Chapter 8 Working with Outsiders
Chapter Objectives
Chapter Learning Objectives
Understand your client’s needs.
Familiarize yourself with copyright and licensing basics.
Explore project management.
Avoid project creep.
Chapter ACA Objectives
For full descriptions of the objectives, see the table on pages 270–276.
DOMAIN 1.0
WORKING IN THE INDUSTRY
1.1, 1.1a, 1.2, 1.2a, 1.2b, 1.3, 1.3a, 1.3b
As a visual designer, you’re going to work with others. Being a designer and being an artist are two different careers, but most people who do creative work for a living find a need to do both. It’s similar to the way a lot of photographers shoot weddings to pay the bills. It may not be their favorite type of photography, but it pays well and makes people happy. However, if you love to shoot old, crumbly walls and rusty farmhouse doors, you will find that you simply can’t pay the bills with your “rusty hinge” photo collection.
Video 8.1
Introduction to Project Planning
Aside from the money, you will probably learn to develop an immense passion for creating designs for others. The secret to this part of the job is project planning twofold: Really listen and really care.
Who You’re Talking For and Who You’re Talking To
ACA Objective 1.1
The first step in designing for a particular project is to understand the client’s needs.
This is critical because, among other things, the client pays the bills. Most of all, the client is hiring you to speak for them. As a visual designer, that’s a weighty responsibility. You’re being trusted to communicate for an entire company or cause. First and foremost, you need to address the client’s needs and goals for the project. This will be the guiding principle when answering design questions. You must constantly remember your goals and focus narrowly on them to streamline your workflow and minimize distractions.
Let’s look at a few example scenarios:
Rockin’ Zombies is a metal-opera-jazz-bluegrass fusion band that wants to promote an upcoming free concert at the local farmers market.
Hoi Polloi Church needs a brochure for a project that solicits volunteers and donations to help orphaned children recover from Hurricane Sally.
OfficeHome Custodial Services wants to share with other businesses information about their upscale, environmentally friendly office cleaning services.
Zak’s Bulldozer wants to promote its tree removal service for residential homes, which uses low-impact tools.
The city’s health department wants a campaign to promote healthy eating and active lifestyle changes and to inform and warn people about common bad habits.
Pop-Lite is a new collapsible photo light, and the inventors need a logo and image for their Kickstarter campaign.
Each project has different goals, right? Some want to give something for free. Some want to make money. Some want to solicit help from others. It’s important to help clients pin down their project goals—and that can be hard to do.
Single Voice, Single Message
Video 8.2
Discovering Client Goals
Here’s a brainteaser: You’re in a room with 20 close friends, but you cannot understand what they say. Why? They are all speaking loud enough for you to hear clearly. They are all speaking your language. None of you have any health or physical impairments that affect speech or hearing. What’s the problem?
They’re all talking at once!
If a design says too much, it says nothing. It becomes “noisy” and makes it hard for the viewer to focus on the main idea. This reality is similar to the design concept of focal point. All creative projects have a kind of focal point. It’s important to clearly define and pin down the most important goals of a project. Sometimes, clients are trying to clearly define their purpose, vision, or dreams for their organization. The overall goals and dreams for the business are helpful in the design process and should be heard so that you understand your client. But to get a project done efficiently—and create a project that communicates well—you must work with the client to establish and narrow down the goals for this project.
This short version of a campaign’s goals is often called the “elevator pitch” because it summarizes the project in the time that it would take for an elevator ride. It’s communicating your purpose in a short, simple sentence. Normally, I push a client to shoot for seven words or fewer. The aim is to clearly define the goals for this particular design project.
Here are some elevator pitches related to the scenarios listed earlier:
Come to our free concert.
Help child victims of a disaster.
Get safe cleaning services for your office.
Trees removed without damaging your yard.
Get healthy and avoid hidden dangers.
Our little photo lights are fun and functional.
Admittedly, these pitches are not elegant or enticing. There’s no “pop” to the message. But they’re the very core of what you’re trying to communicate. It is the reason your client is paying you to design the project. You’ll need more detail than this to deliver an effective design, but focusing on this core goal can help you rein in the insidious forces of project creep (which we’ll talk about later in this chapter). But first, let this sink in: Your client’s goals are your number-one priority.
