Flash forward, and we have more choice than we could ever need. Do we really need 285 varieties of cookies, 75 of iced tea, 230 soups, 175 salad dressings? We define happiness as having choices, and yet give us too many choices and we get stressed and would rather walk away and not make a decision than put in the effort required to make an informed choice. This is the subject of the book “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less” by Barry Schwartz.

Happiness is when we feel like we have the time, the knowledge and the choice required to make the best possible decision. We need filters to help us make these decisions and live in that yellow zone. The Happiness Zone.

As a brand, you have to help people wade through choices and find you. You also have the following related problems to solve:

1. People don’t trust nameless corporations and advertising messages anymore (if they ever really did).
2. People are looking for ways to simplify life, and often make their buying decisions by tapping into trusted sources. According to Forrester Research, “83% of online consumers trust the opinion of a friend or acquaintance who has used a product or service”
3. Your brand is not special to your customer. It’s not the center of their life, as it is to you.

So what should brands do? How do you sell products and have your brand heard over the constant drone of your competitor’s messages? How do you cut through the noise and connect with your customer and have them ‘hear’ you.

Traditionally, brands have done some user and market research, built a product, advertised it’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and repeated the process to keep the product fresh and relevant in the market. This is a throwback to the industrial revolution and no longer relevant. In this world of flux and speed, the touch points with the customer need to be more natural, immediate and constant. Your brand needs to meet your customer where they are most comfortable, and truly engage with them.

Introducing social media. Social Media is the big broad term that takes many forms, from Facebook to a white label wiki. From media sharing sites such as YouTube, LastFM or Flickr, to life-sharing sites such as Twitter or MySpace. Forget stale forums where people post questions and no one relies, GetSatisfaction delivers the promise of community, by allowing companies and their customers to have lively exchange about products.

As brands grapple with the concept of social media, some view it as just another channel to advertise. But that’s one very thin slice of the possibility pie and dates back to thinking from a 100 years ago. Yes, you can create brand awareness, but how do you actually get your customer to care about you, and make you their preferred choice? Instead of using ad-copy, social media allows you to have a more real, meaningful engagement with your customer. You can now discuss things with your customer. And use language that is more natural and accessible to your customer about every subject that matters. To you and your customer.

The wide, wild, undefined world of social media is in it’s infancy. And brands that ‘get it’ are starting to see it’s true potential. It holds promise for creating deeper relationship between organizations and the people they serve, whether that organization is an online company, a bank, or a non-profit organization. If you have something to promote, and communicate about, social media will be a vital part of your communication strategy going forward.

The concept is simple, really. Don’t look at social media as an advertising vehicle. Instead thinks of it like a party. Your customers are attending this party. You are attending the party too. You are not the host, you are just a participant, as are they. Conversation is lively, noisy and on various subjects. How will you join in? How will you introduce yourself to others? How will you mingle in this party, get people to get to know you, appreciate your presence and really want to keep in touch with you, even outside of this party? In short, how will you become the life of the party?

Guido doesn’t get far anymore. People see through the greasy sheen of falseness. Here’s a suggestion: be authentic, and useful. Be(come) the nice guy. The brand that is helpful, and confident. Knowledgeable in what you do, and not arrogant. Proud not full-of-yourself. Communicative not sale-sy. Marriott has joined Twitter and won kudos for creating great conversations with travelers around the world. Even this hot dog vendor in Vancouver has leveraged their geek central location, to talk to their customers on Twitter with great success.

Before you jump into the social media pond, consider how best you will join in the conversation and what do you have to offer.

Here are a few questions to ask, that will help you humanize your brand, and make authentic decisions on his/her behalf:

1. What would your brand be like at the party? (E.g. The clown, the shy one, the chatty kathy)
2. Where would your brand hang out? What online communities would she or he be drawn to?
3. Who are your brand’s best friends? Who trusts your brand and loves them?
4. What are brands that your brand would buy? (Example: Starbucks or the local neighborhood cafe?)
5. What will your brand do or say at the party, that is typical of her/him, that will make people remember her (in a good way)?

On a somewhat related note, you will find DesignStamp on Twitter, but you won’t find us on Facebook. We haven’t figured out why/how we, as a design studio need to be there. And we refuse to attend the party unless we know that we’d look good going in. So we are talking about it internally, dressing for success (a new website is in the works) and making sure we are drinking the Kool-aid we serve. Be authentic, be useful.

We encourage you to contact us and let’s get to work on your social media strategy!

