But it’s all worth it when you hit launch, chewing on the last remains of your fingernails whilst shaking with a lethal combination of adrenaline, caffeine and low-blood sugar and eventually sit back with a near orgasmic relief as everything, hopefully, goes smoother than expected.

What a fucking thrill, what a roller coaster of emotions. This is why we got into this industry, isn’t it? That rush of battling to create something and seeing it through to fruition, blossoming like a butterfly from a cocoon; months in the dark of secret, hushed development, all the while that fateful day of launch looming closer and closer until it’s so damned close we forgo sleep, food and basic hygiene to crack out our little baby. Weary satisfaction attained and complimented, usually, with a congratulatory pint.

Success.

These situations arise in most agencies, and I’m sure in some much more frequently than others. Many students, as much as I appreciate the workload can at times be overwhelming, seem to believe or brag that the ‘work all night’ attitude is protocol, almost that it’s cool.

Well I can tell you this—it’s not fucking cool.

No Excuses

There are a hundred reasons why a project may run over. Producers blame the Account Managers, Account Managers blame the Developers, Developers the Designers and Designers the Client. I won’t speak for the Client but I think it’s safe to say in most circumstances everyone has a part to play.

As a designer and front-end dev, my natural point of blame lies with the project manager, and their inability to supply me with the content/sign-offs/milestones etc I need to get my job done. And in some cases this is fair—a client taking 2 weeks longer than projected to provide requested photography or sign-off on a phase of a project will inevitably push things back, but it’s the PMs or Account Managers job to ensure the client is aware of the ramifications and to work with them to limit the damage done.

We can’t work miracles but we can do our best to compensate for worst case scenarios and put contingencies and backup plans in place as buffers. If a deadline is fixed, launch date non-negotiable, and as a result of someone’s fuck up or unfortunate circumstances it becomes unreachable, then compensations have to be made. This may entail reducing the scope, scaling back the size of the product or cutting out features and functionality—if it’s the agency’s fault then this may even call for a discount on the final cost of the project; if it’s the client’s fault then a conscious and considerate understanding has to be forged between the client and agency that something has to give—and the last thing to give should be an innocent team members time.

Honesty and Contingency

I’m the worst person to rant about time tracking and personal time management, it’s hardly my strong point, however it’s essential to pay professional respect to the importance of accurately analysing how much time it takes you to do something.

A  simple rule here is, however long you think it will take—double it.

When estimating how long it takes to complete a task, whether that be designing a website layout, marking that layout up, implementing a javascript slideshow, integrating an email newsletter system etc, it’s all to easy to let your ego take charge and blurt out ridiculous estimations, when it will inevitably take you twice as long.

It always fucking does.

No matter how shit hot you think you are, no matter how many times you’ve built a drop-down navigation, no matter how many proposals or account reviews you’ve written or WordPress blogs you’ve installed, it almost always takes longer than you expect. And if you do manage to wrap your work up in, or in less than, the expected time, well pat yourself on the back and go browse Reddit for a couple of hours—you’ve earned it.

Massaging the Client

“But the client only has a limited budget/limited timescales” I hear you cry. Well there’s your problem right there—every client always has a limited budget and unrealistic deadlines.

Now you can either choose to work your ass off like a mangy camel sweating your way across the Sahara, or you can be professional and appreciate the value of your own time and experience and work with the client to reach an agreement as to what can realistically be achieved in such time, with such money. Unless the client is Nike or likewise and this is your one shot to impress, in which case stock up on the coffee—it’s gonna’ be a long night!

The reality is that in an agency environment every team member is, for lack of a less obvious cliché, an integral cog in the machine—oiled with passion, creative drive or in some unfortunate cases the paycheque at the end of the month, and driven from behind by the producer/project manager and in front by the ever present deadline. Any cog not spinning at the right speed will effect every other cog; poor project management produces no push and a weak deadline generates little pull.

Thus, self management and professionalism is as essential as relying on the producer to keep you on track. Setting and reaching milestones throughout the course of a project and ensuring that you take into account everything that may be required of you is the key. If you have 2 weeks to design a site, you have to consider not only the hours you’ll spend sketching, mood-boarding and playing in Photoshop, but all the extra snippets of time spent with emails, phone calls to clients, meetings with the account manager, producer or CD, rounds of both internal and external amends and waiting on client feedback that can sometimes add days or weeks onto the length of a project.