If the goal is unclear, the finished product will be unclear. Figure out the goal, and you can always come back to it as a “home base” when the project starts to grow or lose its focus. Sometimes the goal isn’t obvious, or it turns out to be different than it first appeared. But it’s always critical, and one of your first jobs is to help the client focus on the primary goal of the project. Nonetheless, at the end of the day you work for the client, so the client calls the shots, has the final say, and makes the decisions—even if you disagree.
Now we’ll talk about the second most important person on the project—the one who doesn’t really exist. I’m talking about the ideal audience for the piece.
Identifying Your Client’s Ideal Customer
ACA Objective 1.1a
Video 8.3
Finding the Target Audience
In life, we shouldn’t judge people, make assumptions, and lump people together.
But we do. And as creative professionals, we must. This means developing a demographic for the project and identifying the target audience. It’s a critical step in helping your clients bridge the gap to the audience they want to reach. You do this by identifying the common characteristics of that audience and creating an image in everyone’s minds of the typical customer. Some clients will say “Everybody needs my product,” but those clients will still need to focus on a target demographic specific to the project at hand. As the old saying goes, “Aim at nothing and you’ll hit it every time.” Those are wise words, especially when identifying a target audience.
Identifying a target demographic for your project is a critical step, second only to defining the client’s goals. And generally, it’s also a part of the client’s goals. For example, when you want to create a new fishing pole, you can easily picture your target audience: people who like to fish. So you’re probably not going to use the same graphics, words, images, or feel as you would to reach a punk rock audience. At the same time, expectant mothers probably wouldn’t be drawn to those images.
Identifying a demographic helps you focus on who you want to get your message. Understand the goals of your viewer as well as the speaker, your client. Make sure you share information in a way that will connect or resonate with that audience. And if you understand what your audience needs and feels, you can show how what you’re sharing meets those needs.
The easiest way to do this is to create imaginary “perfect fits” for your client’s project. Here are some things to consider:
Income: Determine whether you want to focus on quality, exclusivity, or price.
Education: Establish the vocabulary and complexity of the design.
Age: Dictate the general appeal, attitude, and vocabulary.
Hobbies: Help choose images, insider vocabulary, and attitudes.
Concerns, cares, and passions: Identify core beliefs, trigger points, and so on.
It’s easy to see how different audiences will need different images. You don’t want images of extreme sports in an ad aimed at expectant mothers. You wouldn’t use a crowded nightclub image in a design for a camping and canoe outfitter. Inexperienced designers sometimes try to make a production to please themselves, and that isn’t always what pleases the target audience.
What makes your audience unique? Who has the problems that this product solves? Have those pictures in your mind. Work these ideas over with your client and help them envision their typical customer. Then look for images that will appeal to that ideal customer, this project’s target demographic.
Think of yourself as a matchmaker. You’re trying to introduce your client to the perfect customer or consumer. Speak in the language that the ideal customer would want to hear, and use images that will bring their lifestyle and outlook together with your client.
The Golden Rule for Client Projects
Video 8.4
The Golden Rule for Client Work
Effective design helps someone else convey their vision. It communicates a message. When you’re starting a new edit, use the business version of the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
Ultimately, you work for your clients. Help them see what you regard as the most effective way and identify the right questions to ask, but don’t fight with them. They might have insight or perspective about their target audience that you don’t have. Even when you disagree with a client about a design decision, you still need to help them realize their vision for the project. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to put the final piece in your portfolio, but you’ll still get to put the check in the bank. If it comes down to what the client wants versus what you think their audience will respond to, do what the client asks. It’s their project, their audience, and their money.
There’s one exception to this rule that you need to follow at all times. When your client asks you to skirt copyright law, you’re still responsible for respecting the law and your fellow creative professionals. Often the clients are just confused and you can help them understand that you can’t copy other designs or employ copyrighted materials without authorization. Along those lines, let’s take a moment to talk about copyright.
Copyrights and Wrongs
ACA Objective 1.3
Copyright is an amazing set of laws designed to protect and promote artists along with their art, creativity, and learning. It’s gotten a bad rap, and you can set aside any preconceived ideas for a bit and think through the copyright concept (Figure 8.1).
Copyright law is generally misunderstood by the public, so understanding it is an awesome way to score high on trivia night. A solid understanding of copyright law will also enable you to help your struggling author and artist friends realize that they don’t have to pay an attorney tons of money to “make sure they get their stuff copyrighted.” In the United States, you can register copyrighted work yourself online, and that isn’t even required.