2008 has been an eventful year for you. Yup, you read right, for you. It was a year that saw your investments plummet, and a year that promised you “change”. Change can be good, change can be bad. But change was definitely in the air this year for you.

I suggest that 2008 was the year that big became uncool. Big loans, big debts, big car companies, big wars and big promises. All blew up big and showed us that we need to change our way of thinking. No more spending more than our means and living the big American dream. Maybe the problem was scale. If we thought small, if we cared about the little guy and the little things, we may not be in the big mess that we seem to be in? Maybe we could have set up schools to teach something useful to a group of 20 kids at a time, rather than map out how to spend billions of dollars to conquer countries and seize the big oil?

I am going to, narcissistically, use DesignStamp as an example of why I have always thought that small is better than big. Here are top reasons why:

1. Small and focused = not being anything like the BIG 3. And that’s a good thing.
2. Smaller hierarchical overhead means, we react faster, and create solutions that best meet market and client needs.
3. Our greatest strength is to keep our focus on what we do best. To bring 3 sometimes seemingly contrary worlds together and have them build the same thing: brand, business and technology. Technology simply provides the tools for us to translate business goals and create better experiences that build strong brands.
4. We use fewer resources by not having a big office to maintain and virtualize how we work. We pass that benefit to our clients through reduced costs. We also drive less. Really. We are the masters of modern communication and work with people around the world efficiently and effectively. Our productivity and miles-driven ratio, we hope, is inspiring for other businesses.
5. We spend more time in discovery than we do in execution. Smarter initial questions asked means we spend less in overall budget than large production teams that just build what business owners think is required. Our small team model demands shorter production cycles as do our clients budgets.
6. Our bottom-line effects each of us personally. We are all invested in building a profitable, sustainable business. The level of care is reflected in the work we do. If it won’t look good in our portfolio, we won’t do it.
7. Flexibility is the requirement in this economy. We have always valued that in how we approach projects. Whether it is the size of the team assigned to our project, or the technology we use, we are not married to any particular format/platform, if it is not right for you. Our process has flexibility built right into it.
8. We are not anonymous, we do good work by being personally accountable and maintaining a positive attitude. This creates strong constructive relationships between us and our clients. Most of our clients come back to us for projects, which means we develop a shorthand with them that is invaluable.
9. We partner with our clients. We don’t work as external agencies to just deliver the goods asked of them. We function as partners who can validate business goals with audience adoption and technical constraints.
10. We love challenges and constraints. Designers are trained to not just accept boundaries and limitations, but prove value within them. Designers of buildings and furniture work within the constraints of gravity and space to provide excellent solutions. We do the same within the limitations such as pre-defined budgets of time and costs.

So I suggest that if you are focusing on the right thing you have nothing to fear. Fear is self-perpetuating and only leads to more of itself. Positivity breeds positivity. We value clients who remain positive in challenging times, and we do our best to bring a level of fun to every project.

Our focus is to remain small, and steadfast in what we do, and how we do it. We wish you a fulfilling 2009 in which you see small things bring disproportionate happiness to you!

So what does it mean to me to be good? I am not sure as yet, but here are a few words that come to mind. I told myself that I won’t spend hours and hours on this blog and write from the heart and not the head. So here goes in no particular order:

• Respect. Yup that word again. I believe in this so much that I chide myself when I don’t follow the mantra. It helps me see things more objectively.
• Curious. To want to learn more because I owe it to my craft to be ‘good’ and more importantly, to always be searching for the ‘better’ way to solve problems.
• Caring. From telling someone that their shirt’s tag is showing to giving a team member timely feedback, it is important to “see” people and demonstrate that noticing and acknowledging behavior and yes, even appearances.
• Educate. This I need to do more. I strongly believe that through education you can positively change a life, and this planet’s course is via education. That is why I teach, and if I ever accumulated wealth, that is what I would want to do with my money. Facilitate learning.
• Question. If I want to improve how things are, and make them how they ought to be, I need to remember to think outside the construct and question status quo.
• Happy. If I am happy, I do better work, and I am good to those around me. I owe others to be happy, so I should take the time to do things that make me happy.
• Travel. What better way to appreciate different cultures and ways of living than to see the world. My work, my attitude to people who are different than me is informed by what I think I know about them. I don’t understand how traveling can not be a priority. It’s mine.
• Give. I need to do more of this. But related to “Educate”, for me giving people money or the basics for living (food, shelter) is not the most productive way to change their life for the better. You have to empower people to be able to make choices, to see the world for what it can be for them, and a way out of where they may be stuck. (Gawd, I sound like a preacher, but I have a story that is too long to type, so ask me and I’ll tell you)
• Voice. If you don’t got one, you ain’t going to be able to change nuthin’. If it’s good, than I need to be able to talk about it, start discussions and challenge others to follow. So it’s important to have a clear message about that good thing, and a voice that can be heard.
• Relate. Even if you have to fake it for a bit, you should try and see the other point of view and ‘relate’. World politics could be very different if we stopped trying to vilify nations and whole continents. How about just trying to relate with those people? Why are they hating us so much, and what did we do to make them feel this way?
• Humility. My mamma taught me this. To do good, to be good, and want good things for those around me, I must remember that I am not the best. I am only one person trying to become better because it’s my obligation to do so. Ego is destructive and I am a designer because I want to be constructive.

