Funday Friday 27/01/12

The brief for today's "non project work" was to do produce some simple illustrated posters using big blocks of one or two colours. After some deliberation and a few coffees we've ended up producing posters based on Will Ferrell quotes / films.

I've done illustrations of the man himself from the films Anchorman and The Other Guys, Luke then went for depicting the "Tuna Vs Lion" argument that Will Ferrel and Mark Wahlberg have in The Other Guys.

If you've not seen these two films, please do check them out. If you have a childish sense of humour like us, you'll love them.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Running a small design studio - using the right software.

Producing great design is one thing, but running a studio means you need a whole lot more than just Adobe's Creative Suite.

I took me most of last year to finally settle into a system that works for us, and I found most of it through recommendation and reading up on the subject. So I thought it might be useful to post about what we use, how it helps us, and maybe it will help someone else in a similar position.

We are a team of 2 creatives, 1 developer and various contractors. We produce design, build websites, manage print and offer project management on exhibition builds etc. So we need to manage tasks, track time, send estimates and invoices - and of course submit accounts / VAT returns.

We've arrived at a solution that is the most cost effective and manageable way for us to do the above:

Freeagent (plus the Eon widget): Timeslips, Paperwork & Accounting.

Basecamp: Project & studio task management.

When I started the company I used (again on recommendation) a piece of software called Billings. It's fantastic for sole users on one machine and really gave me a lot of value when first starting out. From timing jobs to billing for them - both essential!

Last year we grew, and with new team members (full time, part time and remote) I needed a new way to assign tasks and track everyone's time.

I did a lot of looking around, and fell in love with products like Streamtime and Sohnar - but with only a couple of us these systems were simply too big. You need your own server, and those systems also both feature a chunky CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems, and we don't need anything that complicated yet. But we do need to keep track of leads, who's called them and what is the next step.

I then discovered that Billings produce a "Pro" version, one which either ran off an in house server - or off their cloud based service, perfect! We could migrate all our data, use a system we were familiar with and people could login using a browser window to track their time.

Well, that worked for all of five minutes.

We found their cloud based service to be very unstable, and after a lot of patches, updates and fixes we were faced with a system that failed to work on a daily basis.

By this point we were already using Basecamp for task management and it works wonderfully, flat monthly rate no matter how many users you have. Give clients and staff access to individual projects, assign tasks, track comments, see timelines on a calendar (which you can import to your calendar) and a whole host of other goodies. Please do go and check it out. I also use Basecamp to keep track of my leads, creating a to do list with tasks for each lead. We can comment on these and keep everyone involved abreast of what stage we're at with each lead.

Thankfully then a friend came to the rescue with a system for timekeeping and accounting he'd been using for his similarly sized company - Freeagent.

Freeagent is bloody awesome! All your time, all your money (inc payroll and taxes) all in one place. You can get a 30 day free trial and I'd wholeheartedly recommend giving it some consideration. You access both these services through your browser, and both carry costs of around £25pcm (cheaper than Billings). To track time using Freeagent you'll need a widget called "Eon" this can be found over here. And it carries a one off payment of £30, you can then install it on all your Macs and sign into Freeagent through it to access tasks and projects. We then all simply submit our time at the end of every day and it syncs straight to Freeagent.

This is what has worked for us, and everyone's needs are different. If you've got any questions please don't hesitate to give me a shout, I'd be happy to help in anyway I might be able to.

Karl.

Funday Friday's

We always try to make some time on Friday's to do some 'self initiated' work. Either random briefs we come up with as a team, a tutorial or something we just fancy doing!

Last Friday I was out all day, but Luke did this rather lovely hand drawn type that he's worked up into a vector. It's looking really nice, and I think with a little more flourishes could be worked up into a really nice screen print for the studio.

We'll try and post up what we get up to on Fridays (when we're not fending off deadlines!) regularly and we'd love to hear your feedback.

Karl.

Free pitching on the increase

Design Week reported today that free pitching is on the increase - not a good thing to hear as far as I'm concerned. I can't say I'm entirely surprised though, with tighter budgets and more agencies popping up every day, our market is becoming tougher than ever before. New young agencies, and freelancers, I'm sure also contribute to this reported increase of free pitching.

The Design Industry Voices survey questioned a (rather modest) number of designers (496) and 71% of them said clients expected more free creative work at the pitch stage.

The age old free pitching debate I fear, will never go away. And like so many trials and tribulations we go through as owners of design agencies, big and small, if we worried about every possibility we'd never get any work done! And it is for this reason I enter this new year with hope, optimism and my head held high when I refuse non paid creative pitches.

We sell ideas, the shoe shop sells shoes, and the baker sells bread. But if you asked to try a pair of shoes for a few days to see if they made you look good, or indeed asked for a free loaf of bread to see if it filled you up as promised - I'm fairly sure you'd be laughed out of the shop.

It is madness that our industry allows itself to be de-valued by giving away our 'materials' - our IDEAS for free on the basis that we might win the work. Why, when so many industries work fine by presenting what they do, how they do it, showing relevant case studies, estimating how much it will cost the customer and moving forward from there?

I wonder if this is all our own fault? Creatives love creating solutions to problems, and wether it's a discussion over a pint in the pub, or a new brief from a client - we can't help but run away with ourselves coming up with ideas, problems, solutions and all that pretty stuff we call design. And over the years has this become more evident to clients? That this natural desire to create can be exploited, because frankly, we love it. Ironic though, that free pitching will only continue to drive up the cost of design - are clients even aware of that? For every free pitch an agency might win, they might have lost 3 others - where do clients think the cost of the lost pitches will be recouped? Probably on their bill I'm afraid.

Clients know we love designing, and (for some brands) know that we'd all fall over ourselves to work with them. So they know we're keen and raring to go, and because of our natural desire to create, over the years I think the free pitching situation has become accepted by some design agencies because it's the only way to win those big, desirable clients - and frankly, we love a challenge - and winning!

But I think design has never been stronger in business terms, and this should enable us to fight back and be respected like the shoe shops and bakeries (where AM I going with this metaphor?!). Most agencies can now prove how their input has helped to grow their client's business. And I think this clear illustration of ROI from design is still a relatively new thing for clients, certainly the ones we deal with. But by presenting great case studies, being aware of design as a business tool, showing returns, your processes and being clear in briefs and deliverables there should be no reason you can't win work without new creative ideas. And no reason for clients not to feel comfortable appointing an agency based on a credentials pitch.

We do not support free pitching, and we turn it down regularly. And I think it's far more interesting to see how we're developing as an agency by having to communicate our processes and case studies better, in order to win clients.

I'd like to take this opportunity to highlight the great work the Design Programme are doing to help battle the free creative pitching debate, please do check out their website. And the original article from DW can be found here.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this one too so please don't hesitate to drop me a line on here or by email: studio@makedesignenjoy.co.uk

Thanks for reading,

Karl.