Being both a graphic designer and business owner, I have a love hate relationship with Microsoft Excel. Having an uncontrollable need to make things look clean, organized and professional in my layouts often leads me to clash with Excel. Being a business owner as well, it is essential that I use Excel for a variety of reports and spreadsheets. Today however, I stumbled across a few tips that help Excel users customize their layouts (among other useful tips) that helped bridge that gap within me between design and business. (more…)

Many of you are probably already aware of this, but Mozilla enlisted the help of the world to help set a new world record for most software downloaded in 24 hours. We were among the millions that download Firefox 3. However, the experience in playing a part in this record breaking event did not end with downloading the software.

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Rare is the person that does not have a nightmarish customer service story to tell. At some point in time we have all experienced customer service so dreadful that it amazed us that the offending individual or company was even able to do business! What makes it so frustrating is that providing exceptional customer service is not that hard. All it takes is a little common sense.

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I spoke on the phone with a client today who is ready to proceed with a Web site project for their business. Their company is growing rapidly and they know they need to expand their presence to the World Wide Web. They already have a domain name registered and want us to create a clean, professional Web site for them. The problem is they have no clue on how to get started.
Getting Started: An Outline

The first suggestion I always make to our clients that have no idea where to begin is to create an outline. An outline is an invaluable tool that can help you figure out exactly what to put on your Web site and where. Your top level items can serve as the main pages featured on your Web site, while the second-tier items are sub-level links that will appear on each main page (figure 1).

A well-constructed outline limits what and what is not considered a top level category. The same holds true for a Web site. You don’t want all of your links to be placed on the home page. You want your pages and information to be organized in a way that your audience is able to easily and quickly find what they are looking for.  You want your broadest categories to be links on your home page, to which your audience can then navigate downward to find the exact bit of information of interest to them.

Write Your Text

You have created your outline and you now understand how your Web site will be structured. What’s next? Writing the text for each page of course! Your primary concern should be making your text clear and to the point. Your audience is not going to spend minutes, even seconds reading every bit of text. Break your text up into sections, divided by clearly defined sub-heads. This way if your Web page requires scrolling, the viewer is still able to quickly glimpse at what is contained within the text.

The More Content the Better!

Providing us with as much information and content as you can about your company and/or product is always the best way to go. The more we know about who you are and what you are trying to accomplish, the more successful we will be in creating a Web site that truly represents you. The other day I had a client send me their company logo and a whole CD full of photographs and promotional materials to use when designing their Web site. This is extermely helpful from a design standpoint in that I am now able to pick and choose visual elements from the library of material thay have provided me with.

Let Us Do the Rest

Knowing what you want to say on your Web site and how it should be organized is half the battle. Once you have figured that out, we take it from there and use your thoughts and words to create a visually stunning, accessible and professional Web site.

I hope this article will help you get started on that Web site project you have been putting off indefintely. Call or e-mail us and we’ll be happy to guide you through the process from start to finish!

Still scrambling for that last minute gift for a client or family member? Productivity and technology blog Lifehacker.com has put together a phenomenal list of gift ideas ranging from the cheap to moderately inexpensive.    

The link below takes you directly to the Lifehacker Gift Guide for 2007:

http://lifehacker.com/software/feature/lifehacker-gift-guide-2007-332249.php 

You have written your proposal for a new Web site project and submitted it to your potential client. After a few agonizing weeks of waiting, they have contacted you and expressed interest in meeting with you to go over your proposal and project details. You can barely contain your excitement as you agree to meet with them in a week for three or so hours. After you hang up the phone you realize this meeting will either give you your next project (and income), or break the deal. What do you do?

Fortunately, the Riddle Brothers have been to and hosted a few meetings and we are willing to share with you our top ideas and tips for hosting a successful meeting.

 
1. A Comfortable Meeting Place

Sure, a coffee shop is fine for a brief 20 minute get-to-know-you type of meeting. However it is not ideal for spreading out your Web site wireframes and proposals for in-depth review. Having a large, spacious place to meet with comfortable furniture is a huge plus. The comfort of your client can only help increase your chances that the meeting will result in your next big project.