So there you go, a blog post more for me than you, but I hope that it will ignite a desire in someone, somewhere to not just do, but think a bit about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it.

1. Keeping a customer is cheaper than finding new ones.
2. If you have high churn, you are viewed as selling a commodity not a brand people care for. You will need to start to compete by lowering price which is not a winning game unless you are a volume behemoth like Walmart.
3. Happy customers are more likely to become loyal customers, and loyal customers tend to become cheaper to maintain than servicing the needs of newbies that are partially willing to “try” you out.
4. History is littered with brands who became too big for their own shoes, and started to forget about who made them big in the first place. The happiest brands are those that keep their customers close, and value their experiences as they do their bottom-line.
5. What can your brand do, to make people say “I love [name of your brand here]“. Make people become irrational about their feelings about your brand. The glow that radiates from people in love is infectious. Try telling a Harley-lover that a Honda is better.
6. In the lean times, it’s your brand advocates that will stick by you. Loyalty is difficult to create, and once you have it, you must hold on it, by frequently checking every customer service point within your company (At Rouxbe, the CEO of the company reads every contact form that comes in).
7. Marketers should be part of the design process, so they understand the product that is being built and who it will satisfy. Slapping on marketing messages after the fact doesn’t work. It’s simply too late.
8. Designers should be part of the marketing process, they are trained to be stand-ins for the end-user. Tap into their knowledge to keep the design and the message unified. Apple does this best.
9. Do things differently. The best way to beat your competition is to stand out and be different. Be less annoying than your competition (maybe my bank machine can start to remember what language I speak, and not ask that question each time?), be more caring (don’t tell phone customers they will get through faster by staying on the line, offer to call them back) and more human (WestJet flight attendants crack jokes when making the same old boring “fasten your tray tables” announcements).
10. Be your own customer. Use your product before you unleash it to a market. Design things for yourself, and design the after-sales service for your family and friends. People who don’t know jack about the intricate details about your product. You owe them a good experience.
11. People talk. And in a myriad of new ways. If you run a business that has customers, you ought to be keeping an ear to the ground to listen to what people are saying about you. You should know about the various (new) ways people communicate.

And now a story:

I am on the phone with Fido (BC, where I live, has only 3 major cell phone carriers, sad). I have a nasty customer experience. The agent is unprofessional, absent and not helpful. He has asked me to repeat my mobile number 3 times now. I have been handed from one department to the next, and no one seems to be able to be able to tell me why my account balance is not being accurately displayed online. The call ends with me hanging up in frustration when they finally decide to blame my computer (Mac) even though I KNOW that there is no way that could be the problem.

My tweets during this call:

Sweet revenge.

Flash back, it used to be that when we would have a bad customer experience, we’d grumble about it to others, if the topic came up. Now, I tweet.

Generation Is uses Twitter. A Tweet refers to messages exchanged on Twitter to let people know what you are doing right now. Or what you think or feel about a particular subject. (Learn about what is Twitter and why it’s so popular and stats on it’s usage). So get searching and find out what people are saying about you on Twitter!

So be good to your customers. Bad stories are more fun to tell than good ones. Revenge is more important at times than spreading joy, and more and more,  your consumer understands the power she wields, in this hyper-connected world.

As I have mentioned before, very often we get people asking for us to design Web 2.0 sites that incorporate community to some level. And while I am all for shorthand (e.g. coffee ordering at Timmie Hoe’s) and I have already written about what web 2.0 means to me, this time let me unpack what community is not. Because sometimes by figuring out what something is not, we get to the core of what it is.

Words that I will use interchangeably to describe community: village, watering hole, gathering place…you get the idea.

