Great resource
A Dribbble of creative
I found Dribbble.com today which is an interesting spin on the creative portal where artists can show off their work. The difference here is that you only share a sneak peeks of your work as small screenshots of the designs and applications you’re working on. Membership in the site is entirely driven by our users so all members of Dribbble have been drafted (invited) by other members.
The screenshots or “shots” are organized by tags but there is no real cohesive navigation to help you sort through all the work. Once you find a piece that looks interesting you can click on it for a slight larger version that you can like, Tweet or Rebound which is a shot in reply to another shot. But for me this site has a huge miss in that there is no way to get real feedback on such a small screenshot and I couldn’t find any way to track the progress of the work. How do I know when it is done? Where can I see it? How is this site anything but a tease for small windows of partial inspiration? Maybe all of this is hidden away only for members but it felt me scratching my head. I found a few artists who were smart to see this problem and posted links to the final work in the comments but this seemed to be rare. I am working to get an invitation to try out everything on the site but check it out and see if these little glimpses do anything for you.
Read more of: A Dribbble of creative »
When Ampersands attack!
Having grown up learning traditional hand set typography on a cast iron print press in my parent’s basement I am a huge type hound. It’s a disease that I’ve come to embrace over the years. I know that side effects include writing letters to occasional brand to help them see the error of their hideous typography or kerning in their ads. When I found ShitAmpersand.com and GoodAmpersand.com this week I was in love. ShitAmpersand.com is dedicated to chronicling the worst ampersand designs in typographic history while GoodAmpersand.com chronicles the best designs. You can flip back and forth between the two realms of good and evil using the red or green arrow located in the top right hand corner of the site. I personally like the description they have for ShitAmpersand.com the best which reads:
“There’s something about graphic designers and aesthetically appealing forms that go hand-in-hand. Who’d have guessed it? Combine that with a slice of typography and the result: an ampersand. It’s sexy, it’s curvaceous, it’s a typographic delight.
So why (pray tell) would someone commit the most horrific of sins by designing a stomach churning ampersand? Let’s face it, there are plenty of boring who-knows-what Unicode characters that no typographer can be bothered to design. But the ampersand is your bread and butter. Bodge the béziers on your acute accents and no one will notice, but design a shit ampersand and you’re going to get blogged (here).”
Read more of: When Ampersands attack! »
Digital office hours – Ask me anything…
The one thing I have wanted this blog to become more than anything since I started writing it in this form over four years ago was a catalyst for conversation. I say that because I am someone who loves hearing different viewpoints, learning new things and having my ideas challenged. Looking at the numbers of comments over the years it is obvious that goal still alludes me for reasons I don’t completely understand. I do get a lot of emails with questions about design or how to have a career in advertising which I am happy to answer but I have always wanted to be able to share the answers publicly so they could help more than just the one person who emailed me.
So in my on-going effort to try and make this more of a conversation I am going to try something new. I am going to shamelessly borrow/steal an idea from my friend Scott Belsky, the founder of Behance.com, who recently started having digital ‘office hours’ on Formsrping.me where people can ask him anything they want. I love it because it is a conversation right out in the open for everyone to learn from and contribute to. So here is your chance to help me make this more than just a one way channel for my endless rants. Click here to ask me anything you want about design, advertising, your career, my career or anything else and I’ll answer you as quickly as I can.
Read more of: Digital office hours – Ask me anything… »
Online Reviews and Site Testing with Adobe CS Live
Last year Adobe was nice enough to give me the perk of working with them on the prerelease of CS5 and Adobe was even nice enough to quote me in their global press release when they launched CS5. So I’ve have been working with the new applications for a while now and since the launch and features like content aware fill have rightfully been getting the lion share of the attention focused the new feature additions. There are two new additions that haven’t been getting much love that I wanted to feature because they are really useful and I’ve been using them more than any of the other new additions lately.
When you launch any of the new CS5 design applications like Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign you will now see this CS Live icon appear in the upper right hand corner as well as in a tab on a fly out panel running down the right side of the screen. Click on the icon and you will find a list of a number of new online features integrated into all the applications but the two I wanted to focus on are Browser Lab and CS Review.
