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The RFP (Request for Proposal) signals opportunity for a creative firm! They’ve made it to your list of qualified firms. You’ll have multiple options from which to choose, pouring over creative samples and price ranges. Sounds like a win-win for both parties?
Not really.
For every creative firm that sees opportunity, another sees a cost to avoid. For every client that sees opportunity, another sees it as an onerous task that derails their real work, and is confused about the process.
The process might seem to favor the creator of the RFP. But there are hidden costs. Even the best-run RFP process has built-in flaws. You can get the most out of the process if you recognize the built-in flaws and costs, and then use workarounds. Read the rest of this entry »
As I look at my stack of current to-be-finished books, I consider the recent proclamation of the death of the book, so called by some bloggers and news outlets. This isn’t really what was declared. But Seth Godin, marketing guru, announced that he would no longer publish (e-books included) the traditional way. He didn’t announce the death of reading. Though some might interpret it that way. Consider this exchange in the comments section from a blog post yesterday that elicited 2500 tweets.
Charity FootballClub: I’m SO OVER reading…it’s why i stick with twitter cos it’s quick , short and sharp. Linchpin the hard copy book is the last I bought and it’s taken a while but I’m getting to the end! as for eBooks! nah…click , close file …game over!
A friend emailed with a problem. Her gardening club loved her tales of digging in the dirt and her near-obsessive, homesteader-like canning and preserving activities that they asked her to write an article for their newsletter.
Then panic set in, so she asked me how write an article, which is funny for two reasons. One, that she asked me; I feel like I fumble through this. And two, her emails are already full of article-ready descriptions of her fruits and her labor, like this one:
I’ve been hanging out my bathroom window picking fresh figs. I’ve got a jar of figs in vodka. Will be doing another in bourbon later. Fig jam and chutney are on the list for this weekend. I guess there are worse problems to have.
Speaking to a friend, chef and creator of Lovejoy Food, about her first day back at the OHSU farmers market, I asked her how her day went, given the tremendous downpour we’d had. “Were there a lot of people you recognized from last year?” I asked her. There were, and she said it was a bit surreal, seeing all these familiar strangers.
The term was coined by Stanley Milgram in the 1972 paper The Familiar Stranger: An Aspect of Urban Anonymity. He is also credited with developing the concept of six degrees of separation.
The true definition of a familiar stranger is someone who is seen regularly (like a person on your morning bus commute) and one with whom you don’t interact. Intel did a study using mobile devices to connect strangers, not necessarily to be friends but, to explore how strangers interact. The concept of familiar strangers is that they are an important link that bridges the gap between friends/family and total strangers. They play an essential role in fixing us in a community and providing us context. We wouldn’t want everyone to be a friend, and nor could we tolerate only strangers and people we know. The familiar strangers act as a buffer.
In my friend’s case, her customers aren’t true familiar strangers. But one friend has been creative with her daily commute (fodder for another post—ways to make the mundane more interesting) by documenting via her iPhone, her fellow commuters’ tattoos, pets, fashion statements and books. She has a non-judgemental, endearing way about her daily documentary. There’s a richness about it because she’s bringing strangers to life and making us look at these people closely, whom none of us know!
An interesting aspect of familiar strangers is that we have an unspoken agreement to not communicate. But we are much more likely to interact if we find ourselves in an unfamiliar setting, like bumping into the person you see each week at the farmers market while on vacation in Rome.
Has this happened to you? Did you introduce yourself? How long should a familiar stranger remain a stranger? Do you ever want to acknowledge your shared presence, especially if your lives seem to overlap in more than a couple places?
In a city as small as Portland, there are people you see over and over in more than one place you frequent, even if there doesn’t seem to be a significant connection among the locations. Maybe this person should be part of your social or business circle.
Sometimes saying no is a benefit to both parties.
A LinkedIn post lamenting requests for cheap work called to mind what many of us forget, especially in a bad economy, or else during a long dry spell of romance. We forget what we value, we forget our standards, we forget what we’re worth. Or maybe we forgot to consider those things in the first place.
A tight economy or even naysayers can conspire to make us operate on a scarcity model, one that dictates that we take what comes our way—in case nothing else does. We feel we have to say yes to work that we can’t afford to say yes to but believe we can’t afford not to. We have to put food on the table, but many of us panic or at least become cynical long before we really face starvation.
You have time to breathe and ask yourself some questions.
What are my strengths?
What do I offer that has real value?
What is that worth?
Is this client or project in line with my values and goals?
Will this challenge me in good ways?
A good exercise is to recall the bumpy roads you’ve been down that you swore you wouldn’t revisit. Perhaps it was the low-budget project you allowed yourself to get talked into, with the promise of exposure and more work. Recall how you felt after that, and what it confirmed about the type of work and client relationships you wanted.
If you find yourself being resentful at the assumptions people make, like a website should cost $500, then you’ve positioned yourself to be a contender for that work. If you didn’t see yourself as a contender, there would be no reason to even flinch as such a request. By giving ourselves time to evaluate before reacting (even if our reaction is only internal), we deepen our commitment to what we value.