Here’s what community is not:

1. It’s not a label to throw up on your site. If you ain’t got community, it’s OK, you’ll get one soon enough. Just stick to what you do best and aim that thing at people who care and sure enough they will gather around and talk you up. You have to have something substantial behind the label to merit making your user click on the “community” button!
2. It’s not what you want it to be. If there is no freedom, there is no community. Censor people, tell them what they can or cannot do inside “your” community and you lose the game even before you start. While communities need a sense of order, people will hack the system to make it what they want it to be, and if the system is too rigid, they will move on to the next gathering place.
3. It’s not a one-way street. Look for perfect circles. I give you feedback on your app. You read that feedback (let people know you read everything they send!), and find that it’s a really good point. Celebrate my input, make me a beta tester, give me “special” access and I will become your brand advocate. Look to complete the feedback and communication loop and you have a lasting relationship with your audience.
4. It’s not just about belonging. People used to join clubs and professional associations just to put that membership on their resume. That’s not enough anymore. People expect communities to be useful. People also like communicating, so let them. The best online communities have strong communication. LinkedIn is not just a professional network, it also offers tools and features that allow people to ask questions, post jobs and communicate with each other in meaningful ways. Providing useful ways to communicate and abiding by personal choices around privacy and noise levels creates stronger (more loyal) communities.
5. The world ain’t flat, and neither are communities. People also like a pecking order, so give it to them. Give people someone/something aspirational, reward them for valuable contributions, so they keep making them. Leading from #3, giving people special status either based on contribution or quality of input is a great way to encourage increased community involvement. Call it karma, call it ranking, call it badges, but provide some sort of tangible, recognition for those that help others. Last fm doesn’t provide any type of rankings beyond what you get if you pay them for the service. But do a search on google for last.fm badges, and you will find people who have created graphics to celebrate the momentous event, when your playlist at last.fm reaches beyond a certain number of songs. Apple provides points that add up to status levels in their support forums. People aspire to receive points by answering questions. Apple wins by having a free support system for their products. People win by being celebrated as Apple gurus.
6. They don’t need it, you do. Because there is big money in online communities, everyone’s got one! So if you have a topic worth talking about, it’s being discussed within an online community somewhere. So don’t create community because you think your user “needs it’. They don’t need your community. You need community features because you want to be loved or at least make people care enough to gather around to talk about you. If you want loyal users and you want to be transparent about everything you do, the best way you can do that is to create a dialog with your consumer.
7. Communities are not just a bunch of people. I want to watch a movie tonight. Flashback to 15 years ago > pick up the newspaper > choose a pretty poster from the movies section > take my chances > go to local theatre > pay $4.99 cheap Tuesday price. Today, it costs over $20 for a movie and I got little time. I also don’t trust my eyes to pick from posters because let’s face it, my mum reads the paper; I scroll, point and click. So I pick online communities to find out what people thought of a movie. I don’t just read individual reviews; I look to see what a bunch of people as an aggregate said about a movie because a bunch cancels swing votes from the the easy-to-please and the gripers. Subjectivity is lost in an aggregate made up of large numbers, I hope. I can also follow specific people that seem to mirror what I like/hate and they become my gurus to help me make decisions. Check out Rotten Tomatoes or Riffs. Communities can be a sophisticated glowing ball of wisdom.
8. It don’t get built overnight! Actually, that’s a lie. It seems like Twitter’s success can be solely attributed to its insanely popular introduction at SXSW. But most online communities need to be seeded, watered and tended to, like a delicate plant that could become a really big-ass tree someday, but not tomorrow. See above for all the seeding, tending things you should consider doing. Love your community and dedicate the amount of resources that you believe is worth building a loyal audience for your product.

So to the gym bunny grandpa: I agree that real people are great to have a conversation with. But in terms of levels of trust, this is how I see the world:

Highest level: I trust my inner circle of family and friends to give me opinions on things because I know them well. I know Robina loves every movie she sees, I know Jo-Ann won’t probably like most “hollywood” flicks, and so I can take their opinion, and self-adjust their subjective opinion to balance out what I have felt about their reviews in the past.

Second level: I would tap into what large crowds think about one thing at an aggregate level because I believe about the power of the collective wisdom of crowds for most things *.

Bottom of the trust totem pole: You, my gym-schmoozer friend. Not because of your oh-too-tight tank and the hefty weight belt that hangs below your beer belly. Only because you are one voice and I can’t rely on your solitary opinion. It’s too risky.

Communities have power, and strong communities can strong and have immense value when they work well.
(* This mp3, points out when crowds don’t work!)