Browser Lab
Any time you develop a web site or any browser based experience one of the most challenging parts is testing the final product to be sure it works in all the different browsers and platforms. I can be incredibly frustrating because you have to be able to run the tests on a Mac and PC and it could look perfect in Safari but is upside down and backwards on IE7. To try and simplify this process Adobe has now introduced BrowserLab which is an online application that lets you run simulated tests on your work on multiple versions of Chrome, Firefox, IE and Safari. You can decide which browsers you want to test and organize them into custom sets for multiple test cases. Once that is done just flip over into Test mode, enter your URL and the site pops up for testing and QA. You can view the results one at a time, side by side or my favorite Onion Skin. In the Onion Skin view the application overlays all the versions over one and another and it makes it really quick and easy to find big problems or subtle differences.
CS Review
Every agency has some kind of online client extranet where they can post comps for client review and to capture all the feedback in one place. The problem is that if you don’t own your own agency you don’t have access to these kind of tools until now with the release of another online application called CS Review. The reason I like this application so much is that it goes one step beyond simply capturing comments and creates an online review environment that integrates into the workflow of the CS design applications. Start by choosing CS Review from the CS Live menu and you will first be asked to create a Workspace which works like a folder. From there you can name the file you want to post for review and choose the quality of the upload. Once it is uploaded the file will open on Acrobat.com where you can highlight areas to comment on or send it out for review by your clients. When your clients review and comment on the work they only need to have Flash installed in a browser and not any Adobe design application. The resulting comments can then be viewed online or they will are pulled back into the design application and displayed when that file is opened. It’s this flow starting with the application that moves into an online review and then back into the application that I really like because is creates a seamless workflow instead of multiple different systems that have to be manually combined to work smoothly.
Read more of: Online Reviews and Site Testing with Adobe CS Live »
Easy iPhone/iPad sniffer
Have you been wanting to create a iPhone or iPad specific message or experience for users who come to your site but don’t know how? Here is how to do it in 3 easy steps.
Step 1
Copy this code into your index page right before the </body> tag
<script language=”javascript”>
if (navigator.userAgent && ( navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“iPad”) > -1 || navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“iPhone”) > -1 ))
{
window.location.replace(“http://www.YOUR-URL-GOES-HERE.com/iPhone-iPad.html”);
}
</script>
Step 2
Create your your iPhone / iPad message or experience and upload it onto your server.
Step 3
In the copy you copied to your index page change the ‘www.YOUR-URL-GOES-HERE.com” to your site and change the ‘iPhone-iPad.html’ to the name of your iPhone / iPad message or experience.
That’s it.
Read more of: Easy iPhone/iPad sniffer »
Presenting Creative 101 – Part 2: The Set-up
In the first part of this series we look at look at how as creatives we have to do more than just present our work and there are some key things we need to understand to be able to get a client’s trust. Now we are going to look at the most important part of any presentation – the set-up.
THE SET-UP
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
One size doesn’t fit all
Anytime you are going to do a presentation you want to find out as much as you can about your audience so you can so you can put together a plan for how you are going to sell you work. That plan should dictate your presentation style and lead to questions like should the presentation have a lot of detail and set-up or should you get right to the point? It should also lead to executional questions like do you need to comp up every single variation or will your audience be able to get the concept with just a few key visual? Working through these types of questions and use the answers and your insights to your advantage because they will help you find the best way to communicate with your audience and get your work sold.
ASSIGNED SEATING
Use seating to help control the focus of the room
Knowing your audience is also key to knowing if there are clients or group of people that will cause side conversations and distractions during your presentation. These problematic groups can derail your meeting, create a lack of focus on you or bigger problems. A simple way to control that is to use where people are seated in the room to control the focus. If there are two clients who usually sit together and have a side conversation then put them on opposite sides of the table but close to you so they can’t talk to each other without interrupting you. It is a small thing but it can really help the flow of the meeting and get the work sold.
KNOW THE ROOM
Seating, projectors, white boards, lighting…
Don’t let something as simple as not having the right laptop adaptor for the projector or the dial-in number not working make you look like you don’t know what you are doing. You haven’t even opened your mouth and your client is sitting there thinking “you want me to give $200,000 to someone who can’t even figure out how to turn on the projector to start the meeting?”. It may sound harsh but subconsciously it happens all the time. So don’t let something that small and simple hurt that critical confidence you are trying to create with clients. Before your meeting swing by the room you are going to use and to be sure you know where the room is located, how it is laid out, how the lighting works, what cord the projector uses and if there is a power outlet you can use. It will take 2 minutes to answer those questions and will be well worth the time.