Keep in mind that I’m a designer and instructor, not a lawyer. This chapter does not constitute legal advice; it’s just intended to help you understand the law and the reasons it exists so you can appreciate it. It’s easier to obey a law that you understand and appreciate, and copyright laws protect your rights. So get onboard.
Here’s something to remember: Copyright law promotes freedom and creativity. Let’s explore how.
Copyright Happens
ACA Objective 1.3a
Video 8.5
About Copyright
The first thing to know about copyright in the United States is that it just happens. If something can be copied, then it’s copyrighted. You needn’t fill out any special forms, report to a government office, or do anything extra to put it in place. The law is written so that copyright happens as soon is something original and creative is recorded in a “fixed form.” This means that as soon as you write something down, sketch it out, or click the shutter on your camera, whatever you just created is copyrighted. The only reason you might do anything additional is to establish verifiable proof of when a creation was copyrighted, because the person who can prove that he or she recorded it first owns the copyright.
Imagine that you’re in a restaurant talking with a friend. During this conversation you make up a song on the spot. A famous singer in the booth behind yours hears you and writes it down. He claims the copyright to the lyrics and melody and makes a million bucks with your spontaneous song, and there’s little you can do about it. However, if you recorded it on your phone when you sang it, you recorded it in fixed form first. So you own the copyright on the lyrics, and the artist now owes you a truckload of money.
Tip
Although your original work is automatically copyrighted without registering it with the US Copyright Office, you can potentially collect much higher monetary damages from an infringer if you do register the work. You can register work online.
Why does the law have this quirky little rule? Because the courts have to decide who owns copyright when its ownership is contested in court. And courts rely on tangible proof. So the law makes it simple by stating that he or she who first records something in fixed form wins. That way, you’re not going to sue someone if you have no proof that you were first. But even if you were, if you can’t prove it you’re out of luck.
So why do we have a copyright notice on music, DVDs, and one of the first pages of this book? If we don’t need it, why do we display it?
Simply put, it reminds people who owns this copyrighted material. When no date and copyright symbol are displayed, people may think they can legally make photocopies of this book for their friends. Most people assume that if no copyright notice appears, then no copyright exists. (They’re totally wrong.) The presence of a visible copyright statement discourages this conclusion and behavior.
So it certainly won’t cause any harm to scratch a copyright symbol on your art when you’re done with it, but it’s more to remind the public than to protect you. You’re already protected by law. Adding the copyright symbol to your work is like putting one of those security system signs in your front yard. It won’t stop a determined thief, but it can deter less committed offenders. Still, if you think it makes your front yard look cheap, you don’t need it for protection. The system already protects you.
Placing a Copyright Notice in Digital Content
Video 8.6
Digital Tools for Tracking Copyright
The beauty of digital files is that they have the ability to contain hidden information that never compromises the enjoyment of the document itself. As a result, you can add copyright information to digital content without having a visually distracting copyright notice on the artwork (Figure 8.2). You do this by adding information called metadata into your digital files.
Metadata is information that doesn’t show up on the document itself but is hidden inside the file. This is a perfect way to store copyright information, contact details, and so on. On some digital cameras, metadata can record the lens information, the location via GPS, whether a flash was attached and fired, the camera settings, and more. In digital files, metadata can share the computer on which it was created, the time, and the name of the creator. (This is how good technology teachers catch cheaters.) Be sure to make use of metadata when you’re sending your work out over the web, and always check files that your clients give you to make sure that you’re not violating another professional’s means of making money when you’re trying to make some yourself.
“But I’m not trying to make any money with their art, so it’s okay, right?” Well, that’s a tough question with a few interesting rules attached.
Playing Fair with Copyrighted Material
ACA Objective 1.3b
Video 8.7
Fair Use and Copyright
Can you use copyrighted material when you’re practicing with InDesign CC? Can you make a funny image using a movie poster by replacing the faces of the actors with the faces of your friends? What about using cool images from your favorite video game as you’re learning InDesign CC?
These uses of copyrighted material are completely legit. The people who came up with our copyright laws were careful to make sure that the laws don’t limit—but instead promote—creativity. They did this with a set of ideas called fair use.
