Seed Conference 3: Carlos Segura

I went to the Seed 3 Conference in Chicago. This is the first in a series of posts about the presentations I saw there.

Carlos Segura is the founder of Chicago-based Segura Inc and runs a whole host of websites and commercial interests centering around his design expertise and passions. At Seed 3, Carlos took the crowd through a history of his businesses and explained the importance of respecting your audience, picking your clients, and doing work you can be proud of.

On seeing things differently

Carlos started out his talk by showing off some pictures of sewer covers. In New York City, he pointed out that the manhole covers are made in China and India. In Los Angeles, he noticed that they also came from India. In Chicago, they were produced in Mexico. These are the sorts of things he believes are important to notice, the details that slip past casual view.

“Communication that doesn’t take a chance, doesn’t stand a chance.” - Carlos Segura

The Segura Inc. businesses

Carlos is involved in a lot of sites/businesses:

• t26 - a type foundry. On t26, font designers showcase and sell their wares. The site was designed to market the type as well as the designer and early on in its history, they used to create music videos to go along with each font, a nifty idea that helped people understand the attitude and feeling that the write fonts could convey.
• 5inch.com - a site dedicated to CD packaging and printing.
  

  “Delivers the delivery vehicle for CDs.” - Carlos Segura

• CarType - a site for collecting design details (logos, emblems, typography, industrial art) of cars
• Segura Inc. - This is the overarching company and contract design firm. Carlos walked the crowd through various design projects such as working with fashion retailers on tags that live beyond purchase, comic book covers that didn’t look like comics, creating topographical pamphlets and brand identity for Rockshox, and working with Corbis to use their photos to tell stories through imaginative croppings and side by side presentation.

Words to work by: What I took away from this presenter

• “Respect for the audience is what will get you work from clients.” Nobody wants to work with a firm that’s “too cool” for their customers. Treat the customers as special and with respect.
• Similarly, “talk to the audience, not the client.” If the client has an issue, tell them “I’m not designing for you.”
• “Build relationships with clients that choose to listen to you.” Life is far too short to work with people that waste your time or make work feel unrewarding.
• “Be unique with what you’re asked to do.” When clients request your work, give them something more than what they were expecting.
• Only produce things that you can be proud of.
• “We create what we think the client needs (not just what they’re asking for).”
• “Cause and effect. The one choice we have the power to make - what we do with our time - is the choice we fail at most frequently. You have to be willing to accept the byproduct of being fired.”

Additional Stuff:

• BusinessPOV video interview of Carlos Segura out in front of the conference

[Disclaimer: What you have read in this post is my recollection and my notes from the event. I make no claims to 100% transcription accuracy and if I botched something, I'm happy to fix it - just drop me a comment.]