Blog | Rochelle Dancel

Update: August 2011

2011-08-11T21:55:00.002+01:00

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been a bit quiet. The last couple of months have been anything but – here are the highlights.

Hello beautiful world

Last June, I made the difficult decision to leave my amazing team at PayPoint.net and move five minutes up the road to a fantastic agency called beautiful world. The talented people at beautiful world aren’t total strangers to me – you’ll know them from my blog from NFP Tweetup fame. We’ve collaborated before on different projects so, when the opportunity arose, there was something quite inevitable about accepting the invitation to join.

Although my business card says ‘Account Director’ - and I do indeed head up the accounts team - in keeping with their hiring philosophy of having to be ‘good at more than one thing’, I also get to work on all the other things that excite me – campaign and digital planning, design and user optimisation – in a totally complementary environment. Every day brings left field challenges, creative solutions, and at least one opportunity for a belly laugh.

Other projects

To mitigate any conflicts of interest, I’ve stopped freelancing for any new UK based charities but the good news is that I’ll be able to work with you in my new capacity at beautiful world.

Aside from that, I’m currently collaborating on a project for Microsoft, and a selected schedule of design and ecommerce-focused consultancy projects means that I don’t have windows for any new briefs until October.

In production

I’m super pleased to be in pre-production with Regan Latimer for a third round of B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye. We launched a fundraising campaign on IndieGoGo, supported by our home on AfterEllen.com.

Filming takes place towards the end of the summer, with new episodes hitting the interwebs later in the autumn. Uber excited!

A little housekeeping

The site is going through a re-design to better accommodate my blog and generally reflect where I’m at at the moment. That’ll be up in the autumn sometime, schedule permitting.

I'm blessed to continue to work on some amazing projects with some very talented people. The last couple of months have been hugely transitional for me on many levels so thanks to everyone that has been a part of it. I look forward to sharing some new things soon :)

Screencasting with an online screen recorder

2011-04-27T09:45:00.003+01:00

Quite simply, a screencast is a video recording of stuff happening on your computer screen.

Very recently, creating a screencast was the easiest solution to an increasingly common scenario in my workflow. I’d set up a blog on a new platform and I had to train the 70+ people that would be posting to it how to use it. No one had time to attend a training session (and I definitely didn’t have time to prep for one), no one ever reads training manuals and I didn’t want to have to repeat myself for any new people that joined the team. So I jumped online, recorded a screencast, sent the link around and let everyone have at it.

Introducing Screencast-O-Matic

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a screencast on how to resize an image in Picnik. It was created using Screencast-O-Matic, an online screen recorder that runs out of your browser.

There are a plethora of other screencasting tools out there, both free and paid services; you can find lists and reviews on Mashable, 1st Web Designer and across the web. Standout alternatives include QuickTime X for Snow Leopard (thanks for the tip, Ash!) and Screenr for quick capturing.

Consider editing

There are a couple of things to consider when it comes to editing your screencast –

How much more you have to pay for being able to edit your screencast: most tools allow you to record for free, but charge for their own editing tools or the ability to export as a usuable video file that you can import into the editing tool of your choice;
The time and resource you have for learning how to edit your screencast.

Although I have Final Cut Pro, it’s a bit hardcore for a basic screencast so I was looking for something with editing functionality already built in to the tool. Part of the reason that I upgraded to Screencast-O-Matic Pro (at a princely sum of $9/year) is because their editing interface is very user friendly and they had a comprehensive YouTube channel of how-to screencasts showing me how each feature worked, so I could edit and learn all at the same time.

I found this demo of how to edit audio in free audio editing tool, Audacity, especially useful.

Screencast-O-Matic Pro also allows you to export videos as MP4, AVI and FLV files to upload into other editing tools of your choice, including the iMovie and Windows Movie Maker programmes that come with your computers.

Audio – remember your audience

One of my clients once asked me why you don’t usually hear me speak on my training screencasts and I replied, “Would you be able to hear me if I did?” Like a lot of office based workers, my client’s computer is devoid of its sound card. Knowing that they would be accessing my screencast at work meant that I had to make more use of the subtitle and text features, although I usually put a generic soundtrack in the background for anyone that does have sound.

Training is the most obvious use for a screencast, but I’ve also created screencasts to

take clients over new designs
show customer services people exactly what happens when I get their error pages
document user experience tests.

Useful screencasting articles from Smashing Magazine

Screencasting: How To Start, Tools and Guidelines
Most common mistakes in screencasting

How to resize an image in Picnik

2011-04-12T10:10:00.003+01:00

I discovered Picnik last year when I left my Macbook – and Photoshop - at home and took to the road with my netbook. I was on blogging duty and needed to find a solution primarily to resize and crop images ready for posting.

If you’re a Flickr user, you might have used Picnik from within Flickr itself. However, Picnik is freely available to use online; you don’t even need to sign up for an account.

Here’s a video walk-through I made on how to resize an image in Picnik for use in a website banner.

Picnik doesn’t just resize and crop images; you can also sharpen and adjust exposure, remove redeye, rotate and re-colour your image. Check it out at Picnik.com.

Why designers can be the first people you use in a re-brand

2011-03-22T16:45:00.001Z

Although, like most things in life, just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

After Mark Phillips’ article on re-branding came out last weekend, beautiful world’s Simon Frank wrote a very interesting response entitled The Truth About Branding in which he said,

'Designers are the last people you should use in a re-brand. The first thing that should be engaged is collective brain-power. No-one enjoys this to begin with as thinking usually hurts. However by the end of the exercise you have a sense of collective ownership and a roomful of brand zealots. You’re going to need them to make the changes stick.’

Having worked as a designer in-house, agency side and freelance, one of the most frustrating things is often the lack of access that I get to anyone else in the organisation outside of the marketing team handling a re-brand. Frequently, the sense of collective ownership that Simon has mentioned is top level and hasn’t been consulted, communicated or translated into the DNA of the rest of the organisation, let alone owned.

Whilst designers shouldn’t be the first people that you call on during a re-branding exercise, we usually are. And therein lies the great responsibility of the designer to do what a colleague of mine calls ‘the sh*t sieve’. This is because, despite collectively looking within your organisation to determine the goals of your re-brand, the designer is usually the first opportunity an organisation gets to test whether they can clearly communicate them.

At heart, great designers are problem solvers. And solving problems involves asking a lot of questions, some of which might not seem obvious to the design process; I can’t tell you the number of jobs I’ve turned down because a client couldn’t answer a question as basic as ‘what are your core values?’ It’s a red flag and is indicative of the problems we’re likely to face should we work with you. Despite trying to explain why these questions are important, clients often get defensive; I once had a very exasperated marketing director on the phone asking why it was important for me to know why they were trying to re-target a specific group of donors.

It’s not just about pushing pixels. As someone who enjoys working with start-ups, one of the most common issues I point out is the ‘I’ v ‘We’ positioning quandary. For example, when a freelance web developer goes from ‘Joe Bloggs – I design wicked awesome websites’ to ‘Firefly – we breathe life into your online presence’, the new positioning and perception will have a knock-on effect to the business model, pitch lists and clientele that this one-man band will have to deal with if he hasn’t thought about that first. Experience has taught me to casually ask how they’ve altered their business model to accommodate this before I start work, as there’s nothing sadder than having to do work on a re-brand twice over.

Designers shouldn’t be the first people you call when you want to re-brand, but if they are, keep an open mind; you’ll either find that your re-branding plans are bulletproof and watertight, or that there are some areas that need re-thinking, re-conceptualising, and maybe putting on ice. Whatever you do, just thank your lucky stars that their first question wasn’t about your favourite colour.

Gravatar 101 and online branding

2011-03-15T09:45:00.003Z

I’ve been doing a little training with some new clients in the last couple of weeks and I’ve had to answer the question “How do I get a picture to show up next to my [blog] comment?” more than once, so I thought I’d do a post...

What is Gravatar?

That little picture next to your name is called an avatar. An avatar is an image that identifies you and your content across a number of websites and social media services, such as your profile on Twitter, your channel on YouTube, or whenever you post a comment in a blog or forum.

Gravatar (short for globally recognised avatar) is a service that allows you to upload various images for you to use as your avatar. You can link different images to different email addresses, all within the same user account.

My Gravatar account. I have linked different images to different email addresses.

How does Gravatar work?

Have you ever commented on a blog and wondered why some people have pictures next to their names and others just have the blog’s default image?

Whenever you type in your name and email address to leave a comment on a Gravatar-enabled website, the image associated with that email address appears alongside your comment. If you change the image linked to your email address, then your image automatically updates everywhere on the web where you have used that email address.

The comment form on the beautiful world blog. After I type in the email address associated with the image I want to use...

... it appears as the avatar beside my name when the comment is published.

Gravatar integrates with Wordpress, the world’s most popular blogging platform (and increasingly popular CMS) according to Technorati's 2010 State of the Blogosphere report, as well as a number of other services such as IntenseDebate, Disqus and Polldaddy. Frustratingly, it doesn’t yet integrate natively with Blogger, which is why if you leave a comment at the end of this post, you won’t see your avatar whether or not you’ve signed up, alas.