The other trick is to keep clients in the loop as much as possible. Maintaining a continuous rapport with clients, 3rd parties and suppliers is essential. Keeping them involved at every stage helps to ensure that if/when you do work over or miss deadlines, they’ve been with you throughout the process, not kept in the dark, and so will have a better understanding of why it’s happened, which will hopefully ease the responsibility on the agency’s part.

However if you find yourself constantly under-delivering and missing deadlines on a regular basis, it might be worth reassessing your project management team—although everyone bears a responsibility it’s ultimately their job to ensure this doesn’t happen. End of.

Idealism

What I’ve preached above is all well and good in theory, but can run into difficulties when applied to real life projects. However if each member of the team takes responsibility for themselves and their own time, and respects and makes compensations for others, the entire process can run smoother and hopefully avoid those final, exhausting and often avoidable panic dashes to the finishing line.

If you find yourself in lucky situation where the budget, timescales and workload are more relaxed—besides overcompensating for your own time, it’s always nice to set a personal deadline a few days before the overall one, giving you that extra contingency for more in-depth testing and final amends, but also providing some extra time to add what I’ll refer to as ‘sexy improvements’. Mmm, sexy improvements….

However, if there’s absolutely no way of avoiding it and you do find yourself stressing with bloodshot eyes over your computer at 11pm with the clock ticking and the client freaking out on the other end of the phone, try and make the most of a shitty situation. If you’re at the office persuade the boss to order in some pizza and grab a few beers—it makes the evening more pleasant and will likely increase your willingness to slog through the overtime. There’s nothing worse than straining and fretting away till 2am on instant coffee and stale Tesco sandwiches whilst your mates are having a few down the boozer.

Well? Have you done it yet? No of course you haven’t. So, here’s the gentle reminder you signed up for:

BUY A FUCKING SHOVEL!

Also, buy a sledge, and some grit.

Go on, buy a shovel RIGHT NOW. Just think how smug you’ll feel this winter when the Snowpocalypse inevitably takes everybody else by surprise.

Here’s a referral link to a very lovely shovel on Amazon (anything you buy through this link will earn us money towards the purchase of our own shovels):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0038JEIGM?ie=UTF8&tag=googlesightse-21&linkCode=shr&camp=3194&creative=21330&creativeASIN=B0038JEIGM

You really should do it now, as we won’t be reminding you again (in fact by the time you read this, we’ll already have deleted your email address).

Have a great winter!

Lots of love,

Your friendly shovel-buying-reminder team.
http://buyafuckingshovel.com/

The handy work of these fellas: http://rotacoo.com/

So very, very tempting…

There’s no getting around the fact that 90% of the interfaces we design exist to, at some point down the line, make money. B2B, B2C, e-commerce, blogs, forums, galleries, apps, games etc; whatever the initial touch point is with the user, be it a website, mobile app, email newsletter, brochure or physical item—the primary goal may differ greatly, but the ultimate objective is almost always to convert that ‘user’ into a customer.

Conversion and retention are two of the commonest goals we find ourselves dealing with on a daily basis. Hence why at BLISS we refer to ourselves as a digital marketing agency; although the bulk of our time is spent creating pretty websites and the like, everything we do is essentially coupled with marketing strategy. Every design decision is determined not only by a practical knowledge of the craft, but by the specified objectives of the product.

As simple as it sounds, it can be all to easy for designers to get carried away with their imagination and ego, and lose sight of the purpose of their creations. It requires a maturity and respect for visual design that goes a long way to separate work that merely looks nice, usually dictated by trends, fads and micro elements such as gradients, patterns, font effects etc, from that which may sometimes go against the grain of what’s currently cool, perhaps in turn setting new standards, but ultimately serving the greater purpose of meeting it’s objectives. Which, when done consistently, can return exceptional results that convert to long-term success.

Depth

An objective led approach requires us to question every subtlety and every nuance of the interfaces we design. Layout, composition, colour, texture, typography, balance and contrast, tone of voice, photography and much more are determined not by trends or by competitors, but by how we can successfully meet the desired objectives.

