? What’s the purpose of your website? How’s it converting?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m stoked for you and your website, but I want to make sure that you’re getting the most out of it. With some minor (or perhaps major) adjustments, your website can propel your career in ways you probably haven’t even considered. I’ll explain how you can take your website from “meh” to “Ah-meh-zing!” without ‘redoing’ your blessed portfolio.

Rather than covering technical tips on how to trim and touch up your portfolio, I’m going to touch on the topics that are often overlooked by designers. Yes, you’re great at being creative, but how are your messaging, marketing and copy writing skills? You may be surprised to find that your audience’s priorities and experiences with your website differ greatly than your own. And this could cost you. Dearly. Let’s dig in, shall we?

Messaging

Your portfolio site is basically about three things: your personality, capabilities and services. These items make up the overall message a visitor receives when visiting your website.

Your Personality

Let’s begin with who you are! If a total stranger landed on your website and read through it, would she feel like she knew you? You’ve got a face, a personality, a passion for design and probably a bunch of cool hobbies that you and your audience have in common. Share these things.

Using myself for example, this is not personality: “I’m a down-to-earth person with a B.F.A. in Industrial Design who likes to solve problems. I’m passionate about design. I’m open to doing freelance work, so if you’re interested, please send me an email at … “

Using myself for example again, this is personality: “A well-traveled Mid-Western boy with the fancy title of Industrial Designer, I’m like a steroid for young and innovative startup companies. I bring a holistic approach to product development. I sold my soul to the devil in exchange for insane sketching skills. Send me an email today.”

Your Capabilities

Demonstrate this by proving your skills within a portfolio. Include only your best work to show how good you are. Examples of how you react to challenges, technical and reasoning skills are a must. Finally, your sense of storytelling and graphic organization must be on point. We’ll assume your portfolio is great for the sake of this article.

Your Services

A list of the computer programs you use may be helpful to some of your technical visitors, but what about visitors who may potentially want to hire you? They care less about your tools and technical prowess than they do about what you can make or accomplish for them. For example, rather than saying you’re the Zeus of Typography and InDesign is your lightning bolt, tell the mere mortals what you can do for them a la designing brochures, magazines, business cards, posters, website layouts, etc. If your goal is to get hired, you should make what you do clear!

Email List

Think of how hard it is to get traffic to your website or portfolio right now. You can’t you expect those visitors to remember your website and visit regularly. Building an email list is your answer. If you produce regular content, decide launch a product or want to promote an event to a captive audience, you should build and maintain relationships through an email list. Mailchimp is easy to use and free for small lists. Give your visitors a reason to sign up for your mailing list and send them regular messages making sure you deliver value each time. This is how you build supportive relationships and a following of those who want to see you succeed.

Screen Size Optimization

Just because you’re a fancy designer and do all your creative work on a UHD 5K monitor, it doesn’t mean everyone who lands on your site will be on a similar device. It’s easy to get used to designing within specific aspect ratios or sizes. I do much of my work on a 27" Dell Ultrasharp monitor. After visiting my website from my Macbook Air, I realized the webpages were too wide. I then course-corrected.

Now, I check everything on: my 27" monitor (256x1440), 13" Macbook, girlfriend’s 7" Kindle Fire, 4.7" iPhone 6 and whenever I visit Best Buy, I hop on a 5K iMac to test each page of my website. I enjoy using Squarespace for my website platform because they do a great job of scaling and optimizing for each device. Finally, if you’d like to know what audience or size to focus on, check your analytics! Both Google Analytics and Squarespace offer statistics on what devices and browsers your website is being visited through.

Portfolio Interaction

Outside of just considering the screen or device your portfolio site might be visited from, you ought to think about how people will interact with your portfolio. Before I built a portfolio website, I shared my work with another designer. He said, “Oh, this would be great on an iPad if the images were full-screen and I could swipe left and right!”

After careful consideration and validation with others, I agreed. Despite being used to the common vertical scroll layout of common online portfolio platforms, I thought about how someone would flip through a book, left to right. How do we read in America? Left to right. Information flows easier horizontally on a 16:9 landscape image rather than vertically. These insights along with learning that nearly 30% of my visitors are on mobile devices impacted my decision to prioritize full-screen images and left-to-right swipe functions.