We have held several of our meetings in hotel rooms which have a living space and kitchen. Most hotels will allow a late checkout of around 2 p.m., allowing you plenty of time for an early morning / afternoon meeting. Libraries often have meeting rooms which they schedule on a regular basis as well.

2. Supplies

I cannot stress the importance of having a variety of supplies on hand. It can result in awkward embarrassment if your client asks for a stapler and you don’t have one. Some supplies I would recommend you bring to your meetings are: extra pens, paper, a stapler (and staples), paperclips, a white board, a laptop and a printer (if easily portable). At our last meeting we had a printer on hand which allowed us to print out a contract we all modified and agreed on while at the meeting. Therefore we were all able to sign it on the spot saving days worth of back and forth faxing.

3. Food and Drink

Having beverages (water, a variety of sodas, juice) and some light fare on-hand will show your client that you care about their comfort and have been thinking about them prior to the meeting. They may show no interest in eating any food, but the fact that you have it to offer will really make a positive mark.

4. Prepare the Night Before

Pack up everything that you will need for the meeting the night before. This way you will sleep easy knowing everything has been taken care of and you only need to worry about getting yourself ready before heading on out the door.

5. Shake Hands

When the meeting begins and your client arrives, always smile while introducing yourself and shake each and every hand of those who are attending the meeting. I have witnessed many presentations in which the presenter did not personally introduce their-selves to each member of the reviewing committee. This folly put them in a negative light before their presentation even began.

Finally, be courteous, friendly and yourself. Relax and have fun while being professional. Most people enjoy meetings with a relaxed, social atmosphere, and showing your client that you are happy to be talking with them about the project can go a long way.

You know the scenario . . . it’s been a few days since any new work has come through your company and you have been busy wrapping up a few larger projects. Then out of the blue a barrage of new clients are requesting jobs from you left, right, sideways, upways and downways! How do you keep track of all these new assignments?

An Easy Answer for Simple Tracking

While there are a variety of large project management applications out there to choose from (and I’m sure they do the job wonderfully), the Riddle Brothers like to keep things as simple as possible. We use a very easy method for tracking our jobs in the form of a shared Excel spreadsheet via Google docs.

Whenever we receive a new job (either design = me, or development = Josh), we add it to our spreadsheet. Information contained on the spreadsheet includes a job number, name of the project, point of contact for the project and contact information.

This spreadsheet is accessible by us anytime, anywhere (thanks to Google) and allows us to keep track as a brother tandem of all jobs in the cue.

The Ever-Important Job Number

The first column indicates the number of the job for the year. This is the most important bit of information on this spreadsheet. For example, our 65th job received during the year of 2007 would be job 07-RID-065….where 07 is the year, RID is our company indicator and 065 is the job number.  

Why is this so important? The number is a locater for us. It is included on all file names for a project that we do. For example, if we were designing a brochure using Adobe InDesign (job number 07-RID-065) for a client, it would be named as file 07-RID-065_companybrochure.indd.

Our reasoning for this is that we may have a client contact us a few years down the road requesting that we revise “that one brochure you did back in 2007”. We would then spend a good amount of wasted time digging through our archives for this brochure if we did not track it in some way. Since have assigned the brochure a job number, we can easily search our archives for the job number (065) or the year (07).

It Saves Time and Effort for You!

Tracking your jobs only save you time and effort to focus elsewhere. I can’t count the number of times I have asked someone to send me a file, only to see them search through their computer in multiple folders and sub-folders not even sure of what they are looking for. What a waste of time better spent on the important and fun things…such as design…or development!

Communicating your ideas effectively through a digital medium is essential to maintaining a productive and successful business. However, conveying your ideas isn’t so easy when emails can be misinterpreted, or even worse, if they are unreadable due to poor structure and grammar. Here are a few tips you can use to make sure that you are understood correctly the first time you type it.

