As a communications and media design agency, we pride ourselves in our strategic thinking and creativity. But service is such a huge part of what MoldaveDesigns does, we think of ourselves to a large extent as a customer service company. We're here to make things easy for our clients, make it seem effortless, and to make them look good.
You'd think that other service organizations would feel and react the same way, but recently we found that this isn't necessarily the case.
Our accountant of many years decided he would rather spend his time at Mets games than number crunching so he retired and sold his firm to two people who worked at the firm. We had an initial meeting with them which went well, but as time went on we were more and more uneasy with the relationship.
It wasn't just that mistakes were made (everyone makes them–especially under pressure), it's that they weren't acknowledged or apologized for. They were corrected of course, because we caught them, but that was it.
Most of the problems for us were caused by attitude.
If we're rushed or hassled by a client on a project, guess what? They don't know it. We'll find the best way to deal with a pressure situation, do the best job we can, and try minimize the pressure on all concerned. What we don't do is tell the client that whatever is going on is their fault (tempting though it might be); point fingers and assign blame in a situation that probably started out as a snowball rolling downhill and wound up as an avalanche.
The reality is we're all part of a team trying to get the job done, and we all have to shoulder each others burdens in a positive, supportive way.
Our former accountant understood that. He knew how to give us a gentle nudge that would send us off in the right direction at the same time he was letting us know we were were a little behind. But it didn't matter, he would take care of it.
The new accountants didn't understand that. Time for a new accountant.
Don't get me wrong, working in a program that doesn't do anything particularly well doesn't irritate me.
It infuriates me.
Why can't I do a simple layout or template as easily in Word as I can in InDesign or QuarkXpress?
Why is Microsoft's code designed so it gums up any attempt at publishing text online? When we get a Word document for a website redesign, we have to be sure and save it in a plain text format so it doesn't throw tons of useless and confusing code into the content.
Why are the defaults set so that whenever I type in a name or website it automatically connects to the internet or my out-of-date Entourage address book even though I don't want it to?
What I want is a simple, fast, easy-to-use word processor that has more capabilities than Textedit – not a slow, bloated, over-featured, complicated program that makes everything confusing.
When was the last time you saved a Word document as a web page?
Why do I need a fix to open up a .docx in older versions of Word (although Adobe is rapidly reaching arch-villain level on that score).
Well now Word's reputation is official- there's an article that agrees with me on Slate, so I feel totally vindicated!
Read it HERE... and don't get me started on PowerPoint.
P.S. Like the article author, I do use Word for word counts –it's great at that.
When I was a kid, I used to keep scrapbooks. Not sports or music, but movie stills, posters and logos. I'd look through the newspapers for movie ads, cut out the ones I liked and put them in a scrapbook- if i liked the logo, I'd just cut that out. I could have dozens of different variations of a logo depending on what size ad it was in or if it was horizontal, vertical, etc.
I saw most of my movies at the neighborhood theater. The local hardware store displayed the one-sheets in the window for the movies that were playing. Every once in a while, I'd ask the store owners if I could have that month's crop of posters and they more than willingly gave them to me.
Looking back, collecting the posters and paying attention to the art that was being done for the "branding" of the movie was a big step toward my realization that I wanted to be a graphic designer.
I only have one of the original posters - a rerelease poster of West Side Story by the great Saul Bass that hangs in my office. But a lot of the artwork that I loved from the movies and cut out was also his work.
Looking at it now, I realize why his design sense appealed to me:
It was off balance- yet it was perfectly balanced. The art for the film title is in the lower right of the poster, with the credits in white right above it. They are in News Gothic - flush right, not left or centered. This adds to the feeling of space in the design. The rest of it is a huge blank warm red field.
The title type is hand lettered - we'd call it distressed now - and looks like paint peeling off a building. I must have drawn and redrawn the abstract dancers dozens of times.