Purpose

Perhaps the most important item on this list is being clear of the purpose of your portfolio site. Just like each page and project in your portfolio should serve a purpose, so should the pages of your website. Once you’ve decided what job you wish your website to do, it becomes much easier to make well-informed decisions and actually achieve your goals. For instance, if your number one objective is to get hired as a product designer at a fortune 500 company, then your website’s copy and contents will differ from someone who wishes to be hired as a design consultant for non-profits or from one who simply wishes to grow a massive email list.

Having a purpose and then stating it as your mission will make you more interesting. It gives you a story. You’re all of a sudden on a quest. It makes you more memorable and your website more shareable since people love stories.

Call to Action

Once you’ve designed your website to support and communicate your purpose, you should help visitors take action. Don’t be afraid to offer a call to action (CTA). A CTA should be a nudge in the right direction. If your goal is to spread your work all over the internet, an option would be to make your portfolio the home page. Next, your CTA could be asking visitors to ‘share’ 3 pieces of your work on their favorite social network to receive a free how-to guide. A CTA shouldn’t be pushy, but encouraging.

Blog

What used to be reserved for nerds and angsty teens is now a mainstream media platform. Blogs make up for more than a quarter billion websites. People turn to blogs to get regular, current and relevant information. Blogging is a fantastic way to sharpen your communication skills, share how you think and add value to those who hope to learn about the skills you already have. Creating regular blog content gives visitors a reason to revisit your website. So long as your blog has a purpose that serves your goals (and subsequently, your readers’ goals), it’s worth having. But like a new puppy, it requires regular attention; ignore it and it’ll do you more harm than good.

Recap

Of course, there’s no such thing as a perfect website or portfolio since it’s a very subjective thing. I have seen so many websites in which a designer has a bit of his or her work uploaded as tiny, low-res. thumbnails, a dreadfully boring about page and no personality. I don’t remember who they were and never returned… probably not the result they were after. I want you to vow to never be one of those forgettable designers with a boring website. There’s no excuse!

Check out this list and see how your own website stands up. Where could you stand to improve?

• Your Personality
• Your Capabilities
• Your Services
• Email List
• Screen Size Optimization
• Portfolio Interaction
• Your Purpose
• Call to Action
• Blog

If you’re not sure how to improve your website, I’m offering consultations. Now’s your chance to pick my brain for a whole hour. If you’re interested in a one-on-one consultation, we’ll hop on google hangouts and go through your website for 60 minutes. How we use that hour will be up to you. We can focus on portfolio development or website improvement or copy writing. It’s your call. If you’re interested, you can make a purchase here.

When I was in design school, learning about product design, I was always told to innovate. Innovation is when a new idea, method or product is applied to an existing idea, method or product. It’s how things like tools, technologies and fashions evolve over time. When I first started design school, I didn’t understand this because my first industrial design studio was embarrassing. I had no clue what I was (supposed to be) doing.

This article originally appeared on willgibbonsdesign.com. There, you can opt-in to get quality articles like this delivered directly to your email inbox each week!

Off To A Bad Start

Attending CCS, in Detroit, Michigan, one has no choice but to steep in the culture of the automotive industry. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are all headquartered either in or near Detroit, Michigan. Because of this, these three American auto manufacturers have hired a majority of their designers directly from CCS. The College for Creative Studies ends up being a magnet for anyone who’s ever dreamed of designing cars. For people like me, who saw cars as nothing more than a costly means of transportation, it was obnoxious at first. I had to endure hours of conversation about cars to which I had nothing to add because I knew nothing of cars.

As an industrial design major at CCS, your studio classes for the first year include students who wish to specialize in product design, automotive design and transportation design. Later on, each area of study is separated and classes are catered to your specific area of interest. My first industrial design studio happened to be taught by a GM automotive designer. Our first assignment was to design a vehicle.

This was bad. At that time, my knowledge and interest in cars was about nonexistent. How the hell was I supposed to design a car? Everyone else was excited to put their ideas into motion, so i did my best to get excited. I wasn’t, but I thought I’d try my best. While many of my classmates had been primed on the expectations of the prestigious design school and its faculty, I had not. Many of my classmates seemed to know what they were doing. I felt as if I’d stumbled into a second year class.

