IF diversification is the name of the entrepreneurial game, then one
of the more interesting examples of this is Macdonald Design.
This Edinburgh-based company was founded by Donald Macdonald -- a man
of many parts. He has a diploma in architecture and in town and country
planning, practised architecture for quarter of a century, and latterly
became an architectural consultant for six years.
Not content with all this, he taught himself to play the double bass
and played for 15 years with the New Society Syncopators, a traditional
jazz band in the New Orleans tradition, making several recordings along
the way. Then, in the 1970s, he was passing a music shop in Edinburgh,
saw a Dallas saxophone (in white plastic with brass fittings) on display
for sale at the princely sum of #15, and taught himself to play that
too.
In 1988 he was head-hunted by Fat Sams Band and asked to revert to
double bass playing. This he did and he has just returned from a
fortnight playing with this nine-piece band at the Sacramento Festival
in California.
All during the years when he was a full-time architect and a part-time
and freelance musician, however, he had dabbled in cartoons (his father
having been for many years the cartoonist on the Edinburgh Evening
News). Now, however, ''the current recession is so bad that many
architectural firms are down almost to one-man-and-a-boy outfits. And
there's no money to be made in music either''.
He has therefore forsaken his first professional calling of
architecture and has diversified into the field of technical graphics
and cartoon illustrations as a full-time career, although he still plays
the bass with Fat Sams Band and the saxophone with the Temple Hall
Stompers.
His move into the field of technical graphics involves the design of
letterheads, business cards, leaflets, posters, and brochures. He had a
lot more self-learning to undergo, familiarising himself with desktop
publishing.
He emphasises that cartoon illustrations and technical graphics can
instantly convey the essence of an idea and enliven what could otherwise
be a dull publication. ''Anywhere there are mountains of text, the best
way to get message across is by means of using cartoon illustrations.''
The way to penetrate the market is, he says, by targeting advertising
agencies in the first instance. It is these agencies and large graphics
houses which tend to sub-contract their cartoon work, and what Macdonald
Design effectively is doing is selling its specialist services.
Publications such as company reports and brochures have tended to be
somewhat grey affairs in the past. The lightening of such publications
with graphics and cartoons could well prove a crucial selling point.
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