Ben Shoemate's Notebook

Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz via Smashing Magazine shared by 6 people

By Jeff Gardner

Let’s face it. Some days, you want to just fire your clients. You go through one too many comps, iterations or edits and you’ve had enough. It has happened to everyone at least once and I’d be lying if I said it won’t happen again; you get to the end of a project and realize that you would have made more per hour flipping burgers at McDonald’s. Thankfully, as with most common problems, there are a few simple guidelines that you can follow to help make sure that you’re never working for below minimum wage.

Due Diligence

“Experts often possess more data than judgment.” -Colin Powell

Know your role

Remember that the client will always know more about their product or service than you do. They are the expert at what they do; their problem is usually that they don’t know how to explain it well. That is where you, as the designer, step in to help. You are a graphical communications ninja, but to effectively make your, and ultimately your client’s, point you must fully understand what needs to be said.

From the outset, make it a priority to get as much information as possible about the company, their product or service, the intended audience of your work and the reason that your work needs to exist. The better prepared you are and the more information you get out of the client before you start working, the quicker your design will be accepted, and the quicker you will get paid. Use that overflow of data from the client to form a coherent picture of what you’re trying to accomplish and then use your good judgment to make something beautiful from the madness. By spending ample time collecting information, you have allowed the client to share their knowledge and participate in the project. This is a good thing. When clients feel they are part of the process they are less likely to question the design decisions you make.

Hire the right customers

“If you try and please everyone, you won’t please anyone.” -37signals

Remember that part of your due diligence is making sure that the project is a good fit for you as a designer. You cannot be everything to everyone, and if you try to be, you will not only look bad, you’ll lose money.

Remember the principle that carries the Vilfredo Pareto name: 80% of the output will come from 20% of the input. In other words, you will make 80% of your income from 20% of your clients, so focus on the good ones and fire the bad ones. Stay true to your strengths and don’t be afraid to pass on a project. In the end, everyone, including your client, will be better off.

I repeat…

Don’t try to take on every project that comes across your desk, even when you’re starting out. This will preclude a large percentage of your client problems. By picking your two or three biggest strengths and building a solid reputation, you will attract clients who are looking for a genius in your fields of choice and who, consequently, will be willing to pay well for the service.

The Harvard Business professor Michael Porter states you can hold a competitive advantage in one, and only one, of two areas: price or quality. Focus your efforts on your strengths, build a solid reputation and you’ll never be forced to compete on price again.

Communication

“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.” -Peter F. Drucker

Approach all communication with a Zen mind

original image by isa_adsr

Zen philosophy teaches you to approach every task with a beginner’s mind. This is simple when you’re trying to teach yourself hyper-astro-meta-particle physics, but not as easy as you think when it comes to something you do all day, every day. Try hard to put yourself in the shoes of a beginner; you will be more apt to understand and sympathize with your client’s point of view. You will also find that by using less jargon (by assuming the language of a beginner) your client will understand and internalize your point much more quickly, which in turn helps to create an evangelist for your work in your client’s organization, which always makes your life easier.

But adopting a beginner’s mind isn’t as simple as dropping your haughty design-speak in favor of a fifth grade vocabulary. You need to approach each conversation or communication as a beginner does, with no expectations and no preconceived notions. Without the benefit of assumptions or preconceived notions, you will be forced to ask more questions and in turn draw more information out of the client; and just like that, your job will have gotten easier. Disclaimer: If all this Zen stuff is too new age for you, just remember the old adage: When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.

Listen for what isn’t there

What the client says: Can you make that text just a little bigger?
What the client means: This font might be a little hard to read. What do you think?

Everyone fears the dreaded “Make this text bigger” line, and everyone (well, almost everyone) has probably cringed and then painfully capitulated. When faced with clients asking for design changes, especially from those clients who don’t have any design training (let alone a good eye for design), it’s important to check your design ego at the door and ask a few pointed questions. What you really need to find out is what the client actually means. Before doing anything to the design, pause for a moment and ask the client to explain what it is about the design that doesn’t accomplish the specific goals you outlined in the pre-work discovery meetings. (You did set specific goals, didn’t you!?)

Here are a few tips to help you get to the point:

• Ask blunt questions (but tactfully). Don’t start or get hauled into arguments.
• Use feature/benefit terminology and plain language, not design-speak.
• Use yes/no questions that push the client to reveal what they really think (e.g. “Do you think this font is hard to read?”).
• Take criticism well. (No one likes an overly sensitive artist.)

By your focusing on the goals rather than the implementation, clients will understand that you are trying to use your craft for their benefit, not just to take their money. Oh, and a note about that ego you left at the door: now is not the time to go into a diatribe about your profession or your skill as a designer. No one cares; your client just wants a functional design that they can be proud of when they show it to their boss.

Do what you said you were going to do

But don’t die by the contract. I’ve heard of many situations where clients and designers get into arguments about what was and wasn’t in the original contract. If the client comes to you with something that is obviously beyond the scope of the contract, you have a few choices:

1. You can do what the client wants and ask for nothing more in return.
2. You can refuse to do it and stick to what the original contract said.
3. You can try to renegotiate the contract to a new middle ground before continuing work on the project.

