Posts Tagged ‘how-to’

Bad clients are noto­rious among designers. We com­plain about them con­stantly, we’ve devoted a hilarious-yet-heartbreaking web­site to them, and we swap horror sto­ries like badges of honour, rolling our eyes in empathy and disgust.

We spend so much time com­plaining about the bad clients that it’s some­times easy to over­look the good clients. Lately, I’ve been working with a few really great clients, and I’ve been so happy because of it. Where a bad client can make you feel as though you’re losing your soul, a good client reminds you of why you fell in love with design in the first place and makes you feel as though you’re doing a good job. It’s the sort of warm-fuzzy feeling I asso­ciate with boys who bring me flowers and strangers com­pli­menting me on my shoes.

Win­ning your designer’s love, regard­less of any other fac­tors, will mean that you will receive a level of ser­vice and quality that sur­passes that most Trou­ble­some Clients receive. When I love a client and feel that my client respects me as a pro­fes­sional, I invest more of my mental ener­gies into their project. A good client makes you want to do an amazing job, where a bad client expe­ri­ence will often just make you want to finish as fast as pos­sible and get the heck out.

So, how do you go about making sure you’re the greatest client ever, and ensuring your designer feels as pas­sionate about your project as you do? Here, a few tips culled directly from my Dream Clients:

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Lately, I’ve found myself giving a sub­stan­tial amount of design feed­back to non-designers. While I always main­tain that you ought to leave design to pro­fes­sionals, some­times this just isn’t fea­sible for one reason or another. So, in the inter­ests of public ser­vice (pret­ti­ness making the world a better place, and whatnot), I’d like to offer up some sug­ges­tions that should improve your design across the board.

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I don’t believe in showing up early for a party (after all, it’s impor­tant to make an entrance). In a busi­ness con­text, this prob­ably isn’t the best thing in the world, and in an internet con­text, it’s even less so. For instance, I just recently started making use of Twitter. I hon­estly didn’t get what the big idea was. Then I started using it.

It’s amazing. News sto­ries break on Twitter before the news­pa­pers even have an idea what’s going on. You can see real-time photos of Stephen Fry stuck in an ele­vator. If you com­plain about a product, its man­u­fac­turers will help you out. But most fas­ci­nating are the con­ver­sa­tions: it’s like what I imagine The Crysalids was like. Someone makes a com­ment about the colour of the sky, and people respond; threads of con­ver­sa­tion begin spi­dering off in dif­ferent tan­gents. Anyone can jump in at any point and drop out just as easily, and nobody dom­i­nates because every response is lim­ited to 140 char­ac­ters. It’s the dig­ital rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the col­lec­tive uncon­scious­ness. And it’s searchable!

Social media, I’m sure you’ve heard, is changing our world. If you’re late to the party, like me, it’s time to get involved! Rather than give you a bunch of infor­ma­tion that may or may not be true, I’m going to point the way to some resources from more cred­ible experts than I.

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I gave a pre­sen­ta­tion to my BBC group last week, giving some tips and guide­lines for how to make a web­site more effec­tive. It’s aimed towards the non-technical person, though imple­men­ta­tion of much of the advice would likely require a designer or developer’s help. How­ever, I thought it might be a useful resource, espe­cially if you’re in the process of cre­ating a new web­site, or revamping an old one.

Do note that I’ve not been fero­ciously good at fol­lowing all of these guide­lines myself—but it’s cer­tainly given me some better ideas about where I ought to be taking my web­site! (more…)

So, let’s say you’re having a problem with your email, or if you’ve found a bug in your web­site. Your first instinct, nat­u­rally, is to fire off an email to your trusty web-person. But wait! Before you hit send, make sure you’ve included as much detail as possible—what you were trying to do when the error hap­pened, what sort of error mes­sage (if any) you got, what soft­ware you were using at the time, etc. This will help your trusty web-person track down the problem far, far more quickly.

An excel­lent way of sup­ple­menting this infor­ma­tion is by sending along a screen­shot. I’ll often request this of clients when I can’t repli­cate a reported bug—if you’ve sent one to begin with, I can be that much more effective.

Here’s how you do it.
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Con­fused by CMYK, RGB, and the like? Got a plethora of logo for­mats and no idea which to use? Read on for some quick tips about how to get the most out of your colour. (more…)

A quick intro­duc­tion to the two major types of file for­mats you’re likely to run across, and what to use when. (more…)