Fair use policy is a set of rules that make sure copyright protection doesn’t come at the cost of creativity and freedom. Copyright can’t be used to limit someone’s personal growth or learning, freedom of speech, or artistic expression and creative exploration. Those ideas are more important than copyright, so copyright doesn’t apply when it gets in the way of these higher ideals. You’re free to use copyrighted materials in the pursuit of these higher goals. Some people (mistakenly) believe that fair use doesn’t apply to copyrighted materials, but in fact, it applies only to copyrighted materials. Here is a list of issues that a court would consider when making a decision about fair use:
Purpose: If you use the work to teach, learn, voice your own opinion, inspire yourself to create a new piece of art, or report news, you’re probably safe. Protected reasons include educational purposes (teaching, research), freedom of speech (commentary or criticism), news reporting, and transformative work (parody or using the work in a new way). It isn’t considered fair use if you’re making money from the use, using it just for entertainment, or trying to pass it off as your own work.
Nature: If the nature of the original work is factual, published information, or the work is critical to favoring education, you’re probably safe. Was the content already published, fact based, and important for society to know? Then you’re pretty safe to use the work. But if it was unpublished, creative (such as art, music, film, novels), and fictional, you’re probably not cleared to use it.
Amount: If you use a small amount of a copyrighted work, it’s more likely that your use of the work is fair use. If you use only a small quantity—not the main idea or focus of the work, but just enough to teach or learn from—you’re probably safe. If you use a large portion of the work or basically rip off the central idea, or the “heart of the work,” it isn’t fair use.
Effect: If nobody is harmed because of the action you’ve taken, then your action is probably fair use. If you use a legitimate copy of the original work, it doesn’t affect the sale of another copy, and you have no other way to get a copy, you’re in pretty good shape. But if your copy makes it less likely that someone would buy a copy or you made a large number of copies, you’re probably hurting the original creator, and that’s not fair use.
As mentioned, copyright law addresses a simple question: How can we promote more freedom and creativity in the world? This is the question that copyright laws seek to answer. Fair use makes sure that beginning artists can experiment using anything they want. Just be sure not to share anything that might be another artist’s copyrighted work.
But as a beginning designer, how can you get good-quality assets to use in real-world projects? Happily, you have access to more free resources than ever before in history via the Internet and free stock photos. We’ll look at some in the next section.
Uncopyrighting
Video 8.8
Licensing: Strict and Free
You have a couple of ways in which to undo copyright. One is voluntary. An author can choose to release the copyright to their material. Believe it or not, this can be more difficult to do than you’d expect. Copyright law protects creators of their works, and it can be difficult not to be protected by copyright law.
The second way is to let the copyright expire. Copyrights normally expire from 50 to 100 years after the death of the original author, but exceptions to this rule and extensions can be requested. It’s beyond the scope of this book to discuss copyright at length, but it’s important to realize that some materials have expired copyrights. When copyright is expired or released, the work is said to be in the public domain. This means that copyright no longer applies to the content, and you can use the material without worrying about copyright infringement.
Licensing
ACA Objective 1.3a
Licensing is another way that you can legally use copyrighted material. For designers and artists, licensing is fairly common because it allows us to use copyrighted material for a certain time and in a certain way, by paying a fee established by the copyright holder according to the use of the material.
Stock photos are popular items licensed by all sorts of designers, and you can find them from many sources at various prices. Stock photos are images for which the author retains copyright, but you can purchase a license to use these images in your designs. For almost everyone, this is a much less expensive solution than hiring a photographer to go to a location and shoot, process, and sell you the rights to an image.
Creative Commons
In the last decade or so, a lot of exploration has been done in finding alternative ways to license creative works. Creative Commons licensing (Figure 8.3) is built on copyright law but offers ways that artists can release their works for limited use and still choose the way the works are used and shared.
Creative Commons licenses include many different combinations of the following attributes, so you’ll need to do some research when using Creative Commons licensed materials and when releasing assets with Creative Commons licensing.
Public Domain (CC0) licenses allow artists to release their works to the public domain. It’s a bit difficult to give your materials away to the public domain, but CC0 is generally recognized as a way to do so and is respected in most parts of the world.
Attribution (BY) requires that you credit the original author when using their work. You can do whatever you want with the work as long as you give that credit.
ShareAlike (SA) allows you to use the item in anything you want as long as your creation is shared under the same license as the original work.
