Last Wednesday, ASAE held a Lunch and Learn session titled “Design on a Dime.” We asked Richard Belle, President of Belle Communications to share his take-aways from the event.

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What a joy to be guest blogging for Jacki today! Recently I was able to take part in a marvelous discussion that explored some of the challenges currently facing associations and their designers.

This past Wednesday, ASAE’s Communication Section Council presented “Design on a Dime,” looking at the best ways to get the most out of a tight budget or limited time restraints, whether working with an in-house design team or an outside firm. Speakers included Wendy Bogart, Director of Graphic Design, Council for Advancement and Support of Education; Amy Miedema, Senior Director of Communications, American Academy of Audiology; and Rita Zimmerman, Communications Coordinator, American Inns of Court.  As a communications professional who is NOT a designer, I was struck by how much of the discussion was really about good management and effective planning, even if couched in the vocabulary of design. Put simply, no design, no matter how compelling or aesthetically innovative, can afford to be disconnected from strategy and budget.

The panel provided straightforward tips that should help you control time and money while still promoting effective design. These should help you whether you are the communications director trying to control your design costs or the designer trying to win and maintain business.

Developing a Cohesive and Proactive Strategy

• Consider all potential uses for a brand or logo. When you create pieces, constantly think of multiple and reinforcing applications. A riveting design is great; flexibility with that design is even better.
• Make sure that your annual budget is realistic in estimating costs. This means that you must consider artwork, design, printing, mailing, and postage for all the elements you hope to develop.
• Develop a design request form that each department must complete, including project name, budget, business objectives, target audience, schedule and deadlines, design medium, quantity, etc.
• Discuss and enforce timelines. By educating non-designers on how long they should plan for design, printing, blue-line, or other activities, you can manage their expectations up front.

Creating Great Artwork with a Shrinking Budget

• Collaborate with other organizations in your industry. You might be able to create photos that more than one organization can use, albeit in different contexts.
• Use typography as a design element.
• Develop cost-effective ways to photograph subjects for use in your publications and web site. With skillful planning, you may use a single event to develop materials that you will use in many different publications.
• Consider using a subscription service or micro stock. Used creatively, these photos or graphics do not have to look like stock elements. Don’t confuse stock with cliché.
• Create your own art.
• Set a budget for each publication and stick to it.

Managing Your Workflow

• Only go to a designer when you have planned out all contingencies and considered all potential applications of the artwork.
• Define what you mean by final copy. You must define in advance how many reviews and corrections may occur. Otherwise, multiple reviews and proofs will destroy your budget.
• Make sure your “final” decision-makers review and sign-off on design at the earliest possible time. If you wait until the final proof to get buy-in, you may end up re-doing the design and paying for it twice (or more!).

Most of these suggestions are basic and reflect common-sense management practices. Unfortunately, too often we are beguiled by sexy design and forget management 101.

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Richard Belle is President of Belle Communications, LLC, a communications consulting firm in Bethesda, MD. Services include communication audits, proposal coaching, technical writing, technical editing, and awards preparation. Please visit the web site at www.bellecomm.net or contact Richard at
Richard@bellecomm.net.

Twitter is a powerful tool to communicate with your members and conference attendees. Here are some ways you can leverage Twitter to promote your conference and add value on-site.

Create a separate Twitter handle for your conference. Use this handle to promote session updates, speaker announcements, and registration deadlines. Cross-promote by posting occasional relevant messages to both your conference handle and your Association handle.

Include your Twitter handle in all print and electronic communication with your members.

Consider giving a specific registration discount to your Twitter followers. Offering an exclusive registration discount code to your Twitter followers will help your organization track ROI and will also result in retweets (RT). If five of your followers each retweet your offer to their 100 followers, your message has been seen by as many as 500 additional people.

Encourage attendees to add their Twitter name to their nametags. (Or, collect them on the registration form and preprint the Twitter names.) Attendees are coming from all over the country and Twitter is a great way to facilitate lasting conversation.

Host a Tweet-Up at the conference. Chances are your members may not know other members who they are following on Twitter. A Tweet-Up is a great way to get to know each other online and off. The event can be as informal as sending out a tweet to meet at a local bar or restaurant, or, the event can be more formalized and planned in advance as a part of the conference.