Despite feeling so ungrounded and lost, I decided to design my car the same way I would ‘design’ a house while playing the Sims. I’m referring to the video game that allows you to customize a virtual life, the best part of which was creating a house. I wanted my design to be the ‘best’ it could. At the time, I saw design as a black and white problem. If something wasn’t designed, you could design it, and that was the correct application of design. I was used to solving problems in high school which meant giving the teacher what she wanted or expected as the correct answer. Yes, this car was supposed to by my design, but that just seemed so subjective, I didn’t know what direction to take.

The result was something that looked like a bad rip-off of a Pontiac Vibe. When my professor asked me about my design, I highlighted the features:

1. Folding seats for storage
2. Large windows to improve visibility
3. Fold-down monitor for those in the rear seats
4. Extra storage near the back seats
5. Some ugly space-age rims

He looked as confused as I felt during the entire project. His thick French accent grumbled, “But what have you designed? I see nothing that is new.” He had wanted to see innovation, and I had given him a combination of attributes that currently existed on various vehicles.

Innovation

When something is interesting, new or exciting, it’s usually innovative. Before going to CCS, I had not been taught how to think like a designer. It’s no surprise that I felt like a fish out of water near the beginning of my college career. Luckily, I had a few good professors along the way who taught me how to think and design. Unfortunately, the world is filled with organizations, people and processes that are so dated, they struggle to innovate.

Innovating is uncomfortable for many. Many people prefer to stick with what they are comfortable with. (Think about those boring meetings when the grand decision is finally made to ‘do things the way they’ve always been done’, or some other BS excuse to avoid taking chances.) Others are okay with being wrong many times in order to find an incredibly appropriate solution. Innovation doesn’t come without curiosity or the courage to ask and try to answer questions in ways that seem unconventional.

Design-Driven Innovation

IDEO, arguably the most famous industrial design firm in America uses an ever-changing adaptive process to solve problems for some of the largest and most successful companies in the world. Chris Flink broke this process into 4 steps in Creative Confidence, a book written by Tom and David Kelly of IDEO.

1. Inspiration
2. Synthesis
3. Ideation & Experimentation
4. Implementation

Inspiration

Waiting for inspiration is like waiting to win the lottery. Put yourself in situations in which inspiration is likely to strike. Speaking with people from an empathetic approach will help you gain insights on human behavior, desires and struggles. Take these insights and design solutions for what inspires you. A designer’s research often entails seeing things through the lens of an end user or target demographic, not the designer’s client.

Synthesis

This is where you make sense of what you’ve seen. Try to organize your thoughts and observations and seek patterns. Identify the causes of certain situations and effects of context. Make notes and stories out of the insights you’ve gained when doing your inspiration research.

Ideation & Experimentation

At this phase, the goal is to get all ideas and thoughts surrounding the scenario you’re designing for out of your head and into view. Whether it’s drawing, sculpting, making, photographing or writing, get it down. Then see what happens when these ideas are combined and interchanged and begin asking if then statements. There are no ‘wrong’ answers at this point, so more is better and allowing for deviation is appropriate. This process is supposed to be quick so as to not get hung up on details. No editing should happen in this stage.

Implementation

Prototyping is a way to test an idea. Creating a crude, yet functional prototype allows you to implement an idea or solution without spending excessive resources. Prototyping is very important, because often when a prototype is used by the target user, the designer is able to learn and discover new problems or opportunities. It’s important that the person who is being designed for actually interacts with a prototype so the designers can observe, synthesize, ideate and implement once again.

Your Turn

The 4 step process above is to be used in a cyclical manner, repeating steps when necessary until a viable idea is reached. I encourage you to try using design-driven innovation the next time you’re faced with a problem. You’ll probably find that you’ll need to fight the urge to jump to conclusions and make assumptions. This is what most people learn when they try this method. The more you can trust a process rather than your gut or biases, the better of a designer and innovator you will be.

