The Orwell Bridge at Sunrise.

The food tent and some cows on the farm near Shotley

Moo. The river Orwell in the distance.

Getting the laptops ready.

The film crew. Really, really happy about such an early start. Honest.

The contestant’s caravans.

Downloading the designs for printing out later that day.

A man once set a challenge to three great magicians.

“Present me with the greatest illusion ever!”

The three magicians worked tirelessly to come up with the greatest trick they had ever conceived, and rather than give the entire illusion (what with the Magic Circle, and all) away, each magician went in and told the man what his trick would do. The man was impressed with what he heard from each magician. After thinking long and hard, he decided on his favourite illusion and chose his magician.

The chosen magician was overjoyed, and set straight to work on preparing his final grand illusion. It would take him weeks to be completely ready to show the man, lots of preparation and planning was required.

After only a couple of days, there was a knock at the magicians workshop. It was the man, and he was interested to see how the magician’s grand plan was coming along.

“Ah, but you must wait until I am ready to show you my illusion, sir”, said the magician, “otherwise, the illusion is ruined”

The man was not happy, he had searched long and hard for the right magician, and wanted to see how the illusion was coming along.

“But if I show you now, you will not see the wonder of the prestige”, said the magician, with great concern.

His client was not budging though, and took a seat in the middle of his workshop. He was refusing to move until he saw something.

Very reluctantly, the magician agreed to show the man where he was up to with his illusion. The man was very happy, he moved his seat over to the side of the room and waited for the illusion to begin.

The illusion began, and the man sat forward on his chair to see his dream realised.

“This is going to be incredible!”, he thought to himself.

To his horror, he looked up and saw an unpainted box being lowered from the ceiling on a series of pulleys and mechanisms.

“STOP STOP STOP!”, shrieked the man. “WHAT IS THIS, NONSENSE? I’M PAYING FOR THE GREATEST ILLUSION EVER, NOT THIS!”

“But this WILL be the greatest trick ever, you just haven’t seen it finished!”, replied the frustrated magician. “It has to be seen on the stage, with the elements positioned correctly, and the workings tucked away from prying eyes”.

The man didn’t understand, surely this is not how these things are done?

……..

There ends the little tale.

I wrote it to try and highlight the worrying situation where a client wants to see an unfinished staging site, on a testing server.

What should be done?

Here are a few thoughts on what should be done in a client/agency situation like the one above:

1. Don’t let it get to that point. From a client-management perspective, the client should be briefed on schedule at the start of the project. This schedule should include when the client will get to see the staging server. Any requests to view prior to that date should be politely deflected.
2. Explain the pitfalls. The client may not understand how a site goes from a concept stage into a build stage. Clearly explain to them that it’s a transitional stage and best kept under wraps until everything is in place, and the above agreed date has been reached.
3. Keep the client busy. The development process can take time. The client can easily become impatient during this process if they have nothing to do. There’s plenty they can be getting on with during the development process, though: image-sourcing, content writing (if they have a news section on the site, get them to prepare a good chunk of articles, ready for launch), product sourcing for e-commerce sites and refining their strategies to drive traffic to their shiny new web site.

I’ve seen the same situation apply to large print projects, too. The above principals of managing the client can (and absolutely should) still apply.

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James Kindred is co-founder and Art Director of Condiment, a design and creative communications agency in the centre of Ipswich, Suffolk.

Thanks to Beatriz AG for the pic.

James Kindred is co-founder and Art Director of Condiment, a design and creative communications agency in the centre of Ipswich, Suffolk.

The responsibility for setting up these key workflows is that of the Studio Director or most senior designer. These processes work to the benefit of the studio and the end-client. The studio has a set of guidelines and an artwork ‘toolkit’ that they can quickly re-use and distribute amongst all the collateral required. Getting things like this in place is good for others in the studio to learn from.

The result of these processes should mean that the client saves money and time, because artwork is not having to be re-purposed, or, worst case scenario, completely redrawn due to result of quality and resolution issues that are solely down to the poor management of collateral in the studio.

The spanner-in-the-works of maintaining and developing these workflows is when corners start getting cut by way of a lack of knowledge. This can manifest itself in the belief that getting something done fastest on the first attempt is the best way. It isn’t.

Consider the situation. A multi-format ad campaign needs to be done, there are various sized ads and potentially a number of non-standard deliverables that require matching artwork. The quickest way of getting an ad done for the first deadline would be to do the artwork in something like Photoshop. Type tools are available, things are easy to cut out quickly and you can layer up everything you need in one document. A proof is off to the client in record time, and they’re none the wiser. All fine and dandy, right?

Now, you need to hand this onto another team member who needs to develop the remaining deliverables. They only have the artwork at the size the original ad has been created, there are no stylesheets to carry across and the elements that need to be scaled up/down are in a pixel-based format that won’t play nicely when it comes to scaling. Bad times.

Doing the initial groundwork would have saved considerable time (and stop a junior designer bugging you every 30 seconds). What would have possibly a few more minutes at the start could save hours in the long run, especially if the campaign is extensive. The introduction of workflow tools like Adobe Bridge have made the creation of workflows and artwork control much easier.