At the conference, encourage the use of laptops and phones. Attendees can tweet session highlights and ask questions to speakers in real-time. Announce specific hashtags (a short abbreviation preceded by a #) at the beginning of each session to allow for easy searching. During Q&A time, broadcast the session’s Twitter feed on the projection screen so attendees can see the questions being asked as well as the comments of their fellow attendees.

Utilize Twitter to serve as a conference “concierge.” Most likely, your members are in a new place and may not be at all familiar with the nearby attractions. A conference concierge can help these members find restaurant recommendations, give information about airport transportation options and help connect members with each other. Plus, since members are in sessions most of the day, they are away from the computer and don’t have time to spend online looking for local information. Assign several staff members (especially those still in the office) to follow the Twitter feed and as attendees reply to your conference tag (@) with questions, have these staff members respond to any questions that arise.

For example: @conference: I’m looking for a place to take 6 people to dinner tonight around 7 for a business dinner. Any suggestions? @attendee: McCormick & Schmicks is 2 blocks from the convention center and has availability at 6:45. Can I make you a reservation? ^staff

or

@conference: How far is the airport from the hotel? Need to know when to leave to catch my flight. @attendee: 15 minutes during rush hour. 7 minutes otherwise. ^staff

If you have a great idea your association has used, or that you’ve seen in action at a conference you’ve attended, share it below in the comments!

Last Friday night, I attended a workshop hosted by the DC chapter of AIGA, an organization I have been involved in for more than 10 years. Moderating the workshop was Stanley Hainsworth, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer for Tether, and former VP Global Creative for Starbucks, and Creative Director for Lego and Nike. I would be lying if I didn’t admit to having a little bit of a design crush on him. While the topic of conversation — Showcasing the Strategic Business Value of Your In-House Team — was specifically geared towards designers, many of Hainsworth’s tips are relevant for anyone in the marketing or creative industry.

1. Track the time spent on your various projects. Share this with leadership and set priorities based on the company goals. If a new project comes up and doesn’t fit in one of the priority buckets, evaluate if the project should take away resources from another bucket.

2. Host a monthly show and tell and invite everyone in the company. Showcase high-quality, high-impact, and successful examples from other industries. By showing off these high-quality examples, you can gently suggest the type of work your company should be doing.

3. Create side projects for your team. These “no-client” projects are a great source of creative relief for your team and will show senior members of the staff that your department is constantly thinking of new and creative resources for the company. And don’t always make the the project something relevant for the company. At Starbucks, the creative team developed a “tee of the month” initiative, where designers created a new tee shirt every month. The project was such a success it was turned into an online shop, BassTruckReactive.com (that’s Starbucks Creative re-arranged).

4. As a team, share something outside of work that you enjoy. If someone enjoys cooking, host a potluck for lunch. If it’s running, go for a fun run after work. Getting to know your team as people helps build the relationships needed to work together successfully.

5. Work in the field for a week. At Starbucks, the entire creative team worked in a store for a week. After a few days, Hainsworth observed that customers in line would often order the same beverage as the person in front of them — and it was not a coincidence, they didn’t know what on the menu to order. With this information, the Starbucks creative team developed a promotion to teach customers how to order. After clicking through a few screens, their customized beverage would appear and the customer would receive a tee-shirt with order. A similar promotion “My Drink As Art” is now available for Starbucks gift cards.

6. Finally, Hainsworth suggested rather than giving performance based bonuses, tie bonuses to specific business problems. Good design and good marketing should solve a specific problem. As problemsolvers, this will not only encourage your team to take ownership of these problems, but it will show senior leadership that you are entirely committed to the success of the project.

Implementing even one of these tips will help your team work together to show those outside your department the value you add to the success of the company.

It’s an everyday scenario: You’re working on a Powerpoint presentation when you realize you need to insert your logo. You browse to the correct folder and you are faced with more file types than you can count: PNGs, JPGs, EPSs, TIFs, oh my!It may seem like a time to panic, but this reference guide will help you select just the right file type for ANY project.

