- Clients are never as prepared as they say they will be.
- Clients always change their mind.
- People always underestimate the amount of time it will take to do something.
Often understanding what causes the problem is enough to figure out how to prevent problems.
From 37signals’ book REWORK, illustration by Mike Rohde
Our culture celebrates the idea of the workaholic. We hear about people burning the midnight oil. They pull all-nighters and sleep at the office. It’s considered a badge of honor to kill yourself over a project. No amount of work is too much work.
Not only is this workaholism unnecessary, it’s stupid. Working more doesn’t mean you care more or get more done. It just means you work more.
Workaholics make the people who don’t stay late feel inadequate for “merely” working reasonable hours. That leads to guilt and poor morale all around. Plus, it leads to an ass-in-seat mentality—people stay late out of obligation, even if they aren’t really being productive.
- Excerpt from 37signals’ REWORK released today, download PDF excerpt
There has been several times in my career where I fell into this cycle working countless nights and weekends. Looking back a lot of what drives workaholism is insecurity in your work and approval from your peers. When you fall into the cycle of workaholism it always takes far longer to make creative decisions, think critically and produce exceptional work. In my personal experience, after putting in the long hours any ground I gained was usually lost the following day or week as I struggled with not having enough downtime for my mind to be fresh.
There is a distinct difference from being a workaholic and pulling the very rare all-nighter in an effort to sprint towards a deadline. One will leave you constantly trying to make up for lost productivity with endless hours and the other gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment in launching a project.
Over the last few years I have actively worked at shifting mindset from working around the clock to working with intense focus and productivity. As a result I have been able to accomplish more that I am proud of, and more importantly I have been able to spend far more time with family enjoying life.
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
In this lecture Blair Enns challenges design firms to change the way that they view their business, services they provide and the way they position themselves. You are either a producer firm, moving with the whims of the client and fulfilling their requests, or you are an expert firm, diagnosing, prescribing, and leading your client, giving them the strength to move forward.
Are you going to run a business that drowns in the sea of undifferentiated firms selling too similar services to too similar clients, or will you run a business that narrows your focus and deepens your expertise?
By not having the imagination to imagine what the content “might” be, a design consideration is lost. Meaning becomes obfuscated because “it’s just text”, understandability gets compromised because nobody realized that this text stuff was actually meant to be read. Opportunities get lost because the lorem ipsum garbage that you used instead of real content didn’t suggest opportunities. The text then gets made really small, because, it’s not meant to be used, we might as well create loads of that lovely white space.
Designer and developer (from I hate Lorem Ipsum and Lorem Ipsum Users). Via Getting Real
Additional related content—Use Real Content to Judge a Design
Lately there has been a resurgence hand-crafted sets, model building, and stop motion film for digital projects. In this 10 minute behind-the-scenes film the HBO team explains and shows their process for creating the introduction before CG. The smallest details and techniques were what helped make the clip look believable and amazing for its time.
Partner at Pentagram, Michael Bierut discusses the topic of Clients at the NYC CreativeMornings event. Often people in the industry love to swap horror stories about difficult clients, but Michael talks about how the the right client can change everything.
The quote that really resonated was, “a sign of a good designer is when the designer gets enthusiastic about a client’s business”. Over 2009 I worked on several projects in the connected health realm—a subject I knew very little about prior. I spent a lot of time researching and fully diving into the industry which translated into enthusiasm. Ultimately it lead to a great relationship with the client through the entire process and translated into work that was very successful for their business. Take the time to immerse yourself in your client’s business.
One last last quote that I have found to always be true, “the best clients love design, or don’t give a damn about it.”
Over the years I have used all type of books, journals, and pads to take notes, stay organized, and plan. Behance has created by far my favorite system for capturing actions, but before now my only complaint was the flimsy cover that took a beating rather quickly. They just updated several of their products to give the journal a thick hard cover that looks comparable to a moleskin notebook. The new journal comes in the action and dot-grid formats. I just ordered both.
Capturing the rough sketches, illustrations, print design, photography, layout and printing of their holiday Mindcastle shows off their creative process.
Stunning Branding for furniture chain Expo Nova in Norway by designer Gary Swindell (aim).
It can also be used with E Text Editor on Windows.
ben:
I’m working on a TextMate bundle for creating Tumblr Themes. It shouldn’t take me too...
Ordered.
