August 10, 2009
The Richards Group
2 min readWhile we were in Dallas, we also met with Brian Linder, Creative Director at Clickhere.com which is the interactive division of the Richards Group. They have a huge building in Dallas and needless to say we were a bit intimidated when we walked in. Clickhere was on the 15th floor and it housed about 100 designers/developers/flash gurus/CDs/ADs/ and other distinguished position titles. This was the first time we had experienced a design firm of this size. Upon stepping out of the elevator, there was a farm of cubicles that looked to be adorned with some pretty cool stuff, but we weren’t allowed to roam (apparently there was some kind of theft in the past). So it was very cool to be inside this monolith of a design firm but sadly we didn’t get to see much. We did get to talk a lot about the incentives of working at the Richards Group. If you’re interested, take a look at their website. Follow this link and then click on “Our Pay”.
Brian talked a bit about portfolios. One great piece of advice was to make sure that when you present an idea, you explore every possible angle. Show as many different uses for the design. For example, you create an identity for, say Llama Wear, a fashion label. Do the standard college class stuff, logo, letterheads, business cards, but then be sure to think about where we are today. What about social media? Explore things like facebook applications, twitter backgrounds, web presence, iphone apps. How could you integrate your fashion label with the local community? Print advertisements, sponsorships, etc. The more applications of your design that you can explore and show in your portfolio, the better your chances.
We wanna thank Pete and Brian from taking time out of their day to chat with us about design and about working in a large firm. We def. feel like we took a lot away from our time at the Richards Group.