Click on the “More” link to download a copy for yourself, or to send a copy to your colleagues.

The latest issue of ASAE’s magazine, Associations Now, provides a great article on how to communicate with your design firm. The original article, written by Jen Smith, can be found here.

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Tips for Communicating With Your Designers

It’s a scenario guaranteed to raise tension: You hear your designer lament the overuse of a particular font while all you want is a brochure that will help you meet your fundraising (or sales, or registration) goals. Your designer, on the other hand, hears you saying, “Well, I just don’t like it. I don’t know why,” when he or she is looking for substantive feedback. How can you get on the same page—literally?

The key to successful partnerships with designers is to understand that your words and their images are working together to create a message. If there is a disconnect between the two, the message is all but lost. Here are some suggestions on how to do so, from a designer’s perspective.

Involve your designer early in the planning process. We want the piece we’re creating to be as effective and useful as you do. Designers can offer ideas to help structure a piece to better convey a particular message, or even ways to make a piece more cost efficient in printing or production.

Understand that designers aren’t just worried about how something looks. We want to create a strong piece in which words and images work well together. Be willing to listen to suggestions about content or wording from your designer, just as we are willing to listen to suggestions about imagery or placement. A team effort makes the final product stronger.

Tell us what you want the piece to say, not how you want it to look. Often we hear “make this text block bold and bigger,” when what you really mean is “this text is more important than the current design shows.” Moving the text to a different area of the page or altering the design of other elements might be a better solution than changing the font size.

Communicate your reactions as fully as possible. It can be difficult to put into words why you do or don’t like a particular design, but even a simple description of what you’re seeing can be more helpful than “I just don’t like it.” This goes back to being on the same page from the start of a project: If the designer understands the goals of the piece, it will be easier to explain why what you see doesn’t meet those goals.

We won’t let our egos get in the way if you don’t. Designers can get a bad rap for caring only about design for design’s sake. This couldn’t be more false. We care about what we are communicating. We are not designers so much as we are visual communicators. When you put it that way, we’re not that different from you.

Our first post in this series looked at how the type of agency can effect the cost of the project, and why the lowest cost agency is not always the best choice. This post will explain what software your designer should be using to prevent problems in producing the piece (try saying that five times fast!).

Depending on if your project is a print or Web print, you’ll want to make sure that your designer has the appropriate program knowledge.

Print designers should be experienced working with Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator (also known as the Adobe Creative Suite). Some designers choose to work in Quark Xpress, which, like Adobe InDesign is a layout program. Your designer should never use Adobe Illustrator for page layout. Illustrator should be used for drawing, creating maps and charts and graphs, and for designing your logo. Similarly, Photoshop should not be used for page layout. Photoshop is a tool for photo manipulation, including color adjustments, collaging, and resizing. InDesign (or Quark) brings together the components created in Illustrator and Photoshop and combines them with text to create your pieces.

Web designers typically use Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Fireworks, as well as Adobe Dreamweaver. Depending on your project and vision, you may want to find a designer experienced in Adobe Flash. Don’t eliminate a designer from your prospect list if they don’t have experience in Flash; your designer can always contract out this part of the project. Additionally, your Web designer will have knowledge of a wide variety of programming languages. Rely on the designer to advise you on the best language for your project.

Using the proper tools for the job prevents printing and file sharing issues, and ensures your piece will be of the quality you desire. In our next post, we’ll what to look for in your designer’s portfolio to make sure they have the experience necessary for your project. Check back next week, or sign up to receive the post in your email.

You want to hire a designer or an agency for an upcoming project. Sounds easy enough, right? Just like any other vendor you work with, you need to be sure that the individual or firm you select is qualified to complete your project. This series of blog posts will help you find the designer or agency that is the perfect fit for your project.

With many marketing budgets being slashed, cost is often the first consideration when looking at design consultants. Since freelancers do not carry the overhead that agencies do, they can typically charge less. However, because a freelancer is only one person, there is a limit to the amount of work they can take on. An agency will often have multiple designers on staff and can take on more projects at one time. Think Tank Creative, and other start-up agencies, are often hybrids of the two — since Think Tank Creative does not have a designated “office” space, we have low-overhead and pass the savings on to our clients; and since we maintain relationships with other freelance designers in the area, we can bring on other designers to support our workload when necessary.