Why you should get a Gravatar

Brand recognition
People are more likely to remember your picture than your name. If you use the same avatar alongside your well thought out comments on a number of blogs, people start to recognise and remember you, enabling you to build your reputation within your field. And to go along with this…

Be more visible where people in your field can read what you think
The most influential people in your field tend to engage on the same blogs and in the same forums. Your avatar enables you to be easily seen as part of this group.

Builds credibility
People are instinctively more likely to lend weight to a comment from someone that can be identified, as opposed to the generic no-face default icon. This is even more important if you are commenting on behalf of your company or organisation.

A comments stream on the Six Revisions blog. Some people have them, others do not.

Traffic driver to your site
People clicking through from sites where I comment is the second biggest driver of traffic to my website. The great thing about your avatar only being linked to your email address is that I can enter a different URL in the website field on the comment form that might be more relevant than my homepage to anyone clicking through.

As a bonus, Gravatar allows you to create a Gravatar profile complete with all the services / presences that you have online, so you can display your Twitter, Facebook, Posterous, Flickr and other accounts together.

Anything that helps others take notice and engage with you and your brand is a plus, and getting your own Gravatar is an easy win – sign up once and you don’t have to do anything except put in your email address to identify yourself on other sites. You can get your own Gravatar at Gravatar.com.

Some things I've been working on recently

2011-03-14T09:01:00.001Z

Although hectic, as always, it has been a pretty great couple of work months. Besides all the strategic online marketing stuff that I've been working on, I've had a nice balance of in-house design and stuff for my friends. Here's a little snapshot of some of the things I've been working on recently.

Some creative for a print campaign that will feature in iGaming Business Magazine.

We recently launched our own blog internally. I figured there ought to be a place where everyone can post all the stuff that makes us laugh, debate, react and meet around totally non-payments related stuff, so after a few weeks of putting together a screencast and some how-to slides on the side, the .net team was let loose on it last week and I shared the highly addictive Go Barbra site with the team :)

This is some creative for a therapy brand. I also did the website and logo for this client too. There were lots of learning points working with this client which, if permitted, I'll share in some blog posts at a later date.

It's getting to be that time of the year again, and I recently took some time out when I was on leave last week to working on a wedding website for my good friends, Lucy and Iain. They asked for a nod to the 50s art deco style 'in a duck egg blue' so I had fun playing with shapes and motifs on this site.

This is the logomark for the branding and design of the portfolio site of a very talented developer with whom I have the pleasure (and challenge!) of working with regularly. It's a fun project because - outside of my usual doodle or minimalist styles - I finally get to put a grunge aesthetic into practice, so this should make a nice little addition to both of our portfolios.

Work has started in earnest on 2GK, a new web series project with my Fletcher colleague and collaborator, Regan Latimer. Planning for this project has taken an interesting turn, and I'm looking forward to exploring it creatively as well as strategically.

And not to forget our other show - if you're still awake, tune into Femslash4Fans Radio on Blog Talk Radio this evening at 11pm GMT / 7pm EST where Regan and I will chat all things Fletcher.

How a great event attracts sponsorship

2011-02-21T09:30:00.001Z

NFPtweetup freebies (I heart freebies!)

The highlight of my week last week was attending NFPtweetup 10. I heart NFPtweetup a lot, and given that I don’t work in a charity, I feel enormously privileged every time I’m allowed to attend. So it was my absolute pleasure to be given the opportunity to co-sponsor this particular event for my production company, Pixel Philosophy.

I’m writing this post because a few people clocked my name sticker that evening and asked how they could get me to sponsor their events. I thought about writing a ‘how-to’ but to be honest, I couldn’t really come up with a generic pragmatic list of tips on how to secure non-corporate sponsors to sponsor your event without thinking of the events and the people that run them. And therein was my starting point…

Be generous

Longstanding attendees of NFPtweetup are ridiculously generous with their ideas, from comments in the days leading up to the event, to conversations during the event itself, to reflection pieces after the event. If NFPtweetup as a collective loaned out incubator or consultancy services, I dread to think what the bill would be, so if you’re a charity at any stage of the online game, you’re going to get a helluva deal. Resources that come out of the event – presentations, summaries of tweets with the hashtag, commentary – are generously shared on Slideshare, Flickr, a multitude of blogs, and sometimes by livestream.

Be nice

There’s no way you can attend NFPtweetup without being moved by the organising team from beautiful world. I remember attending my first event (NFPtweetup 5) only a little over a year ago, by myself, and being generously welcomed by NFPtweetup’s founder, Rachel Beer. Since then, I continue to be impressed by the endless enthusiasm of organiser extraordinaire, Teri Doubtfire, from the announcement for tickets, to follow-up emails, to making sure everyone’s having a good time at the event, to the thank you tweets and emails, and the request that everyone fills out the feedback survey.

With all the talent in the room, it’s easy to feel daunted, but when you’re in the queue for the beer or the muffins, or you’re hanging out waiting for your breakout group to start, people are pretty open to you saying hi; more often than not, don’t be surprised if they hunt you out (in a good way) to talk to you about something you tweeted on the Twitterfall wall.

As online, content is king

NFPtweetup is not a fancy event. I don’t mean this in a bad way – all the events that I’ve been to have been staged in comfortable surroundings, the (free) beer is always flowing, and don’t even get me started on the cake! But ultimately, when NFPtweetup’s strength is ideas in a proliferation of forms – great presentations, engaged conversations, tweeted ponderings, intelligent and enthusiastic blog posts and reviews – the event could be in a pub or someone’s back yard and it would still be pretty great.

Don’t do a thinly veiled sales pitch

Many tweetups that I’ve been to have been thinly veiled sales pitches for some kind of product, service or subscription. The great thing about NFPtweetup is that you couldn’t really get away with that; for example, one other non-profit consultancy rocked up to a recent tweetup and used the mic to try and promote their agency having previously contributed nothing to the community (I use the term ‘try’ loosely – it was a terrible elevator pitch). Tacky. I’ve previously worked with people that I’ve met at NFPtweetup, and although cards obviously get passed around, it’s a pretty secondary consideration to the learning that gets done.

In conclusion

The most effective cheerleaders of any event, brand, campaign or organisation are people that are not associated with the event, brand, campaign or organisation, and you only have to search the hashtag to see that NFPtweetup has such cheerleaders in abundance. Great events attract great people and beget even more great ideas. And I’m into great ideas, or even ideas that haven’t formulated themselves yet.

I’m not going to support an event which, at the root of it all, is a massive marketing exercise or a sales drive, even if it does help my personal or business brand (there are more viable channels and opportunities to which I can attach words like ‘strategy’ and ‘ROI’ if that’s what I’m after).

I hope Rachel doesn’t mind me mentioning this, but I volunteered to co-sponsor an NFPtweetup – there was no pitch, as each of the events I’ve attended have provided more than enough reasons as to why I should support them. It’s an enormous privilege to contribute to this community – both online and off – and I’m very much looking forward to the next one.

Reflections on a careers panel

2011-01-29T18:07:00.000Z

Last week, I sat on a Marketing and PR careers panel at my undergraduate alma mater, Queen Mary, University of London. I had mixed feelings about the event as I recalled how I felt about nine years ago when I was exactly in their shoes. I was very anxious about not having had enough work experience, I had no clue what I wanted to do, and I didn't feel like I had learnt anything of benefit to a potential employer.

You know you're old when you can reflect and use phrases like 'things were different back then'. And it truly was. This lot have ‘social meeja’ at their disposal, making it all at once both easier and more difficult to stand out and connect with department heads, recruiters, agency bosses and our ilk.

I've previously written a post with tips on how to get a job in marketing, so this post is not about that. Here are some of the things I hope I made clear (as they were things that I wish I'd been told back then).

You will never know everything

After an exhausting round of questioning that included explanations of SEO, onsite heat maps and pitching, someone asked if they expected you to know this when you applied for your first job. Our answer was unanimously a very clear no.

When I first started at PayPoint.net I had no clue what golden keywords were. So our Marketing Director sat down and spent a good chunk of time explaining what they were, how to intelligently determine them and how to optimise our website for them. A couple of years later, there are still things I'm learning every day and I'm pestering my team to explain to me. You will never get done learning – embrace it – and remember, it's always ok to ask questions.

No one person will give you the same advice

And going along with this, what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. Everyone's context and experience is different so there are few universal truths. Try stuff – if it works for you and your context, great; if not, bounce back and try something else.

It's ok to not know what you want to do

I'm sure someone had told me this but I didn't quite believe it at the time, so I wanted to reiterate it. I spent two years temping before I fell into a role that was vaguely associated with what I happily do now. In most careers talks the experience that is often portrayed is that the speaker went into a graduate role, then an entry-level executive role, then manager, then whatever it is they're doing now. Well, not me; I was an events manager, travelled, temped and various things in between for a couple of years before I ended up as the information co-ordinator at a charity. And it all worked out great. So it's ok if you end up temping for a little bit (just make sure you keep in touch with your clients – all those directors and managers whose diary you're taking care of end up being great connections in future!).

