Image is everything

Recently on the Marketing Mix blog, Ilise Benun and a few commenters got into the subject of typos in company literature - a subject I've thought about a lot since starting the zen kitchen.

I've actually met people online who are even harsher than this - they'll actively snark people who make even a small typo, or folks whose English isn't quite so good yet (i.e. they're still learning). Even though my English is pretty darn good, I've actually left communities because of this habit.

I do think there's some room for forgiveness on the typo thing - but I think that the more likely cause of Ilise's sketchiness around this person's sign is the lack of care it represents. If this is the way the person presents themselves BEFORE you work with them, how will they be if you do work with them? Why should you care about a company that obviously cares so little about themselves?

Your marketing materials, no matter what form they take, represent your business to people who may or may not know you. While many entrepreneurs do find themselves having to "bootstrap" and do things on the cheap, one of the biggest mistakes I see them making is rushing just to "get something up there," and ending up with something that represents their business in an extremely unflattering light.

Think of it this way: say you're looking for a marketing/branding expert to help you market your business. You have a big vision for this enterprise, and you need someone who's going to get that, and help you succeed. Now let's say someone approaches you saying that they're just the marketing/branding expert you're looking for, and they hand you a card that was obviously ordered from VistaPrint. Would you trust them? If they can't do what they say they do for THEMSELVES, can you really trust them to do it for you?

The same goes for high-end consumer products. Customers in this market (think really good chocolate, wine, fine custom jewelry, organic bath/body care, scented candles etc.) are paying as much for the image of the product as they are the actual product. If your packaging doesn't present that high-end image, the customer is less likely to see the high end nature of the product, and more likely to choose your competitor, over there in the pretty pretty box.

It sucks, yes, but it's the nature of things. When it comes to how you market your business, image is everything. What does your image say about you?

Building your brand: beyond the logo

About a week ago, a friend of mine came to me with a question. She'd been selling a line of hand-crafted clothing and accessories on Etsy for a year and had found pretty good success with it, but when someone asked her at a networking event "Where's your logo?" she got a bit stressed. Did she have a logo? Did she need one?

Here's an interesting secret: you don't always need a logo.

I know, I know, it's what I do and here I am saying that you don't really need it - but hear me out.

When you're building a brand, you're communicating three things:

Who you are (or what your business is);

Who you're speaking to (or who your audience is);

What you need to say to them (or, your marketing message)

Anything you use to market your business - logo, business card, website, even your appearance at events - has to be able to answer those three questions. What logos and websites can help you do is create a consistent image in the consumer's mind when you aren't in the room. They can also help you reach a wider audience, and can definitely help you achieve more success/credibility/etc. - and it can give you more confidence that yes, you ARE an actual business.

But sometimes, especially when you're a solo entrepreneur who deals with primarily local clients, you don't actually need a logo to achieve that. Sometimes success lies in how you present yourself in person; how you deal with clients, how you showcase your product. I've seen folks go for years in business - successfully - without having a logo.

Then, when you're ready for a logo, you can find the right person to help you bring your company to a wider audience.

"Disarming" difficult client requests

I just got turned on to this great entry from Ideas on Ideas about dealing with, ahem, challenging client requests.

Among the requests:

• Can we make the text bigger?


• I'll know what I like when I see it.


• My neighbors/wife/cat don't like it.


• Someone in accounting mocked-up a really neat idea for this.

If you're a designer, you've probably heard these (Lord knows I have); if you've worked with a designer, you've probably SAID these. And I have to say that the author shares some good ideas, especially in responding in a way that looks outside the knee-jerk reaction (really - your accountant? hmm.) and gets to the root of what most of these requests are - an attempt by the client to communicate what you want to your designer when you don't necessarily speak the language.

This is the thing that some designers tend to miss in their haste to be annoyed at the client's comments; oftentimes if you look past the specifics, what they're really saying is that something isn't quite right, and they need your help figuring out what that is and fixing it. Sometimes the only thing you can think of is "I think this should be blue" when what you really mean is "this color doesn't feel right to me; I want something more friendly/steadfast/elegant, etc."

It's a pretty good read, for designers and non-designers alike: check it out here.

Why you need a marketing budget

One of the things I love about working with entrepreneurs is that they are, very often, incredibly passionate about what they're doing - whether it's creative writing, or personal/business coaching, or making handcrafted organic soaps (you'd be AMAZED how many people make handcrafted organic soaps!). They start their businesses because they think they've stumbled on something great - and they want to share that with the world. This is a beautiful thing.

One of the areas, however, where I constantly notice entrepreneurs getting stuck is that, because they are so passionate about what they do, they pour everything they have into the product or service that they're trying to build a business around, and they scrimp on their marketing efforts, hiring the cheapest designer for their identity and website or - even worse - deciding that they "can't afford" to hire somebody and try to take on the whole shebang themselves. In rare cases, this works out just fine - I was lucky enough when I started the zen kitchen that I was a very capable designer (after all, it's a design studio), and was able to learn a number of things myself fairly quickly. All too often, however, the DIY route doesn't go so well. Oh, sure, the company will do okay - maybe even succeed for several years - but at a certain point, the DIY route proves to be too much work for too few results.