There isn’t any one right answer here; different situations call for different actions. If you’re not going to get badly burned by going the extra mile, it will probably be worth it (so long as the client knows you’re hooking them up). That said, sometimes the new request is outrageous and would take many, many hours to implement. In those situations, it is a good idea to be open, talk it through with the client, make it known that you’d love to help but it would be too much of a time commitment (you do have other clients, after all) for the current numbers to work out.

If you approach things with an open mind, with a positive attitude (instead of a demanding one) and on an even playing field, the client will generally help you out with a bit more cash. And if they are livid at the thought of paying you more money for more work, well, they may have just singled themselves out as a client who needs to be fired.

Admit it when you screw up

Then do everything possible to make it right. Mistakes are okay; everyone makes them from time to time. Hopefully you’re not a habitual offender. But the general rule is: the sooner you recognize the mistake and take the heat for it, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

By letting more time pass, the mistake only grows and becomes more difficult to cover up, and the heat that was originally a small and controlled campfire is now the roaring flames of hell licking at the bottoms of your feet. Get it out of the way, clear the air and get on with it. Your client will appreciate your candor and honesty, even if he or she isn’t that happy about the problem itself.

Parting Shot

Hopefully you’ve started to catch on here. Most of the things that can be counted as “common problems” are fairly easy to circumvent, especially if you put in your time doing your due diligence on the front end and adopt a firm but cooperative attitude in your client communications.

Remember, clients aren’t supposed to be a burden. They are a blessing (they are buying the bread on your table after all). But the relationship should always be mutually beneficial. You are getting paid to do what you, presumably, love to do, and the client is getting something beautiful and functional. Hopefully, you’re both learning a little something along the way.

Further Resources

• Design Process, Clients, and Web Standards
• The Importance of Design in Business
• Designing for Clients Made Easy
• What you’re missing if you don’t challenge your clients

About the author

Jeff Gardner is a business nerd. He loves Excel, making graphs and helping companies figure out how to perform better. He also enjoys writing, photography and being outside. You can check him out at his blog or look at some of his photos on his photography site. Stay tuned for his e-book on the business side of freelancing and small business ownership, to be released soon here on Smashing Magazine.

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Michael Masnick via Techdirt shared by 5 people

The latest in a long line of musicians complaining about Presidential candidate John McCain for his use of their music at campaign stops would be the band the Foo Fighters. Now, as we've pointed out in the past, there are two separate issues to keep in mind here:

1. In most cases, there's nothing these bands can do from a legal standpoint. Assuming the venue where the music is being played has paid its standard ASCAP license, they can play whatever they want. So when the Foo Fighters make statements like: "It's frustrating and infuriating that someone who claims to speak for the American people would repeatedly show such little respect for creativity and intellectual property" is somewhat misleading. It implies that McCain is somehow breaking intellectual property laws. He is not. No matter how much a musician dislikes it, they can't stop these kinds of uses, thanks to the way performance licenses work.
2. That said, it still seems rather dumb, from a PR standpoint, for the McCain campaign to keep doing this. By now, it should be clear that in a highly-charged political campaign, a band will speak up against the use of a song, if they don't like the candidate. That just leaves the campaign open to more negative press coverage in a way in which many people will sympathize with the musician against the politician -- even though the politician may be on the legally correct side.

Since the McCain campaign has so far ignored these requests in the past, I'm guessing it will continue to do so. But, to avoid these sorts of stories, it would be smart to start asking musicians whether or not they support the candidate before using their song. Or, perhaps, just start using public domain music.

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Erick Schonfeld via TechCrunch shared by 6 people

This week’s award for best marketing promotion related to the election goes to AirBed & Breakfast, the peer-to-peer pad crashing site for travelers. (You list how much per night you want for travelers to stay on your floor, and they book through the site). Today, I received a package from AirBed & Breakfast containing the two boxes of cereal pictured above: Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s. In addition to the physical boxes of cereal, there are two catchy jingles for each cereal (embedded below), and a Webpage where you can vote for the cereal you prefer.

What does this have to do with AirBed & Breakfast? To promote the service, the startup is encouraging people across the country to put up get-out-the-vote volunteers for each campaign. Hosts can order a box of whichever cereal they prefer and serve it for breakfast. Except each box costs $39, and the company only made 500 of each. (If they make more, that could be their business model, at least for a month).

I just really like the design. The front of the Obama O’s box is stamped with “Hope In Every bowl” and on the back it calls itself the “Breakfast of Change.” The McCain character on the Cap’n McCain’s box is appropriately wearing a naval officer’s uniform, and the side of the box sings the praise of eating squares (inside the box are repackaged Quaker Puffs; the Obama O’s are really Honey O’s). The copy on the side of the Cap’n McCain’s box could have been written by his campaign:

Os may look pretty, but have you ever noticed there’s something missing? That’s right, there’s a hole in the middle of every O. With Cap’n McCain’s you get a whole piece of cereal in every bite.

