On A Long Piece Of String: Prospects

I’m a sucker for decent articles dealing with the business of design. Following Google Alerts for NO!SPEC, I came across Scott’s Prospects. It’s a general rundown on designers dealing with clients. And clients dealing with us (designers).

Prospects
What Problems?

There are a myriad of problems facing designers today. New technology, new communication mediums, uneducated clients, uneducated designers, too much work, too many distractions. The list goes on and on. Rather than try to cover an impossible amount of information, I’m going to take a stab at highlighting a few particular problem areas based on my own experiences.

These are:

- The design process
- Enticement (AKA Don’t Waste My Time)
- Work on spec
- Timely responsiveness and communications

On Clients
When vying for the attention of a designer, here’s a few things to keep in mind : we need real information. Don’t waste our time with pointless e-mails … Give us a problem to solve. Be clear. Concise. Tell us why we should be interested. Sell it to us. Why would we want to work with you? And assuming you get that far, commit to the project. Prove to us you’re serious.

This morning I was contacted via a community site I belong to. It went something like this “I need my xxx site to match my xxx site. I have the files, the css and the html. We can put it on my site so you don’t even have to host it. It should take a really good designer only one and a half hours to complete this job. My budget is US$50. How about it.”

Well, they were clear and concise, I’ll have to give them that. My interest? Nil. At US$50, they can’t be serious.

Posts on On A Long Piece Of String:
Scott’s into music, so check out his Recordings with The Darns and his Top 10 Songs Of 2006

Website: Wishingline Design Studios

Found at On A Long Piece Of String:
The Darns (note: it has sound)

Discovered via: Google Alerts for NO!SPEC
Technorati Tags: Business of Design, design, marketers