NoDerivs (ND) requires that you not change the material when you incorporate it into your own work. You can use NoDerivs material freely, but you must pass it along without changing it.
NonCommercial (NC) means that people can use your work in their own creative works as long as they don’t charge for it. You’re getting it for free, so if you want to use it, then you have to be generous and also give away your work for free.
Creative Commons licenses are widely accepted and used, and you can find a ton of amazing resources that use this licensing. If you have any questions about Creative Commons licenses, you can find everything from a general overview to detailed legal descriptions at www.creativecommons.org.
People Permissions
ACA Objective 1.3b
Because many assets we use in InDesign include photographs, we need to talk about extra permissions such as model releases. This type of release is required when a person’s face is identifiable in the design that will be used to promote something, whether it’s a product or an idea. Any work you do for a client is by definition a commercial use and will require a model release for every identifiable face.
Think Like a Boss
Some might say that the only thing you need to know to succeed in life is how to solve a problem. That’s not how to solve a specific problem; that would be only an exercise in memory. A well-trained monkey can mimic a person’s actions and get a similar result. But a monkey can’t think with the depth of a human. My preferred way to solve problems is to work to understand things deeply and explore all the nuances of a potential solution. But for others, this process is a little outside their comfort zones and they find it faster and easier to copy someone else’s solution.
In InDesign, copying another solution or technique means following tutorials. In entry-level jobs, it’s being a dutiful employee, efficient worker, and good follower who shows up on time.
But what do you do when you’re the leader? What happens when you need to do something new and fresh for your job? What if the boss doesn’t know how to do it and that’s why you were hired? At times, your client’s main request will be something as vague and daunting as “Do something that hasn’t been done before.”
That’s where the problem-solving process comes in—the only skill you need to be successful. If you can do that, you can figure out anything.
Project Management
ACA Objective 1.2b
Video 8.9
Project Management Intro
Project management is just the problem-solving process in action—geared toward supervising resources, people, and team-based projects. The DNA of project management is problem solving and organizing the process so that you tackle the right issues at the right time using the right tools. Project-management systems take on many forms (as do problem-solving systems), but if you truly grasp the ideas behind the labels, you can translate them into whatever management strategy your client, team, or boss is using.
The problem-solving process is creative in itself. A good solution to a problem can be artistic in its elegance and efficient grace. If you can grasp problem solving, you can learn whatever you need to learn now and in the future.
The following procedure will help when you need to solve a technical problem on hardware or equipment, handle an editing issue within your visual design project, or figure out how to get your hand out of that jar you got it stuck in. It will help you translate a tutorial written for InDesign CS6 into your current version (things change fast these days!). And it boils down to three simple steps: learn, think, and do.
Learn
The first step of a problem-solving process is to learn. It includes two important steps: learning what the problem is and learning how others have solved similar problems (research and investigate). It seems simple, but the process can be confusing. Most projects with major problems get stuck at this initial step because they didn’t learn well—or at all. Let’s talk about them.
Understand the Problem
Video 8.10
Project Management—Understand the Problem
As discussed earlier in this chapter, the first step of every project is to understand the problem. For most design projects, you must figure out how to most effectively help your client share their goals with the target audience. If the client is yourself, then it’s about getting to the essence of what you want to communicate and communicating it so that your target audience can act on it.
Understanding the problem is the most difficult part of the problem-solving process. Mess it up here and by definition you’re not solving the problem. You haven’t properly identified the problem, so how can you solve it? Sometimes you can make the problem worse by implementing a plan that creates a new problem without solving the real one.
You can avoid trouble down the road by clearly understanding and defining the problem at the start. “I want to sell a million widgets” is not a problem you can solve; it’s a desire the client has. So what’s the problem you can help with? He hasn’t sold as many as he wants? That’s not it either. How do you get to the bottom of the problem?
Start with good questions: Do people need a widget? If so, do people know widgets are a thing? If so, do they choose a competing widget? If so, why do they choose this other widget? Why do you think they should use your widget instead? Who would be most likely to buy your widget? What is your budget for widget advertising? What do you want to spend on this particular project? What are your expectations?
Many clients become frustrated with this set of questions. They just want action to be taken so that they can feel like they’re doing something. But let me repeat that old saying: “Aim at nothing and you’ll hit it every time.” This is when you sharpen your axe so you don’t have to chop at the tree all day.