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For more ooey, gooey design article goodness, please check out my Article Blog over on my website. There, you can opt-in to get quality articles like the one above delivered directly to your email inbox each week! Also, if you liked it, please share!

And 8 Tips to Getting a Reply Every Time

How many times have you emailed someone about a possible design position just to get zero response? Why is it so difficult to get a reply from the company you wish to work for or intern at? What can you do to get around the email obstacle? Let’s look at these questions and how to (nearly) guarantee a response when you send out an email to a potential employer.

1. Get in their shoes

It’s 4:30 pm on Monday, your boss reminds you of a deadline due end of day tomorrow. You still have 4 more emails to reply to from various supervisors. An urgent change needs to be made to a design that was supposed to be wrapped up last week there goes beating the traffic home. Your spouse/significant other texts you with the bad news that the laundry machine stopped working. You also need to attend your son’s bimonthly Cub Scout meeting tonight.

Then, another email shows up — Subject: Seeking design opportunity
You think, while reaching for the delete key, I don’t have time for this sh —

This is how busy or stressed you need to assume everyone you’re emailing is facing. With more important tasks than time to deal with them, you need to find a way to be a welcome break from the day’s overwhelming chores. When composing your email and choosing a subject, try to avoid the cliche phrases. My rule of thumb is that the first one or two phases you think of are junk. They’re probably the first one or two phrases everyone else thought of before emailing the person you’re about to email. Challenge yourself to come up with something more interesting and attention-grabbing. Be sure to remain professional. For instance, “You’ve just won…” is a sure way to get your email marked as spam.

Actionable step 1: Put yourself in your recipient’s shoes. Choose words that you’d be interested or curious to read if you were inundated with chores, dumb emails and lots of work. Re-word your subject line until you’re actually satisfied with it. Be clever.

2. Give them a reason to reply

Consider how many emails you receive a day. According to the * Radicati Group, in 2015, the average business email receives 84 emails PER DAY. The average number of emails that get sent out of business emails is 41. How many emails do you actually reply to, and why do you reply to them? Often, there’s an incentive to reply to emails. For example, to not get fired, to progress a project, to enter a contest, to say hi to a family member, to verify a fact.

Ask yourself what incentive your email recipient has to respond to your email. Without making the benefit clear to the reader, it’s often tough to earn a reply. What are some possible incentives to reply to someone asking for a job, interview, internship, portfolio review, etc? Most people in the professional world are looking for ways to make their life easier, improve the quality of their work or reputation.

Actionable step 2: Provide a clear benefit to responding to your email. Avoid sounding pushy, demanding or like a desperate sales person.

3. Keep it personal

I’m willing to bet you’ve been on the receiving end of a generic email that screams, “I’ve been sent out to over 100,000 other email addresses!” How obnoxious is that? I tend to mark those and the sender as spam to ensure I never lose precious time to that sender again. Never EVER send out a generic email template to a job, internship or interview prospect. If the person you’re contacting is worth your time, he or she will be intelligent enough to know you’re email blasting a bunch of other companies at the same time. It’s lazy and that’s the last word you want attached to your name.

Take the time to learn about the person you’re emailing and the company he or she works for. Use these facts to add a personal touch to the email. If the email is tailored and empathetic to the receiver, there’s a better chance of it being interpreted as sincere, which is what you should be after.

Actionable step 3: Use personal touches to establish a connection between you and the email recipient. Did you go to the same school? Do you both comment on the same forum online? Are you both raving fans of the same sport? Use a common thread to create a connection somewhere in your email. The header/subject is a great place to drop this since it’ll pull the recipients attention toward something he or she spends time doing or thinking about outside of work. This should create that welcome distraction mentioned earlier.

4. Respect their time

Before you go sharing your life story, and how long you’ve been stalking your email recipient, consider how you tend to avoid reading long emails when you’re busy. Since we’re already assuming your email recipient is crazy-busy, let’s keep it short. I can’t remember where I heard it, but someone famous once claimed that if an email exceeds 5 sentences, a phone call would be more efficient. I don’t necessarily suggest abandoning all emails longer than 5 sentences, but the principal remains the same. Try to keep it as short as you can without losing the integrity of the message.

