Does your design firm have to be close by?

A lot of our clients are in our hometown of Wichita. Several of them aren’t…

We have clients spread all over America. We use email, post, fax, FTP, and telephones to stay connected. While print-work has some unique challenges,(last week we had to overnight some Pantone chips to California) working on websites is seamless. In fact, our process changes very little if our clients are out of town.

The screen is a unifying medium for design and development. Wherever you have one, -you can work, or be shown work.

A few common questions…

• How can you brainstorm?
  We work very collaboratively with our clients. You might think it would be difficult to share ideas. In fact, the meetings conducted via phone are often more productive than face-to-face meetings. People tend to be more concise on the phone. It’s less conversational, and more specific. When both parties have their own screens, their own quiet offices, and their own internet connections, more is accomplished than could ever get done around a single projector screen.

• What about mockups?
  We usually use email to send design mockups anyways… All of our clients have busy lives. We want to explain our thoughts to them, but that can usually be done with a few words in an email, or a quick phone call. We would like to think the work speaks for itself. If it’s a print job we’re working on, we build in extra time, and cost for delivery of swatches, and mocks. Once everyone is visualizing the same sizes, and colors, we can communicate revisions via email.

• Do you ever really get to know the person?
  We have one client we’ve worked with and didn’t see his face for about 5 years… we counted him a friend long before that. We’ll admit, -it’s not quite as good as tipping back a beer together, but there is a bond none-the-less. In fact, due to the circumstance, the necessary trust is compounded.

In short, some of our best friends and clients are long distance ones… We’ve been fortunate enough to experience the world through a bigger lens than our home town can provide…