Here's the thing: if you're a designer, your business is design. You've likely spent years learning design, and you know yourself and your intended business well enough (quite often) to do your own marketing and design; and indeed, you should - since it's the best way to show potential clients what you do. But what if you're NOT a designer - what if you're a coach, or a soapmaker, or a writer? Which would you rather be doing - the stuff you're good at and you truly love to do, or learning how to code websites, or use templates, or design logos? And if you've spent the time learning all this, are you satisfied with the result? Does it speak to you and what you do, and does it convey this message clearly to the people who need to hear it?

It's altogether possible that it does. But it's much more likely that it won't. This is why it's important to figure out a marketing budget and spend it on getting the right people to help you market your business - because not only will you get better results, you can take the time you save and spend it on more important things - like, say, running your business and living your dream.

Logo Design Faux Pas: Copying a well-known brand

Yesterday after my evening yoga class at Healthworks in Porter Square, I stopped into Cambridge Naturals to pick up a yoga bolster and a quick snack to tide me over after my workout. While I was at the counter, grabbing a few Flavor+Fiber bars (man, the chocolate brownie flavor is good), I tried a quick sample of Foods Alive Golden Flax Crackers and was instantly hooked. They're quick, crunchy, really healthy and insanely good. I tell you, this is my new PMS food - HANDS DOWN.

Unfortunately, they also have THIS as their brand:


See that thing on the left hand side? That's their logo. Recognize it from anywhere?

Yep - it's Target's logo with some text over it. And even if it wasn't, what's the concept behind this? What does a bullseye have to do with crackers made of flax seed?

Now, mind, I don't mean any of this as a diminishment of the company - they produce a, frankly, amazing product and one that I really want to see on the market for a very long time. But this is the reason why cheap/do-it-yourself design so often fails; because designers are paid to make sure that what they design is unique and appropriate to each business they deal with, and often that means looking around to make sure that what they're thinking of hasn't been used by someone else. When you're doing it yourself for your own business, too often you end up with quick solutions that are either boring, don't really speak to your business does, or in some extreme cases, look exactly like another company's logo. I won't get into some of the other controversies surrounding other "cheap" logo services; those have been long rehashed by the design community, and I can't add anything that hasn't already been said by about four different people.

So what to do about this? I sent the company a quick and friendly note letting them know about the faux pas and thanking them for making such a great snack. Aside from that, there's not much left other than hoping that they find someone to create a more original identity for them.

Green Design Dialogues at Green Options

Green Design Dialogues on Green Options

Recently, myself and a bunch of other designers got together for Green Design Dialogues, an article series that my fellow HOWie Megan Prusynski is putting together for the green blog Green Options.

Along with myself, Bryn Mooth from HOW magazine, Eric Benson from renourish. Eric Karjaluoto from smashLAB and Design Can Change, Jess Sand from Roughstock Studios, and Megan talked about our experiences with green design, as well as our thoughts on where design needs to go in order to really head in the right direction.

A quick excerpt from the article:

Each designer's journey to sustainability is unique, and we've all had our stumbling blocks along the way. We discussed that each person approaches green living and green design differently, making different tradeoffs and decisions. It was certainly apparent to all of us that our industry was changing, and the green design movement was certainly getting traction. Eric K suggested that the surge of interest in green design stems from An Inconvenient Truth. What began as a grassroots movement has become a mainstream dialogue that is leading to action and change.

Check out the full article here.

Theatre as design training?

I don't really talk about this TOO often, but I didn't start off my career as a designer. In high school, I discovered a love of the theatre that I have (in a much more limited capacity, admittedly) to this day. I switched schools my junior year to join Hope High School's Theatre program, and I chose Rhode Island College for undergrad because their theatre program was considered one of the best in the country. And I was pretty darn good, too, if I must say so.

But somewhere in the middle of that, while working at Kinko's in my second year of college, I discovered that design was, well, kinda fun. And I was darn good at that too. And so, given the choice between taking on a career in theatre (where I'd likely never Make It Big), and a career in design - well, you can already tell where this is going.

But a while back now, I was chatting with a reporter for an interview that appeared in one of my regional newspapers, and we were getting into the whole history of who I am and where I've been, and he asked me what I did with my theatre training, and why I wasn't doing it anymore. I think the answer I came up with was that I still do presentations and public speaking on occasion, and I worked my theatre training into those activities - but honestly, that felt lame, and it didn't feel true to me.

The other day, while chatting with a new client about what I do and how I work, something hit me that I haven't been able to shake, and it has been making me smile all this week. I realized that what I do for my clients is actually incredibly similar to what I did as an actress, and I love design for all the reasons that I loved acting. Great design tells a story, and creating a great brand is really no different than creating a great character - it's up to you to get inside that character's (or in this case, a business's) head, figure out what their story is, and play out that story to the audience watching it. That's what I loved about acting - not just the attention (because, I mean, COME ON) or the applause, but the fact that I had an opportunity to literally experience what it was like to be someone else for a while. And now, I get to do that again, but this time, I get paid better for it and I don't have to stand in front of a room full of people and explain why my headshot doesn't look like me (which, by the way, is because I've seen exactly TWO pictures of myself that actually looked anything like me in person).

