Brendan Murphy Symposium

On Friday, our class had the opportunity to attend a symposium with Brendan Murphy, who is a graduate of the GIT department of PSU and now works for the Lippincott branding firm in NYC. He had lots of interesting information to share.

One thing that stood out to me was that a huge part of designing is writing. He said that he spends 75% of his time writing, 5-10% drawing, and the rest of it in training for different projects. He also said that he is eternally grateful to his tech writing instructor. I don't think Dr. Hermansson was there, but I'm sure she would have appreciated that comment. Not that I
don't always pay attention in tech writing, but I will most definitely save my notes from the class for future use. I will appreciate more the writing assignments for Digital File Prep., as well.

One of Brendan's early and most important projects was his redesign of the universal symbol for handicapped people. He designed it so that the wheelchair was not representative of the person, but rather the person is more independent of the chair. I think it was a brilliant idea, and, apparently, so did a lot of companies such as Walmart, who adopted the symbol for their stores.

Another thing that stood out to me was when Brendan said that the following line can sum up the process they use for designing: "Nowhere leads to somewhere." That inspired me because I dread a blank slate at times. Sometimes I feel like I don't have a wall off of which I can push myself and gain some momentum, but this simple line gave me some hope that something can come out of nothing.

Brendan also said that we should "never fall in love with the technology because it's always changing." I'd never stopped to think of that before, but it's true. Today, we have Adobe products, computers, and a plethora of other instruments to help us in the designing process. However, in the future, the way that we go about the art will be different. We need to hold on to the core principles of design so that we can succeed, no matter what medium we are using.

Among Brendan's interesting tidbits was the fact that places like McDonald's and Cinnabon use "pumped-in smells" to attract customers. I always smell the fries when I pass by McDonald's, but I never stopped to think that they could be exaggerating the smell for my sake.

Brendan also told us that some companies are in the process of creating scents for companies along with the visual and verbal elements of brand identity. I'm anxious to see how that type of concept will be implemented.

One statistic that he mentioned when asked was that he has had scenarios where they created anywhere from 300 to 3,000 thumbnails for one logo project. Sometimes it takes that long before coming across the right one. To a student just getting started and learning the ropes of design, that's quite an overwhelming concept.

Another great piece of advice he imparted to us was to read as much as possible outside of our own specific disciplines and to realize that general education courses are just as important as our major classes because they help us to be well-rounded and give us the ability to relate situations all over the board to our own areas of expertise.

One of the final things he told us is what makes a company a good company is how much you invest into it. I'm sure he meant not only financial, but also physical, mental, and emotional. The time spent on a project will most definitely show in the final results.

*Brendan Murphy photo source: funxionology blog.