As designers we should be able to pride ourselves on our attention to detail and expertise in creating engaging, usable designs that provide a return on investment, meet set targets and where possible do so whilst creating a sense of delight, which isn’t always so easy when you factor in all the variables encountered on a design project (clients/creative directors/account mangers/budget/timescales etc).

There are a several essential stages of an objective led design process that simply shouldn’t be overlooked, regardless of timescales, budgets and clients/account managers breathing down our necks. When adjusting project length I suggest that we simply condense the time spent on these individual areas as apposed to dismissing them altogether.

Variable processes

I’m trying to cover all the bases here, but I’m sure there’s plenty I’ve missed out. Some aspects of this process can take as little as 5 minutes, or can really be investigated for days. This may be determined by how well you already know the client and the goals of the project, how much time you have to spend or what takes priority. Parts of this approach also become second nature with experience.

It’s also worth noting that there is no fixed order in which to conduct these tasks. Different projects may require an emphasis on competitive analysis whereas others may demand more attention to be paid to content strategy. This is usually determined when assessing the initial requirements.

The design process can be broken down like so:

• Research & analysis
• Content strategy
• Sketching & wireframing
• Composition
• Prototyping
• Testing & redefinition
• Build

The difficultly with outlining a process in such a way is that it appears so linear, where in reality we quite often find ourselves going back and forth, skipping steps and revisiting previous areas.

This also don’t take into account project management and development methodologies such as waterfall or agile. With more people trending towards more economical ways of working, the stages of the design process outlined above are being condensed but revisited more often, which is healthy. Instead of slogging through weeks of research and planning then closing that door to that step in the process and moving on, it’s better to keep on your toes, keep inspired and maintain a high pace of progress—then as new developments unfold in the project life cycle, you can revisit earlier stages and adapt your observations and objectives.

For example, in the design and build of an e-commerce website, it may discovered in the prototyping stage that there are too many product variables that may cause customers confusion; it’s at this point that you can refer back to earlier research, investigate how competitors address the issue and instead develop a more refined system, whilst still meeting the client’s core objectives.

More than meeting objectives

Objective led design is about more than dealing with requirements. It’s about creating better work. It’s about being a more respectful designer. Forcing ourselves to really consider the why behind our design decisions will only help us to improve not only the quality of design, but also our ability to empathise with the users we design for.

Instead of carelessly throwing shape and colour around in Photoshop it’s important to understand the consequences of the products we create. It applies to more than just websites and screen-based interfaces, but to all areas of design—product, industrial, fashion, print etc.

If this all seems a little obvious I suppose it should do. Some smart American architect summed it up over 100 years ago:

Form follows function.

Yeah, that.

However form following function is still often overlooked in these teenage years of the web. Trendy new toys like Canvas, CSS3 animations, parallax effects and the magic that jQuery can weave sometimes distract us entirely from the purpose of our design, and we’re all guilty of it.

It’s important to balance critical design with an injection of emotion and imagination that takes it the extra distance. It’s always fun to push boundaries and see what’s possible, as long as it doesn’t compromise the function of the product.

I suppose the art is in finding that balance.

The problem is that Jake’s mum isn’t confident about the Hyper Island course, which is understandable considering it’s unheard of over here, and is only in it’s first year. She feels Jake would be better off wasting his time and clawing himself into mounds of debt going to ‘normal’ university.

Frankly I find this a little absurd, for several reasons.

For starters, although I don’t know Jakes mum and I’m sure she only wants the best for him, she should let him make his own choices and not try to dictate how he lives his life. On the flip side, Jake should grow some balls and do what he wants to do instead of letting his mum control his decisions. Excuse my candor but I believe that if his mum really wanted what was best for him then she’d support his wish to go to Hyper Island.

Secondly, for the direction Jake wants to take, that is getting into interactive and web design, university is such a fucking bad idea. I’ve never disguised my distain for some of the digital media courses on offer in Manchester—by and large they’re a sack of shit. Bureaucracy, obsolete curricula and outdated tutors, a lack of vision and too little interaction with the local industry, boring predictable briefs and a lot of students who don’t really give a shit about the courses are largely to blame.

