Talent is Not Enough

The best business guide for design professionals just got even better! This revised and expanded third edition includes everything designers need–besides talent–to turn their artistic success into business success. You’ll find information on key issues facing designers from freelancing to managing established design firms. A strong visual focus and to-the-point text take the fear factor out of learning about thorny business realities like staffing, marketing, bookkeeping, intellectual property, and more. These smart business practices are essential to success in graphic, Web, and industrial design. Here are just a few of the things you’ll learn:


• How to get on the right career path

• The best way to determine pricing

• How to avoid common legal pitfalls

• How to manage large projects

• The secrets of efficient design teams

• How to forecast your workload and finances

• Dealing with international clients

• The merging models of ad agencies and design firms


Talent Is Not Enough provides a big-picture context for these and other challenges and shares practical, real-world advice. Since its first publication, the book has become an essential resource for both students and working professionals in these areas and more:


• Design planning and strategy

• Corporate identity development

• Publication and editorial design

• Brand identity and packaging design

• Advertising and promotion design

• Marketing communications

• Environmental design

• Industrial design

• Motion graphics

• Interaction design

• Information design


“It is rare to find one individual with such a wide range of knowledge in the design-related fields. And, because of his experience as a designer, Shel brings a sensitivity and understanding to administrative issues while still respecting the artistic side of our industry.”

–Frank Maddocks, President, Maddocks & Company



 “Now that design skills have become a commodity, you need business skills to focus them. Shel has written a crackerjack book that will be on the shelf of every ambitious designer.”

–Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company, Zag and The Brand Gap