Dear client, I promise the following

We all have clients. And we all ARE clients. If everyone treated their clients with this same respect, I think our work-world would be much nicer place.

1. I will ask a lot of questions at the start of a job. This may seem annoying, but I promise it is less annoying than if I did it wrong and had to be corrected.

2. I will tell you honestly if I don’t think something is going to work. You might not like that, but I promise, most of the time you’ll end up saving yourself some heartache later.

3. I will try it your way, even if I don’t agree and you didn’t read #2. I will also try it my way. And then I’ll show you both options. I promise I won’t be mad if you choose the “your way” option.

4. I will not overprice a job. But I won’t undercut myself. That’s just not good business. I promise I will be fair and we will both understand the scope of my job before I proceed.

5. I will not make my problems your problems, make excuses for why work isn’t complete, or make you “wonder what’s going on over there.” We will set a deadline and I will stick to it. No matter what. I promise.

 

 

Filed under Experience Everything>Look At Things With New Eyes

It’s a good lesson for life in general, but a crucial lesson for a designer:  Look at everything like it’s the first time you’re seeing it. It’s about being mindful and absorbing as much of the world as your senses can take in.

No trees were harmed during the making of this photo. All colors are real and not a function of Photoshop.

Thank you USPS

Print media is having a hard enough time. The last thing we needed was a postal increase. Thank goodness we won’t get one! The US Postal Service released this statement:

The Postal Service will not increase prices for market-dominant products in calendar year 2010. Simply stated, there will not be a price increase for market-dominant products including First-Class Mail, Standard Mail, periodicals, and single-piece Parcel Post. There will be no exigent price increase for these products.

Why? Well, it’s complicated. But it has to do with the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act made in 2006.

Now, if we could only get paper costs to hold…

Not your average in flight magazine

I fly on Southwest about once a month, which means that I read what amounts to my annual subscription to Spirit, Southwest’s monthly in flight magazine. As if there weren’t enough fun and quirky things about Southwest, Spirit–which is made by Pace Communications–takes airline magazines to a fantastic new level. The design is, by all accounts, appropriate: smart, funny, not to full-of-itself…it captures the essence of the Southwest brand. It’s no wonder: the masthead includes design consultancy by Pentagram.

And speaking of the brand, no other company gets it quite the way Southwest does. From the advertising and identity all the way down to the flight attendants stand up style announcements and  the goof on-hold messaging on their call in numbers, this company has the right idea when it comes to living their brand.

A word on social media policies, hiring for keeps, employee recognition

Connect is the quarterly newsletter of Network Media Partners, Inc. The newsletter seeks to “share knowledge” and “forge partnerships” within the association community and with Network’s clients.

In this issue:

• some advice on creating the right social media policy for your workplace
• thoughts and tips from Network leaders on how to hire for keeps
• Employee recognition ideas a la The Carrot Principle.

We welcome your feedback.

You have to be brilliant. Every day.

It’s been years since I sat in Ed Gold’s Creative Concepts class. But one thing he said stuck.

You have to be brilliant. Every day.

As designers, it’s our job to come up with fantastic ideas. Lots of them. All the time. Ed said, some people have one brilliant idea in their lifetime, and it’s enough to make their whole career (like the guy who invented shoe laces, or the guy who thought up the little holes to put those shoe laces in). But you, you’re different. You, as a designer, have to come up with a lot of really great concepts all the time.

And more important than where those concepts end up (on the page of a magazine, on product packaging, on an exhibit display), is that you are developing them. That you are aware of the world, that you understand your audience and the essence of the idea you’re conveying, and that you develop a brilliant concept based on that. You need to be wise beyond your years, see it from all sides, filter yourself (and NOT filter yourself), and know the process that works for you.

So even when you’re working on a tough job, with a challenging client, or on a tight turn-around, remember that the goal is to be brilliant. Every day.

If you write it…and keep writing it…and keep writing it…they will come.

