Recap: ASAE’s Design on a Dime

Last Wednesday, ASAE held a Lunch and Learn session titled “Design on a Dime.” We asked Richard Belle, President of Belle Communications to share his take-aways from the event.

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What a joy to be guest blogging for Jacki today! Recently I was able to take part in a marvelous discussion that explored some of the challenges currently facing associations and their designers.

This past Wednesday, ASAE’s Communication Section Council presented “Design on a Dime,” looking at the best ways to get the most out of a tight budget or limited time restraints, whether working with an in-house design team or an outside firm. Speakers included Wendy Bogart, Director of Graphic Design, Council for Advancement and Support of Education; Amy Miedema, Senior Director of Communications, American Academy of Audiology; and Rita Zimmerman, Communications Coordinator, American Inns of Court.  As a communications professional who is NOT a designer, I was struck by how much of the discussion was really about good management and effective planning, even if couched in the vocabulary of design. Put simply, no design, no matter how compelling or aesthetically innovative, can afford to be disconnected from strategy and budget.

The panel provided straightforward tips that should help you control time and money while still promoting effective design. These should help you whether you are the communications director trying to control your design costs or the designer trying to win and maintain business.

Developing a Cohesive and Proactive Strategy

• Consider all potential uses for a brand or logo. When you create pieces, constantly think of multiple and reinforcing applications. A riveting design is great; flexibility with that design is even better.
• Make sure that your annual budget is realistic in estimating costs. This means that you must consider artwork, design, printing, mailing, and postage for all the elements you hope to develop.
• Develop a design request form that each department must complete, including project name, budget, business objectives, target audience, schedule and deadlines, design medium, quantity, etc.
• Discuss and enforce timelines. By educating non-designers on how long they should plan for design, printing, blue-line, or other activities, you can manage their expectations up front.

Creating Great Artwork with a Shrinking Budget

• Collaborate with other organizations in your industry. You might be able to create photos that more than one organization can use, albeit in different contexts.
• Use typography as a design element.
• Develop cost-effective ways to photograph subjects for use in your publications and web site. With skillful planning, you may use a single event to develop materials that you will use in many different publications.
• Consider using a subscription service or micro stock. Used creatively, these photos or graphics do not have to look like stock elements. Don’t confuse stock with cliché.
• Create your own art.
• Set a budget for each publication and stick to it.

Managing Your Workflow

• Only go to a designer when you have planned out all contingencies and considered all potential applications of the artwork.
• Define what you mean by final copy. You must define in advance how many reviews and corrections may occur. Otherwise, multiple reviews and proofs will destroy your budget.
• Make sure your “final” decision-makers review and sign-off on design at the earliest possible time. If you wait until the final proof to get buy-in, you may end up re-doing the design and paying for it twice (or more!).

Most of these suggestions are basic and reflect common-sense management practices. Unfortunately, too often we are beguiled by sexy design and forget management 101.

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Richard Belle is President of Belle Communications, LLC, a communications consulting firm in Bethesda, MD. Services include communication audits, proposal coaching, technical writing, technical editing, and awards preparation. Please visit the web site at www.bellecomm.net or contact Richard at
Richard@bellecomm.net.

Making the Case: Showcasing the Strategic Business Value of Your In-House Team

Last Friday night, I attended a workshop hosted by the DC chapter of AIGA, an organization I have been involved in for more than 10 years. Moderating the workshop was Stanley Hainsworth, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer for Tether, and former VP Global Creative for Starbucks, and Creative Director for Lego and Nike. I would be lying if I didn’t admit to having a little bit of a design crush on him. While the topic of conversation — Showcasing the Strategic Business Value of Your In-House Team — was specifically geared towards designers, many of Hainsworth’s tips are relevant for anyone in the marketing or creative industry.

1. Track the time spent on your various projects. Share this with leadership and set priorities based on the company goals. If a new project comes up and doesn’t fit in one of the priority buckets, evaluate if the project should take away resources from another bucket.

2. Host a monthly show and tell and invite everyone in the company. Showcase high-quality, high-impact, and successful examples from other industries. By showing off these high-quality examples, you can gently suggest the type of work your company should be doing.

3. Create side projects for your team. These “no-client” projects are a great source of creative relief for your team and will show senior members of the staff that your department is constantly thinking of new and creative resources for the company. And don’t always make the the project something relevant for the company. At Starbucks, the creative team developed a “tee of the month” initiative, where designers created a new tee shirt every month. The project was such a success it was turned into an online shop, BassTruckReactive.com (that’s Starbucks Creative re-arranged).