So, how can you (as a designer) bring a bit more theatre into your design work? By asking yourself, and your client, the right questions - and remembering that ultimately, you're doing this to tell a story. It's your job to find out what that story is, and who needs to hear it - and to tell that story visually in a way that means something to the people watching. The Creative Brief is an important part of that story, as is all the deliverables that come along with it - whether you're doing a full-out branding campaign, a website, or even just a simple brochure or business card. It's all about the story, and who needs to hear it.

And, every once in a while, applaud yourself when you do something really special. If others can join in too, even better.

Freelance isn't free

The other day I was hanging out on one of my many designer forums, and a regular on the forum posted a rant about a potential client who had contacted him about his services, gushed over his portfolio, and said that they'd LOVE to work with him. Sounds pretty good, right?

The problem was the next sentence in the e-mail, which read:

"Just so you know, this is a freelance position, so it will not be paid. But after this is done, we will need other materials, such as brochures and websites and flyers, and if all goes well, we will be able to pay you for those.

Now, mind, I could have some strong words to say here, but I won't go there. What I will say is that this is one of the reasons that I personally, even when the zen kitchen was just me, have strategically avoided using the word "freelance" to describe what I do.

It's that word "free," you see. It has so many connotations to it - from the idea of a freelancer being someone who lacks commitment to your business (which anyone who knows me will tell you is not the case), to the idea of a freelancer being someone who will work - well - for free. Not all clients believe this, mind you - I have several clients that I occasionally do freelance for, and they respect my work and my time, and pay me well for it - but there are enough naive clients out there that do, in fact, believe that they can get work for free from designers (and enough poor unsuspecting designers who actually WILL work for free on the vague promise of more work down the road) that being a freelancer is a ticket to being taken less seriously.

So what do you call yourself, if not a freelancer? I'm an independent designer, or I run my own design studio, or I'm a zen warrior princess. You choose.

Thoughts on Designing Identities for Small Companies

This evening, during a visit to the HOW Forum, I was pointed to this terrific post at the Ideas on Ideas blog about designing identities for small companies. As a designer who has been doing a LOT of that kind of work lately, it was great to hear how another studio handles the ultimate challenge of creating identity work for the smaller company, and it gave me a ton of ideas for what I'd like to ultimately provide for the zen kitchen's clients.

A quick excerpt from the post:

Some may argue that the points above are hardly any different from what would be applied to a larger organization. While this may be true, you will find that small companies rarely have marketing and communications experts at hand to implement such efforts; thus, the designer’s role often expands to meet their needs.

Small clients have a particularly hard time remembering that their brand assets play an important role in their growth. As such, you need to reinforce brand-focused thinking. Encourage them to see their identity as more than a “one-off” project. Their brand must remain central in their operations and decision making; likewise, their identity must be implemented consistently in order to reinforce the organization’s nature.

So, so true.

I'll likely have more thoughts on this as time goes on; however, at the moment it's important that I get going.

Feedback request: how can I improve the zen kitchen's site?

I’m gearing up, now that I have a moment to breathe, to revamp the TZK site, and I’m thinking it needs a bit of a re-design; I’ll likely keep the same color scheme, and a few other things are going to stay consistent, but I want to clean it up a bit; maybe move things around. So, in the interest of market research, I’d like to ask you, my humble friends, for your opinions on what works about the current site and how I might improve things in the next version. If you have a moment, I’d love it if you’d take a look and give me your feedback.

The site’s at tzk-design.com; some things I’m definitely thinking about already:

• Keeping the portfolio broken down by client, but changing the way that case studies are displayed to showcase the images more than the text (haven’t quite figured out how that will work yet, but if anyone has a suggestion, it would be appreciated.)
• Changing the navigation to be more clear and text-oriented;
• Breaking up the “fun stuff section” into photography and recipes (I think I can get rid of the stuff I do for fun, since I don’t do enough of it)
• Switching the recipes into a food blog that has recipes and general foodie notes.
• Cutting some of the copy;
• making the sample sheets, resumé and client questionnaire more easily accessible.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Going Back to the Creative Brief: When Clients Can't Vocalize What's Wrong

About six months ago, after a couple of client communication breakdowns that were much more stressful than I needed, I decided to implement a firm policy at the zen kitchen that all projects, with the exception of some minor production work that comes into the office on occasion, required the completion of a detailed Creative Brief. This brief, although not nearly as extensive as some others I've seen, tells me what I'm doing for the client, who the client is and how they want to be perceived, who their customers are, and what those customers need to hear from my client. The brief is still in development (I'm realizing that there are a few more abstract questions I have to add to it), but it's been one of the single best productivity tools I've found for working with clients - especially relatively difficult ones.

Every designer, at some point or another, runs into this problem: you have a client who wants a design (brochure/logo/whathaveyou). You talk to the client about the design, about their company, and all the other things that good designers talk to their clients about when you're beginning the process of creating their design. You do gobs of research and come up with what you feel is the perfect design for them. But the client doesn't like it. And they can't come up with a solid reason why - just "I'm not sure - it's just not working for me."

