Starting a productized design service

👋🏼 Hi, this is Aayush with another publication of the Joy Of Creation newsletter, where I piece together my way of stumbling at success in the design industry. Subscribe to this newsletter if you have a deep appreciation for design and the desire to make a living in this space.

In this issue, we cover:

• Starting a productized design service

• To what degree?

Starting a productized design service

In the corporate context, the art of presentation is all about making your audience more informed than earlier about the project at hand. It’s a theoretical way of solving the problem of miscommunication or lack-of-communication between two parties, most often between clients and vendors, employees, new hires, and the media.

In 2011, although I was too young to realize that, I did enjoy designing decks, a lot. My manager would at times be surprised how well I would develop one from start to finish, and with finesse he had never seen. Following my natural career progression, it wasn’t until 4 years later in 2015 when I started INK PPT.

Recently, I also started INKLUSIVE*, which is a productized version of the services we have at INK PPT. Similar to the need-of-the-hour back in 2015, INKLUSIVE was started to meet the growing demands of brands who need a one-tap access to design services all year round. 

This has proved to be an elegant business model. The reluctance of brands to ask for this service lies in the pain of hiring, managing, and worst of all, firing designers practically every now and then.

This is a deeper dive into the model I have adopted:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IYCQSqwH3EgJpc5FgMyV185QSUZWAKcBK-zIXjKM4pg/edit?usp=sharing

To what degree?

To what degree must we be educated to become good designers?

While I was scrolling through design jobs at top companies on LinkedIn, incidence of a degree mandate was rare. Skill proficiency and software expertise were the prime asks.

But as the mediums to design become increasingly computerized, softwares increasingly complex, and competition soaring sky high, can we and should we neglect formal education?

I’m against that. 

College gives us mastery-based learning. I was a dot net developer starting out in my career and getting my initial job at Infosys wouldn’t be possible without my degree. The grade systems may be flawed but student outcomes have always gotten better into producing intelligent humans. 

If the argument is the failure of institutions to provide students their desired jobs, education is meant to prepare them for life, not for the upcoming campus interviews. Agencies would write off degree mandates of their job description, and so would I, but a good portfolio and a good academic career beats just a good portfolio.

Our duty as the future talent of the nation is not to question college, but to enable everyone to be able to attend it first. 

David Leonhardt from the New York Times said:

While four-year college may not be for everyone, the opportunity to go to a four-year college absolutely should be for everyone.

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