Category: Agency

Constraining Design

Posted by Megan Jonas On October 30, 2015

This is the second in a series of nine posts on the All Things Open 2015 conference I attended in Raleigh in mid-October. For more information on the conference, along with videos and slides from the presenters, check out the conference website.

The first session I attended at All Things Open was in the UX/UI/Design track. The speaker Shay Howe from Belly described how design constraints can actually free a designer to do what they’re best at. Good constraints include a grid, font/typography choices, color choices, and any existing branding for the site, if it’s available.

“Narrowing your options can clarify challenges,” Howe said, and allow a designer to use fewer resources while maintaining consistent styling across iterations.

As someone who is working on a system to create design as good as my development, this really hit home. It is the reason I always suggest to clients that they should start with a style guide, or even a mood board, to give me constraints to work with. Taking away the basic decisions of font, color, and button styling allows me to spend my limited design resources on interesting elements that really customize a site.

Getting clients to see the importance of these style constraints is also an important part of the process. Clients want to jump right in to seeing a website in progress, and sometimes feel like developing these standards is a waste of time. Done correctly, however, it makes the development process much smoother and faster than the code first method.

“Constraints do not equal sacrifices,” said Howe.

Design at the Speed of Digital

Posted by Megan Jonas On October 26, 2015

The web changes quickly and clients expect us to keep up. In this always on age, clients often want design projects turned around within a few days, if not hours.

The traditional agency is used to having a lot longer to do its work. Print deadlines are set many weeks in advance and work is signed off on a weekly basis, not hourly. But when you’re talking about small graphics projects for digital properties, or even iterative web design, those timelines may no longer work for your clients.

But how can you continue to produce excellent design work while working within these newly compressed timelines? Sometimes you just have to wait for inspiration to strike, and sometimes that doesn’t happen overnight (or over the next hour – whatever the case may be).

First, be honest with your clients about your workflow. Especially if you are single-person shop, like I am now, you need to let them know not only that it takes time to produce design work at the quality that they hired you for, but also that you have other commitments, and, at least in my case, you can’t rush the process or you’ll get flawed work that makes no one happy. No one, NO ONE is less happy with flawed work than I am. Not even the client who is paying for it.

Second, you need to re-evaluate your processes and see where efficiencies can be found. Some clients don’t need three mood boards, let alone six. The curse of digital can also be the benefit. You can check in with clients more often which means you don’t have to do unnecessary steps to hone in on a design.

On My Own: Or, How Unemployed Became Self-Employed in 24 Hours or Less

Posted by Megan Jonas On July 9, 2015

About a month ago, I left my job at the Advertising Agency in Asheville. There were a lot of reasons, some positive, some negative, but mostly, it just wasn’t a good fit for me personally or professionally, and it was time to make some major changes in my life.

I had been planning an exit for a couple of weeks and when the end finally came, I was prepared to be “unemployed” for several months, if I had to be. Most importantly, I was not planning to immediately start looking for a new job. Instead, I wanted to take some time to think about the things that I liked and wanted to do, and the things I absolutely did not want to be in my next job description.

What happened next, however, was unexpected to say the least.

Within about 24 hours of leaving my job, I had lined up enough meetings for enough freelance projects to take me well into the fall. While not all of them ended up working out exactly the way I wanted them to, I do have a roughly 100% success rate in signing all these clients. What’s my secret? Most of them are friends (and I definitely realize that well will run dry sooner than later), but I am also finding that when I’m doing work that I am truly excited about (in this case, web development), it comes across in the way I describe my day and my projects. I also can’t overlook the fact that I am priced relatively competitively in this market, especially compared to a full service agency fee.

So now, I am getting used to answering “self-employed” on applications for credit cards and online services. And I’m figuring out how to split my days between billable hours and networking for new business. I’m rapidly learning the ropes of estimates, invoicing, and all the other items that go with being my own business. And I’m loving every minute of it!

If you are looking for web or digital marketing services, or are interested in working with me on other projects, please contact me at meganmjonas (at) gmail (dot) com. In the coming days and weeks, expect some improvements on this site to let you know what I’m doing and what kind of projects I’m looking for in the next few months.

TV Commercials; Or, has the river gone up since you scouted that location?

Posted by Megan Jonas On March 19, 2015

Last week, we shot new television commercials for our largest client. The shoot for two commercials took 25 hours over a two day period.

We contended with rain when it was supposed to be dry, no rain when the outdoor scene called for rain, two kitchens, a hike upriver with all our gear and an overnight shoot at a local grocery store.

There were also nine actors, a food stylist, a wardrobe stylist, a makeup stylist and somewhere around ten guys who’s jobs were lights, camera and miscellaneous.

All for a grand total of 60 seconds of TV… well, actually something like 50 seconds of TV when you take into account the art cards and stock shot at the end.

The end result we’ll see next week, but I think they’re going to be really great. I was reminded of how much making TV is a team effort, and that while the Creative Director comes up with the overall concept, there are a thousand little decisions made by all those people that lead to the final product.

What is Branding? A Video

Posted by Megan Jonas On March 6, 2015

Ad Week highlighted this video a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Produced by David Brier of DBD International, it has just the right combination of clean design and digestible information. I hope you agree.

Do your clients give good feedback?

Posted by Megan Jonas On March 3, 2015

Clients come in a variety of sizes and experience levels. Sometimes I am working one-on-one with a client to develop a new website. Sometimes my client has more people in their marketing department than I have working with me at the agency.