Recently, in the middle of a branding project that's still in development, my client, a soon-to-be online retailer of green computing products, had already chosen a logo design from the concepts that were presented to him, and we were getting ready to finalize the logo, when all of a sudden he decided that the logo wasn't working for him. He couldn't quite vocalize why, it just "wasn't feeling right." At first I was a bit anxious, worrying that we would end up having to go back to the drawing board and incur extra fees and time delays because he didn't like the logo. But after a bit of conversation, I decided to try a different approach. The following is a rundown of our conversation:

Me: "Let's go back to the Creative Brief for a moment. What about the message we're trying to convey doesn't seem to be communicated with this logo?"

Client: "I think it conveys the green message well - I'm just not seeing the computing aspect of the business represented. It feels like it's just another green company."

Me: "Okay, so what works for you about the logo?"

Client: "I like the icon you created. I like the font choice and the color choice."

Me: "Okay, now what's not working for you?"

Client: "It feels like these two worlds - eco-friendliness and technology - are two separate entities that have been forced together. They don't feel as integrated as they should be. The point here is that the two worlds aren't mutually exclusive; they can exist together."

Me: "Okay, so overall it seems like you really like the logo, but you'd like to see the two concepts a bit more connected to each other. Does that sound about right?"

Client: "Yes. Exactly."

By the end of this conversation, which happened on AIM Chat (man, I love being able to use that to connect with out-of-state clients - but that's for another entry), I was able to help him finalize the logo, and we hit on the perfect design in about half an hour, with no panic on either person's end, and no need for extra time or fees. Before I started using my Creative Brief, I found it near impossible to deal with situations like this, since I could never quite figure out what to say. With the Creative Brief, I have a specific set of criteria I'm looking to fulfill with my design, and I can start examining the design against the criteria one by one to figure out exactly where the problem is.

A good Creative Brief doesn't have to be complicated - for most projects, a few questions are enough:

1) who are you?
2) what do you do?
3) how do are you viewed now?
4) how do you want to be viewed?
5) who are your customers? what are they like?
6) what ONE message do you want to communicate to them? (the best designs keep it simple - say one thing and say it clearly)
7) how do you want them to feel when they get this communication?
8) what do you want them to do or think when they get this communication?
9) what's your budget? (yes, you should ask this)
10) who's providing content (text/images/etc.) for this?
11) what are the specific things you need done? Brochure, website, logo, etc.?

You can go as detailed or as broad as you want - just make sure that whatever you use works for the way you work. For example, my friend D'Lanie Blaze of Jailhouse Graphics has questions like "Coffee, Tea, or Tequila?" as part of her creative brief - a fun way of getting to know her clients that stays true to the personality of her business. The Brief available for download at Creative Latitude (which I think is the one that Neil Tortorella uses) has about 10 pages full of questions - more than I could ever think of asking. the zen kitchen's creative brief is available for download here - it's still in development, but it's worked well for me, it's an easily updateable Word document (which is GREAT for most clients - as nice as PDFs are, they're too hard to work with for most people), and the questions are pretty easy to answer for a number of clients. Feel free to grab it and use it for your own clients, or take a look at the Resources section at Creative Latitude and create your own brief.

On Research

One of the beautiful things about this stage in the zen kitchen's development is that I'm starting to see more interesting projects coming in - while there's still a good share of basic web production and ad layout, I'm starting to see more and more projects that I can really sink my teeth into - I've just completed one branding project, and am in the process of two others and a sustainability brochure. On top of that, I'm seeing more clients coming from eco/socially responsible backgrounds, which has been one of my goals since starting the zen kitchen almost a year ago now. Overall, I feel more accomplished and more creative than I have in years.

But a recent experience got me thinking really strongly about the creative process and the steps involved, and reminded me somewhat harshly of one of the biggest challenges that professional designers face: clients who visibly don't understand all the steps that are involved in coming up with great work. They think that you can just throw things together after a couple of hours (sometimes even a few minutes) of thought, and it will somehow magically be brilliant, because they think that's what it means to be good at what you do.

This is the thing: any significant creative venture, whether it's a website, logo, brochure, or new product, requires appropriate time spent doing research - learning about the company or product you're promoting, figuring out who their best customers are and brainstorming the best tactics for reaching them. Skip out on that, and you end up guessing your way through the entire project - sometimes you get lucky and you hit on something really great, but more often your designs end up falling flat, and do nothing for your client. And when that happens, the chance of that client coming back to you is significantly less than if you take the time to research the company and its customers, and use that information to come up with a design that speaks to them.

So often when speaking to clients - and sometimes even when speaking with people who work with creative professionals for a living (much to my dismay) - I find people who mistakenly believe that design is something that only happens on the computer - you talk about the project a little bit, jump right in and start designing away. In my experience, my best designs have NEVER happened that way. More often, I spend the first major chunk of time working on a project (which varies depending on the project's budget, but it's normally between 4 and 8 hours minimum) looking for everything I can find about the company and what it does; looking at competitor's sites and figuring out how the company I'm creating for can distinguish itself; talking to people who fit the target market to find out what they really need from the client's company. Then I start brainstorming - throwing words, ideas and quick doodles into my sketchbook, then filtering through those to find a few ideas that really fit the project's creative brief. Then, and ONLY then, do I head to the computer. Once I've done the appropriate research and sketches, I can turn around most concepts pretty quickly - if I haven't done research, or spent any time in my sketchbook throwing around ideas, it often seems like nothing will come out of me no matter how hard I try. It's incredibly demoralizing - like a permanent state of creative blocks.