Actionable step 4: Edit your email. Don’t send it after writing it. Leave your computer for a few minutes and read it once you return. Can you make it shorter, less-wordy, more succinct? Look for cliches and unnecessary details that you can pull out to condense your email. A shorter email is preferable.

5. Get to the point

Similar to step 4, but more specific is getting to the point. I get frustrated thinking of the number of emails I receive where someone just throws paragraph-shaped grenades at me. If I receive an email where no clear question is asked or I’m unable to determine the purpose of the email, I’ll be sure to ignore it. Nothing feels more like a waste of time to me than that. Please don’t ‘think out loud’ in an email. The recipient should know exactly how to reply to you.

Actionable step 5: Edit your email to see if you can get to the point sooner than you did in your first draft. Make sure that you omit sentences that deviate from the goal of your email.

6. Ask the right person

First I should note, that an initial or ‘cold’ email really shouldn’t be an ‘ask’. By this I mean that the only thing you should be asking for is permission to connect with this individual. Asking for his or her time, or an interview, or a job is a really greedy thing to do. Next, make sure that if you’re asking for something, it’s something the recipient of your email is capable of doing. For example, emailing a junior designer who’s a relatively new hire and asking for an interview won’t do you much good. You’re better off asking a director, president, C-level or other upper-management if you’re looking to get hired. This way, whoever does the hiring can be contacted from a higher-up and he or she will need to act upon the request of a supervisor, not the request of a stranger (you).

Now, if all you’re looking to do is to establish a first connection or get the contact info of a Sr. designer, then perhaps contacting a junior or new hire would be appropriate. It’s a tiny ask and very quick task to perform, increasing your chances of getting a response.

Actionable step 6: Make sure that the person you’re emailing is the appropriate recipient for the email you’re sending.

7. Baby steps

Sending a cold email asking for a job is a long shot. I’ve found a better way to create a relationship that encourages dialogue, rather than leaves you in an awkward position of rejection. Imagine there being stepping stones creating a path to your desired position. What would each of those look like? Maybe there’s 5 or 6 of them.

Possible example:

This whole progression should feel natural and not forced. I’d recommend spreading it out over 4–6 weeks. This establishes a relationship, one where you offer value first.

Actionable step 7: Break your email sequence into as many steps as seems appropriate to work up to what you’re really asking for. Many professionals are smart enough to know what you’re doing, but so long as you’re respectful and honest he or she should’t mind your approach.

8. Casual, respectful tone

Consider the tone you use in your emails. Remember, you’re not able to use body language or voice tone to your advantage in an email. It’s easy for a joke or sarcasm to get lost in an email. That can be the death of your email. Be sure to ask someone you trust to proof your emails and make sure you don’t come off as pretentious, rude or pushy. You want to come off as someone who’s easy to be around and communicate with since communication is one of the pillars of any design job.

Actionable step 8: Get someone you trust to proof read your emails. Do you have anyone in your family who works in a professional office setting? If so, send the email to him or her first and get a second opinion before sending.

Recap

Got all that? It might seem like a lot of work, but it doesn’t take much longer than firing off a few lousy emails and I’m sure you’ll be pleased with the responses you receive. Besides, if you do get a job or internship out of a string of emails, isn’t the time worth it even if it does take a few hours? Below is the list one more time so you can copy and paste it into an Evernote checklist as I often do.

Get in their shoes

Give them a reason to reply

3. Keep it personal

4. Respect their time

5. Get to the point

6. Ask the right person

7. Baby steps

8. Casual, respectful tone

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed, please share this article. And for more articles similar to this one, head over to willgibbonsdesign.com.

Bibliography & Sources:

* http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Email-Statistics-Report-2011-2015-Executive-Summary.pdf

The definition and differentiation of industrial design and product design are debated, confused and sometimes vary given the context in which they’re used. Because many who visit this website may wonder why one term is used rather than the other, we’re going to take a deep dive and hopefully bring some clarity to the topic.

Let’s begin with a macro definition and progress to a micro level. We’ll start with a generic and practical explanation and end up arguing the semantics of the two, which should be fun. Maybe I’ll even ruffle a few feathers along the way. Also, I’ll break up each level of differentiation just to simplify things.

