In my relatively short career, there is one over-arching lesson that I have learned. It being that the word “no” is not a “four-letter word”. It isn’t (since it has two letters), especially when dealing with a client. Slowly, I have and continue to learn that word’s importance my relationship with clients. Being (as I have recently been describe) a natural-born “yes-man” it goes against my very nature to say no. For many creatives who are truly passionate about what they do this is a very easy trap to fall into.

Managing Expectations is hard to do.

It goes without saying, managing client expectations is at the core of the client-designer relationship. Educating your clients as to why something takes as long as it does, why something is done a certain way, etc. are all parts of the job that you sometimes don’t think about when starting a new project. For many of us who have worked in the world of project managers and account reps, we enjoy a level of insulation from the the client and his needs/expectations. We take their requirements (often already filtered and negotiated) and do our thing. This is especially true for young designers who have everything monitored and checked by two or three people before a client ever lays eyes on their design. It is often a crash-course in client relations the first time that you work on your own project for your own client. As most savvy business people go, your client will most likely try to get as much work, time and product out of you for the least amount of cost to them. And, if expectations on what they are getting, when they get it and for how much are not clearly set from the beginning, then you will have problems. I have learned that the best way to keep everybody (mostly) happy is to have a clear, explicit contract that both parties have agreed upon, before the first pixel is pushed. With that place you will always have back-up in the event that you do have to use the “n” word.

Like A Mule

Sufficive to say, you’ve had or will have a client with a bad idea for something related to the project at hand. As with anything, consistency and sticking to your guns is imperative. I’m not saying that you should stubbornly argue for cobalt blue if your client prefers perry winkle, but stubbornness does have it’s place. I like to think of myself of as much a teacher to my clients as I am designer. Your client has hired you because as at some point down the line he recognized that you have a knack for design, and they don’t. Sometimes they need to be reminded of this and to trust your judgment. This isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Speaking as a chronic, life-long conflict-avoider this rings especially true for me. The idea of openly and vehemently disagreeing with the person paying me is hard to swallow sometimes, but completely necessary. You should take a cue from so many terrible corporate training videos and stand by your convictions especially when you know you are right. When thoughtfully argued, you further establish yourself as an authority, who is worth the money they are paying you, even if you don’t win the “battle”.

The Optimistic Naysayer

When it comes to actually saying no, obviously it’s important how you say it. The hardest lesson that continue to have to learn is how to respond to bad idea or ridiculous request with patience and positivity. It’s all simple manners, letting people finish their thought before chiming is something that I kind of suck at, but is key to really getting my point across. In the end though, I’ve found that the best argument is not what will go wrong if I do something I advise against, but rather, what amazing thing will be accomplished if my idea is executed. Learning to spin things positively is always valuable, especially when saying no.

Pick Up The Pieces

I would hardly consider myself an expert on dealing with customers and have made my fair share of mistakes, mismanaged expectations, and gotten myself in over my head on many occasions. But, I’m learning. I’m finding that the secret to having happy customers and clients is knowing what to say and how to say it. It takes finesse, patience and nerves of steel. Though in the end, if handled correctly both client and designer usually emerge pleased with the results.

Recently we (Abidesco) launched a web site re-design for Abilene, TX-based marriage and family therapist Kurt Boyland’s counseling practice, Cedar Creek Counseling Service. My IA and mark-up development support fellow Abidesco partner Ryan Feerer’s simple, single-page design.

Our challenge was simple, to design a site that featured information about Kurt, what he does, what his clients are saying about him, and was easy to update for him. Our solution was built on WordPress and featured a jQuery-driven acnhor-tag navigation, and a killer wood-panel background.

For many people (myself included) there is a need to find an outlet to express yourself. You want a place to share you opinion about everything from politics to religion to the very details of your daily personal routine. I get it. For many of us we find that outlet on our blog, Facebook or Twitter. Once those thoughts and words are out there they are out there for every one to read, to Google, to “stumbleupon,” or to judge. With every post you are, as Gary Vaynerchuk in his book Crush It! put it “building your personal brand”. So what does your personal brand look like?

