Published in 2018
209 pages
Bonnie Siegler, voted one of the fifty most influential designers working today by Graphic Design USA, founded and runs the award-winning design studio Eight and a Half. She is best known for her design work for Saturday Night Live, the Criterion Collection, HBO, Late Night with Seth Meyers, StoryCorps, Participant Media, and Newsweek. Most recently, she was the creative director of the Trump parody memoir You Can’t Spell America Without Me by Alec Baldwin and Kurt Andersen and created the main title sequence for Will & Grace. She has taught at the graduate level for many years at the School of Visual Arts and Yale University, conducted workshops at the Maryland Institute College of Art and Rhode Island School of Design, and judged design competitions all over the place. She is the author of Signs of Resistance: A Visual History of Protest in America and Dear Client: This Book Will Teach You How to Get What You Want from Creative People. She is married to experimental filmmaker Jeff Scher, and they have two wonderful children, Buster and Oscar.
What is this book about?
In this practical, easy-to-follow guide for the client in a creative collaboration, Bonnie Siegler, an eminent graphic designer, directs the reader with a light hand through the pitfalls that often occur between client and creative professional. Her advice is nonjudgmental, with a sense of authority derived from working with clients such as Oprah and Saturday Night Live.
Each concise chapter of this prescriptive book will walk you through the different phases and experiences of the creative process, such as how to communicate to a design team exactly what you want (adjectives are your best friend), which words or phrases to avoid so as not to stump the designer’s creativity (don’t say “Make it bigger”), the importance of designating one decision-maker, how to be open to something you didn’t imagine, and how to establish clarity of purpose. With informative and amusing stories of good and bad clients, How to Work with Creative People is a game-changing and approachable handbook for achieving a productive and enjoyable relationship with creative professionals, and is sure to join the canon of breakout visual business books such as Rework or The Power of Habit.