Having then shifted that focus, we may even arrive at a solution that we hadn’t been able to consider at the beginning. Maybe that solution is passing on a name of a junior designer, offering up a simple service they can afford, or helping the client understand the work involved…all from an objective distance.
In this Zen Habits post, the author gives some tips for saying yes more slowly, for those who can’t stomach saying no. The person who posted the question on LinkedIn, as a result of repeated requests for low-cost work, lowered her rates. Prevailing logic says now is the best time to raise them. David C. Baker’s website Recourses has great position papers related to this, like Avoiding Marketing, Saying “No,” and Rethinking Rates.
We get locked into ways of thinking—that clients want cheap websites, for example. When instead, the real answer lies in what we draw to us. And why. This requires puzzling through issues we want to avoid—Why am I afraid to say no? If I find better projects, what if I fail? What do I owe to myself and my business, and what do I owe to others? And how can I make it work so both of us benefit?
This is why saying no sometimes works better for both parties. Saying yes for the wrong reasons can lead to working with a disengaged spirit, which serves neither party well. And more importantly, each time it happens, it’s a missed opportunity to learn something about ourselves.
I admit I’m a Luddite, despite that, or maybe because, I sit at a computer all day. I even went without a cell phone for a staggering six years till I felt compelled to have one for travel. I’d abandoned my earlier cell phone when I realized it didn’t work where I most wanted it to…in the wilderness (in case I got lost while mushroom hunting).
I fully embrace my inner Luddite when it comes to written communication that, today, has gone awry, in my opinion. I was recycling an article I’d saved at the end of which was a series of comments from readers. One dense paragraph was written in all lowercase letters. Looking at this is the visual equivalent to fingernails on a blackboard. I lean towards more formal typography as espoused by the very clever Robert Bringhurst and his wonderful book The Elements of Typographic Style, excerpts of which I used to make design students read. They didn’t seem to delight in his descriptions like I did. Here’s one:
“In a badly designed book the letters mill and stand like starving horses in a field. In a book designed by rote, they sit like stale bread and mutton on the page. In a well-made book, where designer, compositor and printer have all done their jobs, no matter how many thousands of lines and pages, the letters are alive. They dance in their seats. Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles.”
I admit, there are parts that are too esoteric for anyone without a love affair with type. And blog comments are not books, informal as they are.
But recently, I posted some things to Craigslist. Among the many responses I received, most were practically unreadable. Little, if any, punctuation was used. Sentences ran into each other. Most were written in all lowercase. I’d seen this before and my conclusion was that these were from scam artists hoping you’d take a money order. Bad use of English was a dead give away. But one guy sounded sincere. I told him of my dilemma. He thought I was funny…and quaint, I’m sure.
“It’s just an email. I figure why be formal.” he replied.
True enough. But the writer does take a risk that people like me might not bother to read the email. Try this: Eliminate all the capital letters from a dense paragraph and see if your reading comprehension is the same. My guess is no. Cool as it may be to write in all lowercase and pretend you’re ee cummings, sentences that lack a capital letter do decrease comprehension.
I’m a fan of reading and responding to questions on LinkedIn. This being a professional forum, I’m surprised by the number of hard-to-comprehend posts. Many are filled with garbled language and spelling errors. Given that prospective employers or clients might read posts, it’s too big a risk to look that sloppy. An error here and there is one thing. It is, after all, an extemporary venue but graphic designers need to communicate well in writing. Facebook, on the other hand, might be the perfect place for your all-lowercase-lacking-in-punctuation communiques.
There’s a difference between a professional forum and text messaging. But while these lines are blurring, our ability to shift gears in comprehension isn’t keeping pace. Think about how long you’ve been accustomed to a period separating two complete thoughts. Technology is asking us to reverse something we’ve known since we were four or five years old. Another test: eliminate any spaces, periods or dashes in a phone number. Then try to read the number to yourself without doubling back. It’s very hard.
A friend recently asked if I’d look at a small website she designed. What jumped out was the jarring lack of capital letters at the beginning of sentences, most of which started with the company name (whose logo is all lowercase). I admitted I was pretty formal about such things but if I stumbled while reading, others would, too. There’s something to be said for brand consistency, but like most decisions, it’s about weighing solutions and picking the lesser of evils. First, the user is there to read, learn and understand. Not to care whether your company name in logo form starts with a lowercase letter.
Perhaps we will, and must, broaden our comprehension skills in the face of changing communication modes. But we know too much about our brain’s habits and its reliance on visual signposts like capital letters and, god forbid, a little punctuation.
Updated June 2010
It isn’t every day that calling the IRS to complain about tax-evading politicians turns out to be entertaining. I had a few minutes to spare, and my new method for letting things go that make me incensed is to take some action. Even a small fruitless action helps me to move on.