It amazes me how often people misuse their social media outlets. The most obvious culprits are the people that use these mediums as their personal (and very public) diary. These chronic over-sharers like to fill you in on the blow-by-blow details of their latest doctors appointments, make veiled references to personal relationship problems, and tell you about even their latest “euphemized” bowel movement. The end result has a great effect on personal brand and diminishes social value.

As someone in his late-twenties, I was in high school when LiveJournal and other seminal social media efforts began, and college when Facebook came to be. Needless to say there have been some growing pains and hard lessons many of us early “Gen-Yer’s” have learned about the misuse of social media. At first we could get away with posting pretty much anything we wanted to our various social media profiles. Soon though, as communities like Facebook opened to not just college students, but anybody who wanted to join, we had to think twice before posting the latest kegger pics on our profiles. Eventually we started getting friend requests from our parents, our parents’ friends, and even our grandparents. Soon, everyone could have a very public personal brand, and all the baggage that comes with it.

We live in a world where some employers consider their potential hires’ social media profiles as much as their resume when making hiring decisions. Some company’s don’t even allow their employees to have these accounts, or at least heavily police them for fear of being embarrassed by potential employee misconduct. Yet at the same time a well-written, carefully-meditated social media presence can do wonders for you and your career.

With each mused key stroke, these smart or “boss” social media contributors not only build a strong personal brand for themselves, but also contribute to the general canon of human knowledge. They are the ones have the know-how to sort through the muck, find the useful and informative and bring it to the masses. Their power is pretty incredible, almost as incredible as the influence of those who are thoughtless and reckless.

To me, no matter if you are a college freshman looking for fun on a Friday night or a mid-level manager on his way to the top, the way you present yourself on the “interwebs” really matters. Just as in real life, if you present yourself as an intelligent and relevant professional, people will take notice. Your worth to them will be more than just a blip on their rss reader feed; it will be an opportunity to learn.

It has been my at-times-frustrating pleasure to use Google Voice for the past year and half. Thanks to Steven Ray, I was an early adopter to the service, using the service since the time that it was called Grand Central. In so many ways it’s been fantastic: allowing me the freedom to have an essentially free business line (my 512 number), screen calls, make discounted international calls, and get text message transcriptions of my voice mail messages. It’s amazing!

About those transcriptions: for anyone who has used GV for any amount of time could tell you, those transcriptions are pretty useless. Whether it’s “Brother” (I’m an only child) “calling to expose Bravo” (no clue) or a friend calling to inform me of his “DMC a claim quick bottle automatic form”. Google Voice has been doing a mediocre job of putting my voice mail messages into written form for over a year now, and not once have I found it helpful. If nothing else it has served for some good entertainment. Let’s hope while google continues to improve and perfect Android OS and its many other technologies that it doesn’t forget about Google Voice. Because 90% of the time I’m a huge fan.

“Regarding that Russian or your interest in the dogs.”
- Google Voice, 3/26/2010

Recently Ryan Feerer and I completed the first-ever official Abidesco project, for Mary McBride promoting her up-coming summer tour.

About the tour:

“As part of the release of Mary’s new album “The Way Home,” Mary and her band will be on THE HOME TOUR, a concert tour of “places people call home” – including long-term health care centers, homeless shelters, prisons, homes in low-income communities, homes for people living with HIV/AIDS and homes for people living with mental and physical disabilities. They’ll be playing for the elderly in Washington, DC; for Navajo families living in supported housing in New Mexico; for children in the Treme’ district in New Orleans; for immigrants seeking asylum in Detroit; for a farm worker community in rural Washington State; and for veterans recovering from injuries and living indefinitely at a VA hospital in Long Beach, CA. And these are just a handful of their stops. The band has partnered with a not-for-profit organization in each city which will host the concerts. The videos below represent many of these organizations and the tremendous work they are doing to improve the lives of people every day.”

You can follow the tour and and here tracks from Mary’s latest album “The Way Home” at http://thehometour.org

As has been the trend for the past nine months of my life, from getting married, to moving, the changes keep coming. April 1 will be my last day at Telligent. I’ve been offered an exciting new opportunity at NBC Artworks as a Senior Interactive Designer.

