Find your passion

• people work with you because of you
• passion is magnetic
• make sure your passion is transparent

Create buzz

• develop a position (differentiated)
• have the confidence to promote and market yourself
• people like parties

Plant Seeds

• nobody throws out books
• red envelopes: 10″x13″, stand out in the mail
• promotion is a great way to plant seeds
• be clever in how you promote: make a deficit a positive
• leverage projects and people to reach the next level

Making connections

• strategic partnerships with someone who knows how to do it; can open doors
• overflow from other firms with projects that aren’t big enough for them or they’re too busy for
• co-promotion opportunities to pay for it, e.g. the PUNC’T poster project: raised money, everyone benefited
• do web audits as a ‘value add’ when meeting with a prospective client

Client focus

• speak their language
• listen
• work harder to earn their business

Learn from your mistakes

• debrief after each success and failure
• know your audience
• say ‘no’ to projects that aren’t a good fit

Never be complacent

• know what others are doing
• market when times are good and bad (constantly build your pipeline)
• be selective of the work you take on
• be willing to embrace change

• How do you solve your client’s business problem?
• Can you articulate how your work helped a client meet key goals?
• Can you present yourself as a strategic thinker?

• Put it in writing
  • What do you provide? For whom? And how do you do it?
  • Define your strategy statement: how and why
• All design briefs should have business objectives as well as design objectives
• What do people want (job satisfaction)?
  1. Positive relationships
  2. Interesting work
  3. Opportunities for learning
  4. others: opportunities for advancement, innovation, meaningful & fulfilling work, participation in decision making
• Complacency
  • Feeling unimportant or uninspired
  • lack of healthy competition and challenge
  • Establish an environment where individuals can compete with themselves and work with each other

[this was a last-minute substitution for another session. I had a mixed reaction to her presentation, because a lot of the concepts seemed basic to me. Also, she kept mentioning how hung-over she was from the "seven gin-and-tonics" she consumed while partying the previous night. Other people seemed to glean value from it, but by the end I wished I had gone to another session.]

[this was an engaging interview, so I didn't take many notes as I was busy listening]

Three things he’s learned

1. Most clients are scared you’ll embarrass them and not listen to them: diligently listening will take care of a lot of their concerns
2. Let them tire themselves out
   • ala Muhammad Ali’s ‘Rope-a-dope‘
   • show them something to let them work their energy off, then pull out the better option
3. Understand the cast of characters in a meeting who have their own politics, agenda

Business Development: send out 15 copies of a favorite project

• 5 to the press
• 5 to current clients
• 5 to people you don’t know but think might be interested

Design Research

• Qualitative and quantitative
• Primary and secondary sources
• Formative: at the beginning of a project to help define the problem
• Summative: at the end of a project to determine outcome strategies

Methods

• visual exploration: creating prototypes (sounds more credible), aka ‘sketching’
• competitor analysis: media scanning is ‘open source intelligence gathering’
  • ad placement, time & place to determine target & agenda
  • social media, conversations
• ethnographic research: link human behavior to culture, e.g. geography, interest
  • etic: from the perspective of an outsider
  • emic: immersive study as a member of that culture
• marketing research: human behavior linked to market-based economy
  • demographics: track measurable, concrete traits
  • psychographics: track opinion, attitudes
• user testing: satisfy needs of the end user, i.e. useful, usable, relevant

information literacy

• manufacturing economy: reading, writing, arithmetic
• information economy: communication, computer literacy, search & evaluate
• The Big6 process:
  1. Task definition
  2. Develop search strategies
  3. Location and access
  4. Use of information
  5. Synthesis
  6. Evaluate process and products: don’t forget after delivery
     (steps 1, 2, 3, 4 & 6 are research, step 5 is design)

Articulating value

• research is the key to being able to properly aim creative impluses
• show shared set of values
• UK Design Index: companies that use design effectively outperform others by 200%
• Case study: Type 1 Tools
  • based on personal research into the lack of good information
  • flash cards, magnets
  • website for community building
  • designer as author

