Thursday, November 12, 2009

Design Team tips!

So, you have been thinking you would like to be on a Design Team? You have no experience? Well over the next week or two I am going to do several posts about this process and how you can continue to move towards achieving your goal. This is all based on the process of how I went about it. I am sure there are many ways and many ideas and if you have other tips please post them in the comments section below each post.

So how to get started? How to break into the Design Team game?

I decided for myself that before I approached a manufacturer that I wanted to get some experience. So I found a kit club that I loved and I joined. Once I was a member for a couple of months I contacted the owner and inquired about the possibility of being on her Design Team. I sent her some samples of my work. She liked what I sent and said to contact me a couple of months later. So I put a note on my calendar and two months later I followed up. I attached more samples of my work. Well, she invited me at that point to be part of the team! So this was my very first time on a Design Team and I was thrilled! I had so much fun on this team!

The same owner of the kit club decided to become a manufacturer of papers and embellishments. So she invited me on to that team once she got things going as well and this was my first manufacturer team. She actually asked me to be the DT coordinator which was a fun job.

So this is how I broke into the industry as a project designer. I've got more to share so check back in a few days and I will focus more on the process of doing work for manufacturers. I thought I would start at the beginning and get any of you that do not have experience something to think about as you decide what direction to take in the industry.

There are tons of kit clubs out there but also think about your Local Scrapbook Store, online stores, and being a guest designer on blogs.

Once you are rolling with an entry designing gig then you will want to create your own personal blog to track your experience for people to view. If you notice on my blog home page there is a link to my resume. I have this set up so when I approach someone I want to do work for they can easily go and see my experience.


If you have any questions post them in the commnets and I will post a comment answering your question!

1 comment:

pattyb said...

Great advice. It's so sweet of you to help your blog readers out. Thanks Lisa.