During the time that I’ve been at Telligent I’ve learned a lot and have made some great friends. I want to thank everyone at Telligent for this great opportunity and the experience that I gained during my time here. Specifically to my fellow current and former creative team co-workers, I thank you for you patience with me when I was starting out and your continued mentorship. I have many great memories for our time together and hope to see that continue.

And now on to new things, I’m ever grateful to all of you. Thanks for a great experience.

-Ben

As long as I can remember I have loved movies and film. Really, all aspects of cinema from making it, to experiencing it. Recently I’ve found myself leaning heavily on the later. I’ve become purely a consumer of this media, and wondering how I’ve lost my way. I’ve alluded to this problem before, that I can easily excuse myself from these types of projects because of my lack of pro-grade video equipment. Boo.

The dream: is to have a couple prosumer HD cameras, portable audio recorders, MacPro with 8 gigs for ram, and a crew of at least 3 other people. The reality: is I have a Flip Mino HD, an audio recorder , an almost 4 year-old MacBook Pro, and the occasional help from my wife. Clearly, not the same thing, but I see hope out there. I’ve discovered as-of-late just how many people are doing amazing things using a pretty minimal equipment set-up. (I know, I know, “it’s not the equipment that makes the film maker but the talent”), but it’s easy to forget sometimes.

I seem to have fallen in to an all-to-common trap of giving up or making excuses because it’s the path of least resistance. “But my Flip Mino only shoots 720 x 480!” (I say, while adjusting my imaginary glasses that have just slipped down my nose). I think it was me that once said, “I want to live my life as a reality show.” Maybe it’s not quite on mark with all this, but there’s something to that. I mean I turned my marriage proposal to my wife into a film, and I think that may have been the last really film project that I did. This whole post feels a bit like a Catholic confession.

“It’s been almost a year since my last production.”

Okay, well here’s to belated New Year’s resolutions. This year, I’m going to become a producer of media not just a consumer. Someone want to hold me accountable on this one?

I’ve heard both sides of the debate about whether a “web designer” should be able to code his own designs. I know the reasons for and against, and frankly it worries me. I’ll be the first to admit that nothing puts my mind at ease more than knowing that the design that I’ve put together in Fireworks will be marked-up with highest level of accuracy and care the the developer (me). But, I know this is unrealistic. I don’t have time to do it all my own, nor do I know everything, I need help. Try as I may, I am a designer first, developer, a distant second, and I’m okay with it. What worries me is the disturbing trend that I keep seeing on places like craigslist and job boards everywhere; ads that read more like a entrepreneur’s Christmas wish list than a job description:

“Looking for a web designer to finish an online shopping site that is under construction now. MUST have at least 3 years experience building online shopping sites. MUST have deep knowledge of methods and ways of search engine optimization, customers database, shopping carts….etc. After finish building site position might be available to maintain and upgrade site all the time.

Compsensation: $14-15/hr”

The line between web developer an and web designer have become a bit blurred as of late. I can’t tell you how many times I see people call themselves web designers that are really only developers who how know just enough photoshop to themselves into trouble. The result is well developed site with sub-par design, for less money than if a true designer had been involved. Side-effect being that the potential client pool on both sides now has an overall diminished perception of quality and lower acceptable price-point . This in-turn devalues every designer and developer’s work.

Let me be clear designers are just as guilty of this, I’m just as guilty of this at times. I can, at times write pretty some ugly css, I know it I admit it, and I’m working on it. What I don’t do is tell a client that I am a be-all, end-all, without-a-doubt, full-fledged developer. I can do a lot of things, but not all, and I’m okay with that. I don’t use Terminal to write my code, I use Code and have to use Firebug to make sure my page matches as close as possible to what I did in my design comp. I code like a designer, and I advertise myself as such.

But the damage has already been done. Perhaps it’s a result of the 1990′s mentality of the internet, specifically web design and development being overly technical and unaccessible to a lot of people especially those of the “50 and better” persuasion i.e. potential clients with money to spend. The shrewd business man (and now AARP member) does more with less and the idea of a utility man- web designer is very appealing. This has lead the way for companies like elance.com to further lower competitive prices for design and dev. work by promoting low-priced, foreign vendors. Also, the door has been opened for services that offer bargin-basement prices on bottom-of-the-barrel web site design and development.