It's up to you to carve out your role in a team

There's a reason my job title is the very non-descript Online Marketing Specialist – what else do you call someone that does a little web and collateral design, works on SEO, does a little strategy and manages everything to do with social media presences? I carved out my role in the team and it’s not as unusual as one may think. Each marketing team is different and it’s up to you to speak up and find where you fit.

The road ahead is not clear

Unlike our contemporaries in the law school, the stops along the road to where we want to go are not clearly defined. It’s scary, but it’s also very liberating. Embrace the journey and you might find a destination you never knew existed.

Highlights of 2010

2010-12-31T06:33:00.008Z

I've been blessed with a pretty packed year. I've worked with some pretty amazing people, travelled heaps and gotten to work on some pretty interesting projects. Of the ones that aren't covered by NDA (!), here are some of my highlights from 2010.

Loving my team...

I continue to be surrounded by a pretty great team at PayPoint.net, which is just as well as we’ve had a pretty relentless schedule. My favourite campaign this year was the Trade in 24 campaign that launched a pretty significant product for the business – at only 24 hours from application to trading, we have the fastest merchant account in the industry.

I have always struggled with our colour pallete (indigo and yellow) but it was surprisingly seamless to design the assets for this campaign, which included campaign emails, dedicated landing pages and a guide to trading in 24 hours. I was very pleased with the outcome – fresh, and more in line with a forward facing online company – and I look forward to developing this aesthetic in the coming year.

This was also the year in which social media really came into its own within the business in terms of how we connect with people on Twitter, LinkedIn and within various business forums and I'm looking forward to developing our strategy and partnerships with our online friends next year.

This year we've been working really hard on a couple of projects that will come to fruition in 2011 so it looks like that's going to be an exciting year.

A new agency collaboration

When a new project presents itself, I like to work with the best talent in the field to get the very best out of it for everyone. This year, I had the pleasure of collaborating with digital superstars, Beautiful World (of nfptweetup fame), on developing the social media presence of UK forces charity, St. Dunstan's. We had fun designing their new Facebook Welcome page, as well as talking analytics, demographics and strategy.

I had an amazing experience working with Beautiful World on this project; it was a nice learning curve for me and fingers crossed that we get to work together again soon.

When Fletcher went German

In August, I went to Cologne where we had been invited to screen B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye at One More Lesbian's Theatre Nights. Part of the festivities of the Gay Games 2010, this showcase of web series from around the world put Fletcher in pretty great company alongside five other web series. It was great meeting up with various European editors from eurOut, the production team behind German web series, Emma Stahl and Bridget McManus, who hosted the red carpet for AfterEllen.com.

Coming up in 2011...

Next year, I am looking forward to be working with my web series partner in crime, Bee Charmer Productions' Regan Latimer, on a new web series project. Hopefully that means a trip or two to Toronto :)

January will see the launch of a new performance optimising brand that I have been working on for a private client who has had more than a little influence on my learning curve and career for the last couple of years. As I said, we're looking forward to showing you the new stuff that we've been working on behind the scenes at PayPoint.net, and I have a new blog coming out on part-time working to answer the many questions I get asked from people looking to re-shape their work weeks to look a little more like mine.

Exciting times ahead – thank you all for your continuing support and I look forward to working with you next year :)

Link building in the real world

2010-11-15T09:30:00.001Z

Recently, one of my PayPoint.net colleagues, Etienne Clergue, posted an article on his blog lamenting the rise of external link building techniques and the decline of onsite optimisation in the SEO game.

So here's what I think.

External link building in and of itself isn't evil. After all, in the spirit in which link building was given importance, the more relevant and useful a website's content was to visitors, the more links it attracted as other websites wanted to share its content with its own visitors.

Of course, agencies with link farms - and clients that can afford to pay to utilise them - can exploit the numbers game in order to get a website to rank higher in organic search. However, in order for this to be successful and sustainable for the website owner, they need to remember one important factor: the end user.

The point of all SEO activities is to have your website rank highly in a search engine so that the end user will see it, click on it, arrive on your site and convert; to convert is to get someone to buy something, view something, download something, sign up to something, or whatever it is that you want visitors to do. If the visitor does not convert, all SEO activities are pretty much a moot point. It pains me when I see a website that ranks really well but has sacrificed onsite user experience by stuffing as many keywords as possible into the content to the point of rendering it incomprehensible, replacing navigational anchor text with keywords, or linking every conceivable content keyword to deeper pages without a second thought to user path.

Users are also getting more sophisticated at searching for what they want. Social media, recommendation sites, and links from associated websites also contribute to how we find new sites and services. For example, many of the services that I use to run my freelance office, including online storage service Dropbox and BackBoard, I discovered through reviews in articles on design blogs and recommendations on Twitter.

It is entirely possible to build a successful startup business or website without giving a second thought to SEO, but instead focussing on fundamentals - great products, good customer service and old school marketing. Take for example the case study of Woo Themes, who built up an annual revenue of over $2 million in two years by ignoring SEO altogether and instead focusing on these principles.

The importance given to external link building strategies is necessary because no website exists in a vacuum. However, the part that isn't dictated by search engines – taking care of your users, both onsite and off – is extremely important, if not more so, because a negative experience provides a natural antidote to artificially inflating one's rankings - users vote with their proverbial feet (and real world wallets).

Also, if they have a good experience, they'll create a link back to your site... Don't hate the players, Etienne.

How to juggle your day job and your freelance gig

2010-10-25T10:30:00.002+01:00

It might just be the industry that I’m in, but recently, a lot of my friends and colleagues of the 9-5 persuasion have either dipped their toes into getting a freelance gig or are looking at it, whilst my freelance friends are getting part-time employment gigs or taking on agency contracts that are as full-time as you can get without actually being employed.

And why not? I live the best of both worlds, enjoying the steady pay cheque, growth in my role and familial banter with my team employed in the ecommerce payments industry half the week, and the freedom and choice of projects, clients and schedule that freelancing brings.

Although living the dream sounds great, anyone that does it will tell you that there are any number of challenges in juggling your 'day job' and your 'side gig', and you will be juggling all week – clients don't stop calling you because it's one of your office days.

So here are some tips that I picked up along the way to make the process of juggling your day job and freelance gig more manageable.

Figure out your limits

When you're just starting out, the temptation is to say yes to every bit of freelance work that comes your way. Start slowly with just one or two contracts so that you can figure out how much time it will realistically take you to so something – trust me, that creativity won't flow as easily when you've gotten home from eight hours in the office. This is especially important for people with families or other non-work obligations.

Stay on top of your admin

Your side gig will come with its own side of admin, and everyone always underestimates the amount of time it will take to do – trust me on this one. Admin includes billing / invoicing, returning calls and email enquiries, collecting your receipts, balancing your books, paying bills, ordering stationery, maybe filing meeting notes – basically, everything you need to do to run your office. It’s completely unavoidable, so when you’re figuring out how much time it’s going to take you to do something, factor in your admin time too.

Get your equipment sorted

I’m guessing that at least 90% of you will do work that requires a computer. Although it’s tempting to do client work on your office computer, don’t do it – if your company’s IT policy is anything like mine, you don’t want to risk the IT department running a random search on your computer or claiming proprietary rights on your work. The chances of that are quite slim, but if your day job and side gigs are similar, the same or in the same industry (designers, developers and consultants – I’m talking to you), the odds of it happening increase. To a lesser extent, the same goes with your office phone – don’t use it to make client calls and never give the number out to your clients – that’s what your mobile is for.

I have a laptop fully loaded with the apps I need to do any quick and urgent client work so that I can just run across the road to Starbucks (where wifi is free), make and upload the changes, and then come back to the office.

Keep your files accessible

Back in the day, I had a handy little flash drive on which I kept all my files. Now I keep all my files online so that they can be accessed anywhere where I have an internet connection and there are a number of services that make it easy to do so.

I use Dropbox to store and sync my files online and across my computers – it’s like an online drive where you can drag and drop all of your files and then access them from anywhere. I can even send links to clients to access specific files. I use Google Docs for all my copywriting and word processing, and the wider Google Apps suite for pretty much everything else.

If there are certain documents that you send out all the time, consider putting them on your own website or even turning them into online forms. For example, if there is a project briefing form that you have your clients complete before you meet with them, put it on your site and simply send them a link.

Schedule, schedule, schedule your lunch hour

Most people are entitled to an hour off in the day; it’s typically known as a ‘lunch hour’ although this doesn’t mean to say that you have to take it in one chunk at lunchtime. I break mine up; lunch usually takes a half hour – enough time to go out, buy lunch and eat it. I then take some time in the morning and the afternoon to check emails and return client calls – no more than fifteen minutes each time. That way, I’m fully in touch and up to date, but not eating into my employer’s time. Just ensure you’re scheduling morning and afternoon time in a way that isn’t disruptive to your office colleagues.

