Catherine Baird

Associate Creative Director, Dashboard

www.catherinebaird.com

Catherine is a Sheridan Alumni, who kindly returns every year to share her story the students of Web Design. She shared with us her admiration for recently deceased Arnaud Mercier, her inspiration. He combined design, photography and art in motion graphics. You can find samples of his work at Area 17 and more about his life and his career as well.

Catherine also emphasized how very hard it is to find a qualified senior art director with interactive design experience and how for those of us who are more experienced in the working world will find the combination of skills beneficial.

– Her main message – 

BE INSPIRED!!

Do what you love, love what you do.

Her history:

She graduated in 2001 during the dot come crash. There was lots of concern for many grads regarding employment opportunities post graduation. Catherine was fortunate and was hired right out of school with Eccentricarts. She was more or less interviewed at the Grad Show and employed within a few weeks.

She later went on to work for Henderson Bas. Within 3 yrs she was running the art department and was managing 9 designers. Although she loved her work there, one of her bigger challenges was learning how to manage people.

In looking for a big change in her life she moved to Paris and worked for a brief time at 5emegauche, Paris, Senior Art Director. She found it incredibly challenging to work in a foreign language, in a foreign market, with foreign tools (keyboard). Her time there was brief, but rewarding.

After returning to Canada she worked part time and did Freelance work for 4 years before moving onto Dashboard. She transitioned to an employee of Dashboard from a freelancer.

A big challenge that she's faced often is the assumption that interactive designers can’t design for print. Perhaps it's just the other side of the coin, for us traditional designs often can feel like there are assumptions that we are unable to design for digital.

Her current employer, Dashboard is a tight group, a smaller agency specializing in digital marketing. Their client list is impressive, as were the sample of her work. She spoke about the Thrivetastic campaign for ING and the redesign of The Grid.com. Both very creative and unique, however, perhaps it was my heart strings, but I loved what they did for the Santa Claus parade!

5 Steps to Success

1.  Be a really, really good designer
2. Understand and love technology
3.  Learn video, flash animation and social media (Premier, final cut pro and after effects)
4.  Understand what User Experience and Information Architecture are
5.   Work hard, be flexible and keep up

Other Advise:

When contacting employers – if you don’t get a response, follow up. They’re likely just busy. Be persistent, but not crazy. Don’t be afraid to ask for a portfolio review.

Recommended Book – Reality is Broken By Jane M??

Look into Ad Lounge and Sid Lee

Overall, I really enjoyed Catherine's down to earth, practical, yet creative approach. She offered good insight and valuable advise. She was approachable, yet commanded a level of respect, but in a subtle way.

I guess my favourite part was that she was real and realistic in her approach and what she preached.