The concept of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not hard to grasp: You do stuff with–and to–your site that makes it rank higher on a search engine’s results page. That, of course, is the point of SEO…that you help people find you. (Actually, more to the point, really, is that you help people find you when they are looking for someone like you.) But how do you do that? That question is not as easy to answer, but it boils down to a few key points.

It’s all about your content.

But what isn’t? Visitors will visit you if you are providing them a steady stream of usable, relevant, worthwhile, purposeful, helpful (I could go on here…) content. And that’s what is most important to Google and all the other search engines out there. Google knows when you are updating your site with the right kind of information for your audience. (And I focus on Google because it handles about 70% of the searches done online.) One of the easiest ways to do this is to blog regularly (ahem), so that your content is constantly pushed through Google’s radar.

It’s an ongoing process.

It’s a process, because you have to keep doing it. That is, updating your content. Now you’re getting it. SEO strategy is not something you can focus on once and forget about it. Keep your content fresh, experiment with new key phrases, see what works. There’s a lot of tips out there, and you can decide for yourself which is worth your time. But you won’t get around the fact that it’s not a one-shot deal.

It’s not Tech’s job.

See points 1 and 2. This is about content. The stuff that comes from the communications department. So while, yes, your tech team–and even the people you hire to build your web site–better be knowledgeable of SEO, it’s up to you to champion this process.

Ok, it’s Tech’s job too.

There are some things that those tech people can do to improve your rankings. These things are very technical. And nitty-gritty. And ever-changing. This is why tech people are so …technical. And because I’m not one of them, I’m going to reveal some of their tricks here:

1. Google will not read the words in your URL in they all run together. The URL www.havefunstorminthecastle.com means nothing to Google. Rather, make a URL using hyphens as spaces (that’s how Google reads them). You don’t have to go out and blast your new URL, just direct www.have-fun-stormin-the-castle.com to your index page.

Also, search engines don’t read an underscore as a space, so use dashes.

2. Register a Sitemap with Google and other search engines.  By doing this, you’re giving the search engines the lowdown on your site. Here’s what Google says: “[We] use the data in your Sitemap to learn about your site’s structure, which will allow us to improve our crawler schedule and do a better job crawling your site in the future.”

3. Make URLs out of real words. CMS’s do a disservice to us when they name inside pages …com/script/524w39f0234…  But search engines’ number 1 indicator is the words in a URL. Work with your CMS to create URLs with real words in them.

*Enormous thank yous to Tobin Conley, of Delcor, Thad Lurie, of American Health Lawyers Association, and Dan Scheeler, of American Health Care Association, for teaching me and all the attendees of last week’s Association Media and Publishing (formerly SNAP) Lunch and Learn that SEO can be fun…if you include monkeys.

Killer TOCs: Stop being lazy

The worst trap a magazine team can fall into is to treat the TOC like a throw-away page. I get it, you’re busy wrangling writers, making and deciding on cover art, cutting (and cutting) to fit…who has time to worry about the TOC. I dare say, it’s one of the most neglected pages in the book. Here’s a few ways to put life back into your table of contents.

1. Write the teases at the same time you write the heads and deck of the stories. You want the TOC tease to entice as much as it does explain, so take the same kind of approach you take when writing a compelling headline.

2. Don’t use the same exact imagery you used on the cover. Just as you wouldn’t copy and paste the cover art on your spread, don’t regurgitate it here either. Let the TOC be an extension and a progression of the imagery and message, from cover art, to TOC tease, to feature spreads.

3. Add a to-do list. Instead of passively describing the jist of each department, turn that content into “action items” for the reader.

4. If you are not using a separate “On the cover” section of the TOC, make sure that the teases on the cover can easily be translated in to finding the right story on the TOC. Specifically, if you use “Face any challenge” on the cover, I’d better be able to scan the TOC and find the word “challenge.”

5. Don’t let yourself get stuck. Vary the grid, vary the shape and size of the imagery, vary the colors you choose to use in your type. The TOC does not need to be heavily templated to be easily understood or helpful to readers. Remember that design is equal parts direction and visual appeal. Use both good design and good organization and direction to keep your readers tuned in to your TOC.