Schedule returning your calls and emails

One of the things that I have learnt over the years is that if you return a call or email the minute it comes in, you can be on your Blackberry all day. This pointer doesn’t just apply to days that you’re in the office: schedule the return of phone calls and emails twice in the day – once in the morning (about 11.45am mean you catch people just before lunch) and once later in the afternoon (about 4.30pm – reasonably within the work day, but just before people go home) to stop them taking over your day. Be polite and friendly but brief and as succinct as possible to ensure that you actually get some work done. You don't actually need to tell your clients that you will be calling them at a specific time, but making a mental note - even putting it into your calendar - makes it more manageable to mark out the time in your day.

Be on it at work

Ultimately, your day job is a source of income, and probably your main / biggest client, so when you're at the office, you're at the office. Although your mind may be wandering to that piece of client work you want to get started on and you have one eye on your Blackberry or iphone wondering if your clients have emailed you, you need to discipline yourself to focus on the task at hand and not neglect your work. Your manager will also be way more understanding if you need to make urgent calls or take longer lunch breaks if no one can fault your work and you’re seen to be getting it done.

(Maybe) tell your manager what you’re doing

Ok, so this one is a little bit contentious. There are all kinds of negatives to it: you may be perceived as not being as dedicated as your colleagues so may be passed over for promotion, you might not get to work on projects you want to because you’re perceived as someone who won’t put in extra hours, or you won’t get the pay rise you want because you’re perceived as making all this extra money on the side (don’t even get me started on that last one!). But like everything, it really depends on your context at work. My manager knows that I freelance and it’s acceptable for me mainly because I work part-time. I’m also in a team that is very flat in structure and no one person does any one else’s job at a junior or senior level, so there is no chance of promotion in the traditional sense.

Should anyone find out what you’re doing, the trick is to spin it into a positive. My manager and I have a great working relationship, so I can talk about projects I’m freelancing on and how my experience and skills will be of great advantage to projects we have coming up in the office. Freelancing in and of itself will teach you so much - personal marketing, dealing with clients, writing good proposals and documents, networking and time management are all part of the curriculum. In my case, I’ve had to up my design and coding skill sets quite substantially, on my own time and at my own expense, and I’ve been able to apply these to my role in the office. Networking contacts have also been useful across the board.

Have time in the day for yourself

So this is the one pointer that I struggle with every day, but I have learnt that my work improves all around if I schedule in some time for me every day (and makes me a generally nicer person to be around too). I go to yoga or the gym for an hour, or I watch tv or go out to dinner. Your brain needs to go offline for a little bit every day in order to perform at its best, so try and take the time out to rest it - this is especially important if you’re working seven days a week.

The days of having to pick between full-time freelancing and full-time employed are long over, and in the current economic climate, almost impractical. Having two jobs (and counting) is never going to be easy, but it is completely manageable. Regardless of whether that side gig turns into your full-time gig, it’s always good to have options and feel that there’s a little part of your work life in which you have even more control. And having done it for almost five years, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

What are your tips for managing your day job and your freelance gig?

How to get a job in marketing

2010-10-11T09:30:00.063+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked by one of my Twitter followers if I had any advice on how to get a job in marketing without any marketing experience, so I thought I’d throw together a post based on my experience as someone who both works in a pretty tight marketing team and also hires a number of marketing professionals throughout the year for various projects. So, in no particular order, here goes…

Know that ‘Marketing’ encompasses a number of fields

Our team includes a Project Manager, who also looks after SEO and paid search; me – who looks after social media and design; a Web Developer; a Partnership Manager; a PR Specialist and a plethora of other talent both in-house, freelance or agency based. Day to day, we all do very different jobs under the title of ‘marketing’, but as Etienne Clergue, Marketing Manager, advises, “Know the basics of everything but have an area of expertise.” For example, I specialise in social media and community building, but Etienne and I work together on SEO and link building strategies.

Be prepared to prove what you do

Not having secured that first marketing job is no excuse for not being able to prove what an SEO genius, pixel ninja, social media guru, or whatever else you claim to be. Luckily, you don’t have to wait to start establishing your expertise online. If you’ve worked on university projects, write them up as case studies and submit them as articles to more established marketing blogs. At the very least, contribute meaningfully to the comments on blog posts relating to your sector, tweet links to useful articles, and share your thoughts and ideas on your own blog.

Keep up with, and comment on, industry news, as Etienne does on his blog, It’s A Web Life, on all things related to SEO. Don’t wait for someone to give you an opportunity to shine – there is also nothing stopping you from creating your own projects and making a name for yourself.

Get some experience

Like I said, there is no excuse for not having any experience because you have yet to secure your first marketing job. Volunteer for a charity or non-profit organisation or throw out an offer of help to your network – trust me, someone is always setting up a business, needing to publicise a fundraising concert, or looking for a little input or fresh eyes on a marketing challenge. Just don’t forget to get a testimonial or reference from them for your online portfolio or CV.

Also consider doing some temp work. I joined my team for six weeks to help with a re-brand, and two and a half years later, I’m heading up some pretty sweet projects.

Spin your existing experience

Of course, you can see the parallels between your existing non-marketing related work experience and the marketing job you want, but some people might need a helping hand in making the links. Be explicit in how your experience relates to that marketing job and ensure it is always presented as an asset.

“Position yourself to strike when the opportunity arises.”

So goes the advice of our Partnership Manager, David Evans, who joined the Marketing Team from Sales. If you already work in an organisation with a marketing or marketing-related team, keep regular contact with your colleagues, volunteer to help them out especially when they’re busy, find out exactly what they do (you’d be surprised how little people within the same business know about what other teams actually do) and seek their advice on moving forward within the sector. That way, you’re already best placed and prepared should an opportunity arise.

Join a specialist recruitment agency

After eschewing the super agencies, I joined my team through a small recruitment agency that specialised exclusively in marketing and media jobs. Go through the job section of Marketing Week or Digital Media Week and you’ll notice that the same agencies frequently appear. Don’t discount smaller agencies – the service tends to be more personal and they usually have fewer high-quality candidates vying for their placements.

Ensure your LinkedIn profile is updated

We all agreed that, even though we’re not actively looking right now, the most common unsolicited job offers that we get are via recruitment consultants on LinkedIn, so if you’re not on there already, get on it. When prospective employers are Googling you, LinkedIn profiles usually rank on the first page, so keep it updated and ensure that your summary and specialities sections are public.

Assess how you look online

When I’m Googling someone to decide if I want to work with them or not, I look at the links they’re sharing on Twitter, the image they present of themselves on Facebook (do I really want my organisation represented by someone who posts pictures of them doing questionable things at the weekend on their Facebook profiles?), and the blogs and forums in which they are active. How you present yourself online is indicative of how you are likely to represent the organisation online, so present the best version of yourself.

Never underestimate the value of your network

PR Specialist, Siobhan Brennan, recommends building your network as much as possible. Start with any university associations and alumni networks. If you qualify, you can also join the Chartered Institute of Marketing and take advantage of their networking events and resources. TheUK Marketing Lounge is one of the biggest groups for marketing professionals on LinkedIn and runs regular networking events. And on the subject of networking for jobs…

Remember your target audience

This is especially true for freelancers, but if you’re showing up to networking events to secure a job, you don’t really want to be a room full of other marketing professionals, simply because they’re all in the same position. You want to go to events where people who might be looking for marketers or marketing services might be. These include local small business meet-ups, CSR gatherings and business expos and conferences. The same is true online. Be active in marketing forums, but don’t forget to contribute on marketing issues in start-up and business-related forums.

Be yourself at your best

“It doesn’t particularly matter what flavour you offer, what matters is that you have lots of it. There’s no personality template that lends someone to marketing more so than others, but as a dynamic profession, Marketing attracts (and seeks out) people who are comfortable and confident with who they are and their capabilities.” In my experience, David quite rightly points out that your best asset is you – there is no one else quite like you, so be yourself at your best.

In summary

Contribute meaningfully online
Cultivate a good online presence
Leave proof online on what you can do
Go after some experience
Build your network, and not just with other marketing professionals
Seek advice
Join a smaller, specialist recruitment agency (if that’s your chosen route)
Be yourself at your best!

All of this contributes to you being found online, being preferable to other candidates and cherry picking your marketing job offers. Good luck!

With thanks to PayPoint.net’s Online Marketing Team. If you have any other tips, please leave them in the comments!

Why I'm supporting Chance UK's Big Influence Campaign

2010-09-27T10:00:00.007+01:00

They say it takes a village to raise a child. What they don't tell you (or make explicit in the terms and conditions) is that, even if you grow up to be a producer, designer and brand strategist, you'll still need a village of people to guide your career, cut you breaks, be patient with their advice and generous with their time to exploit your potential. So far, in my near thirty years, there has never been a time when I haven’t needed advice or a sounding board so I’m grateful that, even now, I'm blessed with mentors (whether they're aware of it or not) and opportunities to learn new things and new ways of being.

