Being a cheerleader

It’s a strange fact that success doesn’t make as big a splash as a failure. When you do something wrong, or something breaks, your clients will necessarily know about it. When you do your job well, a client forgets you exist.

Not just in our business, but in any business, you have to be a cheerleader. Most of us are humble by nature, and we don’t tend to toot our own horn… But who will do it if not us? As a service based industry, you learn to cringe when the phone rings. Clients don’t call when things work right. They call when things are broken…

It seems when things are going right, a service based company is the last thing on most peoples’ mind. It’s unfortunate, but true. So as a service based company, how do we deal with being a foul weather friend? Simple, we’re our own cheerleader. It doesn’t come naturally, but we’ve started telling our story of success whenever we get a chance.

We corner our clients for one brief moment, and let them know exactly what we went through to get to the answer. We don’t make it sound extra hard, or extra smart, we just factually discuss the steps and pitfalls. It’s honestly quite impressive the response you get.

The next time you’re getting down about your job for being more a partner in crisis, than a partner in success, -pick out someone to tell your story to. Be your own cheerleader for once. you’ll be surprised at how much more valuable you are in your own eyes, and in your clients…

Glimpses of genius beauty and novelty – distractions and perspectives

Design Influences – Edward Tufte

Edward Tufte is a kind of genius at telling stories with pictures. As designers we have a lot to learn from his succinct, clear view on how information is transferred. Tufte is not only an idol for his own translation of 4d ideas into 2d space, but his perception of the importance of other historical work he finds through his research.

Tufte, with his genius ideas on conveying motion through still frames, his thoughts on comparing similar items, and his thoughts on whitespace, can teach even non-designers something. In business our primary goal is to communicate accurately, and Tufte has dedicated his career to understanding how information is understood by its viewers.

His ideas translate to every part of graphic design, and every part of business. After-all, we are all trying to tell a visual story, and trying to get the message across accurately.

Tufte quotes:

“The minimum we should hope for with any display technology is that it should do no harm.”

“If your words aren’t truthful, the finest optically letter-spaced typography won’t help, and if your images aren’t on point, making them dance in color in three dimensions won’t help.”

“Quoting British typographer Eric Gill: ‘If you look after truth and goodness, beauty looks after herself.'”

More on Tufte:

Official site

Edward Tufte on the user interface of some Sun software: via kottke

Tufte recap from 37 Signals

Wikipedia entry

Email Marketing in the Age of Blindness

It’s been coming for awhile now. Direct mail had its hay-day, but is now lying at the bottom of the waste bin. Tele-marketers were really successful while people still considered them human. Billboards worked great until people were too busy with their iPods, cell phones, and XM Radio to pay attention. Newspaper advertising worked great back when people still read. Websites worked until there were hundreds of millions of them. And now in a never-ending tidal wave of spam, email marketing too is waning as a successful way to get the word out.

So does anything still work? The simple answer is “yes” -but marketing, like it used to be, is hard work again. Every so often a new media pops up, and there is a brief honeymoon period of novelty. People are receptive because they haven’t yet grown mistrustful or bored with it.

Marketing today has to be even more creative, and even more truthful for it to resonate. It’s no longer as simple as dividing your budget between the media options, and casting your hopes to the wind. You may as well throw your money out the window…

As a business, you have to seriously analyze your service, or product. You have to know your audience, and be able to pull at their heart strings. We’re a consumer society, and a knowledgeable consumer cuts very little slack for sloppy service, or faulty products.

Marketing is back to what is used to be, back to what it always should have been. The simple hard work of telling a story, telling it well, making people believe it, and most of all believing it yourself…

Whether you choose billboards, TV, web, mail, or email, don’t expect easy answers. Yes, marketing campaigns scale. Yes a traffic count, and a demographic study still matter. But today nothing matters more than your message. That one true nugget that you’re ready to shout at the top of your lungs, and make people believe it.

What is identity?

People, even designers, struggle with defining identity. Of course it has a dictionary definition, but we’re talking specifically about a corporate identity. Talk to any designer, and they might tell you identity is:

• Your logo
• Your logo, letterhead, and business cards
• The bits and pieces that tend to be repeated over the course of all of your collateral

We think all of these are right, but lacking. We tend to think of identity as literally everything. Anything that you see, hear, read, touch, or maybe even smell is part of an identity if it relates to a company. From the way your receptionist answers the phone, to the navigation on your website. Anything that might affect a customers perception of you is a component of identity. That’s not a textbook definition, but it’s our definition…

Some things you might not think of that affect corporate identity

• How easy your automated phone service is to navigate.
• How friendly and accessible your employees are.
• How sharply dressed, and put together your staff is.
• Every single tiny bit of correspondence you send- from emails to faxes to invoices.
• Packaging, manuals, disclaimers warranties etc.

As an industry we might ignore some of these things because we don’t have control over them. We often short-hand refer to identity as the pieces we design. As a client, or an owner of a business, we encourage you to broaden the definition. Everything that can affect the way your client perceives you is part of your identity. Right down to the smell of the lobby…

Inspiration:

Seth godin