It also points out that “Squares Are Stackable” and that “Squares Keep America Regular.” But the Obama O’s jingle is catchier. Have a listen:

Obama O’s

Captn McCain

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

(author unknown) via Boing Boing shared by 5 people

Shared by Joshua
Amazing -- I'll see your trumped-up Bill Ayers controversy and raise you one Joe Vogler. His wikipedia entry is interesting reading.

The Jed report comments on the Salon article about the Alaskan Independence Party, which Todd Palin joined and Sarah Palin supports:

David Talbot reports on what would have been the crowning achievement of Alaskan Independence Party founder Joe Vogler had he not been first killed in a plastic explosives deal gone bad:

Vogler's greatest moment of glory was to be his 1993 appearance before the United Nations to denounce United States "tyranny" before the entire world and to demand Alaska's freedom. The Alaska secessionist had persuaded the government of Iran to sponsor his anti-American harangue.

That's right ... Iran. The Islamic dictatorship. The taker of American hostages. The rogue nation that McCain and Palin have excoriated Obama for suggesting we diplomatically engage. That Iran.

The following year, Todd and Sarah Palin attended the AIP convention, and Todd Palin joined the party shortly thereafter.

Link

Mark Frauenfelder via Boing Boing shared by 6 people

Sarah Kershaw of the New York Times reports on research published at Siggraph about a computer program developed at Tel Aviv University that changes the geometry of faces in photographs to make them more beautiful. (Photo: Lars Klove for The New York Times, manipulation by Tommer Leyvand)

The photograph on the right was doctored by the “beautification engine” of a new computer program that uses a mathematical formula to alter the original form into a theoretically more attractive version, while maintaining what programmers call an “unmistakable similarity” to the original.

The software program, developed by computer scientists in Israel, is based on the responses of 68 men and women, age 25 to 40, from Israel and Germany, who viewed photographs of white male and female faces and picked the most attractive ones.

Scientists took the data and applied an algorithm involving 234 measurements between facial features, including the distances between lips and chin, the forehead and the eyes, or between the eyes.

The Sum of Your Facial Parts

Ali via Think Progress shared by 5 people

Ever since President Bush confirmed the existence of a National Security Administration wiretapping program in late 2005, he has insisted it is aimed only at terrorists’ calls and protects Americans’ civil liberties:

– If somebody from al Qaeda is calling you, we’d like to know why. … In the meantime, this program is conscious of people’s civil liberties, as am I. This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America — and I repeat: limited. [1/1/06]

– This is a — I repeat to you, even though you hear words, “domestic spying,” these are not phone calls within the United States. It’s a phone call of an al Qaeda, known al Qaeda suspect, making a phone call into the United States. I’m mindful of your civil liberties. [1/23/06]

– People who analyze the program fully understand that America’s civil liberties are well protected. There is a constant check to make sure that our civil liberties of our citizens are treated with respect. [2/28/08]

However, ABC News reports that the NSA frequently listened to and transcribed the private phone calls of Americans abroad, according to two former military intercept operators. These conversations included those of American soldiers stationed in Iraq and American aid workers abroad, such as Doctors Without Borders:

[Former Navy Arab linguist David Murfee] Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of “cuts” that were available on each operator’s computer.

“Hey, check this out,” Faulk says he would be told, “there’s good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, ‘Wow, this was crazy’,” Faulk told ABC News. […]

“We knew they were working for these aid organizations,” [former Army Reserves Arab linguist Adrienne] Kinne told ABC News. “They were identified in our systems as ‘belongs to the International Red Cross’ and all these other organizations. And yet, instead of blocking these phone numbers we continued to collect on them,” she told ABC News.

Kinne called Bush’s assurances that the U.S. was only tracking phone calls of a “known al Qaeda suspect” “completely a lie.” Click here to watch ABC’s report.

Digg It!

via http://digg.com/

John Herrman via Gizmodo shared by 5 people

During the last Presidential debate, John McCain delivered this line about his opponent with withering contempt:

[Obama] voted for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark projects, including, by the way, $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois.

I'm already tired of hearing these guys talk, but that caught my ear. A $3 million dollar projector? What does that even look like? Gearlog did some digging and found out that appropriation was requested by the planetarium to replace an awesome (but obsolete) 40-year old Zeiss Mark VI star projector with a newer model (pictured above).

Anyone with a planetarium in town will remember the Mark VI from school field trips: the 2.5 ton, 1350 watt giant (pictured below) can project a dynamic image of thousands of stars and constellation onto the ceiling of a massive dome for the viewing pleasure of a reclined audience. Its replacement would have been much more impressive, had it been granted: the Universarium Model IX, which is a $3.5 million dollar astronomical projection unit capable of accurately representing a night sky in full color and motion. The proposal was never granted. But politics aside, that's not exactly your school's transparency projector. You can check out the spec sheet at Zeiss's official site. Model IX photo from Picassa user Lito [Gearlog, NYT]