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.