Micro

For all intents and purposes, industrial design and product design are the same damn thing! A product designer and industrial designer play nearly identical roles professionally and share virtually the same goals. If you’d like to, go ahead and use the titles interchangeably as the general public doesn’t know the difference.

That said, each connotes a different idea of what the designer does. To many, industrial design sounds more technical and engineering-based. Alternatively, product design sounds more straight-forward and simple… one who designs products. Of course, the connotation of each is totally subjective and depends entirely on the previous experiences of the person you’re talking to.

Macro

Now, to draw some distinction, we’ll establish that industrial design is a field of study as well as a career path. Many colleges offer Bachelors and Masters Degrees in industrial design, and when a company wants to hire a designer who graduated from an industrial design program, the employer will advertise an industrial design position. Industrial design programs at schools are often divided into more specialized majors such as automotive, transportation and product design as was the case with the college I attended (CCS). At this level, product design is one of the various occupations an industrial designer may choose to pursue.

Based upon the above, all product designers are industrial designers but not all industrial designers are product designers.

Industrial Design — an Abridged History

Back before many of us were born, objects were hand-crafted and cost much more to produce, which prevented most people from consuming at the level we do today. The industrialization of production made mass-production possible. Mass-production is how a product can be made in high volume at a low cost through an heavily automated process. Think of Henry Ford’s production line, which allowed his factory to crank out vehicles faster than ever before. The same thing happened to household products such as furniture, ceramics, tools, electronics and appliances. Prior to having a process that allowed for such high-volume production the cost per unit and production time of products didn’t matter much. When the mass-production became the goal, cost-per-unit, production time and efficiency surrounding the entire process became key to offering affordable products to the masses.

The need for engineers to optimize this whole process became clear, but lowering the price of a good wasn’t the only way to make a sale. Norman Bel Gedes is often credited with bringing sleek design to products that didn’t need to be sleek and sexy, but the result was that these beautiful products sold! It wasn’t long before the aesthetics of products were considered as important as function at the mass-production scale. Prior to the industrial design era, designers were artists and craftspeople. Primarily focused on creating quality objects that looked as good as they were built, designers weren’t designing for the masses, but were crafting low-production goods that were very expensive.

Now that mass-produced goods could be made, how do you get people to replace items that still worked just fine with newer versions? Designers filled the role of creating incentives for consumers to buy the new mass-produced products by adding features such as improving ergonomics, aesthetics and functionality. They did this through their knowledge of design. In order to increase sales, companies began hiring industrial designers to continually design new versions of the same products and sell them to customers year after year.

Check out this great video by Open University for a nice, short narrative.

Product Design — an Abridged History

Alright, so there isn’t really a distinct history of product design, since separating it from industrial design is impossible. Over the years, designers or companies have chosen to use the term ‘product design’ rather than industrial design as it’s slightly more specific than the vast field of industrial design.

As previously mentioned, product design is a specialized field within the broader spectrum of industrial design. product designers are often hired to design everything except for vehicles. Vehicle design (land, air and water) is a field that has its own traditions and practices and often prefers to hire designers who have specialized in automotive or transportation design. This leaves virtually everything else up to product designers. Today, software or digital products as well as services are often in the territory of product designers. In some cases, product design includes a sub-field of specialists called engineering designers. Given the common goals and roles played by the field of industrial design and product design, using one term instead of the other certainly leads to confusion for some. The field of product design and industrial design do overlap and sometimes the distinction between the two isn’t so clear.

I like to think that product designers are responsible for the design of household and consumer products, whereas commercial products are often designed by specialists such as aircrafts, architects and automobiles. I understand though, that there will always be exceptions.

So What?

Some will think I wasted a whole bunch of words trying to distinguish between the indistinguishable. Perhaps. I just wanted to provide some contest to shed light on exactly why there is often times confusion between the two terms product design and industrial design. The simplest way to bring clarity to an often ambiguous set of definitions is this:

Industrial design is the profession responsible for elevating function and aesthetics to all things manufactured. Product design is one of many niches within industrial design often defined by the kinds of products it designs. Just like a dentist is a specialist within the larger medical field.

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