Staying organized

Hey artists and designers- let’s talk about organization. What are some of your methods or tricks in staying on top of things.

Specifically, how do you keep your email inbox clean? Do you divide into subfolders? Recently I’ve decided to delete at least 12 old emails daily in order to not have to spend a huge amount of time every to often cleaning it out.

What about saving files? When I am working on a project in the digital realm I find that after I am done I have a ton of files of different stages of the image, different file types, etc. What’s a better way?

What about the organization of files on your computer? Files seem to be all over the place on mine.

How about keeping track of clients, potential clients, projects, unpaid projects and so on?

Let’s hear your solutions…

• Michael Phipps
• 4 responses
•  Business, General

Dumbing down design

For the last three months, I’ve been working with a client that produces investment software, helping them brand the product and design the website and manuals. This last week, they met with potential investors who felt that blue and grey were too colorful and mingh offend somebody, they also decided that the name of the product, which associated an emotional idea rather than a reinteration of what the product does, was unacceptable, and that the name had to have ‘invest’ within it.

Meeting with my client, he asked me how I felt about it from my standpoint, and I told him that I thought it made their product thoroughly forgettable. He was in agreement with me and we likened the name change to calling a company like ‘Starbucks’, ‘CoffeeCorp’ instead and painting their shops with flat grey paint, a black and white logo of a coffee cup and using a laminate flooring and formica tables… just so that any color or style wouldn’t exclude or offend anyone. I was gratified that the individual that I work most directly with in the client’s organization was in agreement with me, but in the end, he doesn’t have the power to change the decision.

I’m curious if this is a common issue that designers face, and how they deal with it. I certainly don’t want to offend or lose a client (particularly as they are my studio’s client and not mine directly), but I don’t want to lie to them and tell them I think it’s a good decision to ‘dumb-down’ their brand in some hope that it’ll appeal to everyone. My take is, that while it may not ‘offend’ anyone, as they say, it will never stand out to be appreciated either.

• Jonathan Hull
• 7 responses
•  Branding, Business, Graphic design

does copyright mean anything on the internets?

This stuff seems to happen every day.

In another part of the globe, Mr. X, stakeholder in Giganticorp, Inc., decides his company needs a web presence. His company hires a “talented” designer (or uses someone in-house) to design said web site. As the new site is completed, everyone in the company oohs and aahhs at the awesome design that has been produced. The site goes live on Monday morning.

Meanwhile, across the ocean, a successful and productive web designer wakes up and decides to check his referrer logs. Wait—where is this link coming from? As he opens the referring site in his browser, his cup of coffee falls to the floor—along with his jaw—as his eyes behold Giganticorp’s new web site. “Wow…that’s my site!”, he exclaims.

What do we do when your hard work is pilfered by some no good designer trying to either make a quick buck without working or is just too lazy to come up with his own idea?

Here are the sites in question…
The ripoff
The original

• Rick
• 6 responses
•  Business, Graphic design, News, Web

prerequisites, prompts, and checklists

What type of information do you require from a client before beginning a project? What methods have you found most effective for extracting the critical details necessary to produce a product that they are pleased with and satisfies their needs? Do you use standard prerequisite forms or checklists?

I threw a quick one together a while back for web applications after another frustrating project of trying to read the clients mind and have been considering making a few other for identity development and other design projects. What works for you?

• wade
• 3 responses
•  Business