Design professors Launch Book, Promoting Value of Professional Design Work

Associate Professor in the School of Visual Communication Design (VCD) Ken Visocky O’Grady and his wife, VCD alumna and Chair of the Art Department at Cleveland State University, Jenn Visocky O’Grady recently released Design Currency:Understand, define, and promote the value of your design work. Design Currency “shows you how to frame the value of your design work in terms that your business partners will both understand and respect. An actionable resource, Design Currency empowers you to do your job with less pushback on aesthetic decisions, encourages earlier involvement in the creation process, and it makes it easier for you to justify your fees.” The text strives to teach designers how to leverage their skills in new ways; measure the value that design work brings to a project and articulate that value; charge clients based on the value of their work; and generate business value by better identifying audience needs. The pair is speaking on the same topic at the HOW Design Live conference in San Francisco from June 23-26, the “largest annual gathering for creative professionals.” HOW Design Live combines four separate creative conferences, each focusing on distinct audiences – agency designers, creative freelancers, in-house managers and package designers. The HOW brand began as a print magazine in 1985, and has since expanded rapidly into resources for designers in design courses and books, competitions and MyDesignShop.com. Design Currency is available at PeachPit.com/DesignCurrency. Download a free chapter here. Jenn and Ken are co-authors of The Information Design Handbook, and A Designer’s Research Manual. The pair strives to make academic concepts approachable while celebrating the power, impact and potential of good design.