Hyper Island changes all that. Originating in Sweden (and the Swedish always get it right), Hyper Island is an academy that gives the finger to the stiff syllabuses and teaching styles of typical academia, instead developing a creative learning environment that encourages collaboration, making mistakes and working on real briefs for real clients. They really adhere to the idea that learning should be fun, and there’s no doubt that it pays off—the caliber of talent that leaves the doors of Hyper Island is astounding and inspiring.

Although the Hyper Island course doesn’t offer a degree at the end, the experience is surely far more beneficial. The arguments for and against a degree-level education in the digital industry are varied and numerous; this article from a couple of years ago still holds some relevance, but I’ve found more and more that spending 3 years studying digital media, or interactive design or whatever title you want to give it is a huge waste of time and money. And I’m not the only person who thinks this.

At the time of writing this I’m 21. I have no formal qualifications that relate to what I do now. In fact on paper I’m a bit of a dunce. Like a lot of people in this industry I’m self-taught from books, websites and interning. I worked hard, asked a lot of questions, tried to meet the right people, was passionate about what I wanted to do and without a doubt I’ve been very lucky. I took opportunities when they arose, and thankfully they’ve paid off. Now I’m the lead designer at a great digital marketing agency in the Northern Quarter, doing a job I love, working with great people and earning a healthy salary.

I’m not saying this to inflate my ego, I’m trying to make a point.

Most people my age are just leaving university with the baggage of debt, inexperience of the real world, competing against everyone else on the course for a job with little of any real value to show for themselves but a piece of paper. In fact, unless you’re really fucking talented it’s hard enough getting an unpaid internship at the moment.

For some people university is without a doubt the right path to take. But for others, like Jake, I think he’d be making a huge mistake. At 18 he’s already making his mark on the scene, meeting the right people and getting his name around. He’s worked with some of the top agencies in Manchester including Magnetic North (and ourselves), had his work featured on the cover of a magazine and has been accepted to join one of the most unique, forward-thinking digital education academies in the world.

He’s smashing it. He’s already proved he can do it himself. University would only hold him back.

Whether you agree or disagree, your views would be appreciated in the comments.

– N

Witty, engaging and challenging. Pretty site as well.

See Obama Stole Our Writer.

Mike Monteiro takes half an hour of your time to look at how to reinforce your financial defence and strategy as a designer and as a businessman. Considering most lunch breaks are an hour, that gives you plenty of time to grab a sandwich and sit back and enjoy—it’s a great talk from an entertaining and interesting speaker.

Indeed they have done a good job. Besides a few of the regular candidates (British Rail, TATE, Apple, FedEx), there are a few curveballs such as Deutsche Bank, Woolmark and British Steel, which I found rather refreshing.

What grabbed my attention was not how iconic these logos are, nor their clever use of visual puns or gestalt design principles or effectiveness in suitably representing all their respective companies stand for.

It was their timelessness.

In most instances the logo marks had barely changed over the course of decades, through recessions and booms, through war and peace and huge paradigm shifts in technology, society and consumer perceptions and expectations.

Try finding a logo design book that doesn’t, at some point, mention Saul Bass. If you’re not sure who he is you will do by clicking that link.

Logo Design Love recently featured a selection of Saul’s finest logos over time, some dating back to the 50s. The lifespan of some of the examples is almost laughable, remaining almost identical after 40-50 years.

Now that is timeless design.

The Digital Dustbin

Sure the web’s still young, everyone keeps telling me, it’s a medium still in it’s infancy. Perhaps we’re still in a sort of ‘trial and error’ phase, and let’s face it, it’s a completely different kettle of fish to print and branding.

But how long does a website really last? A common rule of thumb for business sites tends to be around 2 years. Then it’s time to start anew, even get a new agency in to throw some fresh ideas on the table; “the old design’s getting a bit stale”, “we need a more contemporary look and feel”, “we think it’s time for ‘revolution’, not ‘evolution’”.

You get the idea. The tenders and briefs go out, always looking for the same thing—modern, contemporary, ‘more in-sync with today’s digital landscape’, and the proposals pour in from all the eager agencies reckoning they’ve got the perfect solution to reinvigorate your brand online. Shit, we’re all guilty of it, especially designers—we get bored of our work all to quickly and rush to create something new and ‘fresh’.

Designs, sometimes great designs, are simply thrown away. Lost to the annals of online yesteryear.