A few examples:

And a special sneak preview of a new project:

Examples are courtesy of Network Design Group. Thanks to our clients and my fellow designers for allowing me to illustrate my points!

Crowdsourcing vs. Spec Work

I’ve had a lot of feedback from designers via Twitter about my comment that crowdsourcing does not equal spec work. Let me try to explain my position.

So says Wikipedia:

Crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production model. Problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. Users–also known as the crowd–typically form into online communities, and the crowd submits solutions. The crowd also sorts through the solutions, finding the best ones. These best solutions are then owned by the entity that broadcast the problem in the first place–the crowdsourcer–and the winning individuals in the crowd are sometimes rewarded. In some cases, this labor is well compensated, either monetarily, with prizes, or with recognition. In other cases, the only rewards may be kudos or intellectual satisfaction. Crowdsourcing may produce solutions from amateursor volunteers working in their spare time, or from experts or small businesses which were unknown to the initiating organization.^[3]

My original tweet was that “crowdsourcing is not spec work as long as it’s without exchange of money.” While it’s true that there’s plenty of crowdsourcing out there that does involve compensation of some kind, whether it’s a prize (contest winner) or a dollar amount or just plain old kudos, my point is that crowdsourcing can be useful and productive, and specifically NOT harmful, as long as there is NO exchange of compensation.

There’s a place for crowdsourcing. When there is a group of people who are dedicated and knowledgeable about a subject, it’s for the betterment of the whole to seek out participation in problem solving. Two words: Open Source. But even beyond the obvious example of open source, this type of problem solving can be helpful in an editorial sense, for developing content, format, and yes, even design. If you strip away all of the nuances of the term and get it down to its bare bones, I would even argue that readership surveys are a form of crowdsourcing…and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I’d mentioned that I would readily give ideas away for the betterment of a whole. This is where crowdsourcing is at its best and certainly can play a role in design..to help form a concept. Not the nitty gritty design decisions of grid and font sets, but the overarching concept. Afterall, if we think of ourselves as visual communicators, then we need to approach our work from the standpoint of the reader. How will my audience react to this? How will these people interact with my work? And when a designer approaches their work with the needs of the audience top of mind, there’s no harm in asking the opinions of the masses to find that ideal concept.

Would I go out to a design community and say: “Hey, develop this design and I’ll take the glory. Maybe I’ll give you props for it”? No, of course not. But I would go out to the audience that I’m working for and ask for their opinions on content and approach to content. Just like an editor needs to be clued in to their readership, a designer is no different.

So, I’m going to stand by my original tweet that crowdsourcing is not evil if it’s done without the exchange of compensation. I will not go in to spec work here, plenty of people have that covered.

Work at home: Perfecting the art of the solo lunch out

There are a lot of benefits to working from home (no commute, for one). But there are also a lot of challenges. I’m not talking about the challenges of working with remote colleagues or clients (that part is actually quite easy). Specifically, I’m speaking here about the cabin fever. While we may chat, email, talk on the phone–even tweet– there is still something to be said for the social interaction that comes with just being out of the house. Enter the Solo Lunch Outing.

First, just do it. You know you want to. You want to go out for a nice lunch every once in a while, just like you would if you worked in a typical office. What’s stopping you? Oh, no one to have lunch with. At one time or another, every adult should dine alone. Although I would venture to say that most of us have never actually gone to a restaurant alone, sat alone, ordered alone, ate alone…and enjoyed it. Here’s a few tips for the successful Solo Lunch Outing:

1. Go somewhere you really enjoy. Having been there before will take the pressure off.

2. Bring a book. Make it a book you’ve been meaning to read for your work.

3. Don’t cower. Own it. This is your lunch out and you’re gonna rock it.

4. Don’t spend the whole time on the phone. It’s a cop out. And you’ll just get sauce on your new iPhone.

5. Enjoy yourself. See #3. Smile at the wait staff and the other diners. Savor each bite. Finish the chapter.