Each agency and individual has their own formula for calculating budgets. The type of project (print vs. web, flyer vs. catalog), the lifespan of the piece, and the man-hours involved in developing the piece all factor into the cost of the piece. Some designers will work on an hourly basis, while others prefer to work on a per-piece basis. If working with a designer on an hourly basis, consider asking for a cap on the number of hours as a form of insurance that your project will not go over budget.

It is important to remember that the lowest cost designer or agency may not be the best choice. They may lack the proper software, technical skills, and relationships necessary to properly execute your projects. In our next post, we’ll explain what software your designer should be using to complete your project. Check back next week, or click here to sign up to receive our blog posts in your inbox!

You’ve invested months working with a top-notch designer and programmer. You’ve agonized over the appropriate wording for your homepage. You’ve argued colors, fonts, sizes and images with just about every person in your organization. You’ve tested the site, the CMS, and the database. Your site is about to go live. Before it does, there is one final round of checks you MUST perform on your site.

1. Do you have a favicon? Is it representative of your brand?

A favicon appears next to your URL in your browser window, or the bookmarks window of a site. Think Tank Creative uses the iconic “!” from our logo. Twitter uses the lower-case “t”. Facebook an “f”. Your favicon can be a stylized letter from your logo, or a small graphic representative of your product or service.

2. Have you looked at your site on multiple machines and in multiple Internet browsers?

A reputable web development company should test your Web site in a variety of browsers before it goes live, but you should also take a few moments and test the site yourself, or have a few trusted members or customers test your site for you. Have them send you a screen capture of the site so you can identify and potential cross-platform issues. There will be slight variances between browsers; you’ll want to make sure the site doesn’t look completely out of sorts.

3. Did you proofread your site? Did you proofread it again?

Everyday I stumble upon mistakes and errors on Websites (sometimes even on Think Tank’s site!). Really read your site. Some find it helpful to read the site to yourself outloud; as silly as it sounds, you’d be surprised how many mistakes you find that way. Ask a few colleagues to proofread the site as well — not for content, for errors.

4. Did you click every single link in the site?

You’ll want to triple check that all of your links go where they are supposed to go. Make sure they aren’t still linking to a development site, or that a typo is not preventing the links from working. If you have lots of links in your site, assign a few pages to each of the members of your team to divide up the work. And, if most of your links direct users to external sites, you’ll want to make sure you check the links every few weeks to ensure they are still active and correct.

5. Have you contacted yourself through the site?

If you have a phone number listed on the site, pick up the phone and dial it. Numbers can easily be flip-flopped, and the Smith’s will thank you when they aren’t fielding hundreds of calls a day for ABC Association. Make sure links to emails actually pull up an email address. Is the subject line pre-populated? If it’s not, consider having your programmer adjust the code so that it is. It will save your site visitors the time of filling it out, and it will allow the recipient to filter these emails in their inbox. If there is a contact form on the site, fill out the various fields and make sure the form is working — and that the appropriate person receives the form submission.

6. Are your analytics working? Have you looked at the dashboard? Are you scheduled to receive regular analytic reports?

Analytics are extremely important part of your site. You’ll want to make sure everything is in working order when your site launches. Make sure you understand what the dashboard is showing, and ask your Web developer any questions about the venacular. As more and more users visit your site, these analytics will show areas where your site could use improvements.

7. What happens when you print your site?

Let’s face it. Web site are not designed to be printed. But some visitors will print part or all of your site. What happens when the occasional visitor does print your site? Is the printer spitting out 20 pages of text in a 2″ wide column? Or, is the site printing out a single formatted sheet of paper. If it is the former, ask your Web developer to add a print style sheet to your site. This style sheet will not effect the look of your site in a Web environment, but will print the content of the site in an easy-to-read format.

After investing so much time — and money — in your site, you’ll want to make sure everything is in perfect working order out of the gate. Your Web developer should perform all of these checks — and more — on your site, but you’ll want to make sure that you also confirm that everything on the site is in perfect working order.