He was a designer that created beautiful things that meant something- there was never any ornamentation for the sake of ornamentation. Whether it was movie posters, film title sequences (check out Vertigo, Psycho, North By Northwest, Spartacus (Kubrick- not Starz), Anatomy of a Murder) or his corporate design work (AT&T, United Airlines, Rockwell International, and more) his designs always told the story about the subject.
To see more of Saul Bass' work, click HERE
I'm cynical enough to believe that if a bad guy really wants to get information on you they will- so there's no sense worrying about it. But I recently read a couple of articles on smartphone and wifi security that offer some easy and practical ways to help avoid hacking and identity theft- or at least tell you how to take the "Steal Me!!!!" sign off your back.First of all, it's important to realize that most people's smart phones are windows into their personal and financial lives. Your contacts are there, where you've been is there, any accounts that you have set to automatically log in to are there- if you do online banking on your phone, THAT information is there.
Symantec did an experiment and "lost" 50 smart phones with simulated corporate and personal data on them. They also were able to monitor the activity on the phones once they were "found".
Results:Only half of the people made any attempt to return the phone and even the people who did try to return them also tried to access the phone 96% of the time. This may have started out as an attempt to find the owner, but:
- Six out of 10 finders attempted to view social media company information and email.
- Eight out of 10 finders tried to access corporate information, including files clearly marked as "HR Salaries," "HR Cases", and other types of corporate information.
- If you're a consumer, the experiment showed that your email, social media and photos are going to be viewed, but half the finders tried to access the bank accounts!
Two practical recommendations came out of the experiment:
- Use a screen lock feature and make sure you have a strong password to unlock it.
- Use smartphone security software. It can stop criminals from stealing info and spying on you while you're on a public network and also can help you locate a lost phone or lock it and even remotely wipe the data.
For more see the Symantec link below.
Another article talks about security on a wifi network- which can be easily broken with a device as cheap as $89.99- so anyone walking around a mall or trade show can hack your device.
- Turn off wifi and use a 3g or 4g stick instead.
- Avoid open wifi networks and use those that are password protected.
- Change your computer settings so it no longer remembers previous open networks and erase the list of preferred networks- it will be somewhat of a bother to login again but it's better than having your computer being an open target to anyone who wants to access it.
The original articles with more information are:
Symantec
Wifi
In 1982, one of the original and greatest of the "Mad Men" sent a memo to all of O&M's employees about how to write:
The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well.
Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.
Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:
1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
6. Check your quotations.
7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it.
8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.
I have to admit, my favorites are numbers 4 and 10.
This article raises an interesting question no matter what you do for a living. It brings up the difference between motivation and follow through.
You know you have to do a blog post, update your Linkedin profile or develop your company social media program. You need a better web site, capabilities brochure, sales development program and you're really, really psyched! In other words, you're motivated.
But now it's six months down the road and all of the things you were motivated to do in September are still at the starting gate. So the problem isn't motivation, it's follow through- there's always so much to do and no time to do it that we get overwhelmed and wind up looking at our computer screens like deer looking at headlights.
The "White Socks" Solution
The article uses a workout metaphor, but it can really work for just about any follow through problems you have. The most important thing for me is to create an environment. Start small- my workout environment creation is very basic: if I put a pair of white socks in the morning I'll go to the gym, if I don't I won't. It's really simple but it also really works.
The article goes into more tricks like this, but the solutions are are very straightforward and easy to implement.
When I was teaching, I would open up my class on branding with three symbols:
A Cross
A Star of David
A Swastika
My point was to show that a strong brand didn't necessarily have to be a good brand.
The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a "name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers."
So today, just designing a logo isn't enough- the consumer experience is shaped by all media- online experience, logo design, packaging, print, and even the retail environment a product is displayed in.
From an article in the Washington Post: Businesses find they can’t grow without branding
"These days consumers are driving the public perception of companies, offering their sometimes not-so-flattering reviews of products and services through blogs, Web sites and social media marketing goals. Companies are responding to the public’s demand for transparency; in this era of the 24/7 news cycle, consumers no longer are tolerating firms that represent one thing in their branding but demonstrate something entirely different in news coverage, experts say."