Mind you, some jobs don't really require that much research - something where the layout, fonts, images, etc. is already predetermined, for example, really just requires you knowing where to find things and where to put them. Most production work falls into this category. But well-done research is essential to any truly creative project, no matter how small - skip it, and you're doing a disservice to your client, and to yourself.

I'm in a book!

Okay, well - not really ME, but the logo I did for Branches Fine Gifts was selected among 2000 others to appear in LogoLounge 3, a collection of the best logos submitted to the popular LogoLounge site by a panel of international judges.

Jill Johwa, owner of Branches (which sadly had to close its doors in early 2006 right after I found out this logo was going to be published due to landlord issues) was my client for almost two years. She was a complete joy to work with - she knew where she wanted the business to go and the message she wanted to send, but she always trusted my creative judgement. Through the two years we worked together, I honed my skills in copywriting, branding, and illustration. I was devastated when the store had to close - in addition to the other great products she offered, her store was where I found my favorite perfume, Earth by ZENTS.

Re-Nourish Interview Part Two: Future Plans

This week, partly because the interview was long and partly because things here at the zen kitchen have been too busy for me to breathe (guess this marketing thing works, huh?), the interview with Eric from Re-Nourish continues. In this second half, Eric talks about the future of the site, as well as how he works his sustainable message into the courses he teaches.

4. What do you hope to achieve with the site as it grows?
Personally, I want to develop more in terms of my exploration of the field and apply that to renourish. I designed the site to be fairly "open source" where the information flows freely in and out. I wasn't ever planning to charge people to get this information, but instead hoped that they would spread the word or "seed" conversations with their peers and clients about sustainable design. This was the metaphor I used to develop the "bur" logo. Burs act as seeds attaching themselves to people and animals and are carried elsewhere to start new again. Just imagine what the world would be like if designers only chose 100% PCW paper tomorrow? That's one of the things I'm hoping to accomplish with renourish.5. What's been your favorite thing about seeing the site grow? What has response been like?

My favorite thing so far is the email I receive from readers. Typically they send me links to explore and also simply just tell me how much they like the site. That makes me feel all fuzzy. I'm glad the word is getting out and hopefully changes are soon to follow.

6. What's been the biggest challenge in maintaining the site's integrity and content?

The biggest challenge hasn't been finding the information. In fact it's all over the place (which of course is great). The difficult part is filtering all the information for the site to keep with my standards. Not every link people send me works for the site. Part of filtering all this content then becomes time. I have many interests (however renourish being up at the top) so it's difficult maintaining that balance. I want the site to be chock full of well organized information, but I'm finding the original quick implementation I did in grad school is quickly not adapting well to the amount of available good content. Renourish is growing faster than expected and may need a change soon. I think I may need help! Anyone willing?

7. You mentioned that you're a design professor at the University of Illinois. How have your green principals played into the work you do with students? Do you include sustainability as part of your coursework?

This is a question I have been asking myself every day. How do you get students excited and disturbed enough about the topic without sounding preachy? How do you make sustainably seem full of opportunity and not limiting? As this is my first term teaching at the University of Illinois I am attempting to begin to answer these questions though lectures and assignments. So far I haven't included sustainability as a topic (that is until my next assignment starting Monday October 23!) but instead have been building the students up to it. I've used the idea of "aware". The projects so far have then slowly opening their eyes to the power of their design work through its impact on society. Next I plan on heightening that sense of awareness to their possible environmental impacts. What I find promising is that many students already are interested in the topic and want an assignment related. I've assigned them to read "Cradle to Cradle" as a basis for the next project and hope discussion ensues. These assignments are really building blocks for me to assign more challenging and exciting sustainable design projects in the future. Thanks for asking me to be a part of your blog. Glad we could make time for this interview.

An Interview With the Eric, Founder of Re-Nourish, part the first

One of my happier recent discoveries was Re-Nourish, a repository for just about every sustainable thing you could ever want to think about, especially as it relates to graphic design . Sites like these are hard to find—so many of them deal exclusively with industrial design, a field that's been looking towards sustainability for years. Eco-friendly print design, while not new, has not started looking really sexy until recently, when the world (or, at least, the US) finally started turning an ear to the green movement. Re-Nourish has listings of green design firms (in which the zen kitchen is, in fact, listed), information on how and why to design green (including safe PANTONE swatch pallettes and paper listings), and notes on other miscellaneous greenery, including a running commentary on environmental news in the articles section. Not long ago, I asked Eric, the founder of Re-Nourish and a design professor at the University of Illinois, a few questions about his reasons for developing this incredible information repository and vision for the future of the site.

note: This is the first part of the interview, as it's a bit long for the blogosphere. Tune in next week for part two!

