There’s truth to the saying, “You can have it fast, cheap or good, but you can’t have all three.” As a business owner, I recognize that fast and cheap are values that clients relate to. But as a designer, I value doing great work that I can be proud of. As an owner of a creative agency for over 16…
A sensitive topic that’s a huge struggle in our industry is how to give employees direct and honest creative feedback. Creativity is so subjective that this is sometimes very difficult, especially if the one giving the feedback and the one doing the work aren’t on the same page. Setting overall expectations is great, but how you break down those expectations…
Preparing speculative (a.k.a. “spec”) work for new business is a common practice in the agency world. In the design world, however, there is a rising tide for abolishing spec work with entire websites devoted to just saying “NO!” to spec work. Normally, the scenario is for a client to send out Requests for Proposals, or RFPs, to various agencies asking…
We want to briefly discuss a few quick notes on sustainability design. The definition of sustainability is “conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources.” This is a great definition, however, we like Nathan Shedroff’s definition from his book Design is the Problem: “Don’t do things today that make tomorrow worse.” Design is the Problem The challenge of…
Everyone has experienced what Larry David went through just trying to open a product. Packaging can be its own worst enemy. Take potato chips, for example. Why do potato chips come in a bag? Is a bag really going to protect a fragile potato chip? It’s always surprising to open a bag of chips and find anything other than crumbles….