So whose fault is it? Designers? Clients? The industry?

Are designers not striving hard enough to create digital designs that stand the test of time, that respond and evolve within themselves—future proof, bucking trends and pioneering long-lasting appeal and usefulness?

If Creative Review were to feature a list of the top 20 websites of all time, what would we find in there? I’d like to think it would be less your jQuery-swathed flashy sites boasting every feature on Smashing Magazine’s ‘Web Design Trends for 2011′ article. Christ, I fucking hate those lists.

What about your Googles (obvious, I know), Wikipedias, IMDBs and Amazons etc. Websites that’ve barely changed in 10 years because for the most part they were done right the first time around. Besides a few tweaks and small steps of evolution of time, the main look and feel, layout, colour scheme, typography and tone of voice of such websites has truly stood the test of time, in an online sense.

Is this not something we should be working harder towards when we design? Not just impressing the client, winning the pitch or the award or building something that screams ‘Look at me—I know CSS3 and jQuery!’, but a standard of interface, user experience and visual design that will be as relevant in 5 years as it is now?

Is it really an issue?

Maybe that’s not the point. Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree. Is this a vicious cycle of carelessness and laziness in design or is it a product of the environment? In the 60s a logo had to be right, a companies branding had to be perfected before the first print run, because to change something later on was such a massive expense.

Online, such expense has been more or less erased. New palettes, typographical arrangements, imagery and visual motifs can be changed and removed at the drop of a hat. Whether or not this is a good or bad thing is something could be debated endlessly.

I’m going to take a middle of the road view; the disposability of digital design is both a curse and a blessing. It provides opportunities to create and improve at a faster rate, however this shouldn’t distract us from taking the time to create the best possible work we can in the first place.

The ‘we can always change it later’ mindset must be handled with respect.

Advocates of these new initiatives include, among others, web luminaries such as Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jason Fried, Eric Karjalouto et al. You know the sort I’m on about. Bestselling books to their names, massively popular blogs on new business, marketing, passion and inspiration and a dash of life coaching and likely a place in the bountiful depths of the TED archives. Apologies for the lack of female references there; these were simply a few names that jumped to mind.

I personally lap this sort of stuff up. I slap my thighs in the middle of a train journey whooping ‘Of course!’, ‘Hot damn it’s so darn obvious!’ whilst flicking through Meatball Sundae or Rework, garnering peculiar glances from other passengers. Simple, obvious concepts—simply, inspiringly written. I envision myself walking away from such reads a changed man, one step closer to nirvana, ready to conquer the business world and achieve a lifestyle I could only have previously dreamt about.

However, more often than not, 90% of the words within such books and blogs, so energetically conveyed in presentations and webcasts, are lost deep in the fluff of my mind. I go to work the next day, rant at colleagues about how we should abandon meetings, build half a great product instead of a full poor product, work less but more effectively, banish wasteful protocols and become more agile, agile, AGILE!

Then I begin sifting through the backlog of a night’s emails.

Then we have that rescheduled production meeting.

Then I spend an hour on the phone to a client.

Then a fresh batch of client amends materialise on an already overdue project, and of course they’re top priority.

And all that new thinking, that inspiring new direction that was going to transform our business, becomes lost in the tired fuss of the status-quo.

What a shame.

Inspiration vs Momentum

Ben Holden of Cahoona fame did a short talk the other night on ideas and keeping that initial spark alive, when so often it dwindles. It’s 10 minutes long—watch it.

This is something that plagues me obsessively. I have a rather short attention span; I get excited and stimulated by the spark of a new idea, whether it be visual, audible or conceptual. My imagination runs away with it and symphonies of colour, sound and endless possibilities fill my mind. My moleskine (yeah that’s right, don’t judge me) is packed with rough sketches for website layouts, verses of poetry and tattoo designs, outlines for art projects and marketing campaigns.

Around 10% of those scrawls have found any form of fruition. All too often that initial spark dwindles and burns out, I forget about the whole thing and on brief recollection 6 months later I bow my head with a private shame that yet another opportunity of creative exploration has been neglected in the drag of daily life.

I believe this is a problem that curses us all. How can we break out of our old, or current mindset, and adopt new ways of thinking, new ideas, new initiatives?