To those who care to know (and Starbucks, if I were you, I would be searching Google everyday to find out what people think of you), here are the reasons why I have made it my mission to seek out alternatives sources to feed my caffeine addiction:

1. Starbucks coffee sucks? To me, the coffee has always tasted burnt. I am not a coffee connoisseur like the good people at 2paths but even to my relatively unsophisticated coffee palette, Starbucks never felt ‘good’.
2. It all began with ‘No free internet’ (Starbucks has changed that, but it’s too late)? Ok, so this is geek reason, but it had a ripple effect that lead to #3. Basically, I don’t understand why I would have to pay a zillion dollars for a “tall” coffee and then pay for a service that should be as basic as providing lighting and mind-numbing muzac.
3. I found ‘others’. Leading from # 2, I started looking for cafes that had free internet. Free internet lead me to cafes with great coffee! Take 5 café in Vancouver is great, as is Caffé Artigiano which has amazing coffee (and terrible baked goods). Lesson: sometimes your ancillary, supporting services are the reason why people buy into your primary brand offering.
4. I heart community. In this world of remote offices and telecommuting, cafés are the new networking opportunity. Starbucks tries to create a strategically comfortable environment with its big arm chairs and carefully positioned mood lighting, but I am thinking that it takes more than just soft cushions to make for a successful third place ! For example: Take 5 café lends its location to geek events in the evenings after open hours (fringe benefit: geeks tend to drink lots of java, and do so during these events too). Result: Now geeks flock to the café at all hours of the day! If you are looking to hire your next freelance coder/designer, chances are you will find them huddled in the back of the café, working on their laptops and guzzling down their third cup of java. Lesson: big brands need to work harder to give managers the freedom to operate each store as an independent business and make ‘authentic’ community contributions not the catch-all ones that are dictated at a corporate level.
5. Anonymous service. I have worked in retail and I have worked for a large global brand, so I know that customer service training can sometimes takes the humanity out of that service. It all becomes a timed science of making eye-contact within x number of seconds and saying thank you in just the right way. Again, I suggest that Starbucks and every other mega retail brand consider going back to the idea of creating “villages” around their stores. Look to hire people who genuinely enjoy people. Look to make each store unique, different and while it can have the comfort of leveraging familiarity of the same logo, same product, it should be courageous enough to respond to a particular community’s needs. Treat that 65 year old customer differently than the 30 year old who buys a low-fat, soya latte with extra foam from you every day. Keep your humanity, and don’t correct the customer when they order a “small” coffee.
6. Laughable brand extensions. OK, I guess I am a bit of a brand Nazi but I don’t want to give my hard earned money to a brand that thinks it’s so beautiful that it should be able to sell just about anything with its logo on it. How many types of tumblers does this world really need? What do plush toys have to do with the primary product i.e. a decent cup of coffee? Lesson: create a brand that is known for what it does best, keep a laser focus on that strength and don’t deviate from that focus. You seem wasteful and self-congratulatory when you overdo the logo placements.
7. I like local more then I like global. When I go to Europe, I resist the temptation of going to any American brand restaurant. Sure it’s easy to order a Royale with cheese at McDs. And it’s a linguistic and cultural challenge communicating with the owner of a petit bistrot. “I am asking for a medium rare steak but I would prefer if the cow were not still breathing when it is served to me”. But McD’s ain’t Paris. And Starbucks doesn’t feel local. If I want to feel posh, I go to 49^th Parallel. I want to feel like I am doin’ the drive so I go to Calabria café with its somewhat garish, fake Italian statues and unpretentious attitude. I want the local environment to impact my coffee experience. I don’t want the same lighting, same music and same artwork comfort but maybe that’s just me.
8. I want to curb the infection and not encourage it. Even if you love Starbucks and can’t live without it, you too would admit that the sheer number of stores that have cropped up in the last few years is a bit nutty. Do we really need a Starbucks store across the street from..another Starbucks? Vancouver seems to be hardest hit by the fungal growth of the green logo stores. “I’ve never seen so much coffee in all my life. The whole town is on a caffeine jag,” said Bette Midler, when she performed in Vancouver.
9. If I were a coffee shop I would be. Picture it, a little cafe with the bubbly, friendly tattooed crazy coffee girl (barista would be too pretentious, and not sure why she is a girl! Frued?). The smell of food and coffee would be mixed and the air would be warm and the music would be Radiohead-ish. Strange but hey, that’s me. I tend to try and use my money to vote up the brands that reflect who I am (or want to be). Little bit of narcissistic anthropomorphism . If I were a coffee brand I hope I am not seen as a Starbucks. Apparently a study of 8000 consumers found Starbucks to be “arrogant, intrusive and self-centered“.
10. I can’t stand the thought of sameness. I said it time and again in this little list, but one of the reasons that I am so fascinated by brand creation and management. I think we need to challenge how good brands are built. The whole idea of sameness is unnecessary. The idea of wrapping a marketing message around a product is such a throwback to the industrial revolution. We are now living in emotional times. I think the future of successful brands flips the equation on its head. As this brilliant article suggests, grassroots brands are cropping up that start with an emotion or thought and then manifest into a product that reflects that emotion best, not the other way around. Starbucks started that way but along the way it seems to have shifted its focus from coffee and experiences around that drink, to growing exponentially. Something got lost along the way and got replaced with this sameness/safeness that I question.