Welcome to my nightmare:

None the less its still healthy to dream big, push yourself and expand your skill set, its the only way things get better. Good, true hybrids do exist, but are not as common as you may think. I want to be one when I grow up.

I had to stifle a squeal of child-like glee when I returned from lunch, and before getting back to work, I logged onto Facebook and discovered that FINALLY, after about of week of anticipation my account reflected the new UI re-design. Here I am geeking out about new simplified and more usable header and sidebars, but I know full-well that it’s only a matter of time until it starts. What starts? You might ask. Well, it seems that it’s inevitable that in the next few hours someone will log-on and be so taken-a-back by the appearance of the new FB that they will start their revolt; just as it seems to happen every time that FB makes a significant change or improvement. The page for the FB group “Bring Back The Old Facebook!” is already, showing comments from newly discontented users. It’s funny.

In a nut shell, I totally get where they’re coming from but I also know they they just don’t get it. Things like FB start to become familiar comforts for people and just like when something is disrupted in their environment the change is often not welcomed. Obviously some take it worse than others. I’m totally that way too when it comes to other areas of life. I just get settled in and unpacked(sort of) and in a few weeks I’m moving again! I’ve also learned that no matter how much of an adjustment/inconvenience something can be, probably 98.3% of the time there’s a greater side benefit that results. In this example: Moving = Inconvenience/Hate My Life + New Place = More space = Overall Improved Quality of Life. The same applies to Facebook’s annual UI face-lift (no pun intended). It may take some getting used to but like any other product or service FB is constantly examining and re-examining itself. The funny part is that in a few weeks I’d bet the same people complaining about the new UI will become used to it and a year from now grovel over another change, wishing it were the way it is now.

Maybe I just have stars in my eyes for Facebook, I’m a fanboy. I like the new UI. Now if only they could do something about all those annoying Farmville and Mafia Wars notifications.

All of my life I’ve been involved in the eternal struggle between due process and due personal logic. That to mean my way of doing things VS the way prescribed by given “expert”, text, or authority. I’m finding more and more as I get older that the adage about cat skinning wasn’t too far off. As a designer I am charged with the task of coming up with a solution to a given problem in the best manner that exists and when one doesn’t exist, to create one that does, then if after much trial and error no suitable one rears it’s head (ugly or other wise) then resort to the next best compromise. The creative process for me, much like many other things that I get myself into is not an easy or clean one. I used to like to describe it like this:

There are all these chunks of idea floating around and then some of the meet (bang!). Then the zygotal idea begins to grow and grow until it forms a concept. Finally when the concept is fully developed it comes out. Out of the loins of my mind.

It seems like the the biggest misconception of what I do is that I spend forty to sixty percent of my time everyday just goofing of online and the sixty to forty making a few pixel and opacity adjustments on an idea that I took way too long to come up with. I know it may be hard to believe, but the moment when you walk into my office an I’m browsing good.is, I’m not just reading up on how the U.S. lags in environmental performance (which is a bit concerning) but I am studying the way the site’s designers chose to display related articles and recent comments. Just like when I was a kid and my Dad and I would get into arguments over the best practices for mowing the lawn (front of the yard first or the back of the yard first), my idea of what methods make sense are is a good use of time often differs from what those in my senior feel. It would be very easy to declare victory on a given design challenge after thirty minutes of fumbling around on a Fireworks document but what’s the fun in that? I’m quite certain that I’m not alone on this.

I remember a few years ago hearing a What-A-Burger commercial that flaunted the fact that they made all of their burgers by hand and as a result were a “model of inefficiency”, but also totally worth waiting for. I was sold. On the flip side, I could site times when I’ve been known in times of extreme time shortage to produce works of greatness, but there more to that than meets the eye. There were many hours of research and exploration before that made it possible. I have a bag of tricks that I’ve collected on deck should I need them at a moments notice. Despite what it might seem like, nothing good is every created quickly.