What had me incensed was the news of Tom Daschle’s little tax hiccup causing him to withdraw his cabinet nomination for Health and Human Services. Is he too good to lose? Opinions abound, but many of us would rather take a draconian view and get rid of him. Our goodwill towards people in high positions is threadbare these days. Let some political forest fires rage and they might leave fresh ground for new growth.
I had just witnessed Barack Obama’s inauguration in person. Two days later I see news of my city’s mayor facing questions about his teen sex scandal. Opposing factions are calling for him to stay or resign. Is it my civic duty to consider his governing abilities before casting my verdict? I used to think so but who has the energy anymore? My fear is that events like this are becoming quotidian. How does remain interested and involved in the face of looming cynicism—our own and theirs?
Having just written a check for a $90 underpayment on last year’s taxes (that’s $90, not $900, $9000, or $90,000), I couldn’t help but wonder how the IRS could miss $128,000 of Daschle’s unpaid taxes. Sure, his taxes are more complicated than mine are. But that’s not my problem.
So I called the IRS expecting not to get through or to be taken seriously. I was transferred to the Procedures and Rules department. I pictured the cubicled workers snickering at the whack job who called to ask why the IRS wasn’t doing their job. I hope I wasn’t the only one calling.
I waited on hold for long enough to hear Mozart’s Symphony No. in G minor, then his Eine Kleine Nactmusik, and finally Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker. It was all quite lovely. I can thank my sister’s long-ago ex-husband, who was a violin teacher, for why I know the titles of these pieces.
I couldn’t help but laugh listening to Tchaikovsky. Anyone who has seen the movie Top Secret is familar with the famous ballet scene in which the Nutcracker’s Waltz of the Flowers is performed. Nearly every scene is a parody, and here the male ballet dancers have enormous codpieces on which the female dancers eventually leap to and fro. There are so many ridiculous lines and scenes in this movie. And this, coming from someone who doesn’t like slapstick.
Just recently, my brother and I were inspired, while inside a Catholic cathedral, to recite the scene in which a prisoner is given last rites by a priest before being executed. He reads from a bible every Latin phrase having nothing to do with last rites—veni vidi vici, e pluribus unum, ipso facto, pro bono and so on. We never fail to collapse in laughter and see which of us can remember the most lines. Perhaps Mr. Daschle had a little lapsus memoriae.
An IRS woman finally answered the phone and I was yanked out of my YouTube reverie. She assured me that “Mr. Dashle would have received notices from the IRS.” And that she “was also a taxpayer who pays her taxes and thinks the system should be fixed.” Oddly, it made me feel a little better. I say a little. This is either reassuring or disturbing to know that you can owe that much money to the IRS and not be thrown in jail.
At least the time I spent on hold and in YouTube meant no dollars earned and, thus, fewer taxes to pay.
Back in the early days of my graphic design career, I took a not-so-glamorous route and worked in a university publications department. After a whopping six years, I moved to another not-so-glamorous job as an art director at an association. But what I lacked in the sexy-projects department, I gained in the word department.
Multiply the number of pages of edits that came across my desk times the number of projects times six years and it equals a lot of decoding of proofreader’s marks. I was blessed being surrounded by scholarly editors and writers. I say scholarly to contrast them with the marketing department because their respective focus was different. And we designers enjoyed the usage war that silently raged between the writer writers and the marketing writers. The latter took great liberties with the English language much to the former’s dismay.
Indeed, there is a time and place for the modifying of proper usage or grammar for the sake of boldness or simplicity, like Apple’s “Think Different” slogan. But I appreciated the delicate, focused care that these editors put into their work—plodding along word by word, line by line, page by page, ironing out the wrinkles. I then pressed out the remaining wrinkles, and learned by doing. There is something refreshing about (mostly) unequivocal rules. With design, anything can be questioned. (I have since learned that anything can be questioned about writing and editing.)
Even so, it was eye-blurring work, deciphering the correct spot in which to insert a commas. Enter proofreader’s marks—this wonderful shorthand of symbols became etched on my brain. It was among a designer’s responsibilities to know what the symbols meant. Now their application seems like a dying art. Making corrections to a document these days is a bit like dancing with a different partner on a dance floor, each using a different style that you must adjust to.
The beauty of proofreaders marks is that they are universal. Each one has a unique meaning and purpose and are, therefore, unambiguous. They are also shorthand for what would otherwise be spelled out, leaving the page less cluttered and leaving the edit easier to understand. A curlicue means delete, whereas a cross out means lowercase. Cross out a whole word and one has to think too long, use guess work or make more errors.
Now, with many proofs coming to designers in the form of marked-up PDFs, there may be no need for proofreaders symbols. These PDFs have their benefits, especially the ability to check off each edit as it is made. But it’s a cumbersome way to make corrections, switching back and forth on screen between software programs. Call me a luddite but I still love a marked-up (in red), hard-copy proof. Those were the days. But then again, those were also the days of making halftones in a dark room using a stat camera for hours while inhaling chemicals. Some progress is good.
