Graphic Designers on Reality Television Competitions

HELLO NBC! Two of NBC's shows that were on the Spring 2011 Television Lineup, Celebrity Apprentice & America's Next Great Restaurant have incorporated Graphic Designers into their business competitions. Heavily demonstrated on America's Next Great Restaurant, Graphic Designers helped showcase the importance of branding and executing your business visually each week by having the restaurant entrepreneurs to not only have a cooking challenge each week, but a design challenge and help them create their companies logos, visual atmosphere, branding, marketing, menus and even their chefs outfits. 
On this season of Celebrity Apprentice, I quickly found out that Star Jones is not only a diva with a big personality, but is very tech-savy and works quite well with the graphic designers compared to the other project managers including legendary stars and actors/actresses as LaToya Jackson, Marlee Matlin, John Rich, Meatloaf, etc. Here are some tips that these celebrities and other entrepreneurs need to take in consideration when working with graphic designers. Take these tips into consideration if you want to have a winning design:

Hovering
Standing next to the designer and looking over their shoulder telling them where to click and specifically what to do. The contestants tend to use this technique in every episode and I can’t stress enough how inappropriate this behavior is.

Why It’s Wrong:
The graphic designer is not an extention of the computer. They are a human being with a knowledge of not only the tools but also of design theory. Micro-mange them like a machine and the results will suffer. 

How To Do It Right: 
Realize that the designer is an expert. Let them do their job without interference. Communicate your desires to them, walk away, and review their work when it’s complete. This is the number one tip to take away from The Celebrity Apprentice.

Know-It-All
Too often the project managers on The Celebrity Apprentice, especially Star Jones, think that they are experts on every topic. This leads to a terrible job of listening to their team.

Why It’s Wrong:
Your team knows things that you don’t. They can bring ideas, concepts, or critiques to the table that are valid and need to be considered. Excluding team members results in poor morale and low productivity.

How To Do It Right: 
Listen to them; open your ears, eyes, and mind! You don’t have to take all their ideas but make sure that not only are ideas heard but that the teamfeels like their ideas are heard. That is an important distinction. And always remember, the designer is part of the team! Include them in the decision making process.


Make it Bigger!
Making the product as big as a New York Sky Scraper, does not communicate effectively. We’ve seen this technique week after week on the show. Too many messages on one piece or an over emphasis on the size of the product or logo.

Why It’s Wrong:
Branding does not mean louder, bigger, bolder, and more copy. Branding has more to do with staying in line with the image that you simultaneously project and is projected upon you by your customers. Making a design louder, bigger, or adding bursts everywhere will not communicate more effectively than a well designed, targeted, branded, and sophisticated piece. Quite often the saying, less is more, is true.

How To Do It Right: 
Don’t try to shove 10 lb. of JUNK into a 5 lb. bag. Edit your content. Know your brand, know what is crucial to the message of each piece and cut the fat.

Unclear Messages
On the show the poor designer is taking commands from several people who all have different ideas of how the final product should look. Which is why so many of the final products look so terrible.

Why It’s Wrong:
Graphic designers are communicators. They take the message of business A and communicate it visually to potential customer B. If you can’t communicate your message clearly to the designer how can you expect them to communicate effectively to your audience?

How To Do It Right: 
Define your message clearly to your self and your closest team members. Pick your target audience and decide on your message. Sit down with a designer that listens carefully and understands their role in the process. Communicate to your designer effectively.


*four examples are courtesy of Graphic Designer James Kurtz as well as Andrew Bartolotta.