Here's an article (with slideshow) about Susan Kare, the designer of the original Mac icons- I was so familiar with the one at the left.
For those of us who started on the Mac way back when, I imagine they still are the default images we still visualize when we're on the computer.
The difference between designing the icons back then and designing for companies like Facebook (Kare designed the icons for Facebook Gifts- which allowed users to send virtual gifts to a recipient) now:
For the Macintosh, most symbols were monochrome, needed to fit within a 16 x 16 or 32 x 32 square pixel grid, and were shorthand for computer functions.
For each Facebook gift, there was a 64 x 64 pixel canvas with virtually unlimited color. The challenge was to create images desirable enough or affecting enough or amusing enough to encourage potential gift givers to spend a dollar to enhance a message. The gifts functioned as small greeting cards, rather than digital road signs. Some gifts were more iconic and some more illustrative, but detail in this case did not impede understanding.
Posted by
Donna Pace on Tue, Nov 01, 2011 @ 12:42 PM
Email is essential to our work, but it can easily become too much of a good thing. Each new message requires attention, and an overstuffed inbox makes it more likely that an important message may get lost in the mix. To conquer email overload, try these simple techniques.
- First, reduce your incoming email. Unsubscribe yourself from mailing lists and promotional emails, or forward your emails to Unsubscribe.com and have it taken care of automatically.
- Some non-essential emails are actually useful. Aggregating and unsubscribing can help you stay on top of them. Receive a daily summary of different coupon offerings from Groupon and the like by using Dealery. Setting up Google Alerts or signing up for The Daily Beast can streamline your updates on news topics of interest; just be sure to unsubscribe to other individual news alerts.
- Any type of email you get with some regularity should have a filter assigned to it. Accounts can be set up to forward emails with certain keywords to an assistant, or provide a specific automated response. Find out what filtering services your email system offers and make the most of them.
- Next comes organization. Take your messages out of your inbox and sort them into folders tailored to your own needs and interests. If you need help, try OtherInbox, which integrates with Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and others. It automatically organizes your messages into folders like “Shopping” and “Business,” and OtherInbox will learn from you; therefore, getting better over time. It also has its own unsubscribe service.
- Take away the need for people to email you in the first place by answering questions ahead of time. Try including an FAQ section on your website, or putting relevant information in your signature.
- You might also use your email signature to state that you only check your email once a day. Leave instructions for how to reach you if the matter is urgent. AwayFind, for example, creates an emergency contact page that routes messages to you by voice or text.
- Finally, don't put off taking action on your emails. The old advice of "handle it once" for printed mail and memos can be applied to digital correspondence. The more quickly you can respond to what's truly important, the less of an email overload you will have to contend with later.
Key takeway: Take action on one of these each week to manage your email inbox.
One social marketer I heard speak described the whole social media scene as the "wild west".
Consumer companies such as Coca-Cola, Nike and Starbucks use social media to successfully build brand awareness and track what their customers want, only 26 percent of CMOs track blogs and 40 percent track any online communications. 82 percent still rely on traditional market research.
Here's an article about a survey IBM did that has this information and a whole lot more.
I have to admit, as a creative, I've always looked at marketing data, focus groups, etc. with a bit of suspicion. Data, facts and figures can point in a direction, but it seems to me that inspiration and creativity is what makes or breaks a great marketing effort.
Steve Jobs passing has brought all sorts of quotes to mind, but I especially like this one as reported by the New York Times: Jobs said "his own study and intuition, not focus groups, were his guide. When a reporter asked what market research went into the iPad, Mr. Jobs replied: 'None. It's not the consumers' job to know what they want.'"
I don't think he meant this in an arrogant way- although it comes off like that- I think he was encouraging people to rely and trust the creative side more and use the data as a map, not a goal.