The difference between ideas in a notebook and core business methods is that realistically, besides perhaps budget, there’s little to stop me evolving the ideas in my notebook. But amending the fundamental ways in which a business works, whether it be your own company, a small team or a larger corporation, is a far more daunting and difficult task.

Simply convincing others to entertain the idea of a new way of working, or breaking out of the routine they’re comfortable with, can be quite a hurdle. All it takes is a few people to stamp on your idea—”No meetings? Well that will never work, how will we ever make any decisions?”, “We can’t launch this product yet, it’s not 100% finished, the client would never agree.” and it can all too easily lose momentum, and before long it’s forgotten.

And life carries on as usual.

Adopting and abiding

So how can we try and break out of this perpetual cycle of spark and fizzle out?

My first suggestion would be to take small steps.

Instead of decisively cutting out meetings, just try reducing them at first. Question whether that production meeting’s really necessary, if it really needs the entire team present, or can the same thing be accomplished with a couple of emails?

Breaking it down will make it less of a challenge. It may take longer, or appear to take longer, but it’s better than no change at all. Like my dad used to say ‘Slowly slowly catchy monkey‘… I believe this is the correct context?

Also, don’t take it too seriously.

It’s easy to get on a high horse. So many times I’ve read one of Godin’s articles, spoke out at a panel evening, stumbled upon an Edward de Bono or Paul Arden quote and become awash in the glow of my own enlightenment. All of a sudden I become an illuminated advocate, dedicated to spreading the gospel of these new words of wisdom I’ve acquired.

Get real.

I find it’s worth taking everything with a pinch of salt. It’s all too easy to run away with ideas, blinded quite often by the imaginary status of those you’ve learned them from. Not every word out of Andy Clarke, Jeffrey Zeldman, Dave Trott, Jason Fried etc mouth’s is truth. Everything exists with a dash of opinion and conjecture. Allow your own experience and perspective to influence everything you learn.

Don’t abide.

Perhaps I’m trying to be a bit clever here, but in order to abide to new ways of thinking, don’t abide. Nothing is set in stone, and not everything will work for your business. It’s all well and good small being the new big, accurate planning being a fallacy and it being a good idea to say no to clients; but the unfortunate reality is sometimes you really can’t make it work with your business.

Determination to abide may be admirable, but also stupid. Instead experiment, constantly try new approaches that don’t necessarily disrupt the day-to-day too much and don’t feel compelled to follow a course of action because the decision’s already been made to. If something isn’t working, step back and try something else.

That’s at least better than never trying anything new in the first place.

Finally, strive to inspire others.

Life coaching time folks! Great ideas are lost when they’re kept in your moleskine or in your head. Share them, get them out there! One of the easiest ways to win people over to a different way of thinking, or a new theory, is to inject plenty of natural enthusiasm and passion. If you truly believe in it this should be a given, and there’s nothing more infectious than pure, honest enthusiasm and love for what you do and for what you believe in. It shows in the work your produce, the way to talk to others and how you dedicate your time.

Getting others on board can be crucial in seeing a new vision into existence. It may be in the form of back patting, it might involve spreading your idea and getting others on board, physically helping out or giving you a boost when you run out of steam or begin to question yourself.

But if you don’t really care yourself, then what’s the fucking point?

New initiatives become old initiatives

As usual I could go on and on, and there’s no doubt in my mind that I’ll likely question several of the points I’ve made above in the future. But surely that’s the point? No-one has the answers, especially not me. But without speculation, debate and actually getting things done and out there in the world—we’ll surely stay stuck right where we are at the moment. Now that’s not really all that bad, but I reckon it could be a hell of a lot better.

And boy wouldn’t it get boring, stuck in the same moment, never inspiring, never changing or learning?

It always excites me to think where we’ll be in 5/10 years. How life, culture, fashion, technology, business and mindsets will change. What appear to be new initiatives now will hopefully become more of a standard, and we’ll be working towards even better ways to conduct our lives.

Well, if that’s what you’re in to.

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull – May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

How on Earth did I manage to miss this place? What astonishing architecture.

Discovered here – The Melbourne Recital Centre and MTC Theatre, http://www.melbournerecital.com.au and http://www.mtc.com.au respectively:

Man, I miss Australia…