Back in June 06, I had written an article about a more human approach to brining users into the design equation. In the midst of packing and checking flight times, here is a PDF that has so far only been used by us internally and sent via email to our clients. It lists our process of highlighting user goals and marrying them with business goals. It is heavily influenced by Alan Cooper, and his book “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum“– a must-read for anyone involved in the design, management or development of an interactive project.

DesignStamp Persona Process

I write this month’s article in the spirit of bringing some joy to my fellow designers. A happy designer is one that has happy clients. There is no greater professional joy than to know that your work matters and is being appreciated by those who use it, and those who pay for it. While clients (those pay for the work) wait to derive happiness from the reaction of the end-user (those that will use it), the design process often precedes that usage. So the client and the designer must work together and alone, against odds, creating work together that has yet to see light of day. Someday the work will be known to, and used by, millions but for today it is tended to and developed by the two people who care most about it.

I have written articles about ethical designers, and I have bantered about how to be a good designer, but this month I write a few tips targeting clients. I think every designer should get their client to read these. And clients: ‘Tis the season to give. So go on, give your designer some love! Here are the 10 things that you can do to share some joy with your designer:

1. Don’t rush it. The first to market syndrome plagues most of the online business world. Sometimes the quality of the final product can be directly proportionate to the time spent on building the product. Ask for timelines from your designer, and work with them to meet your business needs. Consider breaking up your project into phases if necessary. Your customers will love you, not if you launch your product within a month, but if your product actually meets or even exceed their expectations.
2. Design briefs are important. Design briefs help define the problem and the desired solution. It’s important to at least identify the problem that needs to solved, the target audience and the intended impact even before the first pixel is drawn. Good pre-planning and a targeted brief just means that everyone is facing in the same/correct direction. You should be a partner in helping craft this document. It doesn’t need to be a thick document. Good design briefs are short, succinct and capture the key points that help define the project and its requirements.
3. Don’t design for the designer. Don’t ask your designer if they can move that one element 5 pixels to the left or right. Of course they can. But if they are good at their job, everything was done with intention. Good designer lay out grids and work from them, so moving elements means everything could potentially have a ripple effect. They are presenting you the best solution for the design problem you posed to them in the design brief (see #2). If you don’t trust your designer or don’t like their work, the issue may go far beyond the 5 pixel shift. There may be other things that need to shift (either how you relate with the designer or your business to another designer!)
4. Help Manage production. It is important that assets are managed with care during production. I find it humorous to see files names such as “final_final.doc”. It’s good to get used to versioning and working within a structured pipeline to provide assets to your designer because you are ultimately helping them deliver intended results on time. Trust me, more chances that the copy will be correct if you give a file named “About_copy_GD02.doc” for implementation instead of “final_final_07_FINAL.doc”.
5. Communicate. Well! It’s important to define communication protocol early on. Instant Messages and impromptu phone calls are usually not productive because they interrupt the flow of work and catch people unprepared. It is best to define when/how often status and feedback meetings would take place. I find weekly check-ins is a good thing along with the usual stream of emails as needed. Meaningful subject lines and well-formed emails help matters. It is best to not have stream-of-consciousness communication as it can make it difficult for the recipient to follow along and result in misunderstanding and wasted time seeking clarification.
6. Help define expectations. In the end, everyone wants the same thing. A successful project. Success means everyone walks away happy and looks forward to another opportunity to work together. Good pre-planning also means that success metrics are defined and so the end-result can measured against those objectives. This also removes subjective desires or at the very least identifies them. In my experience most people in this world are not bad, lazy or mean. Most misunderstandings happen when expectations are not aligned. Set expectations, develop trust and a plan and then build something good together.
7. Don’t hire in-house full-time designers. The agency model works so much better than having in-house designers. Designers who benefit from being exposed to a diversity of projects, bring fresh energy and perspective to the client work they take on. In-house designers who deal with only one product, one problem at one time, end up stuck in the politics and become colored by the subjectivity that surrounds them. Obvious exceptions are designers who work in large, kick-ass companies where the entire ethos is built around keeping design integral to the company’s mojo. These companies have built successful brands by design and work hard to keep their designers (and thus their design) fresh and innovative e.g. Apple, Google even Harley Davidson!
8. Do some small talk. While familiarity breeds contempt, a lack of humanity and connection leads to communication that is not natural and that can negatively impact project quality. It takes only a few minutes, but connecting with each other at a human level creates a more fulfilling and positive work environment. Some of my best clients are those that I can see myself socializing with. That doesn’t mean that I would socialize with the, but I get them. And that matters.
9. Care about the project. Like a tiny seedling, a project needs to be taken care of, and tended to, by the stakeholders. Neglect, apathy and negativity can severely hinder the project plan and result in ugliness all around. Only hire people you think can care about the project you want them to work on. Don’t hire people who show even the slightest indication of being flippant or bored by your project needs or its objectives. They won’t be able to sustain the energy required in later stages.
10. Respect! If you read the previous points, you know this article is not really about design at all. It is not really even about the final product. It’s about how people come together to achieve common objective. And the process for creation. How people connect, and how the process flows, depends largely on communication and mutual respect. If you have to share a common objective to solve a given problem together in the best way possible than you have to respect each other. Respect is the oil that makes this machine run smoothly. The design process can be fulfilling and rewarding in not only its outcome but in the how the end-result is made. And if there is mutual respect that process can be joyful. That is why our guiding principles are all about respect.

