Happy New Year

Lily and Julia at our graphic design firm

Happy New Year and welcome to the first entry of the Opus Design Blog. My name is Lily Robles and along with Julia Frenkle, we run Opus Design, a small graphic design firm in Boston MA. Today we are celebrating our second year as a business. After working together for many years in a design studio as part of a strategy consulting firm, we are off on our own: putting in the crazy hours, obsessing over the design projects, and dreaming about the details and deadlines (more like nightmares). It’s consuming, challenging … and super fun.

Over the coming months we will share the design ideas, questions and discoveries we make throughout the year at our graphic design firm. Designers, please feel free to comment and say how much time you’ve saved with our tips and tricks* or maybe tell us that you already learned that trick back in 2005. (We never assume we’re the first to figure things out.)

I worked in one place for 22 years. I learned mainly out of necessity when there were problems to solve…but thank god for my design colleagues who shared what they figured out behind their screens and said “hey guys, you gotta check this out!”

We hope this blog will offer readers much more than technical information. A good designer has the tools and can use them efficiently. But other elements are just as important; conversations with clients are part of the design; the questions* we ask are part of the design; the 5 second pause followed by the 5 second comment that we get from the art director is part of the design*; the stuff we have to try and throw out* because they suck — are all part of the design process. I will talk a lot about this process as well as the client’s participation* which is also consuming, challenging and super fun.

Julia and I want to thank our clients for trusting us with their projects. We’d like to thank our designers, apprentices and vendors for their time, talent and patience. We look forward to seeing you in the new year and wish you health and happiness.