So it stands to reason that children and young people need mentors and positive role models even more so than us voting age grown-ups to help them navigate the challenges of classroom and playground politics, impossible family situations, the crossroads between school, college and work, and all of the floundering that comes with growing into your own person.

My Big Influence

This is Wanda Opalinska, who you probably know as Wiki Dankowska from Coronation Street. But back in nineties, she was my English and Drama teacher for many years at secondary school until she left to teach at another school shortly before my GCSEs. I was academically gifted in most subjects and knew it, but whilst I enjoyed an easy ride in my other classes, whether I deserved to be in the top tiers or not, Wanda actively took me down a peg, pointing out every little flaw in my essays. I could write an A paper and finish in the top of my class, but it would always come back covered in red crosses, so it was both infuriating and inspiring to do better again next time. She taught me not only to aspire to be better than everyone else, but to be the best that I could possibly could be, a lesson that I carry to this day. Whilst at school, Wanda actively encouraged me to pursue script writing, read everything I wrote and continued to write me letters of support through college.

Not everyone is as blessed to have a positive role model growing up, so Chance UK does an important job in providing mentors for children aged 5-11 with behavioural difficulties, improving their self-esteem and building on their strengths away from their negative behaviours.

Chance UK’s Big Influence Campaign celebrates the importance of positive influences in life, especially in the lives of young people. During Big Influence Week, starting 27th September, contribute to the campaign by sharing your positive influence either on your blog, Twitter or Facebook.

If you could be a positive influence on a young person in London, find out about mentoring with Chance UK.

Image credit: Nick Sadler/Startraks

Introducing my new website

2010-09-15T10:00:00.001+01:00

I've had the same message on my website for the last year and a half: 'I'm blessed with a multitude of projects at the moment, so I've put the development of my new website on hold...' It's one of those things I've kept meaning to do, although during moments of craziness, I always managed to convince myself that, if the point of a website was to secure more work, it was a moot point as I was doing more than fine without one.

So why now? Well, I've been doing a lot more collaborations recently and instead of being able to direct someone to a link on my portfolio, I've had to go old school and manually upload examples of my work to Flickr or Twitpic on the fly - not particularly convenient or professional. Also, I noticed a surge in the number of referrals to my website from LinkedIn, but no obvious conversions. It was devoid of any information of my non-design related work, which actually forms the bulk of my work, and it has made me wonder what opportunities I've missed out on as a result. So instead of putting up yet another interim solution, I decided to do it properly.

So here are some features on the new site that you couldn't get before:

You get a less clunky way of viewing my design work

When I recently checked my analytics, I noticed that about 25% of users were not javascript enabled, so weren't getting the polished experience of the jquery gallery plugin. I have neatly separated my work into three lists: web design, brand identities and brand assets, so all you have to do is scroll.

You get to find out about me

For some people, it's not enough for them to know your job title or your work, so if you didn't know that I used to work for a domestic violence charity attached to the Mayor of London's office, once did analysis of Disney's real estate holdings in the UK or that I studied arts management with at a private university in Virginia, then this is the section for you.

You get to find out what I actually do

Like most people that work online, I do more than one thing. Read the page – it's bad practice, but I have yet to work out my elevator pitch that encompasses it all.

Frankly, how I managed to secure any work before is beyond me, but there we go. In time, I will be adding strategy case studies; unfortunately, right now, clients are reluctant to share in any great detail how their strategies have worked for competition reasons so I'm having to stay firmly behind my NDAs.

So here's the link if you're not reading this on the site – it’s still needs a little tweaking, so all feedback is most welcome :)

Preparing marketing materials for an international audience

2010-08-13T09:30:00.015+01:00

In case you haven’t been following my tweets of panic on Twitter, I was in Cologne last week where we had been invited to show our web series, B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye, at a 2 day event of web series screenings from around the world that media site One More Lesbian produced as part of the Gay Games 2010 festivities.

Over 10,000 participants from more than 70 countries converged on Cologne, alongside spectators and supporters from all over the world. Out of respect for the host nation, all the shows that screened during OML’s Theatre Nights had to be subtitled in German, so we put out a frantic call to our European fans to help us translate the show.

After the DVD was winging its way to OML’s HQ in San Francisco, our attention turned to the marketing materials that we would be bringing… which quickly turned into how we would be engaging our new non-English speaking fans and supporters. With the benefit of a week’s hindsight and reflection walking around promotional tents, here are some tips and examples of things that worked.

Ensure that new audience members can relate to your messaging

Early on, we decided that we were going to bring button badges; they are cheap to produce, lightweight to transport in bulk and are less likely to end up crumpled on the ground. Our first instinct was to put our logo on them, but then we realised that it wouldn't mean anything to anyone that hadn't yet discovered the show. So we had them printed with 'sichern und laden'. It's German for 'lock and load' – the most used catchphrase on our show. It was ominous enough to be worn in isolation, and our grunge branding peaked the curiosity of young people browsing the promotion tent.

Get a localised URL

We figured that people discovering Fletcher anew wouldn’t remember the name of the show, especially if English wasn’t their first language and they were unfamiliar with Anglo-Saxon names. So we registered a new URL in German: sichernundladen.com and re-directed it to a landing page on our main site. We did consider getting a .de extension; however, after consulting the Twitterverse (thanks @kaibrach and @NoahsStoryArk!), we learnt that Germans would expect content in German on the page and we didn’t have the time or resources to put it together. As a compromise, we placed a Google Translator tool on the page together with targeted copy on where they could watch the screening and catch up with earlier episodes on our site.

Where possible, translate your print materials into two languages

This is a flyer for the German web series, Emma Stahl, in both English and German on the same side.

Although most of the world speaks English, people are more likely to read your flyers if they can do so easily in their native language. My German friends told me that, although English is commonly taught in school and is fairly easy to understand, it’s not as intuitive for the majority of Germans as it is for the Dutch (as English-speaking television shows in Holland are subtitled where as the same shows are dubbed in Germany), so people don’t instinctively want to make the extra effort to process. The proof of the pudding was in the number of English-only flyers left on the information table at the end of the festivities.

Don’t forget your business cards

At an event where a number of web series producers are gathered, it might get confusing remembering which producer works on which show when you’re sifting through a pocket full of business cards. So that everyone received a personal reminder of the show's brand, I had mine printed with artwork from Fletcher on the reverse.

Marketing materials – tangible or otherwise – should be presented consistently: messaging and branding should be the same across your merchandise, your website, and any other channels on which your new audience can find you, so plan carefully and holistically; after all, with the expense and effort you go through to transport yourself and your show to an event, you don’t want to be lugging home several boxes of stuff in a different language that you won’t use again.

Thankfully, the only buttons I took home were the handful I had to salvage to ensure that friends in Canada got one. And we've had a nice traffic spike in our visitor data from Germany in the days since the end of the Games.

6 tips to creating assets to build your charity’s brand online

2010-07-19T09:15:00.002+01:00

The number one question I am asked by charities at the start of their digital strategies (and some much further along) is how to increase their brand awareness online and get people linking to them. I could go on for eons about it, but ultimately, if you’re just starting out, my number one piece of advice is to create useful content that people will want to share.

Us online marketers sometimes give this process some kind of jargon buzz: you may have heard of ‘seeding assets’ or ‘link baiting’, but it’s all essentially the same thing: create something useful that people will want to share and they will share it and link away to your website, blog or online profile.

Now, before you think you’re going to need a significant amount money and a crack team of creatives to create an award-winning video viral campaign, remember that the key to creating content people will want to share is simplicity: if it's useful and easy to understand, people will embed it, link to it and share it. Digital assets aren’t just videos – they can be documents e.g. guides and factsheets, slideshows of graphics and photographs, PowerPoint presentations (bet you’ve got a few of those kicking about!) and even the humble blog post.

You don't need to go to great expense to create assets either; the best assets are the ones that you create from your everyday workflow. I’ll wager that you already have digital assets but you have yet to share them.

So here are a few examples to illustrate a few simple tips to creating digital assets, sharing them and building your charity’s brand online.

Share assets you create going about your daily business

If your organisation gives presentations, either at conferences or training, consider sharing it online instead of emailing it out.

At each NFPTweetup, a number of really great presentations are given by charities that use social media to further their brands, campaigns, and messages. At the last NFPTweetup this presentation was given by Rob Dyson from Whizz-Kidz exploring their use of Facebook to build community around their marathon fundraising events. After the event it was uploaded and shared via Slideshare.

Whizz Kidz and social media

Organisations are constantly producing PowerPoint presentations so if you've just presented at an event or if there's a generic presentation that you give all the time, upload it to Slideshare and let others share your knowledge and expertise.

Create assets from existing information

Which facts and figures do you use to inform potential funders and stakeholders of your work? And how do you present them? This is one of my favourite examples of presenting thought-provoking facts and figures from NFPTweetup sponsors, Beautiful World. You can find it in on the popular photo sharing platform, Flickr.

Naturally, photographs from your organisation’s events or simply from capturing daily office life work well on photo sharing platforms like Flickr and Picasa; they are most likely to be shared by people blogging about your event. But creative presentations like this one are a quirky way to provide people with useful facts, educate people about important issues and the work that your organisation does around them.

