Today I’m giving you a peak at the sort of thing designers would rather not point out: sometimes we make mistakes. Gasp! Unfortunately it’s true, and with the permission of one of our fav clients, I thought I’d share one of our mistakes from a few weeks back…and what we did to fix it.
More than anything else, I want to share it because in Architecture school my professors often told my studio-mates and I to “measure twice, cut once.” We practice this on a daily basis, but there are those occasions when everyone forgets to measure that second time. Even more importantly, I’ve learned over the years that a pair of fresh eyes can sometimes catch a problem you’re too close to see. Usually it would not be a big deal (after all we work hard to get it right the first time!), but this particular snafu was the perfect storm of mis-measurement, tired eyes and a real error we should have caught.
I recently read a great article by Steve Baty of Meld Consulting entitled “The Idiot Check” in which he uses a simple metaphor to explain the value of doing “a last minute, top-to-tail, make-no-assumptions check before you turn out the lights and close the door behind you.” I recommend you read it.
To make use of Steve’s analogy, we did the walk through about 50 times, but then drove off with the front door unlocked, because it was so ‘obvious’ we all thought someone else had checked it. Someone else hadn’t and here is our humbling story of what happened:
Just caught this video over at catch this and needless to say it rang true with all of us here.
Of course we echo their disclaimer at the bottom, “none of our clients ever do this,” but what I love about this video is that it illustrates a phenomenon most designers recognize. People treating designers, and the work we do, like a commodity.
The question I tend to ask is what makes this so pervasive?
Is it because design tools are so accessible? Who knows? We don’t think they mean to seem penny-pinching or unreasonable, but sometimes that’s how it comes off. Maybe you disagree, I’d love to hear your thoughts, but at least we can all laugh a little at this…
I think the only scenario missing was the ol’ carrot dangling, “I can only pay $XX.XX now, but there’s more work later.”
You’d have to to be living in a cave not to be aware of the rapid decline of the newspaper industry in the US. Actually…it’s happening everywhere. There’s an article on Tech Crunch that’ll give you an idea of how rapid that decline has become, in terms of the havoc it’s reeking on advertising revenues: $7.5 billion last year. OUCH.
Of course, the interweb is being blamed, the argument being that big bad Google is allowing the public to access newspaper content for free, so that now no-one wants to buy the newspaper. CORRECT. And also WRONG. Newspaper-type-folks please allow me to weigh in: Read More of this post
In the article, Peter Bregman makes the argument that large companies who’ve traditionally had the competitive advantage, may now face a new reality: that they’re more of a gamble for prospective clients, than smaller firms, who are more likely to keep their staff intact in the present economy. Add to this that smaller companies relate to their clients one-on-one and you’ve got a recipe for success at a time when people are very careful where they spend their money.
Every professional designer is passionate about those big, juicy projects you can really sink your creative teeth into. And that’s exactly how we felt when we were approached by The Weather Channel to create a new HD show package for their weekday show, Day Planner. At the time, they were launching their HD programming, and needed show graphics to execute the visual improvements they were making, while maintaining the integrity of the existing brand. What a sweet challenge!
Coming into a New Year is exciting. New challenges, new opportunities, and new perspectives… all very invigorating. From my standpoint, it gives me the opportunity to assess the marketing efforts we’ve pushed in the past year, and look to new ideas for more effective methods in the year to come. One effort we initiated last year was a portfolio book, and is one we will definitely continue in 2009 (revising and adding new projects as we see fit). Read More of this post
I just got the latest ChangeThis newsletter and immediately read Patricia Martin’s peice on what she’s calling the Renaissance Generation (or RenGen). She has a whole book on the subject but this quick read perfectly encapsulates a lot of the social media trends we’ve been seeing or feeling around us over the last couple of years. Of course it doesn’t hurt to have a catchy word like RenGen to add to the “cool” factor.
Some of the points that resonated with me dealt with the central character of the RenGen: the Cultural Consumer. The CultCon (sorry, I couldn’t resist) isn’t satisfied with the old guard uni-directional flow of information, entertainment or opinions. Rather they relish (and seek out) avenues of creative self-expression. Engaging in more of a dialogue with their media… a conversation, if you will…. sound familiar?
Part of the beauty of a collaborative-rich environment is that phonies are eventually found out. One of Martin’s lessons of the RenGen: “The RenGen prefers products that are imperfect but authentic, over perfect products that pollute.” You see this a lot at professional networking events. You can always tell when the person you’re talking to has checked out of the conversation, and all they’re doing is doing the obligatory nodding and smiling. They don’t care about what you’re saying but they know they need to look like it. Likewise, there’s a tendency now for marketing and PR types to use blogs and social networking sites to appear to be in conversation with their customers. Sure they might be able to pour money into Interruptive marketing campaigns to convincingly appear concerned, but in the RenGEn the currency isn’t dollars but genuine attention; yours in exchange for your customers. And they’ll know when you’re not really listening. Genuine trumps polished.
We had the pleasure of going to the launch/ welcome-to-the-neighborhood party for one of the newest creative businesses moving to our area, Oddpodz. A social networking site for creative professionals.
Part of why I love it here is that you’re constantly reminded that you do business with people not corporate entities. So it was great not only to meet the lovely ladies behind Oddpodz but to have some face-time with other like-minded local business people. Thanks to the TCCi and Oddpodz for the great time and here’s to Oddpodz’ longevity.
It’s disappointing how many examples of corrupt corporate culture appear to be in the world. I know nothing can be perfect, and god knows I certainly don’t claim to be the perfect at what I do, but it means a lot to me that my 2 business partners are the same folks that I love to spend my time off with. Not because we talk about work (which we don’t…OK sometimes), but because we have such a good time working together and truly care for and respect each other. We’re family. Sappy I know…but it’s the truth. And I’ve discovered more and more that this is not as common as it should be.