4. As a team, share something outside of work that you enjoy. If someone enjoys cooking, host a potluck for lunch. If it’s running, go for a fun run after work. Getting to know your team as people helps build the relationships needed to work together successfully.

5. Work in the field for a week. At Starbucks, the entire creative team worked in a store for a week. After a few days, Hainsworth observed that customers in line would often order the same beverage as the person in front of them — and it was not a coincidence, they didn’t know what on the menu to order. With this information, the Starbucks creative team developed a promotion to teach customers how to order. After clicking through a few screens, their customized beverage would appear and the customer would receive a tee-shirt with order. A similar promotion “My Drink As Art” is now available for Starbucks gift cards.

6. Finally, Hainsworth suggested rather than giving performance based bonuses, tie bonuses to specific business problems. Good design and good marketing should solve a specific problem. As problemsolvers, this will not only encourage your team to take ownership of these problems, but it will show senior leadership that you are entirely committed to the success of the project.

Implementing even one of these tips will help your team work together to show those outside your department the value you add to the success of the company.

Let’s Talk…

The latest issue of ASAE’s magazine, Associations Now, provides a great article on how to communicate with your design firm. The original article, written by Jen Smith, can be found here.

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Tips for Communicating With Your Designers

It’s a scenario guaranteed to raise tension: You hear your designer lament the overuse of a particular font while all you want is a brochure that will help you meet your fundraising (or sales, or registration) goals. Your designer, on the other hand, hears you saying, “Well, I just don’t like it. I don’t know why,” when he or she is looking for substantive feedback. How can you get on the same page—literally?

The key to successful partnerships with designers is to understand that your words and their images are working together to create a message. If there is a disconnect between the two, the message is all but lost. Here are some suggestions on how to do so, from a designer’s perspective.

Involve your designer early in the planning process. We want the piece we’re creating to be as effective and useful as you do. Designers can offer ideas to help structure a piece to better convey a particular message, or even ways to make a piece more cost efficient in printing or production.

Understand that designers aren’t just worried about how something looks. We want to create a strong piece in which words and images work well together. Be willing to listen to suggestions about content or wording from your designer, just as we are willing to listen to suggestions about imagery or placement. A team effort makes the final product stronger.

Tell us what you want the piece to say, not how you want it to look. Often we hear “make this text block bold and bigger,” when what you really mean is “this text is more important than the current design shows.” Moving the text to a different area of the page or altering the design of other elements might be a better solution than changing the font size.

Communicate your reactions as fully as possible. It can be difficult to put into words why you do or don’t like a particular design, but even a simple description of what you’re seeing can be more helpful than “I just don’t like it.” This goes back to being on the same page from the start of a project: If the designer understands the goals of the piece, it will be easier to explain why what you see doesn’t meet those goals.

We won’t let our egos get in the way if you don’t. Designers can get a bad rap for caring only about design for design’s sake. This couldn’t be more false. We care about what we are communicating. We are not designers so much as we are visual communicators. When you put it that way, we’re not that different from you.

What to Look for in a Design Agency, Part 1

You want to hire a designer or an agency for an upcoming project. Sounds easy enough, right? Just like any other vendor you work with, you need to be sure that the individual or firm you select is qualified to complete your project. This series of blog posts will help you find the designer or agency that is the perfect fit for your project.

With many marketing budgets being slashed, cost is often the first consideration when looking at design consultants. Since freelancers do not carry the overhead that agencies do, they can typically charge less. However, because a freelancer is only one person, there is a limit to the amount of work they can take on. An agency will often have multiple designers on staff and can take on more projects at one time. Think Tank Creative, and other start-up agencies, are often hybrids of the two — since Think Tank Creative does not have a designated “office” space, we have low-overhead and pass the savings on to our clients; and since we maintain relationships with other freelance designers in the area, we can bring on other designers to support our workload when necessary.

Each agency and individual has their own formula for calculating budgets. The type of project (print vs. web, flyer vs. catalog), the lifespan of the piece, and the man-hours involved in developing the piece all factor into the cost of the piece. Some designers will work on an hourly basis, while others prefer to work on a per-piece basis. If working with a designer on an hourly basis, consider asking for a cap on the number of hours as a form of insurance that your project will not go over budget.

It is important to remember that the lowest cost designer or agency may not be the best choice. They may lack the proper software, technical skills, and relationships necessary to properly execute your projects. In our next post, we’ll explain what software your designer should be using to complete your project. Check back next week, or click here to sign up to receive our blog posts in your inbox!