Re-present existing assets

One of Education for Choice's most requested documents is their FAQs About Abortion factsheet that I recently re-designed and is downloadable from their website's resources page. Following our last example, I took the factsheet and created a slideshow of all the facts and then uploaded it to Flickr. This slideshow is simple to access, easy on the eye and a great asset to promote the organisation's work; in fact, you can see it in the sidebar of EFC’s blog.

If you make your information available in more than one form, people can choose to share and use the asset that works best for them, increasing the chances of your brand being seen. Presentations make great factsheets, photos make great slideshows and videos, so get creative in re-presenting your work.

Create assets that will make your life easier

To illustrate this tip, I’m going to borrow an example outside the charity sector. I recently illustrated a downloadable guide for prospective e-commerce businesses for PayPoint.net’s ‘Trade in 24’ campaign, where the application process of securing online credit card processing facilities has been expedited from several weeks to 24 hours. One of the things the business anticipated was customers requesting a checklist of documentation they would require to ensure they were ready to go through the application process. Instead of simply furnishing them with a checklist (which they are emailed during the process anyway), we decided to add value to the process and use it as an opportunity educate customers on all the additional things they needed to put their businesses online. So we created a downloadable guide called '24 tips to trading online in 24 hours'. The guide is downloadable from the PayPoint.net website and was promoted across Twitter and in business forums.

Checklists, frequently requested information and explanations of new processes are perfect material for creating white papers and guides. It doesn't even have to be information that comes into your organisation – look at questions that people are asking of you and your peers on Twitter and in related forums and create a document to which you can point people.

Recycle any previously discarded material

During the process of making Brent Talking Heads, I filmed some rather lengthy interviews with representatives from six organisations (in the voluntary and statutory sectors) that work with the Brent Specialist Domestic Violence Court system. Not all the footage made it to the film, but it would have been a shame to lose, so it was edited it into a short video introducing each of the agencies and the work that they did in Brent. I then uploaded it to the video sharing site, Vimeo.

Putting any videos you've made online is a great way to demonstrate the work your organisation does, whether it’s a training demonstration or documenting your participation at an event. Many organisations have YouTube channels, and encouraging members to upload their videos to Facebook groups is a great way to encourage community building online.

Use the sharing tools that come with your social media platforms

A lot of popular social networking platforms have tools that allow you to customise your profile and allow it to be embedded across the internet. For example, Twitter has a variety of widgets that you can embed on your blog, like the Twitter stream that Howard Lake has on the homepage of the UK Fundraising blog. If you’re running an event you can create a Twitter widget to livestream your event’s hashtag. For example, I’m a big fan of Media Trust events and I follow their #mtevents hashtag. The widget below is a real time example of all tweets carrying the #mtevents hashtag.

The great thing about these free online tools is that you don’t need any technical knowledge to be able to create them; simply set them up and share the code so that others can display the widget on their blogs and websites to enable their users to follow your event.

It is now easier than ever to reach a wider audience for your charity – you simply need to provide the content to engage them in a suitable form on a platform that makes it easy for other websites to share. Creating digital assets for your organisation is not as difficult as you might think; in fact, you’re already doing it, so don’t keep it in-house: share it online and enjoy new audience members discover and engage with your brand.

Pixel Philosophy sponsors Philippine Independence Day World Cup

2010-06-11T12:34:00.003+01:00

To celebrate the launch of my new company, Pixel Philosophy, we’re sponsoring the first annual Philippine Independence Day World Cup tournament on 12th June 2010.

The sixteen teams are comprised of players from the Filipino community and their friends and will be named after regions in the Philippines. Although, of course, we wish each team the very best of luck in the tournament, I’m secretly throwing my support behind all-girls team, Manila Jailbirds (in homage to that video).

The event is being organised by Philippine Generations, a non-profit organisation that celebrates and promotes Filipino culture in the UK, and I recently re-connected with PG’s Chair, Adrian Williams (a former secondary school classmate!). "Philippine Generations is very pleased to be working with Pixel Philosophy. We support the Filipino community wholeheartedly and are very excited at another young successful Filipino professional who can act as an inspiration to others in our community."

The tournament runs from 10am – 4pm at Paddington Recreation Ground in London [map]. For more information, please visit the Facebook event page.

It’s a free event and a great way to warm up to the England v USA match in the evening, so grab a picnic, come along and be sure to say hi!

To contact Pixel Philosophy about our involvement in this event, please email hello [at] pixelphilosophy.com

First interior design project

2010-06-07T09:00:00.004+01:00

Last September, PayPoint.net, an e-commerce payments provider, relocated our London office from a small business centre in Tower Hill to our current, more spacious office in Moorgate. When we moved in, it had the requisite number of functioning desks and meeting rooms, but no thought had yet been given to decorating it or marking it in any way indicative to what we do (I think we were just that keen to move in!).

At the beginning of this year, I was tasked with the very specific project of decorating the walls of our four meeting rooms, and later, our MD's office.

After a fairly lengthy brainstorming process, we decided to theme a feature wall in each room after five prominent areas of our business: retail, gaming, lifestyle, financial services and SME e-commerce.

You’d think that, as a designer, it would’ve been a pretty easy project for me, but the whole process was a massive learning curve.

Firstly, I had no idea how many different kinds of wall covering there are, or even what they were called. After much Googling, phone calls to other designers and recommendations from old colleagues, I wrote and issued a brief and invited four interior design companies to come in, tour our office and explain our options. After a lengthy tender process, I appointed VGC Colourlink to undertake the design and installation of our wall coverings.

The wallpaper on our walls is Digital Wallpaper™. It’s trademarked because VGC Colourlink invented it several years ago as a solution to a brief for the decoration of the new Channel 5 offices.

We selected a number of photographs for the feature walls, and they were made black and white with a portion of the photograph coloured red to match the red partitions that we have running between our desks in the main body of our office.

Each room also has a whiteboard covering one wall and we had an interesting time having the office vote on one of four shades of red that would go behind it.

Etienne and I painting our walls red

Channeling the Tate Modern...

We were sent some samples of a section of each of the rooms to check the shades and gradients. This was a useful part of the process as we made some quick substitutions of images to two of the rooms after we discovered that they looked better on screen than they probably would’ve done on our walls. The decoration was done over three weekends last month to minimise disruption to the meeting room schedules.

A section of the keyboard image for our MD's office

The finished images can be seen in PayPoint.net’s Flickr stream below. We’re still getting used to them (they were only finished last weekend) but it’s interesting to see how a few images have changed the character of each room.

How not to respond to a tender

2010-05-02T13:00:00.002+01:00

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been issuing, supervising and making recommendations on some fairly big tenders. Although fairly stressful, time consuming, and – towards the end – laborious, it has given me some invaluable insights into the mentality of corporate clients when I, as a freelancer, respond to tenders.

One of the tenders was for the design and installation of wall coverings for my corporate office in London, where I am the in-house brand designer. Four interior design companies were shortlisted and invited to come in and tour our office. The core brief covered the walls of our four meeting rooms, although each company was welcome to suggest additional spaces that would benefit from this treatment. After three weeks of meetings and deliberations, I appointed the winning company.

So why didn’t the other three get it? Here are some tips that would have improved their chances.

Read the brief

Simple, huh? You’d be surprised. The brief quite clearly said that the scope of the project was solely for wall coverings and that each room had to be clearly themed according to a list of supplied business areas. However, one company pitched an abstract pattern running through each room and another included quotes for bespoke furniture, both lumped in with their overall proposal.

Whilst we’re all familiar with the concept of the cross sell, don’t try if until you’ve thoroughly addressed the core project requirements.

Try hard, but not too hard

Never assume it’s in the bag because you’ve previously worked with a company; you need to prepare just as much and be just as positive as if you were pitching to a brand new client.

On the other end of the scale, chanting, “Choose us, choose us,” as you leave the meeting is not great either – it’s cringe worthy and off-putting.

Send only the supporting material requested

It’s great that you’ve got so much experience and that your lengthy client list contains brands with which everyone is familiar. However, sending 64 random photos of a collection of corporate office interiors when I had requested one example of a wall with a projection screen wasn't exactly going to up the endearment stakes.

And while we’re on the subject of submitting requested materials…

Put any files that you submit into some kind of order

The better companies threw all their images into one pdf document that I could easily print out and take to meetings or forward on to colleagues that were out of the office. Better still, their notes were on the document right alongside each image so that I didn’t have to guess which comment went with which image.

One of the more frustrating emails included eight attachments, labelled img_01.jpg and so on, with a line in the email stating, “If you look at the picture of the big meeting room, you’ll find the glass treatment that we were discussing.” At 6pm in the evening of a very long day, with all the meetings having turned into one, you can imagine what I did with this email.

Stay in the ballpark of your original quote

Before I invited each company in, I called them, told them what we needed, sent them our brief and asked them if there was a guesstimate that they could provide to ensure that we could actually afford them. It was a given that the design fee for the actual images would be over and above the wall coverings, but the wall coverings themselves were quoted per square metre.