1. Why did you decide to create Re-Nourish? How did it get started?
Renourish really started back in the autumn of 2003, when I attended the AIGA Power of Design Conference in Vancouver, BC Canada. I heard people like Bruce Mau, Susan Szenasy, Jeff Mendelsohn and Michael Braungart speak. The all spoke about the things that were running through my mind at the time as I questioned my purpose as a designer. I was curious to know how detrimental the paper industry really was and if I could do better. I had recently read "Culture Jam" by Kalle Lasn and "Cradle to Cradle" by William McDonough and Michael Braungart and found myself wondering should designers be less consumer related and more citizen focused?
These ruminations led me to the University of Texas at Austin where I decided to purse and MFA in design and social responsibility. I struggled for two years to find a positive relationship between graphic designer and the environment. At times I felt my efforts were in vain and that our society was doomed to fail, consuming everything as it fell. I read voraciously. I spent hours in a nearby coffee shop writing, asking myself questions, and experimenting with projects with limited success. The turning point came when I asked myself these questions: "How can the graphic designer practice more sustainably in a very practical way?" and "What is the medium where the designer can be reached 24/7 at home and at the job?" At first my answer was a sustainably designed paper sketchbook, but found the web more accessible and less wasteful in its construction. Renourish was born. It was two years of research and a hurried 3 weeks of design and implementation to meet my thesis deadlines. Looking back I feel the answer was sitting in front of me a year earlier, but I needed to test my other ideas before accepting I was right all along.
2. What first intrigued you about green design? When did you start applying an eco-friendly focus to your design projects?
I think in reality I got interested in the topic when I was a teenager arguing with my dad about why (as a household) we should recycle. I would constantly pull newspapers, milk jugs and cardboard out of the kitchen trash bin and haul it out to the curb every week. It was a losing battle, but in the end I think that sparked my interest. Later, as a designer I found the direct mail, packaging, and print collateral I spent days/weeks slaving over piled in city trash bins. I wanted to do better. I didn't want my work to end up the way it was. But, it really wasn't until graduate school when I began to apply eco-friendly, sustainable principles to my work. Up until that point I really didn't have the information and techniques to do so.
3. How much research did you put into the Re-Nourish resources? How do you find information to put into the site?
I spent 2003-2006 reading about the environment, design impacts and sustainability. I wrote a number of papers and my thesis on the topics. Along the way the information came from books by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, Daniel Imhoff, William McDonough, treehugger.com, the Sierra Club and literally hundreds of other sources. I also had the pleasure of meeting a number of people who also focused their life on sustainability. They were from different cultures (India, Mexico, England) and brought to my life a different perspective on the topic outside of that here in the USA. I collaborated with a few of them on some eco-friendly projects and used those experiences on renourish.

To learn more about Re-Nourish, visit http://www.re-nourish.com. Tune in next week for part two of the interview, where Eric talks about his vision for the future of the site, and how he works sustainability into the courses he teaches.

Designers Unite! Another Designer Goes Green

One of the things that's been making me smile of late is the new wave of designers who have decided to make green considerations part of their practice - environmental concerns have been a consideration in product design for quite some time, but in the world of printed goodness, eco-concerns weren't really talked about as much - with the exception of a select few places where you could find the goods on green design.

But lately, I've been seeing a host of terrific writing from other designers about their committment to going green, including this post I discovered on the HOW Design Forum from Holly Castles, an illustrator from Canada (who has REALLY CUTE work, by the way - it reminds me of fairy tales), where she discusses 60+ ways to make your studio and your design work more eco-friendly. I was pleased to find that I was already doing a couple of the things she suggests (such as using shopping bags for trash instead of buying trash bags and using natural light whenever possible instead of turning on the lights in my office), and I learned a few great tips as well.

This newfound excitement for sustainability makes me happy - when I first decided to make eco-friendly graphic design one of the focuses of my studio, I worried that I would be limiting myself by having to be extra choosy about the stuff I took on; and so far, I've been getting great clients, and doing the work that I want to do, the way I want to do it. And seeing other designers moving towards greener practices gives me hope that maybe we can make a difference. After all, we are the ones who create all this paper in the service of our clients. If we don't do something, who will?

Clearing the Air: When Client "Favors" go Awry

Designers, for the most part, are a giving lot. While you do get the occasional antisocial jerk (and really, what profession DON'T you get that in - have you been to the Post Office lately?), most of us got into this because we want to make the world prettier. As such, most designers, especially in the beginning of their careers, find themselves doing a bit of design work here and there as a favor - to a family member, friend of a friend, etc. Often, this isn't a big deal - you whip something together really quick, the person loved it, and buys you a six-pack (or, in one recent personal case, a fancy dinner) to thank you. No biggie.

But sometimes, and some would argue more often than not, what starts off as a quick favor turns into a nightmare of revisions, tweaks, and "could you just make this bigger? Could you make the font green?" The resulting stress is enough to make even the most generous designer swear themselves off doing favors ever again, and think of the favor-askers as someone who is just looking for something for nothing. But often, all that's needed to rectify the situation and get things on track again is a bit of open communication about what's expected from each party at the beginning of the project. And if things do start getting out of hand, a gentle reminder of those expectations is in order.

Not long ago, I ended up chatting with Kevin Scarborough, a young designer and budding illustrator who's going for his master's at the Portfolio Center in Atlanta. As a "favor" to a friend of a friend (which really is a favor to the friend, but let's not get into that discussion), he agreed to do the shell of a website for someone his friend knew at a greatly reduced rate. The deal they struck verbally was for 1 home page and 1 interior page, with 2 rounds of revisions on the design. The client would then take the pages and do the rest of the build, and all the updates, on his own machine.

