Life
Imitating
Design

I know the problem. People visit your website out of curiosity, fascination, or just plain need, but they spend way too much time there, gleaning information and reading about your great services and products.
Not all people may think like me, but here are a few things you can try if you want me to stop looking at your site and close down that browser tab as quickly as possible. » Read the rest of this entry «

Seema Eye Care Centre in Calgary AB is now sporting a brand new look online.

seemaeye.com is now live! The site features SiteCM content management by ideaLEVER and surgery animations by Eyemaginations. With SiteCM, staff at Seema are able to login from any browser and edit the site whenever they need. Update text, replace or upload new photographs, create new pages, edit the menu – all from a browser. Training and support are also provided.

Eyemaginations offer embedded video animations to help doctors communicate better with their patients. Before going into surgery or consulting with a specialist, patients are able to learn more about procedures by choosing from an elaborate array of videos that are easy to understand and professionally presented.

Drop by seemaeye.com and take a look around!

From Nags to Niches

Oo my Mum used to drive me nuts. (Mum, if you’re reading this I’m sure you agree!) Perhaps your Mum was the same. “Clean up  your room”…”Hurry up, you’re going to be late”…”Did you finish your homework?”…and on and on. And on! Eventually, over years and years of being reminded, I needed to be nagged less and less. As an adult, it’s much easier for me to remind myself to pick up socks, clean up after myself and the other things that grown ups (usually) do. But in a group of similarly afflicted adults, who have discovered a tool that prevents them from doing what has to be done when it has to be done, I would stand up and confess. “My name’s Nick, and I’m a procrastinator.”

“Hello, Nick.” » Read the rest of this entry «

If you manage a website with a content management system and need to make a few minor changes to some photographs but didn’t want to spring for Photoshop, I have some good news for you!
» Read the rest of this entry «

A healthy relationship is often about realistic expectations. What do you expect from a graphic designer?

Hiring a designer, or anyone to join your business, can be a challenge. Different people work with different workflows, have different personalities and different viewpoints. Different people communicate at different levels in different ways. I can’t count the number of emails that have contained the phrase “I’m sorry, I thought you meant…” or “I was under the impression…”. Somewhere somebody made an assumption and something got missed.

Because of these, and other differences I thought it would be a good idea to ask an open question to anyone who has considered hiring or has hired a designer, whether for short term projects or as part of an ongoing marketing plan. Rather than looking at things from a graphic designer’s point of view, it would be good to hear things from the other side of the fence.

So what do you expect? Do you prefer designers to provide all the ideas, or do you prefer to be part of the process? What has worked? What has gone wrong? What kinds of things would you like to see graphic designers doing that perhaps they aren’t? How have things changed over the past few years? If you’re a designer, tell me some of the things that you’ve been asked to do that you thought were not part of your job description but helped the project move along.

Tell me your stories … spill the beans!

There is a problem with design and it always comes from the client.

The client is not the problem. Admittedly, some people can be a problem, but I’m not talking about personal issues. If someone did something nasty in your cornflakes this morning, you just received some bad news or my shirt offends you, I’m sorry, and I’ll try to see past it. » Read the rest of this entry «

I don’t think I’m alone in having a strong dislike for manuals. As the saying goes, if all else fails, I’ll dig up the instructions and read through from page one, but ideally I believe (especially when it comes to technology) that user interfaces should be intuitive and obvious. As the title of Steve Klug’s book states, Don’t Make Me Think. From my iPhone to my television remote, if I have to read how to use the thing, I feel that I’m wasting time. Come on, hurry up, CSI is starting any minute. Why can’t I find the volume? » Read the rest of this entry «

When your website doesn’t seem to be getting you the return on your investment that you had hoped, it is possible that your expectations were a little amiss. It is often said that a website is not a like the baseball diamond in Field of Dreams – you cannot simply ‘build it and they will come’.

Think of your website as a purebred racehorse.

You are the Owner.

You’ve invested in the horse, but there it sits (or stands) in the stables, looking beautiful and full of potential. It’s fit, well fed and ready to go. But you aren’t making money. It’s a fantastic horse, and all your friends tell you so, but it’s not doing its job.