MAKE IT AN EVENT
If it is an important meeting – make it feel important
If you are having an important meeting or are presenting a big project make it feel like something different from all the other meetings your clients sits through every day. I use things that are a part of the clients brand like take aways, snacks, flowers or even candles to create a visual impact as soon as they walk into the room. It tells my clients this is going to be an important meeting, that I understand their brand and that I am excited about the work. It starts to create that sense of confidence before the meeting even starts or they see one piece of creative. Plus all of this can be done for as little as $20 – $40.
TELL ME A STORY
Bring your creative process to life
You can use the concept of telling a story two different ways. The first is exactly what you would think in that your presentation should, like any good story, have a beginning, middle and end. The beginning of your presentation should set the pace, introduce the story and set the stage. The middle should elaborates on the beginning and be the heart of the story where everything is explained. The end should wrap up everything and set the stage for the next episode.
You can also look at it that when you present creative work you have the license to make the way you present more of a work of theater. I don’t mean put on costumes and sing songs but instead think about the fact that you have the license to improve upon the story you tell your client about the work. You can take the fact that you really came up with the concept you are presenting while sitting at your desk and make it into how you were driving to work, saw something, were struck with inspiration and the concept came to you. It is a more engaging and personalized approach than simply standing up there and revealing the work.
LIMIT CHOICES
Edit. refine. edit. refine.
Getting your client’s trust means that you present anything you have to have a point of view about their brand, their work and the project your are presenting. This is important for two reasons. First, is that point of view puts you in a leadership position as someone who is in charge of the business and that position creates trust and confidence. Second, is because it will help you refine and edit your the work you’re going to present down to only the choices that are in line with your vision. Not having that vision usually leads to two different actions – throwing in the step child and guessing.
We have all done it at some point. You have 2 really good options but you told the client you would present 3 concepts so you throw in that step child concept no one believes in to hit your number. You present all three, the client picks the third one you threw in at the end and now you have to put whip cream on the onion to make it work. For a long time I thought it was because clients, like dogs, can smell fear and you key on the one concept you were afraid of. Since then my thinking has evolved to knowing that it was my fault for throwing in something I didn’t believe in and not doing a good enough job of selling the two better ideas. If I would have stuck with my vision then the finished project would have been one of the concepts I knew would have worked better.
Onto the subject of guessing. I recently had an agency do a presentation to one of my clients where they presented 8 different campaign directions and I got the sense that they felt like they had really gone the extra mile to produce all of this work. I saw it as a group that was completely lost with no clue about where to take the business. They didn’t have a point of view, they were grasping at straws hoping something you stick and as a result I had no trust or confidence in them. I would rather they present a strong singular vision, even if it was wrong, than just guess wildly.
Have faith in your vision and have the strength to present it because your client will respond to that much better than if you just guess and hope you hit something.
PRACTICE. PRACTICE. PRACTICE.
Then practice some more.
If you want to get better at presenting then practice. It’s so simple it’s obvious but we all know because of the demands on our time it is really hard to find the time. If it’s early in the morning or at night after you have gone home you have to find the time and an audience to practice. It is so important because you have to be in command of the material and work on your personal style to get better.
It may sound silly but I used to practice with a video camera sitting next to my dog. I did it so I could look into somethings’s eyes when I was practicing instead of talking to a blank wall. I had the video camera so after I went through my pitch I could play it back to see if the performance matched the mental image I had in my head of the performance. Time after time I found when I watched the video playback it was like when I recorded my answering machine message and thought “I don’t really sound like that do I?”. You smooth things over in your head and create a slight different perception of yourself. Being able to step outside of myself to see how I looked and sounded was really important to understand how to do a better job. It’s easier than ever to do this now with pretty much every every iPhone and smartphone having the ability to record video. You can set it up anywhere, anytime to grab some practice time. Just remember to delete it before your significant other posts it to YouTube for some laughs.
WHAT DO YOU WANT THEM TO DO?
The most important thing in any meeting or presentation is making sure your team has a clear understanding of what you want the client to do at the end of the meeting. The way you build the deck, the story you tell and everything in between should all lead your client to taking that action. If you can’t answer that simple question then the meeting is going to be a mess that wonders around with no goal and too many chances for things to go wrong.
From here we will be moving on to the presentation before ending with how to handle problem clients and dealing the aftermath of the presentation. If you have comments, thoughts or additions feel free to put them in the comments because this is by no means a complete or definitive document and I always love to hear other opinions.
