

WHY aren't there more consumer Internet VCs w/ graphic design skills? - cwan
http://www.dshen.com/blogs/business/archives/why_arent_there_more_consumer_internet_vcs_w_graphic_design_skills.shtml

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ggruschow
Did he miss intrinsic motivation? VC seems less related to what designers like
to do and think about.

People often do tech work in order to build big things and make money, and VCs
are right there in that game. Many engineers and programmers I've known speak
of people who made a lot of money in the industry, and sometimes reference how
they did things.

I don't recall that mindset in designers. They've far more often been pointing
at some (anonymous) beautiful work or speaking about how great somebody's body
of work is.. but personal profit isn't amongst the qualities mentioned. Market
success is pretty rare too, and usually more related to the "clients don't
know what they need, have no taste, are creatively barren, and have to be
worked on/around" theme.

From my experience, I'd expect designers to be far more likely to end in
groups supporting the arts rather than groups investing in tech.

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dshen
First, thanks to all who responded to my blog post!

As far as intrinsic motivation goes, I did think about this, but in the end I
declined to comment on generalizing about the motivations of a group of
people. I chose to stay with non-motivational factors in my discussion because
those could be analyzed more objectively. I did not feel right saying that one
group of individuals thinks this way more than any other group, and certainly
without a serious survey to really see what people want to do.

I do believe, like many other disciplines, that designers haven't been exposed
to, or even given the opportunity to enter the investor business until recent
years. Now that the discipline has been exposed to a new potential career
path, I think we'll see that perhaps peoples' motivations could change simply
because they have the exposure to a new possibility.

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pieratt
As a graphic designer, I hope to be an exception to this observation. Just
give me a few years.

On a less personal note, it's pretty rare that you will find a designer who is
also interested in tech startups or business in general. As someone who spends
an inordinate amount of time reading industry blogs and such, you simply don't
see that much cross over between the two. Which is surprising considering how
business-minded a good designer has to be, both in the way they understand and
interpret their client's problems, and in the inevitable challenges that come
with running your own shop.

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fortes
Any industry blogs you'd recommend? I've got my share of tech blogs, but would
love find some new hidden gems for design (especially interaction design).

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pieratt
For Interaction Design? I don't have much for you. Here's a couple that are
somewhat in that vein:

<http://uxmag.com/> <http://www.minimalsites.com>
<http://www.creativeapplications.net> <http://www.formfiftyfive.com>

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fortes
Thanks. Knew about uxmag, but the others are new to me.

If you have recommendations for Graphic or Industrial design (or anything
else, really) -- I'd love them as well.

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oneplusone
The biggest problem with current design schools is that they completely focus
on print design. When I was studying for my bachelor in design there weren't
any interactive design course until the 4th year.

It was also the only web design course that year.

And it focused entirely on Flash.

Is it really such a big surprise that when designers graduate most of them go
into print? The ones that do go into web design has this Flash baggage they
need to overcome and forget. For proof of this just take a look at print
designer's portfolios, they are mostly made in Flash and have terrible UX.

~~~
pieratt
A part of the issue here is that most design schools require a Masters degree
from their teaching staff, which flies in the face of working with talent in
new media fields.

I spoke with the Chair of the design department at a decent school about this
recently, and they basically had no intention of changing their policies on
this.

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tptacek
Why isn't the answer to this question simply the bill rate of graphic
designers? A standard web design project runs 10k-20k. A standard dev project
runs 20k-100k. Also: the Internet is lousy with designers. Scarcity isn't the
reason.

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jbenz
This article is really asking: Why haven't more designers become VCs and Angel
Investors? He does a pretty nice job of answering this question.

I hire a lot of talented graphic design interns. We encourage them to think:
"What skills can I learn to make myself more valuable?" The answer I always
tell them is hacking. A suprisingly large amount of them don't know much about
the hacker / startup world. They don't realize that being an awesome designer
and an awesome developer could make them all-powerful.

This holds particularly true when thinking about this article's final point
regarding "me-too products".

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chaostheory
edit: (forgot to elaborate on which question I was referring to) "There just
aren't that many designers out there, relative to other disciplines. Anybody
who has tried to hire designers knows that it is super hard, harder than
hiring engineers which is already hard."

I think the real question is: why aren't more graphic designers transitioning
from print into web design instead?

IMO There are plenty of graphic designers for market demand, but there are
very few qualified web designers

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omouse
Because web design sucks. Dealing with HTML and CSS directly is like dealing
with assembly language. With print design you know exactly what you have to
work with. With web design, you're designing for a multitude of browsers and
clients.

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pclark
BVP has a designer in residence.

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jasonlbaptiste
Interesting fact: Mike Moritz was a journalist for many years before Sequoia.

