Toky Visit

Toky.com
Last Friday I visited a very awesome branding company here in St. Louis called Toky. I met the Senior Interactive Designer, Kirsten O'Loughlin at the Cherokee Street Print Sale and she invited me to take a tour of Toky and look at my portfolio.
These are the things that i learned from her:
Number One: Always be continuously looking for innovation and inspiration. Find a good bookmarking website and bookmark any website that impresses you. When you start a project, research all current websites that have the same target and audience. Stay current with all the popular trends.
Number Two: Never skip any steps in the design process, take every step seriously and design every step well. She actually has the job that I some day want, which is to be the one that finds out what the client wants and how to give them more than what they thought was possible. She starts with diagrams and wireframe sketches and she puts a lot of effort into them. (This is the part that I find most fun.)
Number Three: Always work with the Client. Clients will always have bad suggestions or difficult requests and the best way to deal with this is with example and discussion. When your client gives a bad suggestion show them other websites that communicates what they desire and explain why this website was successful at it. Become good at discussing design to that good design can be explained and easily understood for those without a design mind.

I'm sure there was more but of course I can't remember all of it because I waited Three days to blog about it...