Read more of: Presenting Creative 101 – Part 2: The Set-up »
Keyonary – Google for keyboard shortcuts
I have been using Photoshop since version 1.0 so most of the time I hardly ever use the actual menu to get things done in the application and instead rely on keyboard shortcuts. Even with all that time in the programs there are still dozens of things I wish I knew the shortcut to. Enter Aaron McGuire who is the senior technical lead at Crispin Porter + Bogusky and creator of Keyonary whis is a new site/search engine dedicated only to keyboard shortcuts. So far he has Photoshop, OS X, Winodws, InDesign, Windows 7, and Illustrator with more on the way. I love it and it’s a hell of a lot easier than fumbling through a manual or PDF for the answer to some repetitive task.
Read more of: Keyonary – Google for keyboard shortcuts »
So You Need A Typeface
A very humorous process diagram on how to pick the perfect type face for your next project though I am disappointed there was no way to a solution that was Crackhouse.
Click here for the full size version.
Read more of: So You Need A Typeface »
Presenting Creative 101 – Part 1: What are we presenting?
Throughout my career I have consistently been given high praise for being really good at presenting creative and it didn’t happen by accident. Early on I realized that my design skills were only going to take me so far if I wasn’t able to sell my work. The problem was that I left college afraid to talk in front of a group and hadn’t been given any tools to sell my work. I needed to get over my fear, understand hot to sell and the psychology of it all. I started to hanging around with people who sell to high end clients for a living like venture capitalists, sports agents and PR agents to study their techniques. I even went so far as to read police interrogation books to understand how to analyze people and what makes people tick . It may sound really extreme but like I said this wasn’t anything I was taught in art school so I had to make up my own curriculum. Like the illustration above points out , the further you go in your career the further you are going to get away from you brought you into it. You are going to be doing less design work and the more budgets and presentations.
As I traveled around and worked with other creatives from all over the world who graduated from the best design school I heard that they had the same problem. So I wanted to share what I have learned with a broader audience in the hopes that it can help you too. It normally takes me about an hour and half to do this starter class so I am going to break it into three articles and try to keep the points short and to the point. This first article looks at the core to any great presentation and what we are really selling. Then in the second article we will go over the set-up to the presentation and the presentation itself. Finally we will look at how to handle problem clients and dealing the aftermath of the presentation. I hope this helps, please share what I have learned and if you would like me to present the full class at your conference drop me a line.
EVERYONE PRESENTS CREATIVE
The first thing that EVERYONE from the designers to the project managers and everyone in between needs to realize is that everyone in the creative team presents creative. Even if they aren’t pitching concepts or showing comps they present their work and the core principle listed here work for everyone on the team because all the pieces of a project are linked together.
PRESENTING = SELLING
Present spreadsheets. Sell creative.
Once you get everyone to understand that this is a part of the core DNA of any creative group then you need to change the way you think about presenting because what we are really doing is selling. If you have the results of an ad campaign from last quarter then you present it to the client but when you have a new project you are trying to make someone BUY something. Making someone buy something takes a totally different way of thinking from presenting.
SELLING CONFIDENCE NOT COMPS
So we are selling not presenting but what is it we are really selling? Comps? Concepts? Sorry but none of the above. We are selling trust and confidence. Unlike a car salesman who will let you sit in the car and take it for a test drive, we are selling air. We are selling the idea of something we want to make. Something we think will move people. Something we can roughly sketch up but wont be able to really show you in a finished form until we go on that photo shoot with the high price tag you’re going to find at the end of the presentation. So you, the client, need to trust that I know what I am doing. You need to trust that this is a great idea. You need to trust that the future of your career is safe in my hands and I am going to make you look like a hero at the end of all of this. Without that the best idea in the world will never see the light of day and will never make a difference to anyone.
HOW DO YOU SELL TRUST & CONFIDENCE?
Selling confidence sounds simple enough when you say it out loud but I have spent most of my career trying to perfect the process and it is a skill you will have to constantly evolve and adapt to meet the challenges of new projects and new clients. Here are some of the big things you need to do and be aware of to build trust with your clients.
ONE VOICE
Everyone needs to support each other no matter what
Selling creative and conveying confidence are a team concept. As you go through a project a client will interact with a lot of different team members and anyone one of them can break that confidence and throw a project into problems and changes in a heart beat. Problems and disagreements will happen but they need to be worked out behind the scenes. You need to speak with one voice on every presentation and cast doubt on what someone is saying or presenting so your client gets confidence from seeing a team that is completely behind one concept.