This part of the project can be fairly informal on smaller projects but can be huge on large projects. Here’s a list of critical questions to answer:
Purpose: Why are you doing this creative project? What result would you consider a success?
Target: Who needs this message or product? Describe your typical customer.
Limits: What are the limits for the project? Budget and time are most necessary to nail down.
Preferences: Aside from the results we’ve already discussed, are there any other results you’d like or expect from this project?
These examples are intended to show how quickly you can determine a client’s expectations. The answers to these questions define the size of the job and how you’ll best be able to work with the client.
Sketches and written notes from this initial step will help. Gather as much information as you can to make the rest of the project go smoothly. The more you find out now, the less you’ll have to redesign later, because the client hates the color, the layout, or the general direction you took the project. Invest the time now, or pay it back with interest later. With a clear idea of what the problem is, you’ll get the information you need to solve it in the next step.
Research and Investigate
After you understand exactly what your client is expecting, you can start doing the research to arrive at the answers you need. Let’s take a quick look at that word: re-search. It literally means “search again.” Lots of people fail to research; they just search. They look at the most obvious places and approaches, and if things don’t immediately click, they settle for a poor but quick and easy solution.
Depending on the job, researching can be a relatively quick process. Find out about the competitive products, learn about the problem you’re trying to solve, and understand the demographic you’re going to target. The more research you do, the better information you’ll have about the problem you’re trying to solve, which will help you with the next step.
Think
Video 8.11
Project Management—Think It Through
The next couple of steps represent the “thinking” phase. You can do this quickly using a pen and a napkin, or you can do it in depth and generate tons of documentation along the way, particularly on large projects (Figure 8.4). But thinking is the part that most of us often mistake as the beginning. Remember that if the learning step isn’t done well, your thinking step might be headed in the wrong direction.
As a designer, you’ll often do much of your thinking on paper, even if you’re not producing traditional or formal storyboards. Sketch out your sequence first and have that reference to show the customer and to come back to for clarity.
Brainstorm
The next step is to brainstorm. As with research, you need to grasp the word’s meaning. It’s a brainstorm, not a brain drizzle. A full-on typhoon of ideas. At this point, it’s important to stop thinking analytically and start thinking creatively. If you start thinking critically instead of creatively, you’ll change direction and lose ground on your brainstorming task. If you start moving in the critical direction, that’s the opposite of creative. Stop that! Don’t try to work hard on brainstorming. Work relaxed instead.
At times, analysis will need to happen. You start analyzing how to complete your ideas when you should be creating them. Here are some things you should not be doing when brainstorming, including trains of thought that can trigger critical modes of thinking:
Judging your ideas
Trying to finish an idea when you should still be brainstorming
Getting stuck on a particular idea
Planning out the project
Thinking about how much time you have
Thinking about the budget
Thinking about numbers
Grouping or sorting your ideas
Developing the idea that you think is best
Here are things you should do to get into creative mode:
Listen to music.
Look at cool art online.
Call a friend.
Doodle on something.
Read a poem.
Take a break.
Go for a walk.
Watch a movie.
Write a haiku.
Meditate for five minutes.
Exercise.
Sleep on it.
When you’re in brainstorming mode, don’t edit your ideas. Let them flow. If a crummy idea pops into your head, put it on paper. If you don’t, it will keep popping up until it’s been given a little respect. Give the weak ideas respect; they open doors for the great ones. Brainstorming is a matter of quantity, not quality.
Pick and Plan
Video 8.12
Project Management—Get It in Writing
After brainstorming, you need to pick a solution that you generated in your brainstorming session and plan things out. You’ll find that the plan you go with is rarely your first idea. Through the process of brainstorming, the idea will go through several iterations. A common mistake for beginners is to fall in love with an early idea—beware of this pitfall! Your best idea is lurking in the background of your mind, and you have to get rid of all the simple ideas that pop up first. For a small project or a one-person team, you might quickly hammer out a contract and get to work, but in larger projects, the planning needs to be detailed and focused.
The larger the project, the more formal this process will be. A small project with just one person working on it will need little planning to move forward. However, larger projects will need a project plan to set the project requirements for the team.