Resources

• grokker.com, visual search engine
• visual thesaurus

• you need to have adequate startup capital to cover the first two years
• most start with savings and personal loans
• most only last about three years
• essential to work with a CPA
• because you’re self-employed, you need to make quarterly tax pre-payments

• keep track of project costs (direct labor, materials) and indirect costs (overhead, self-promotion)
• use financial projections to avoid surprises
• use weekly projections to know your cash flow
• use the client’s money (instead of your own)
  • ask for an upfront deposit before the work begins
  • send progress billings at the end of each phase, paid within 15 or 30 days
  • send month-end statements
• build-up reserves for three months of normal operating expenses (“rainy day fund”/cushion)
• growth: yes or no? you’ll have to:
  • take on new skill sets
  • hire a business manager/partner
  • delegate/share responsibility
• resources
  • Small Business Administration
  • AIGA Center for Practice Management
  • Talent is Not Enough: Business Secrets for Designers
  • AIGA Professional Practices in Graphic Design, second edition by Crawford, et al
• when working with multiple freelancers/contract people, someone has to manage the client contact
• insurance means much more than just health coverage to a business owner
  • errors & omissions
  • assumption is you will never make a claim
• the Hollywood model for an agency (group of independents come together for a project and then disband) is a hard-sell to a corporate client
• Optimal team
  • 1 person administrator
  • 1 business developer
  • 10 person creative team
• tracking software
  • comparison in August 2007 Step Magazine
  • need general ledger tools
  • should track project-level costs
• retirement strategies
  • the old model was to build a practice by your name, live off its revenue and close shop when done
  • the new model is team-oriented with multiple owners, where partners can sell own share to co-owners or merge with others when want to leave
• growth should be for bigger creative challenges
• form an LLC or incorporate to isolate personal financial risk
• if no credit history, do NOT sign a personal guarantee for a loan

presented by Joe Duffy, Duffy & Partners. (original description)

• Design permeates our lives now. We’ve moved from:
  • Agrarian age = Grow It
  • Industrial age = Build It
  • Information age = Tell It
  • Design age = BE IT
• Design is only interesting relative to how people live their lives.

• Good design should:
  • be not about just products but a unique experience
  • be unique
  • be relevant
  • be transparent and true
  • be aligned with people’s values
  • have its own point-of-view
  • consider all aspects of our interaction with it
  • make people want it and recommend it
• He left a large partnership to start his own agency
  • no more than 25 employees
  • no spec work; never compete when required
  • no hourly rates, just bill for projects they want to work on
  • 16 core staff: 1/2 business, 1/2 design
  • partner with others on specific projects
  • a mix of vocation and avocation
• His process:
  • imagine > design > activate (iterate)
  • continually collecting images for inspiration
  • edit & mix down images to create a visual brief
    • symbols
    • color
    • imagery
    • typography
  • have the client select and edit
    • so it’s not a surprise to them
    • they will let you design it rather than meddle
    • they have a hand in it in the right way
• more than just a logo or ad campaign, it’s about creating a brand language
• ask: what makes it unique, attracts people?
• created a brand book for The Bahamas for the people on the islands to understand the campaign; get buy-in; distributed in Sunday paper
• We must demystify the design to increase its value (more people playing golf doesn’t threaten Tiger Woods)
• In Japan, design is a way-of-life
• Design is not timeless; someone else will eventually change your work

I’m back from Boston, where I attended the 2008 How Design Conference. It was interesting to be among ~4000 other designers, and there were iPhones & Blackberries, MacBooks & messenger bags as far as the eye could see (I went unplugged for the most part, except for a few tweets and a visit to the Apple Store). I like Boston’s balance of historical architecture, metropolitan pace and New England culture (I had a cuppa chowda every day for lunch). In the coming days, I’ll be posting my notes from some of the standout sessions.