As a client, it’s worth checking with your agency what workflows they have in place. At the end of the day, you don’t want to have to be shelling out for poor production practices that are not your responsibility.

Here are a few pointers on setting up studio workflows.

1. Know the pure purpose of each application. Yes you can typeset in Photoshop and add photos to Illustrator, but you need to understand the pure purpose of each application and how they fit into a studio workflow.
2. Assign responsibility. Make sure there are people with key roles in for the management of each workflow in the studio, with one senior studio member over-seeing the entire process.
3. Streamline, modify and improve. Regularly review the workflow process in the studio, ensure that people are maintaining their role and try to find ways of saving time during each stage (without cutting corners)
4. Introduce project management tools. Workflow problems can sometimes come when communication fails between the account managers and the studio. Take a look at things like Traffic or the 37Signals suite of project management tools.
5. Keep learning. You can never completely master a software suite, but by ensuring you always set aside time to learn key methods of a production process, you can strengthen your studio workflow.

James Kindred is co-founder and Art Director of Condiment, a design and creative communications agency in the centre of Ipswich, Suffolk.

Pic: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid.

This doesn’t have to mean a full rebrand, or writing a massive swear word in your advertising, or – most importantly – spending a unquantifiable amount of money.

What is does mean is taking one step back and taking an unbiased view of what you (or your agency) are currently doing with your marketing material and writing down what could be done better.

It doesn’t need to be a massive list, nor do they have to be game-changing demands for change.During this process you’re potentially going to have to put something aside that all of us hold too dearly. Pride.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic to be proud of something you have done, to have a moment where you finish something, release it to the world and think “I did all this”.

You need to take a clear view of your marketing material and overall identity and ask yourself whether it’s communicating to the right audience, and whether they understand and want to buy into what you are all about.

By reviewing your marketing material in this way, you will be able to fine-tune and push how hard your agency is working for you, and more importantly whether you feel you can’t get what you need from your current creative team.

It can be easy to lose sight of what all your different methods of communication are trying to achieve when you’re in the thick of it. But a regular review of the marketing message is an invaluable way of measuring the performance of your creative agency.

If it’s not getting your money’s worth, or aren’t convinced your existing agency can’t step it up a gear, then it’s time to review who is helping to represent your company in front of your client-base.

Now is the perfect time to such a review. The economy is nowhere near being back on its feet, but those metaphorical green shoots are poking their heads through the pile of manure the bankers left behind and a highly competitive market is starting to flourish.

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James Kindred is co-founder and Art Director of Condiment, a creative agency in the centre of Ipswich, Suffolk.

The planning of this event has been of military proportions. New computers, servers, drives and screens have littered my spare room (soon-to-be-nursery) for the last couple of months, much to the concern of my poor wife, who has been trying to nest around a tangle of USB and network cables.

And so, now we are about to get into a very full car and drive to the new Ipswich design agency I’ve co-founded.

First thing to go in? The kettle, of course.

So, it’s that time. After over three years working with Spring Design & Advertising as creative director, it’s time for me to move onto a different challenge.

It’s been a blast. There’s a wonderful group of people at Spring, and the clients that myself and the team have secured over the last few years have ranged from small start-ups that have flourished through to FMCGs and luxury brands.

Three years fly past, and not just in agency-land. In that time I’ve got married, and we’re now awaiting the arrival our first child. Which is part of the reason for my departure from Spring D&A. Being closer to my family, and having somewhere to work closer to home is at the top of my priority list.

What is the other part of the reasoning? Well, for a start taking on greater challenges and pushing myself to new levels is key to my career as a creative. This doesn’t just mean moving onto larger accounts, or dealing with bigger budgets (most of the time, quite the opposite), it means finding ways to evolve my creative processes, and deliver them in ways that are yet to even pop into my head.

Taking all of this into account, the best way for me to develop is to look at the situation from the top down, by which I mean that it’s time to start my own little agency.

Along with another brilliant creative mind and some sage advice from those with excellent business brains, early March will see the start of a new Ipswich-based creative communications agency. Condiment.

That’s all I’m going to say about who we are – or what we’re going to be doing – for now. You’ll have to just visit the new web site to see how we’re developing.

For now, just have a look at www.wearecondiment.com or just follow us to keep updated.

See you soon.

Image – http://www.flickr.com/photos/noizyboy/

Based in London and operating worldwide. Ogilvy is one of the names in the world of advertising.

Idea Shop will be in Brixton for 3 days in February. They’re open to anyone and everyone, from small businesses and social enterprises, to charities and arts projects. It’s an interesting idea, and a great CSR push. I do wonder though how much uptake there will be by the everyday SME, initiative or charity. In the advertising/creative industries, Ogilvy is a name synonymous with innovation, strategy and success, but what does it mean to the small business owner looking for advice?

Time will tell, and they’ll be updating their blog while the shop is open to demonstrate the types of people that are coming through their door.

Idea Shop, Unit 47, Brixton Village Market, London, SW9
10am-6pm, February 4th – 6th

Big pic - jSome1

See the large version on Flickr