Setting Project Requirements
ACA Objective 1.2b
This is where the action happens. Look through the ideas you’ve generated, pick the one that seems best, and plan how to make it happen. This is where you determine exactly what has to be done, establish some direction, and identify a clear target. This planning stage (which most creative types naturally tend to resist, myself included) is where you clarify what needs to be done; it establishes your direction and identifies a clear target. We resist it because it seems to limit us. It ropes in our creative freedom, and it gives us a checklist—all things that many creatives hate. These things are creative kryptonite—or at least we think they are. But let’s consider this for a moment.
If you don’t perform this admittedly tedious step, what won’t you have? You won’t have a definition of what needs to be done, a direction to head in, or a target to hit. Everyone will be in the dark. Although this step doesn’t seem creative in itself, creativity isn’t the priority at this particular juncture. You’re at a journey-versus-destination moment. Creativity without limits is a journey, which is great for your own work but a disaster for a client-driven job. A client-driven project requires clearly defined goals—a destination. You need to arrive somewhere specific.
ACA Objective 1.2a
Two critical points that must be a part of every project plan are the project scope and the project deadline. Every contract needs to have these critical components defined to focus the project:
Project scope is the amount of work to be done. On the designer’s side, this is the most important thing to establish. If the scope isn’t clear, you’re subject to the Achilles heel of editing and production work: project creep. This is a pervasive problem in our industry (you’ll learn more later in this chapter), but simply writing down a defined scope can prevent the problem. Get in writing exactly what you need to do, and make sure specific numbers are attached.
Project deadlines dictate when the work needs to be done. This is the client’s most important element. The deadline often affects the price. If the client needs 10 animated banner ads in six months, you can probably offer a discount. If they need a draft by tomorrow morning, then they’ll have to pay an additional “rush” fee. Deadlines on large projects also can be broken down into phases, each with its own fee. This division of tasks helps you pay the bills by generating cash flow during a large and lengthy project. It also limits the impact—for you—of payment delay.
I strongly encourage you to include the following additional items in your creative project plans. These items, when shared and discussed with your client, will save time, money, and disagreements. These additional deliverables are the raw materials of project planning and help convey the exact target of the project. The following two deliverables are critical for every production project:
Sketches are helpful for showing the client how your project and edit will flow. It’s even better when the client has an idea of what they’re looking for and can give you their own storyboard, however crude. Does this limit your creative freedom? Yes, and it also saves you a ton of time. The goal of a job is to get a project done to the client’s satisfaction. If the client is particular and knows what they want, you’re not going to convince them otherwise. Sketches save time because they limit your direction to one that the client will accept, and they help you get to that acceptance faster. That means you get finished and paid sooner. The better the storyboards are before you get into actual editing, the fewer changes and revisions you’ll need. You don’t have to be a master sketch artist; just convey the idea. Sometimes sketches may just be wireframes, very rough representative sketches of how to lay out the project; they’re used especially in interactive media projects.
Specifications, or specs, are detailed, clearly written goals and limits for a project. Many times, the specifications themselves will be referred to as the “project plan” and become part of the contract. This will involve the target platform and feature set of the interactive project. All project plans should include two critical pieces of information: the scope of the project and the deadlines that need to be met. Be sure to always include both of these items in your project specifications.
ACA Objective 1.2b
Avoiding Project Creep
Video 8.13
Project Management—Avoiding Creep
Project creep occurs when a project starts to lose focus and spin out of control, eating up more and more time and effort. It is important to be aware of this phenomenon. It happens all the time, and the main culprit in every case is a poorly designed project plan that lacks clear specifications and deadlines.
Here’s how it happens: Joe Client creates a product and wants to sell it. He comes to you for marketing materials. You determine that he wants a logo, a flyer, and a three-page informational website. You’ve settled on a price of $4500 and you’ve got a month to get it done. You go to work.
Then Joe realizes that he also wants some images for social media. Could you just make a few? He also realizes that he needs to put his new logo on new business cards. Could you just design a card with the logo on it? Oh, and he can’t figure out how to get his product onto his favorite online marketplace. Could you just help him set that up? And he changed his launch date. He doesn’t need it next month; he needs it next week because he just reserved a booth at a large convention. By the way, do you know anything about designing booths?
This is why it’s critical to create a detailed project plan with task definitions and deadlines attached. Sometimes the client asks for something and it takes you 30 seconds. It’s a good idea to always happily deliver on these little items. A favor is any job that takes you five minutes or less. After that, the favor turns into work. And your only defense is your contract defining a clearly stated scope.