SHORT TERM MEMORY LOSS IN THE IVORY TOWER
Look at your work with fresh eyes so you can sell it
When you work on a project for a long time you get immersed in the details and problems which is a natural part of the creative process. When it comes time to finally present that work to the client you need to be able to develop the ability to remove yourself from that forrest of details and problems to be able to see the project with fresh eyes. To get short term memory loss so you don’t skip over key details and selling points, assume the client knows thing they don’t and, most importantly, you won’t do justice to all the hard work your team put into the project.. It is critical to be able to see how to present the work in a clean and simple way to someone who knows nothing about it so they can understand it and have confidence that it will work.
NOT EVERYONE CAN SEE IT
Don’t assume clients can see creative the same way you can
Working in digital I have been in a lot of meetings where co-workers use terms they know the client won’t understand to sound cool. The problem is that you may think you sounded cool but you probably just lost the connection with your client, made them feel self conscious for not being in the know and none of that leads them to feel confident about you or the work. You need to realize that not everyone has the ability to see designs in their minds eye the way that we can so you have to take that into consideration when you talk. Be overly descriptive or sketch the solution on the back of a piece of paper so everyone can see it. This will also help eliminate any confusion and those dreaded words from your client at the next meeting – “Oh… That wasn’t what I had in my head after our last meeting”.
Also realize that coming out of any presentation your work will probably be re-presented and it won’t be done by you. I always want to be confident that when my client leaves a meeting with me to go back to their office to show off the work to their boss they will be able to talk about it confidently because they understand all the details that went into it. If I talk over their head then that next presentation isn’t going to go well and the project could be sidetracked before it even got started.
EVERYTHING COMMUNICATES
You aren’t just selling your work with your words
Think about the fact that when you are presenting you are communicating with more than your words and that your body language and tone can say just as much. Doing things like slumping down in your chair, looking off into space or having an ambivalent tone about your work all subconsciously communicate a lack of confidence in what you are presenting. Think of it like a poker game and your client is subconsciously looking for tells about what you are really thinking.
PASSION & AUTHENTICITY
It’s OK to love your work
When it comes to creative the TV and movie generated idea of a slick person standing at the front of the behind a podium delivering the information in clear monotone can really hurt them. You were asked to create something out of nothing and that process should have infused the final result with elements that mean something to you. You aren’t presenting spreadsheets so have some passion about the work and let your client see it. Saying simple things like “I really love this idea” will let them know that you believe in the work. It will let me know you are going to bring this to life with the same passion you had when you created it. It will give them confidence that you have something invested in the project and that it means more to you and your team than just another assignment.
EMOTIONAL FOCUS
Go to your happy place
From the time I was around 8 years old though high school I shot competitive archery at a near Olympic level. It’s a sport of control and repetition that becomes a head game because it all about you. There is no team to jump on a mistake and save you. You win and you get all the glory. You lose and there is no one to blame but yourself. As a part of my training I had a coach who drilled it into my head that in high pressure situations nervousness is a self created emotion. When you need to make a shot your emotions are completely in your control.
Standing in front of a room full of clients needing to sell them on your concept can be intimidating. Anytime I need to deliver in a big meeting or present at a big conference I get nervous. It’s a natural reaction. The key is be aware that this is going to happen, that it is OK if it does and try to develop things to help you deal with it. For some people it is practicing the presentation until they know it forwards and backwards so they can go on autopilot. For other people it is finding comfort in going about the presentation in a ritualistic way so they find comfort and control in going through familiar ordered actions. For me it is finding a quiet place a few minutes before I need to present to sit down, close my eyes and think about something that makes me happy. It is usually something outside of work and away from whatever it is I am about to go do. Something that helps me get myself centered, clear my head and my nerves. This should be different for everyone since your personal triggers are going to be different.
All of this is just the beginning and like I said I will be moving on to the set-up for the presentation and the presentation itself in the next few days before ending with how to handle problem clients and dealing the aftermath of the presentation. If you have comments, thoughts or additions feel free to put them in the comments because this is by no means a complete or definitive document and I always love to hear other opinions.
Read more of: Presenting Creative 101 – Part 1: What are we presenting? »
web.without.words
Found an interesting site today called web.without.words which was developed by Paul Armstrong to visually represent the idea that hierarchy, grid systems and uniformity ultimately leads to a more natural user experience. He takes the overall structure of any website, strips it naked of the distractions of text and ads and images and showing a site for what the eye unconsciously perceives – pattern, consistency, unformity, predictability and balance. Each site has this visual breakdown and some analysis of the structure. There aren’t as many examples as you would hope for but it is an interesting approach to analyzing popular sites.
Read more of: web.without.words »
