Becoming a Design Entrepreneur: How to Launch Your Design-Driven Ventures from Apps to Zines

Lita Talarico · Steven Heller

Nov 2016 · Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

About this ebook

Any designer who runs a studio, office, or firm is entrepreneurial. In fact, anyone with a studio already has an infrastructure for entrepreneurial content development, and with the technological developments over the last few decades, there are more opportunities now than ever. The use of computers has allowed not only new tools for creating design, but also enables makers with entirely new ways to prototype, promote, and sell their products. Becoming a Design Entrepreneur is the guide for these designers and a breakdown of the prospects and challenges they face. Topics include:

•Methods for launching a venture into the market
•Tips on presentation, pitch and public relations
•How to legally protect intellectual property
•Ways to do effective research, and crowd source
•How to benefit from social media
•Sources for funding and investment and incubators
•Case studies from successful and startup entrepreneurs.

The ability to produce and market has helped to reposition graphic design in the new entrepreneurial economy, in which graphic design entrepreneurs are constantly raising design bars and standards. Everyone harbors at least one viable product idea, and designers can be "social entrepreneurs," creating campaigns or events that serve the greater good aside from profit-making. Readers will learn to grow as innovators and creators from Becoming a Design Entrepreneur.

Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

About the author

Steven Heller and Lita Talarico are co-founders and co-chairs of the MFA Design / Designer as Author + Entrepreneur program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Heller is the author and co-author of over 170 books on design and popular culture. He is a contributing editor to Print, ID, EYE, and Baseline magazines and writes on design each week for the Atlantic online. For thirty-three years he was an art director of the New York Times and is the recipient of the AIGA Medal, Art Directors Hall of Fame and Smithsonian National Design Award for “Design Mind.” Talarico co-founded the SVA Masters Workshop, an intensive summer program on design history, theory and practice in Rome, Italy. She is the co-author of Typography Sketchbooks; Design Firms Open for Business; The Design Entrepreneur; Graphic: Inside the Sketchbooks of the World’s Great Graphic Designers; Design School Confidential; and Design Career: A Practical Guide for Beginning Illustrators and Graphic Designers. A board-member emeritus of Adobe Education Partners by Design program, she holds a Masters in Art Criticism and Writing. Becoming a Design Entrepreneur is a follow-up to Heller and Talarico's co-authored book The Design Entrepreneur. They both live in New York City.