Gain a professional edge by becoming a Certified Graphic Designer. Our next portfolio review will take place the week of April 04.

Get your work ready! Portfolio submission will happen the week of March 28 - April 01, 2011.

GDC/BC and FunctionFox are proud to present 2 professional development workshops with Blair Enns, founder of the Win Without Pitching movement and a business development adviser to marketing communication agencies. 

Choose the workshop that works best for you or take both and spend the day immersed in creative business knowledge. Blair will personally guide you in both half day workshop sessions to empower you to change the way you present your creative services to your current and potential clients.

Location: Westin Bayshore Hotel
1601 Bayshore drive, Vancouver

Date: February 9th, 2011

Cost for GDC Members:

Single workshop $250 (Choose from morning or afternoon half-day session)

Workshops combo: $450 (Full-day session)

Include continental breakfast/lunch and coffee breaks

Limited seats available. Sign up here!

Sign in to your GDC account to receive your member pricing.

Cost for Non-members:

Single workshop $350 (Choose from morning or afternoon half-day session)

Workshops combo: $550 (Full-day session)

Includes continental breakfast/lunch and coffee breaks

Morning Workshop | 8:00 AM to 12:00 noon

Positioning for Profit

Business development success begins with positioning, says business development consultant and Win Without Pitching author Blair Enns. In this half-day workshop, Enns explores the role of a creative firm’s positioning in its business development efforts and he maps out the steps to take to position your firm for success.

In this workshop you will learn:

• Why business development success begins with positioning (and why positioning is harder for creative firms than any other profession)

• The common mistakes to avoid in positioning your firm

• The three components and ten tests of a successful positioning

• How to make your new positioning real 

Blair Enns has helped to position hundreds of creative businesses around the world and in this workshop he’ll help to position yours. Devote a half a day to setting the foundations for business development success in 2011.

Afternoon Workshop | 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM

Beating the RFP

The RFP process is but a game – a puzzle to solve, says business development consultant and Win Without Pitching author Blair Enns. In this half-day workshop, Enns explains how the compliant followers of the RFP process seldom win and what you can do about. Your days of blindly responding to RFPs are over. 

In this workshop you will learn:

• Seven steps for responding to RFPs

• The criteria for determining which ones to pursue and which ones to pass on

• How to derail the RFPs process and gain the inside track when it cannot be derailed

• How to get out of the proposal writing business for good (and where to direct all that proposal-writing time)

Creative firms needlessly devote many hundreds of hours a year to unnecessarily responding to RFPs and writing lengthy proposals, according to Enns. “The RFP process is a shield designed to keep the undifferentiated firms at arms length, while the truly differentiated are allowed in through the side door.”

Join Blair Enns for this half-day workshop as he lays out the path to the side door.

We would like to determine how relevant sustainability is for British Columbia designers in their practice today, by asking you to participate in our Sustainable Desing Survey.

This survey is confidential, with no identifiable personal information collected as part of the survey. It will take approximately seven (7) minutes to complete.  Please fill out the survey here before Friday, December 17.

For more information on sustainability as it applies to your design practice, or the work of GDC BC Sustainability Committee, please contact out Chapter's Sustainability Chair 

 For more info about the GDC National Sustainability Committee, please contactValerie Elliott CGD.