As the brief didn’t actually change, you can imagine my horror at one company when the square metre charge ended up being quadruple their original estimate. Apart from being way out of the budget, the prospect of encountering more budgeting misunderstandings should I retain them totally put me off wanting to work with them.

Remember that everyone in the room is a decision maker

I was assigned this project because I am our in-house designer but I did each meeting with our office manager, who has nary a design bone in her body. One company brought in their head designer who pretty much excluded her from the conversation, preferring to talk to me about file types, layer mask treatments and the merits of various photo stock sites.

When it came for us to submit our recommendations to our senior management team (who would ultimately sign off the budget) our office manager did not have an awful lot to say in their favour as they had not engaged her.

Understand and support the processes that go on behind the scenes

I wish that the process was as simple as calling a contractor on Friday, looking at their portfolio, agreeing a price and having them start on Monday. The back end process for this tender included writing scoping and briefing documents, obtaining at least three quotes for good practice, including references and insurance guarantees, the pitch meetings themselves, the debrief and review after each meeting, collecting all the supporting materials and packaging them into one cohesive document for our senior management team to review and writing up clear recommendations. And all of this on top of my normal workload.

These processes suck for everyone involved, but they are ultimately deemed necessary by the business, so frankly, if you want this gig, you have to suck it up. So support the person that’s having to deal with the process internally by submitting your extra materials promptly, and not calling every day for an update – find out when a decision will be made and wait.

How you handle the tendering process is indicative of how it will be to work with you. Ultimately, everyone that tendered had impressive client lists, lots of experience and generous portfolios – any one of them would have been qualified to do this job well. Ordinarily, I probably would have picked the least expensive, but I didn’t – I appointed the company that I thought would give us the smoothest, easiest ride.

I'd be keen to hear from others on both sides of the table as to how they handle the tendering process.

Why Designers Offer Their Services For Free

2010-04-27T14:00:00.005+01:00

(Image Source)

Earlier this year, I got in touch with a number of organisations that responded to my Christmas giveaway of a half day of any of my skillset. Each organisation actually ended up being well more than a half day, but you know what, it was so much fun that it was totally worth it, and I’ve met some amazing people that I’d love to work with again in any capacity.

Each of the organisations came to me the same way – they had come across my blog post via Twitter. Despite having explained why I was giving away pro bono hours (in a nutshell, it was a manageable way for me to get back into volunteering again) each one asked me why I was doing it, what I was getting out of it, and if there was anything they could do in exchange (yes, good charity folk really are lovely people!).

Before you take up any offer, you should first consider whether that free offer of help is right for you. Here are a few reasons why designers volunteer their services for free (and indeed other creative professionals).

They’re into giving back.
This is especially true of designers that are or were volunteers. Also, from personal experience, designers that are American, went to an American university (as I did) or work for a company with many Americans have a high propensity to volunteer, as ‘giving back’ is a big part of their cultural rhetoric. But simply put, sometimes we’re just into balancing our bad karma and putting good things into the world.

They are new designers or they’re looking to break into a new sector.
Recent design graduates need to build portfolios beyond their university or art school projects. Working with actual clients and client briefs brings their portfolios credibility and allows them to flex their working designer muscles. Designers needing to inject new pieces into their portfolios (there is a recession on) or looking to break into the non-profit sector will also volunteer their services.

It’s great self-promotion
Part of being a good working designer is the ability to self-promote. We too have mailing lists, as well as at least one blog, and a presence in most social media channels. Whenever I complete a project, with the client’s approval I upload it to my portfolio, blog about it and reference it. And, in sales terms, they covert to great leads, which in turn can convert into paying clients. Speaking of…

It’s an opportunity to convert voluntary opportunities into paying clients
After numerous informal chats and brain picking sessions, I was the London Centre for Personal Safety’s first choice to re-design their website. I’ve also had the opportunity to tender for paid projects with the added benefit that the client had a positive experience working with me.

It’s an opportunity to work on something different
I’m a corporate designer for one half of the week, and whilst I love my job, designing around the theme of payment processing can sometimes have its limits. There are also many restrictions and brand guidelines to follow when creating new artwork. Thankfully, I have the rest of the week and projects across other sectors to flex my creative muscles. Some other corporate designers aren’t so lucky.

But it’s not just corporate designers. I have a friend who did product design for a children’s brand and was sick of drawing monsters and animals. His first volunteer project was an annual report and he loved it.

Designers (or most creative professionals) are usually very clear about why they are offering pro bono services – just ask them. You may be used as a case study, you may be asked for a testimonial or LinkedIn recommendation if you’re happy with their work, but spending ten minutes putting a few lines together effectively thanking them for a good job is a tiny price to pay for the work that you’re getting back.

Making sure that free offer is right for you

2010-04-26T09:00:00.003+01:00

(Image source)

Money – or lack thereof – is a constant concern for most charities and some start-ups, so the lure of anything free – be it a product or service – sounds like a bandwagon worth hopping.

Last Christmas, as a way to get back into volunteering, I decided to offer a half day of my time in any part of my professional skillset – design, marketing, development - to charities and social enterprises. I received over 40 responses, but when I came to whittle down the list, I couldn’t help but wonder how many organisations were compromising their projects because someone had potentially offered to do it for free. There were also organisations that were clearly grappling at proverbial straws and hadn’t read the brief (I’m good, but delivering an entire website, integrated online strategy and brand identity in half a day is pushing my limits just a little bit). It’s a bit like those promotional teams you see outside tube stations, handing out samples to the latest flavour of their snack of beverage, and people rushing to them whether they like them or not – they’re free, after all.

Normally, you would have a project plan, a task that needs completing or at the very least an idea of what you want to achieve, and then you would call a professional, research them, commission them and pay them to do the work. When you get or come across a free offer of help the only part of this process that should change is the payment part at the end, yet there were some organisations that were clearly looking to get something, anything, that appeared to benefit them, so long as it was free, whether it was right for them or not.

Here are some tips on deciding whether that free offer of help is right for you and your organisation.

Be very clear about what you need
Sending someone an email with one line stating ‘we’re always looking for people to do some design for us’ isn’t going to cut it. You need to know that you need a leaflet to give out at conferences, generic business cards for volunteers, a poster for a youth campaign or a template for an information microsite so that your professional can assess how much time it’s going to take them to complete.

Find out any restrictions
For designers, it may be a number of revisions; for web developers, they may only work on specific platforms; consultants may only be available in certain geographical areas or on certain days. Whatever they are, find out any restrictions before you commit to a project.

Research your professional
I am always surprised at how organisations negate to check the backgrounds of their volunteers when they do such a thorough job with new members of staff or contractors that they actually have to pay. I’m not recommending that you hire a private investigator, just that you apply some common sense questions. Have they done work for anyone else in your sector? Do they have LinkedIn recommendations? For some organisations, it’s important that anyone they work with shares the same political or ideological viewpoints (think of the potential PR nightmare). Running their name or their company’s name through Google or any other search engine should throw up a few highlights on your potential volunteer, including blogs on which they’ve left comments, their social media activities e.g. Twitter streams, news and any projects to which they’ve been attached.

Find out if they can add value to an existing project or process
On this occasion I decided not to deliver entire websites; however, I did work with organisations that benefited from consultancy I did on new, developing and existing websites. For example, I spoke to Chance UK about their content and usability points (as well as bamboozling them a little with SEO 101!), I did a user scenario exercise for Leap Anywhere as they continue to re-develop their site, and I’m helping Education For Choice plan their blog strategy. Sometimes, a fresh pair of eyes or an opinion from someone outside the organisation is as valuable as a brand new website.

Get your house in order
Good professionals will ensure that their work process is the same for you as it would be for their paying clients. If a project has to be completed within a certain amount of time, don’t drag your feet assuming there will be no repercussions for you because it’s free. In the same way that you research anyone coming to work for you, most good professionals research their clients to ensure as much as possible that no one has had a bad experience working with them.

Remember, there’s no such thing as a free lunch
Although professionals offer their services for free, that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t benefit from you. Simply ask what it is that they may want in return; it’s usually the opportunity to use you as a case study in their promotional materials, a recommendation on LinkedIn if you’re happy with their work, or a reference request for a future job. If it’s anything over and above that, you may want to consider whether this ‘free’ offer of help is worth it.

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t benefit from free offers – just be smart about it to ensure sure they don’t end up costing you more in future.

Logo design process of the Ignite PR logo

2010-04-12T12:58:00.001+01:00

Ignite PR is a network of PR professionals that works to promote cultural diversity in PR in the UK. Earlier this year, the network’s Chair, Bieneosa Ebite, got in touch to talk about the organisation’s first logo.

Process

Bieneosa completed my brand identity briefing questionnaire, which included questions around brand values, usage, competitors and partners, as well as preferences for colour and style.

I also spent some time researching where the organisation was present online (blog posts, news releases), organisations that were represented in the online network and competitors and other organisations in their field.