Well, as many things do, things didn't go that way.

"I laid out the site for him, sent along the files. He asked for tweaks, I tweaked. Back and forth for close to two months. 2 rounds [of revisions were mentioned]. We've long since passed 2 rounds."

At the point he was at, he was ready to give up - getting down on himself for being enough such an idiot to take on this job, and thinking that he was stuck in a situation he couldn't get out of. What I suggested, however, was a simple conversation to clear the air.

Okay. So what I think you need to do is sit down and have a conversation with the guy on the phone. Say that there seems to be some confusion as to what was actually agreed to when we spoke, and before you move forward with this job, it's important that the two of you reconnect to clarify what is being done for how much money. When you talk to him, impress upon him that what you verbally agreed to was 2 pages with 2 rounds of revisions. It's now been [x amount], and this job has reached the point where it is no longer feasible to continue working on it without additional compensation. This also puts you in a situation where you can get a signed contract from him that will protect both of you. Draw up a formal agreement that both of you can sign. Send him a PDF and have him fax it to you before you do any more work for him.

So, did this reasoned discussion with the client result in a magical client turnaround? Not exactly. But, it accomplished the primary goal - getting the matter resolved - professionally and without causing undue stress for the client or for the designer. When I asked Kevin how the situation turned out, this is what he had to say:

It ended amicably; we decided the situation wasn't set up properly from the beginning. Deliverables made, payments made, both parties parted in peace.

Now, one might think that this resolution is a negative thing; after all, nobody wants to lose a client. However, amicably parting ways with a client after a reasoned discussion on the phone is far better than what can often happen when issues are hashed out via e-mail. E-mail arguments are enormous time-wasters, and the impersonal nature of e-mail makes it near impossible to judge a person's tone or mood, which can lead to misinterpretation and hostility on the part of either party. By talking with the client in person or on the phone, you can avoid a whole host of potential drama.

Stuck for inspiration? Just look around you.

My good friend Mike Mackenzie, who does motion graphics for video and TV (and he's completely BRILLIANT at it), told me a great story about inspiration the other day when I was feeling uninspired.

He was in art school, and they gave the class an assignment to do a "get out the vote" poster. Everyone else was doing the standard cliche thing of red white and blue, stars, etc. He was railing against it in class, when the teacher told him to put his money where his mouth was. Trouble was, he had nothing.

He went out for a walk to clear his head, and remembered something he had heard from Neville Brody (he had the opportunity to study under him in the 80s-90s, which is when he went to school and when Brody was HUGE) - when you're stuck, let inspiration come from whatever's around you. He closed his eyes, cleared his head, and said that the next thing he saw was going to be inspiration for his piece. Then he opened his eyes and found it - a crumpled-up newspaper on the sidewalk.

He started taking headlines and bits of text that were relevant to the issues of the time, cut them out and formed them into the single word VOTE on his paper. His assignment was deemed the best in the class, and he ended up graduating second in his class (underneath, oddly enough, a designer I knew from Providence, even though they both went to a school in Boston).

That story was probably the most inspirational thing I had ever heard. Now, whenever I'm out, I look for inspiration in the things around me - especially trees, grass, and the seasons.

Conversations on Green Design: Getting Started

Well, it seems that I've happily reached that point in my career where other designers are coming to me asking for advice. Although I get my fair share of the "do you have advice for a new designer looking to get work in this field" questions, the larger portion of questions/fan mail (yes, one person actually called it fan mail) I've received concern how to get into green design, and how they can work with their clients and printers to make their jobs more sustainable.

Recently, I got a comment on one of my blogs from Kerri McHale, a designer in California whose site just makes me think of running through a field picking dandelions when I was six. It makes me smile. Her work is quite lovely as well. Kerri and I have chatted briefly on a couple of design communities I frequent through this particular blog, and she popped over to ask me a few questions:

I've followed you over from the graphic design community, as you've always been so helpful with very well thought out answers, then I noticed on your website that you focus on sustainable and green design practices. You also seem to have developed a very successful business for yourself. I have a question about all that... if you don't mind taking the time to answer.

My whole career I've been working as a full time employee for businesses, and I will be for a while to come (read: Bay Area, CA mortgage squeeze-- no room for the beginning draught of a full time freelance business)... but I plan to begin developing a client base to start up a freelance business, eventually going full time once I move away from California. I'd like to not only implement sustainable design practices, but also, if I have a large enough client base to choose, focus on design and marketing from businesses in sustainable industries.

So my questions for you mostly pertain to when you were starting out:
Did you, from the very start, employ green practices?
Did you (and do you) only employ green practices, or do you also use standard practices depending on the client?
Did you focus only on a certain niche of clients when you first starting developing a client base?

This is my biggest conundrum when I think about a business model, because, starting out, I imagine that I'd lose a lot of valuable clients who don't want to pay more money for sustainability's sake. Then again, if I practice these standards on a case-by-case basis, there's no credibility there, is there?

Incidentally, have you found that practicing green/sustainable design is that much more expensive for the client?

