A Visible Distance: Craft, Creativity, and the Business of Design

By Matt Owens A practical guide to building your own design and branding firm, as told by a leading figure in the field Part personal memoir and part professional manual by designer and creative strategist Matt Owens, A Visible Distance addresses the common challenges faced when building a practice in graphic design or branding. Drawing lessons from Owens’ roots in DIY, punk and skateboarding in the later ’80s, to the advent of the commercialization of the internet in the late 1990s, building and growing a creative agency, to the present disruption of artificial intelligence, automation and distributed hybrid teams, A Visible Distance is a testimony to learning new things and embracing fundamental changes in popular culture, tools, technologies and processes to make your own way in design.The book provides concrete strategies to tackle the complexities of balancing intuition and taste, technical and personal capability, strategic business decisions in design work and the demands of modern brand building."Matt Owens masterfully decodes the complex interplay between design aesthetics and commercial success. This book is for anyone serious about making their mark in the design world without sacrificing creative integrity.” —Elliot Earls, head of the Graduate Graphic Design, Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art Edited by Margaret DodgeEditorial advising by Mark Owens and Freek Lomme Designed by Matt OwensWith production assistance from Ryan Gerald Nelson / Studio Xee Published by Set Margins' Publications, 2024 Softcover with flaps, 236 pages, 34 full color images, 6 × 9 inches ISBN: 978-9-08-340414-1