Just make sure that the project’s scope is clearly stated. If the contract says that you’ll provide any images for the company’s web presence, you’re in trouble. If it says that you’ll specifically provide up to nine images for the client’s website, you’re in great shape. Taking the hour it requires to specify your project and its deadlines in detail will save you from many hours of work and contract revisions.
If the client has approved your project parameters and then asks for something different, you need to charge him for the change if it’s going to take more than 5 to 10 minutes. Sticking to this policy helps the client think about changes before sending them to you. If you fail to charge when addressing impromptu changes, the client has no reason to think about the requests in advance. Charging customers for additional changes focuses them on what they really want.
Of course, if the client asks for something that makes the job easier and faster, then make the change and do it for free. The bottom line is this: Establish good will whenever it’s good for both you and your client. But when an 11th-hour alteration serves only one side of the relationship, the requesting side has to pay for the service. This arrangement ensures that everyone ends up winning.
Do
Video 8.14
Project Management—Make It So
The last phase of the project plan is to knock it out! This is the “two snaps and a twist” phase because it generally happens quickly when you have a good plan—unless there’s a hitch. But at this point, on most design projects you’re pretty much wrapping things up.
Build It
This step is obvious: Make it happen. This phase is where most people think all the action is—but honestly, if you’ve done the prior steps well, this can be the fastest part of the process. You already know what to do—now just do it. The design decisions and feature specifications have been made and you can get to work. Of course, when doing this step, regularly refer to the specifications and keep the client informed. The best way to do so is to have a feedback loop in place.
Feedback Loop
ACA Objective 1.2a
A feedback loop is a system set up to constantly encourage and require input and approvals on the project direction. Keeping your client informed is the best way to speed through the process. For an interactive media project, iterative work establishes effective guideposts to send to the client for review and input. Iterative work is work you’re sharing as it’s done. Doing so performs a couple of critical functions. First, it lets the client see that the work’s being done and helps reassure them that the process has momentum. Second, it lets the client chime in on anything they don’t like while it’s still easy to make a change.
Establishing this open communications channel encourages and enforces a healthy exchange of opinions and can enable you to most efficiently adjust and fine-tune your project to suit your client.
Test and Evaluate
This very last step can also be fast if you’ve had a good feedback loop in place. For visual design projects, it’s essentially checking the work against your project plan and making sure that you met all the specifications to satisfy you and your client. If not, you should essentially start the problem-solving process again to understand the current problem. Find out exactly what the client believes doesn’t meet the requirements.
Assuming a good project plan with storyboards and a good feedback loop, the test-and-evaluation phase should require only minor tweaks—no different from any other iterative work resolution. If you don’t have a good feedback loop and the first time the client sees your work is upon delivery, that client could become unhappy and demand innumerable changes. Avoid this headache with an effective and well-defined feedback loop as part of your plan. Those two tools are your weapons against project creep and unreasonable clients.
Working for “The Man”
Video 8.15
The Advantages of Working at a Firm
Many visual designers begin their careers working at larger firms, which can be a much easier way to get started than freelancing with your own business. If you’re exclusively an artist, this type of job may require you to do only the tasks you’re best at doing. In a large firm, someone else does the sales, manages client relationships and projects, and creates technical specifications.
As a designer at a larger firm, you’re responsible only for the sketches, mock-ups, and the final image processing. Everything else is handled by someone else, which is a good trade-off for designers who don’t like the detail-oriented checklist work of project management and bookkeeping.
Working within an experienced company can also be an amazing education. You can develop your strengths, learn about the industry, and slowly increase your involvement in the other aspects of this career beyond InDesign proficiency.
Conclusion
Video 8.16
Wrapping Up Project Planning
Much of this chapter digressed from the hands-on InDesign work that similar books cover. But starting their careers without the information presented in this chapter can pose a problem for many beginning artists. You need to master a lot of industry information, creative knowledge, and business skills to be successful. We’re stoked that you read this far. Many of us creative people have a hard time with the business side of the career, but it’s best to understand these ideas and concepts now before a lack of understanding becomes a problem. The tips and techniques that you’ve read in this chapter will eliminate a lot of the inherent frustration in the complexity of working with and for other people.
InDesign is an intensely creative and varied application that tends to attract adventurous individuals. The qualities that make us great at thinking outside the box and designing new and beautiful images are the same qualities that may make us less skilled at the organized detail work of business and client management.