The Subject Has a Purpose
If you were about to submit a report to your manager, boss, or a business investor, would you ever label the cover page “Read Me” or “Question”? If you said “yes” then I think email communication should be the least of your worries. The subject line of an email is one of the most important parts of an email, as it determines when, and if the recipient is going to read it. Subjects should be clear, to the point, and as much of a summary of the containing email as possible. Don’t abuse the purpose however, and keep it short to a few words. If the subject line is more than 10-15 words I would consider cutting it down. Also, mind your manners when sending an email to your recipients and do not type in ALL CAPS. It is rude, appears as if you are yelling, and overall is ineffective in communicating your message. If the email is urgent either mark it so in your email program (most client-side programs have integrated this feature regardless of what program you are using) or else place “Urgent:” before your subject. Just be sure that your message is indeed urgent, or else nobody will treat your emails with priority anymore.

Grade School Grammar
Nothing is worse than an email without proper use of grammar and punctuation. Read over your emails and think of what your 4th grade English teacher would have said about your email if it were written on wide rules loose leaf paper (you know, the yellow kind with 2″ lines that tears every time you try to erase something). Use the shift key, punctuate properly, and make sure that you have a subject and predicate. Decrypting the hieroglyphics of a sentence is sometimes more time consuming than reading the email in its entirety. Not only is this frustrating to your recipient, but it requires them to reply to your email for further clarifications. It can also lead to misinterpretation which sometimes is a minor issue, but if you are estimating a large project then misinterpreted scope can cost you a substantial amount of money.

Attachments
Unfortunately not everyone is using high speed internet connections yet. Sending an email with a 3 MB attachment is not so bad on a cable or DSL connection, but those of us that are still using dial-up connections are going to have to wait a good 10-15 minutes for the email to finally download. Even worse, some email programs will not allow you to read other emails or continue using the program until all of your email has downloaded. Talk about frustrating! If you have a large email there are a few alternatives. If you are able to zip the file using a zip program (or Windows’ built in zip functionality) it may be all the difference you need. There are also a lot of great sites that allow you to upload your files and send them to another person for download. I wouldn’t recommend sending your financial documents and other sensitive information, but simple presentations, graphics, multimedia clips, and other reports are perfect for this purpose. Here are a few upload sites that you may want to look into:

DropSend
DropBoks
OneDump
SendThisFile
MegaUpload

Stay On Topic
In relation to the first topic concerning the subject having a purpose, remember that throwing in additional information towards the end of an email is a sure way to be forgotten. Rather than adding “p.s. our meeting is at 3 p.m. tomorrow, right?” to the end of a lengthy email about an entirely different topic, send out another shorter email so that it has its own subject, and is separated from the bulk of the current message. It is very easy to forget the final line of an email if there is a lot of other subject matter that the recipient is focusing on.

Listening can do wonders for friendships, conflict resolution, managing your employees and even marriages. You can’t begin to solve a problem if you aren’t sure what the problem is. The only way to find out what the problem is…is by listening. So how does this apply to the Web and graphic design business?

Day in and day out, I come across one point that is stressed repeatedly as the most important step for being a good leader: listening!

Your Client Knows What They Want
So how does this apply to the Web and graphic design business? Simple…listening to your client is the number one rule for success as a service provider. When a client requests that I draft up a design for a Web site or logo, he or she usually has a general idea of what they are looking for. It is my job to extract their thoughts  and transform them into a physical presence in traditional or digital media.

However, as a designer, you cannot achieve this without having your client describe the thought they have in their mind. A good majority of my clients have come to me because they were looking for a designer to replace a firm that couldn’t give them what they wanted. The firm didn’t listen to the client. They created what they thought the client wanted…all the while ignoring the description the client was trying to convey. The client would say they wanted a red square, and the firm would give them a blue circle because they thought it looked better. You get the picture….

Guide and Educate
The point is, our role is to guide the client . . . to take their thoughts and mold them into something they can see. Feel free to make suggestions along the way, but don’t think you know what the client wants better than he/she does. Listen to the client, give them what they want, and you will build a strong relationship that will bring you promotion via word of mouth…and ultimately more business!