Book Review: Stand Out
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Are you a struggling designer wondering what your next move should be? Are you just starting out? Maybe you’ve been at this for a while but not seeing the results that you want?
Wherever you are in your design process, you’ll want to check out Denise Anderson’s Stand Out.
Despite Anderson’s bright colors, Stand Out makes its own statement with helpful information and illustrations for its readers.
Stand Out takes you step by step and offers you a guiding hand to assemble an employable graphic design portfolio, an appealing personal brand, and, most importantly, how to procure a potential job offer.
While on my first read, I thought Stand Out was a bit wordy. However, not all of Anderson’s text is related to her own commentary. A lot revolves around graphic design business’ case studies and graphic design exercises to interact with the reader. Each is depicted with brightly colored, but not overpowering, headers and illustrations to promote their purpose.
This is a great graphic design book to go through if you’re just entering your graphic design career or are about to enter it. I know, if you were anything like me, you might be nervous about getting employment after college or once you have some graphic design examples under your belt. It can be a nerve-wracking experience. If you plan accordingly, you can easily make strides to being more confident in your portfolio selections and your professional prospects with this book.
Anderson takes you through the three aspects as a designer that are important when approaching graphic design careers.
1. Creating a personal brand.
In this section, Anderson’s very clear on giving you many things to focus on. Some topics are the target audience for your clients, discovering your personality, and determining your style. She offers both graphic design exercises and examples for this process so you know you are on the right track.
2. Developing your graphic design portfolio.
Anderson knows the importance of your work in this section. She knows what to look for in an engaging graphic design portfolio. She suggests an array of graphic design examples but to be selective in all the work that you have. It should be enticing to your audience and provocative to your employer. Again, Anderson includes a wide variety of graphic design exercises and case studies to back up her findings.
3. Landing the job!
This section in Stand Out is similar to Craig Oldham’s Oh Sh*t… What Now? Anderson provides you many avenues to pursue when looking for a job in the design sector. She doesn’t tell you just what you can do in design, but also tells you more about how you can land the interview and the offer.
Read more about Craig’s book Oh Sh*t… What Now? here.
If these three steps seem daunting to you, do not worry too much.
In each section, Anderson goes even further by creating her own projects for her audience. Some might be a few sentences, sharing the page with 2 other subsections, but others are lengthy and need their own graphic design exercise or example to move forward.
Better yet, each section provides a few graphic design examples of each task at the end. So if you’re nervous about doing anything incorrectly, finish each section and take a look at the end result to make sure you are headed in the right direction.
Anderson makes sure to focus on the individual’s graphic design career in Stand Out , yet I still find many ways it could transfer over for small or start-up graphic design businesses.
I’d suggest this book , even if you’re not a designer or starting a creative business. If you’re struggling to put together a graphic design portfolio for your employer to show you know what to do, look into some of the information that Anderson provides in her book.
If you’re not a graphic designer, you’re probably wondering what this book has to do with you?
Note: There are probably more reasons than these to recommend this book for you or your business.
- If you are starting a business, this is a great way to sift through packages, ideal clients and branding. Even if this is catered to designers, you might have to put on your design cap or understand what a designer is talking to you about in regards to your business.
- Creating a portfolio is great for everyone. If you’re a project manager, you’ll want to remember some of your better-accomplished projects and your role within them. If you’re an accountant, maybe you’ve managed or assisted in some big-name accounts that you’re proud of. While you might not have the physical documents, you can learn a lot from developing and maintaining a portfolio of work in some shape or fashion.
- At the end of this book, Anderson talks about resumes and presentations when talking with potential employers. Resumes can always use a personal touch and Anderson does a great job in talking more in detail about this topic.
- If you deal with anything that might be presented, I’d recommend this book. Anderson makes a great point about putting everything through a round of design. While it might not seem essential to put your memo out in branded letterhead, it probably would make it more eye-catching to make people follow the office rule or the changes in management.
Most of Anderson’s graphic design exercises are great practice for your potential clients as well. Most of her design briefs that she has her audience participate in are good examples for what you should be asking clients or collaborators. No matter if you are looking into starting a graphic design business, go with an agency, or enter another company, these are great ways to start questioning people that are working with a designer to develop a project for them.
Read more on 5 Key Elements to Question when Building your Personal Brand
I wouldn’t try getting through this book quickly, however. Most of her graphic design exercises are meant to be thought-provoking and make you question the choices you are making. The graphic design exercise you’re doing might take an hour at the most, if you know yourself or your work well enough to answer each survey. That being said, the graphic design exercises should allow you to question your prospective professional outlook.
If you’re going through Stand Out from front to back, I’d probably give yourself at least a month to really develop everything, and that’s if you have thought about each of these topics a bit. I’d probably give yourself a bit more time if you are starting from ground zero.
No matter how you use it, Stand Out is a must-have for establishing a brand, building a portfolio of great assets for your career, and giving you valuable professional advice.
Do you have any other advice for aspiring designers? Or, better yet, have you read Stand Out by Denise Anderson? Give a piece of your own advice in the comments section below!