Regardless of the client, one thing that we struggle with is how to encourage clients to give good feedback. That is, feedback that is helpful to the designer, developer or creative, and feedback that accurately reflects the client’s views on the project.

Setting the tone and standards of feedback early is key. Once a client has devolved into a bad habit (say, completely rewriting my copy minutes before the print deadline), it’s hard to break them out of that.

So here are a few things that I tell clients early on in the relationship to encourage constructive feedback:

1. Tell me why: You may not like this color or that image, but please, tell me why. How does it make you feel? What feeling were you hoping that element might create? What is your goal in changing that element?

2. Tell me early: Feedback is best when it comes early. When you see the wireframes, if there’s something you want to change, it’s much easier to change in that stage that it is once I have built your navigation. Same thing with more general feedback on the feel, styling, and substance of the end product.

3. Tell me straight: The number one thing I hate that clients do is to sugar coat their criticism. My graduate school professors can tell you I have never been a fan of the compliment sandwich. You are not going to hurt my feelings if you don’t like something. I am a grown woman and can handle it, so please don’t water it down for me. The only thing that accomplishes is creating another round of edits when I thought I made the changes you requested and you think I have no idea what you said.

4. Finally, Let me explain: You hired me because I am the expert at what I do and you are not. So let me explain to you why I made the choices I did. They are almost always based in research, data analysis, or best practices. You and I may ultimately agree to deviate from those standards, but let me explain to you why I did what I did so that you can make a decision based on all the facts.

Central New York is Cold and They Know It

Posted by Megan Jonas On February 18, 2015

You may have seen this latest marketing gambit by the city of Ithaca, N.Y. and their travel and tourism website. It involves and unlikely message for most travel marketers: “Don’t come here, go to Florida, instead.”

As someone who spent four cold years just 30 minutes north of Ithaca in Syracuse, let me tell you. They are right. February are dark days for central New Yorkers. It’s been at least a month since they’ve seen more than a day above freezing. They’re digging out from yet another snow storm that would grind any other area of the country to a full, week-long halt. And the sun, when it makes a rare appearance, seems to only make things colder (All former or current CNY residents know that clouds are actually positive because they trap what little heat the area has).

And so, the Visit Ithaca site decided to have a sense of humor about all of this and gently suggest that maybe this isn’t the best time of year to visit. Maybe you might want to consider a warmer climate for your February travels. Oh, and, by the way, it’s a great place to visit in Spring, Summer, and especially early fall, when the gorges that the area is famous for (Ithaca is Gorges t-shirt, anyone?) are lit up with fall colors.

Most tourism bureaus would shy away from this, seeing it as a risky move. But honesty and integrity go a long way, and so has this campaign. It’s now trending in some areas on social media, and people who never even knew where Ithaca was are visiting the site and poking around. Next time your agency suggests something a little out of your comfort zone, don’t be so quick to say no. You might just have the next viral campaign on your hands, or at the very least, you might have the ability to convey that you have a sense of humor about yourself and your destination/brand.

And no one will hate you for that.

Owning Up to It; or, how not to model your customer service after the airline industry

Posted by Megan Jonas On February 17, 2015

Yesterday morning, I was laying in bed, wishing that I somehow got a miraculous second Sunday instead of having to haul my butt into the cold and go into the office.

To kill time (re: make myself impossibly late to the office), I was looking through my twitter feed on my phone and came across an article that had unexpected connections to my life.

This Washington Post Article, by Travel Columnist Chris Elliott, outlined how airlines use the “force majeure” excuse to prevent them from owing passengers any compensation for flights that were cancelled or re-routed. In the past, airlines used this excuse, which essentially means “due to forces outside our control,” for weather related events, or political events (i.e. war) that affected flights. Some call this the “act of god” excuse.

Now, it seems, airlines are deploying this excuse even when the cause for delays, cancellations or reroutes are seemingly in their control – maintenance issues, employee strikes, etc. The columnist, who often acts as an advocate for jilted passengers, notes that travelers do not have to settle for this excuse and can often get past it simply by asking “why?”

And so, everyone hates the airlines. Even passengers who have generally good experiences hate the process and experience of flying. Seriously. If you’ve ever sat in an airport waiting area during a flight delay, you know this is true. And I think part of the reason is because the airlines are increasingly refusing to take responsibility for their role in any delay or cancellation, because they owe passengers compensation for events that are their fault. And so passengers feel like the relationship is adversarial, rather than a customer service transaction like it should be.

The lesson here is this: don’t be like the airlines. Take responsibility for events that were in your control and let clients know that you will work to do better next time. No one is perfect all of the time, and the vast majority of clients would rather have a hearty apology along with a plan to improve than a million excuses on why it’s not your fault.

Treating the client-agency relationship like a partnership rather than a battle earns trust for those times when you do have forces outside your control that affect projects. For example, my car this morning looks like a glazed donut – there is a thick layer of ice that has totally encased it after a storm last night. That, combined with a slick, steep driveway, means I won’t make it to the office today. But clients know that I don’t use excuses like this often, and so their trust in me allows them to laugh at my iced-in car with me, instead of feeling like I’m just making excuses not to make my deadlines.

If the airlines went back to their policy of only blaming weather/geological events on “force majeure,” they could probably go a long way toward earning back the trust of their passengers. After all, we’re all in this giant airborne metal tube together, and we just want to get home safely.

Megan Jonas