Your site needs to show up in search engines using the keywords that you or your designer have chosen and your site has been built around. One of the most important and effective ways to get your site noticed is with backlinks, or links on other sites pointing to your site. Social media is one way to do this – Twitter links are indexed by Google and count as links to your site.

The Trainer.

Owners who aren’t going to train their own horse hire a trainer. In the case of the website, this could be the web designer or developer. They know your site already, and  probably have a good grasp on marketing your site, using search engines and choosing keywords. If your website guru doesn’t do these things, find one that does. At the very least, you should have a list of keywords that you or someone else can use to promote your site.

The Jockey.

The jockey is the one who does the work! Promoting your site is not the job of a web expert or a marketing specialist, in the same way that you wouldn’t hire a lawyer to collect your dry cleaning. A virtual (or real) assistant can help create inbound links by posting on other sites, take care of your Twitter account, update Facebook and write new blog posts for you, leaving you free to do what you do best: running your business. With a modicum of supervision (it is recommended that Tweets and posts be approved before posting) an assistant can, for a moderate outlay, promote your site, gain inbound links and get you the publicity you need online.

Where is your horse? Still in the stables, or helping your business win the online race?

*Photo credits

The story goes something like this (and is subject to the rules of Chinese Whispers, but the idea remains the same):

Pablo Picasso is dining at a restaurant when a passer by recognizes him and asks the artist for a favor: a quick sketch. The aging Picasso finds some paper and a pencil and spends a few minutes drawing something to please his fan. He hands over the finished piece and says ‘That will be $10,000 please’. The passer-by, stunned by the high price tag exclaims ‘But it only took you five minutes’, to which the painter replied ‘No, it took me 25 years’.

While not all graphic design jobs can be undertaken in just a couple of minutes (most jobs will take a lot longer than expected or often budgeted for), it is not necessarily the time you are paying for, but the expertise. Pablo Picasso had spent many years honing his craft, making mistakes and discovering what worked and what didn’t. Graphic designers too spend many years, that you will not have seen, in training and developing skills.

The flip side to this story is that many jobs require much more time than expected. Design is not an event, but a process. To correctly create a commercial piece (print design, web design, multimedia, etc) requires research, time and space. Research of the customer’s field or industry; time to work through all the wrong answers and ill fitting solutions; and space to process the research and other data to produce something truly creative.

Most graphic designers charge a little less than $120,000 an hour, but they will still have many years of experience that they will put to work for you and your business.

*Photo credits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pablo_picasso_1.jpg

Looks like we're all out of scope. Better get some more.

Scope creep is not the close talker in the office you avoid at all costs unless you can offer him gum. Scope creep is way more dangerous (and costly) than that.

Imagine you are out for a meal and you ask the waiter how much a meal costs (silly question, but just go with me here). His reply? “Entrees are $15″. Great, you think, I can eat for $15. So you order the salmon with rice pilaff and sauteed asparagus. Delicious. Of course, you have to have a glass of wine with that, follow it with dessert and round it off with an espresso. When you get the bill, you are somewhat surprised to see the final figure is $28, not the $15 you expected.

You ask the waiter why your $15 meal is now $28. “Well,” he replies, “you asked how much a meal costs, and the entrees are $15. But you also ordered the Sauvignon Blanc, cherry cheesecake and coffee.” Did you really think they were all included with the entree?

Of course they weren’t included in the entree. There’s a menu in plain site, whether you read it or not, and common sense really would prevail. What if the waiter asked you if you wanted dessert, would you take that to mean he would be buying? Of course not.

Asking your service provider (whether it’s web design, print design, marketing consulting or any other service) to add services on without the expectation of paying for them is theft. Continually adding ‘one more thing’ to the project is asking them to work for free. Whether that’s an hour or six hours, that’s time that could have been spent on another project that would have been billed.

You don’t ask others to do ‘just one more thing’, so why would you ask your graphic designer to add ‘just’ a logo, flash animation or another form?

Most designers and consultants are very flexible. They would be more than happy to accommodate what you need and come to some kind of arrangement. This doesn’t mean constant freebies, but it may mean that they could spread out payments, subtract another service in exchange for what you are requesting or trade services.

Not only does scope creep rob the service provider, it also taints the project, leads to an inferior product and hurts a potentially long term relationship.

So is the relationship really worth that little extra add-on? Or can it wait until next time?