We wish you, our clients and everyone around the world, a joyful festive season. We expect a whole bunch of new-ness next year. See you in 2008!

status

1. I have only updated it once (and it’s 2pm). Usually I would update it at least twice by now. My friends seem to update theirs every hour!
2. I woke up from a dismal 3 hours of sleep, and the first thing this morning, I stagger to my office and instead of checking my email, I update my Facebook status first. Before checking my email? Wow.

For those of you hiding under the rock that hides the internet phobic or privacy hounds, Facebook provides you the option of finishing a sentence that begins with <Gagan is…>. That becomes your status for all to see. Some of my status messages from September (from the inane to the informative):

Gagan is telling his dog that wet dog don’t smell good

Gagan is Monday

Gagan is in meetings

Gagan is actualizing (and using big words)

Gagan is CPC, CPM, CPE and every other acronym

In fact if you have any kind of RSS reader , you can keep getting pings throughout the day that will display your friends’ statuses (statuii?) without you doing much of anything at all. The only caveat is that you cannot remove the “is” in

That leads to the name of this post. Generation Is.

I am part of that blurry-eyed generation that is not neatly defined by world politics , war, dreams or the lack thereof . Instead I am defined by the desire for the “now” of information. I don’t have favorite websites, I have favorite RSS feeds. I don’t go out looking for information to be typed up on the pages of a newspaper or even a website for that matter. I rely on my social network to recommend movies, not a corrupt reviewer sitting behind an oak desk. I trust no credentials, but instead I trust the intelligence of masses and look at how many people have saved a link on delicious to decide if a link is good or bad. Give me a bad experience on a website right now, and I make swooping statements about your brand at many cocktail parties. I don’t waste time sorting through spam as Gmail does that for me quite nicely thank you. After all, my status on Facebook can never be as wasteful as “cleaning my inbox”. My here and now status message must wax poetic or be set apart by productivity or philosophy. My networks come with a dot com prefixed to them (LinkedIn, Flickr, Newstoday or, you guessed it, Facebook). I know when a contact has quit their job because she can text me as she walks toward her boss’s door. I know what she tells people about her job officially (LinkedIn) but I also know how she felt day to day at that job (Facebook status). Nothing is hidden from me even information that I have no desire to go search for in the first place. My life, and the information that fills it, has a sense of immediacy to it. My head is constantly filled with ’stuff’. Up-to-the-minute world news, how the planet is going to s#%$ and how people are dying in countries I will never visit. I can now also find out just how my employee or boss really feels about their day or me! A sense of now. A sense of is.

Where is this going?

Gagan is not sure.

Is this good?

Gagan is on the fence.

I look back at how my parents lead their lives. They wrote letters to relatives who lived in other cities. They sent telegrams when there was a sense of urgency and hoped that the news of birth, death and train arrivals got to the recipient within a day or so. My parents actually picked up the phone to arrange dinners and parties. They didn’t even have a day-planner or PDA and instead relied on the calendar with pictures of pretty flowers that hung near the phone. My parents completed a crossword together each day with their morning cup of tea before breakfast. They also read the paper every morning, along with that tea and crossword, to get their daily news. Cup of tea, crossword, newspaper reading and a sit down breakfast. All this before going to work? How did they have the time?

