Uuups, I forgot to Write that on my List
http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/article/articles/176/1/Uuups-I-forgot-to-Write-that-on-my-List/Page1.html
Marina Rivon
Marina Rivón is a Professional Graphic Designer, Author and Principal Partner of Maremar Graphic Design. Maremar is a marketing driven graphic design studio based in the island of Puerto Rico. Her goal is to help business owners make the maximum of their visual identities and develop marketing materials that will help grow their businesses. She regularly publishes ‘Apuntes’ a free e-zine with articles and advice to empower her readers design decisions. You can subscribe to the e-zine at http://www.maremar.com By Marina Rivon
Published on 12/10/2006
Are you an efficient buyer? Do you make a list of all the things you need to buy at the supermarket as you run out of stock? Or, do you jot down a couple of items you remember at the last minute while you are running out the door? Are you the type of person that has to go daily to the supermarket because you thought you bought all the things you needed only to find out once you get home that you forgot half of your ever vanishing mind list?
Uuups, I forgot to Write that on my List
Are you an efficient buyer?
Do you make a list of all the things you need to buy at the supermarket
as you run out of stock? Or, do you jot down a couple of items you
remember at the last minute while you are running out the door? Are you
the type of person that has to go daily to the supermarket because you
thought you bought all the things you needed only to find out once you
get home that you forgot half of your ever vanishing mind list?
With the prices of gasoline going up and time being ever more scarce taking a little extra care in the attention to details does pay off on the long (and short) run. Planning your shopping trips will help eliminate extra time and money spent on gas and all those unforeseen items that just seemed to “jump” into the cart as you went by the aisle. Statistics show that each time you go into a supermarket the average person comes out with at least two items that he did not intend to buy. And that’s if you are not hungry, because if you are hungry, all the goodies in the market will attack you! Try multiplying those two small miserable items by all the times you had to go back for stuff you forgot. At the end of the week you could have easily spent an extra $20 or $30 dollars on unnecessary items. Get the picture?
Here is where planning and visual auditing comes in handy. If you prepare a shopping list as you run out of articles, check your pantry for under stocked items and plan ahead your menu for the upcoming week you can limit those costly trips to the supermarket to the bare minimum.
OK, now that you have that colorful picture in your mind, lets talk about design.-
When you decide to go “shopping” for marketing or corporate image pieces to represent your company the same principles apply. What? Not buying an extra candy cane? NO. You should prepare a “shopping list”, make a visual audit of all the materials you have available, and plan ahead. Don’t limit the scope of your design project to your immediate needs. Try to visualize what your future needs will be, one, three, five years along the line. If you don’t you just might find yourself spending extra gas and time “going back to the supermarket” before you even realize it.
Lets analyze this from both points of view, yours and the designers:
You have a new business that deals with developing workflows for specialty standards manuals for pharmaceutical companies; you need a professional looking logo and stationary. You go to a designer that a colleague has recommended so that he can help you with this. To the designer you are a stranger, he knows nothing about you nor your business, so he starts asking questions, all sort of questions, questions you have probably never sat down to think through the answers. He wants to know about your business, but your business is very technical and difficult to explain to a layman, hmmm. Huston, we have a problem- your designer needs to understand about your business, your target market, your actual market, he needs to know about your business plan, your projections and your expectations. Get the idea? And all this for a “simple little logo”.
The fundamental job of design is to solve communication problems but to be able to do that, the designer has to responsibly research and learn about your field. This takes time, it takes patience and it takes pride in your work. A designer has to become part of your team to be able to offer valid solutions. He has to learn what colors you like and the fact that you hate early American furniture. The better he knows you and your profession the more natural a solution will emerge. And this takes time, and it takes patience and it will cost you more money on the long run if you have to go through this process again two years latter with someone else because even though you could have developed that product brochure two years back, well, heck you thought it would be cheaper to do it this way. Naaaaaaa, wrong.
If you were going to buy spaghetti and pot roast but when you get home you realize that, uuups, you forgot the pot roast, you would have to start all over again. Same thing applies to design, it will be much more efficient for you and your designer to work on all the pieces in your shopping list even if you decide to keep some of them in the “freezer” for a latter date when you have the money to produce or print them.
So, be an intelligent buyer, take advantage of all the specials you find at once, plan ahead, you never know if they will be there when you come back.
With the prices of gasoline going up and time being ever more scarce taking a little extra care in the attention to details does pay off on the long (and short) run. Planning your shopping trips will help eliminate extra time and money spent on gas and all those unforeseen items that just seemed to “jump” into the cart as you went by the aisle. Statistics show that each time you go into a supermarket the average person comes out with at least two items that he did not intend to buy. And that’s if you are not hungry, because if you are hungry, all the goodies in the market will attack you! Try multiplying those two small miserable items by all the times you had to go back for stuff you forgot. At the end of the week you could have easily spent an extra $20 or $30 dollars on unnecessary items. Get the picture?
Here is where planning and visual auditing comes in handy. If you prepare a shopping list as you run out of articles, check your pantry for under stocked items and plan ahead your menu for the upcoming week you can limit those costly trips to the supermarket to the bare minimum.
OK, now that you have that colorful picture in your mind, lets talk about design.-
When you decide to go “shopping” for marketing or corporate image pieces to represent your company the same principles apply. What? Not buying an extra candy cane? NO. You should prepare a “shopping list”, make a visual audit of all the materials you have available, and plan ahead. Don’t limit the scope of your design project to your immediate needs. Try to visualize what your future needs will be, one, three, five years along the line. If you don’t you just might find yourself spending extra gas and time “going back to the supermarket” before you even realize it.
Lets analyze this from both points of view, yours and the designers:
You have a new business that deals with developing workflows for specialty standards manuals for pharmaceutical companies; you need a professional looking logo and stationary. You go to a designer that a colleague has recommended so that he can help you with this. To the designer you are a stranger, he knows nothing about you nor your business, so he starts asking questions, all sort of questions, questions you have probably never sat down to think through the answers. He wants to know about your business, but your business is very technical and difficult to explain to a layman, hmmm. Huston, we have a problem- your designer needs to understand about your business, your target market, your actual market, he needs to know about your business plan, your projections and your expectations. Get the idea? And all this for a “simple little logo”.
The fundamental job of design is to solve communication problems but to be able to do that, the designer has to responsibly research and learn about your field. This takes time, it takes patience and it takes pride in your work. A designer has to become part of your team to be able to offer valid solutions. He has to learn what colors you like and the fact that you hate early American furniture. The better he knows you and your profession the more natural a solution will emerge. And this takes time, and it takes patience and it will cost you more money on the long run if you have to go through this process again two years latter with someone else because even though you could have developed that product brochure two years back, well, heck you thought it would be cheaper to do it this way. Naaaaaaa, wrong.
If you were going to buy spaghetti and pot roast but when you get home you realize that, uuups, you forgot the pot roast, you would have to start all over again. Same thing applies to design, it will be much more efficient for you and your designer to work on all the pieces in your shopping list even if you decide to keep some of them in the “freezer” for a latter date when you have the money to produce or print them.
So, be an intelligent buyer, take advantage of all the specials you find at once, plan ahead, you never know if they will be there when you come back.