It might seem like an awful lot of trouble to go to before even putting a pixel on the screen, but you’ll find that a thorough research process is integral to the development process of great logo designers like Jacob Cass and Graham Smith.

The research process ensured that the logo wouldn’t be similar to anything that was already out there, and gave me an idea of other logos that might be displayed alongside their logo. For example, Ignite hosts events in co-operation with other companies and organisations, so all logos may appear alongside each other on presentations, signage and other collateral. Research also helped me to understand the culture in which the organisation operates so the tone of the logo could be adapted accordingly.

After reading the brief and notes from my research, I mind mapped words that came to mind and started sketching some ideas before rendering them in Illustrator.

The logo had to contain a strapline which could be removed when the logo got below a certain size. I settled on three ideas.

Concept 1 – The Spark

The first incorporated a spark, emotive of the organisation’s name, representative of something dynamic and energetic, but contained within the letters of the name - hence, qualities within the organisation.

Concept 2 – The Network

The second concept reflected the idea of the network, with each spark representing a member sparking a chain reaction throughout the network.

Concept 3 – Out of the box

The third idea reflected the ‘out of the box’ nature of the organisation’s work. It is literally the organisation’s name not being contained by a box shape.

As colour is a very emotive thing, I always design and present the original concepts in black and white. It also ensures that the logo looks good without colour (consider cheaper one-colour printing, or having a document photocopied or printed at home in black and white).

The font that I selected was Museo Slab. It has classic styling, looks very clear on signage and in print and pops online, but has more personality than Fruitiger and Helvetica. It has the added benefit of complementing a wealth of other sans serif fonts, including Calibri, which was later used for the strapline.

After much email discussion, we decided to progress two of the concepts – the network and the spark.

With the network concept, I made the sparks more ‘sparky’ and added some colour. I also moved the strapline in so that it wasn’t longer than the name.

Network concept – Before

Network concept – After

Just before I got to work on the spark concept, Bieneosa emailed me to say that they had decided to shorten the strapline from ‘a network to drive forward the benefits of cultural diversity in PR’ to ‘promoting cultural diversity in PR’. As well as shortening it, I also aligned the strapline to balance the logo.

Bieneosa also requested that I remove the spark from the dot of the second ‘i’ and move it to the first ‘i’ instead. I also changed the placement of the sparks so that there was one in each letter, but each letter could still be clearly identified.

Sparks concept - Before

Sparks concept – After

After consulting with her group, she requested that I render the concepts in one colour in red, orange and blue. However, as a wildcard option, I also decided to submit the logo with a red/orange gradient running through it to further emphasise the feeling of heat.

I was absolutely delighted when they decided to go for the wildcard colours. This is the final logo.

After the final full colour logo was approved, I rendered black and white versions of the logo.

I converted the logos into a number of formats and sizes, including high res jpgs for print and optimised gif and png images for web use, which I sent over with the original EPS files and branding guidelines for various usages.

I also created an avatar based on the dot of the first ‘i’ incorporating a spark that can be used for their blog, Twitter profile and Gravatar.

The logo is now in use on their website and in their branding at events.

One happy client

Bieneosa also submitted the following testimonial via on my LinkedIn profile:

“Rochelle designed the logo for Ignite, a not-for-profit organisation that promotes cultural diversity in PR. I liaised with Rochelle throughout the design process and was impressed with her approach to the project from the outset. Rochelle took the time to learn about the organisation and its aims and objectives, before she came up with design concepts. It became clear very quickly that Rochelle is an extremely creative person and a breath of fresh air, coming up with suggestions that were out-of-the-box and unique. As a client, I found Rochelle to be an easy person to work with, very thorough and flexible to the needs of our organisation. I would not hesitate in recommending Rochelle as a designer, as I was more than pleased with the final design of our logo.”

Bieneosa Ebite, Chair, Ignite PR Network

A little blog spring cleaning

2010-04-06T01:00:00.001+01:00

Last weekend I migrated my blog to a subdomain on my website (it’s a Blogger thing). In response to some feedback, I took the opportunity to do a little spring cleaning on it before I moved it over. The little tweaks and additions to the design details aim to improve user experience whilst introducing a motif that will be more prominent in the re-design.

Size

The width of the blog went up from 960px to 980px. Although that’s not great practice for people that view at the current standard for web development – 1024 x 768 – a 980px width still enables users to read all content without having to scroll horizontally (although the horizontal scroll bar does appear); you can use the Web Developer plugin for Firefox to re-size your screen to various resolutions when you’re testing new layouts.

On checking my analytics report, I discovered that less than 6% of visitors to my blog use resolutions of 1024 x 768 and smaller, so not many readers will be affected.

As you can see, the font and the line height is slightly bigger – from 10pt/120% to 11pt/150% which should make it more comfortable to read.

Before:

After:

Sharing

There is a ‘Share This’ button underneath the title of each post (as opposed to in the right sidebar where it was previously).

Although somewhat late in the day, I burnt the feed to Feedburner and also enabled RSS updates by email. I have doubled the size of the RSS icon to make it more prominent.

Before:

After:

The Name

The blog is simply Rochelle Dancel’s blog, as the Philosophy Studio moniker will be reinvented at Philosophy Times Studio. The link to philosophy and studio remains though, and will continue to do so.

The most interesting addition is seen in the styling of the ‘and stuff’ wording in the header. The hand drawn sketch/doodle thing is a style that you’ll be seeing more from me. I’ve always loved it but, being inappropriate for the corporate brands I’ve been working on of late, it has been put on the backburner. I re-discovered my love for it when I designed the Bee Charmer Productions site, and have had a number of requests for icon sets like the custom ones I did for them, so it’s coming back.

Old header:

New header:

Add to that a handy Back To Top link in the footer and this blog at this stage is good to go. The most common question I get is why I choose to stay on the Blogger platform when I use Wordpress in the majority of my work. That’s one I’m going to answer in a future post.

My blog is moving!

2010-03-28T16:49:00.001+01:00

It has been a bit of a tornado start to the year for me so, with the first sunshine of the year signaling Spring (fingers crossed), I'm extending my Spring cleaning to my sites and blogs.

This is mainly for the handful of you that have actually subscribed to my blogs. I'm transitioning so that the content will be separated out across various blogs as follows:

Rochelle Dancel

In a couple of weeks, this blog will be moving to blog.rochelledancel.com. The reason for the URL change is because it is currently published by FTP to Blogger and, as Blogger has removed support for FTP uploads, it has to be migrated to a new URL via their migration tool to facilitate canonical indexing. My RSS feed is now available via Feedburner, so please update your RSS readers so you'll be up to date when the change happens.

This will remain my principle blog covering all things work-related, as well as commentary and tips on work-related issues. If you follow my blog for posts relating to branding, communications, non-profit and design, this is where it will continue to be published.

Philosophy Times Studio

For the most part, Philosophy Times Studio will be handling my collaborative projects, most immediately production for the new webseries, 2 Girls Kissing. Posts on that blog will cover production updates, as well as updates on forthcoming projects. This site will be available around the end of April.

Rochelle Dancel on Posterous

If you want to know what my favourite meal of the day is, why I think everyone should nap, or a great band that I went to see rock it out, my Posterous blog is where you'll find all the weird and sometimes wonderful life sprinkles in my work/life ice cream cone.

So that's it. The new feed will be available on Feedburner in the next couple of weeks, so follow me on Twitter to catch the announcement and in the meantime update your RSS readers accordingly.

I have finally gotten around to scheduling in some time to develop my own site, so that's in the works, as well as a number of other web properties, so it's going to be a very exciting year. Cheers for your support :)

Help needed with my identity crisis...

2010-03-08T01:05:00.002Z

Every new beginning is marked with a new name. But I'm having issues selecting one and, as result, it's holding me up somewhat.

I freelance under my own name and will continue to do so in future. However, because of the projects I’m launching this year and the increasing number of collaborations I’m doing I need to form a limited company with a new business name.

I’m not hiring anyone, I’m not looking to turn into an agency at this stage or anything like that – it’s still going to be projects either delivered exclusively by me or led by me. Apart from design and web strategy projects, this new entity will look after all of my web series production, any online properties (including blogs) and a new merchandise line.

My work is ever-changing - it ranges from creative to consultancy to management, whilst my clients range from non-profits to businesses and media publishers - so the name needs to be malleable/vague enough to encompass all of these things. Consequently, I’d like to eschew words like ‘media’, ‘creative’ or ‘productions’.

I’ve narrowed it down to three choices:

Philosophy Studio – ordinarily, I would have passed on this one because it contains ‘studio’; however, it’s currently the name of my work-related blog and most people that follow me know it.

Hey, Squish! – I just like this; I came up with this when brainstorming names for my t-shirt line, but ‘Produced by Hey, Squish!’ sounds pretty good too.

Oli&Chris – Named after the personalities of both of my brothers: fun, witty, courageous, thoughtful, serious, spontaneous, pragmatic, dynamic, juxtaposed…

So, please vote! And leave your comments in the comments… Thanks!