Flash forward to the now and the “is” of me. I just got back from Europe and paid a lot of money for that vacation so I could have the luxury of checking my email only once every couple of weeks. However I couldn’t help it. I fell right back into the “is”. I updated Flickr photos and wrote back to panicked clients and curious friends/family. I even found myself greedy in the “is” of being a tourist. I rushed around taking in sights, food and drink. I was exhausted every evening just from the is-ness of the day. I felt forced to relax by siesta in Barcelona and couldn’t get used to everything coming to a standstill and shutting down every afternoon. I was “is” more often than not, running from one gallery to the next. But truth be told, I wish I had taken the time to just siesta! I guess now that siesta is no longer an option; I yearn to be less “is”.

But it ain’t all bad. I love technology and the immediacy of communication and connection in the world I have bought for myself. I love what all my devices and machines let me make, play and enjoy.

That said, I have to disconnect from IM, email, Skype, Facebook and the phone just to get work done sometimes. And I don’t think everyone I work with understands that need to disconnect, to create. Sometimes a work day is made up of communication. Where does all that communication about the “is” of projects really get me, or for that matter, the project?

I is tired of pings and updates. I is going to log off. I is done for the day.

principality

For those of you who have never traveled with a designer, your photos must be, well, so normal. However, my poor camera frequently finds itself shooting odd subjects. From garbage cans, street signs or zooming in on random billboards. The world around us is highly designed. Everything we use, every object that helps us live our lives was designed by someone. Visiting a foreign country makes the designer in me work over-time. I want to capture the genius and the obtuse. As a tourist I am left staring at things I would ignore in my own city. I pay attention to what is probably mundane to the locals.

Here are 5 of the top photos that capture some interesting design solutions (4 good, 1 questionable)

London Tube.

Harry Beck created the London Underground map. By doing so he created a mapping system, now used around the world, to help people get from point A to point B. He ignored geographical accuracy and instead used color, lines and the circuit diagram metaphor to communicate clearly. The London Underground’s map and in-station signage are synced so even if you forget the name of the route, you can still find your way by finding the color of the line. Cognitive brilliance.

Antonio Gaudi.

If you are not familiar with Gaudi , you will be if you ever make a trip to Barcelona. Gaudi’s brilliant architecture dots the city and is now part of every tourist’s have-to-see list. Gaudi was very interested in blending what he learnt from nature into his work. So every building, every piece of furniture that Gaudi designed, ignores symmetry and instead focuses on the organic softness of curves or working with gravity and mathematics to create buildings that almost resemble living things. Gaudi didn’t just create beauty, he created work that was usable , livable and entirely experiential .

The Folding Pet Stores on the Las Rambla

Probably not as celebrated as the Gaudi buildings but still ingenious! On the busy Las Rambla you can stroll past tens of mini pet stores that sell everything from hamsters and snakes to various exotic birds. First of all, who would have thought that a row of pet stores on a busy pedestrian throughfare was necessary. Not sure. But what makes them so brilliant is that when the day is done, the store owner has to just pull in the walls of their store like the doors on a closet, put one lock, and viola their precious inventory is safe and concealed. The magic folding pet store doors function as part of the display during the day and secure the critters in a safe dark ventilated haven at night. Nifty!

Bicycling in Paris

Paris is dealing with the environmental and congestion issues posed by traffic by introducing the Velib bicycle system . Besides the kudos they deserve for the enviro-friendly bike program, I love their design solution to make it easy for people to tap into the system. Sign up using a well-designed interactive kiosk located at every bike parking station. Parking stations are located just about everywhere in Paris. Walk over to the bike stand, take out a bike and ride to your heart’s content (or till your time runs out). When it’s time to return the bike, simply find another bike stand (again, they are everywhere!) and put the bike in and boom you are done. Next day pick up another bike, and repeat. Simple, clean, elegant. (We saw Barcelona had it’s own smaller Bicing system).

Multi-Functional Garbage cans.

The last one, is in the "what were they thinking" category of design. Barcelona has recycling containers that replace old garbage cans in train stations. Awesome. Only problem, the labels to indicate what to put into which bin are uncolored, unlabelled, embossed icons on the container. I bet the contents have to sorted at the end of the day to account for laziness and mistakes, given the hard to see signage. The raised edges get dirty and scuffed as well. Paris has it’s own really big recycling solutions.