Sheesh, I might as well be conducting an interview!
This is a lot to answer, so I'll understand if you take a pass! But thanks in advance nonetheless! ;-)

After some thought, I offered this:

hey there,

I'm glad you appreciate the work I've been doing—it's a great inspiration to keep going when I hear props coming from others in my line of work.

In response to your questions, I had always thought about green practices and done my best to employ them to my limited knowledge on every freelance project I did—with my "day jobs," it wasn't always an option. But I have long been a fan and avid supporter of recycled paper, and from the very first project I was fighting to use it in every job I had some control over the printing on. After I started my studio and started searching around for a focus, my thoughts turned to green design, and it just clicked. I got in touch with a woman I knew in Providence who had a design firm that employed green practices, and asked her for advice. She happily gave me a bunch of resources to check out, and I started doing the research.

To the best of my ability, I employ exclusively green practices. Occasionally you get the odd job—a business card here or there where the client already has a printer lined up and it's just a quick one-off job from someone you're helping out for a moment or two—and you end up not being able to have the control you need to be green; but it's been my experience that most clients will listen if you explain to them why, and that you can still have beautiful design that's sustainable and reasonably priced.

As for a niche, I don't know that I focus on one particular niche, although some would say I do. I talk about green design wherever I have the chance, online and off, and I've noticed that the clients who come to me lately genuinely care about green design and want to apply sustainable principles to their jobs. What it comes down to is that, as the designer, you have the control. If you make it clear that this is how you work, the client either respects that or doesn't. If they don't, you probably shouldn't be working with them.

As far as pricing goes, I've found the majority of pricing to be competitive on going green vs. not going green. The trick is doing the research and figuring out what's entailed. The basics (veggie ink and 100% postconsumer paper) isn't going to up your cost that much (although some would claim that it's expensive compared to places like Vistaprint, but frankly, that site doesn't even factor into the equation on the vast majority of my work), but ink-saving techniques like die-cutting and embossing can. It's really up to the specifics of the job, and where you want to go with a specific piece.

What I'd suggest is to do some research—start with Partners in Design's Eco Strategies and Celery Design's Eco Guide to Paper, and spend some time on Re-Nourish. Then start talking to your clients about it. Get price quotes on recycled vs. non-recycled. Most high-end papers have at least one recycled option, and it's usually similar in price to the other sheets in the line. Make them see that it will make barely a blip on their bottom line, and the good karma they get from going green on their materials will pay for it in spades and accolades. Then make the switch and start pitching yourself as green.

Greening the Office: PDF Design Workflow

One of the things I love about having my own office is that I get to make my own decisions – as the boss, I get to decide what kind of paper to put in the printer, how often to print things, what kind of notebooks to buy, and a whole host of other things that I just don’t get the opportunity to do as someone who isn’t running the show. When I started the zen kitchen, one of my primary objectives was to be as green as possible, not only in the materials I created for my clients, but in my in-studio practices as well.

Before I opened the studio, I spent about six years working in print shops, corporate art departments, and privately at home, and one of the things that always frustrated me about the places I worked outside of my home office was the amount of waste created in the traditional design workflow. In almost every art department I worked in, the average layout required printing every page of the layout, usually on a larger size sheet (11 by 17 or 12 by 18), to be passed around the office for approval. Inevitably there would be anywhere from 3 to 12 rounds of edits, and each round of edits required the printing of a new proof. The end result of this was that the average job jacket contained anywhere from 12 to 50 sheets of paper by the end of a job; and generally speaking, most of the paper used had either no recycled content or the bare minimum recycled content, and while many of the offices had excellent recycling programs, the sheer amount of waste created was disconcerting.

With the work I’ve done in my home studio and for the zen kitchen, I’ve instituted a digital PDF workflow – meaning that, after I’ve finished a draft for a client, I export the piece as a PDF and send it to the client for review via e-mail. This process has worked very well for a variety of reasons:

• It saves time – many of my clients are ½ hour or more away, and sending them a PDF means I don’t have to deliver proofs in person. It’s also much quicker than working up a comp and mailing it to a client.
• It saves money – by eliminating shipping and printing costs for proofs, I’m able to work more efficiently and keep overhead reasonable.
• It saves paper and ink – by not printing out proofs after every round of revisions, I manage to save a tree or two, as well as avoid a trip to Staples.
• It saves space on my workshelves and in my filing cabinets.

I began to fully realize the beauty of the digital workflow I’ve created in the studio while I was working with Virgin Life Care on a big layout project. The project was a 75-page manual that was being cut to about 50 pages with edits on those pages – much more reasonable, but still quite the feat. My contact at the company had the full version of Acrobat, which (because it’s brilliant) allowed him to make comments and requests for edits right in the PDF document – which meant that, through three rounds of changes, I was able to not only get his edits in a timely manner and make the edits quickly, I was able to do it all without printing a single sheet of paper.

PDF workflows can be tough to implement – in some, more established, art departments, it can be tough to get people used to dealing with Acrobat’s commenting features, as well as getting them out of the habit of requiring paper proofs. In addition, it can be tough to accurately judge things like size, die-cuts, etc. in PDF form – for things I’m using die-cutting for, or that require special assembly, I always try to do at least one paper comp, fully assembled and cut out. But once it’s in use, a PDF workflow can add tremendous benefits to both office efficiency and a company’s bottom line.