Noisy Decent Graphics

Why graphic designers are like hairdressers.

More and more I'm convinced that graphic designers are like hairdressers. Graphic design agencies are like hairdressing salons.

I believe you could open a hairdressing salon in any town in Britain and you would make money. If you were sensible and kept on top of things you could make a nice living. Nice house, nice car, two holidays a year. All that.

I also believe there could be three hairdressers in this same town and they would all make money. All have nice cars. Two holidays. That's all perfectly possible.

I also believe you could open a graphic design agency in any town in Britain and you would make money. If you were sensible and kept on top of things you could make a nice living. Nice house, nice car, two holidays a year. All that.

I also believe there could be three graphic design agencies in this same town and they would all make money. All have nice cars. Two holidays. That's all perfectly possible.

You could repeat this formula up and down the country and it would still work. Just because there's already a hairdresser in town, it's no barrier to setting up another one.

Essentially all of these hairdressers will be of roughly the same quality. You could walk into to any of them, anywhere in the country, and get roughly the same haircut for roughly the same price. From time to time some of them will win awards and some of them will have good patches, but essentially, they're all just as competent.

Every once in a while one of these salons will become very well known. Famous, even. That's because approximately a couple of percent of everything will always be very good. The rest will be average. It's the same with graphic design.

From time to time some of these salons, or agencies, will go bust. Such is life. The staff move on, the good ones start up on their own, taking the good customers with them.

With the right financing and the right management a few of these salons could expand and go nationwide, maybe even international. But this will be rare, because essentially the business model isn't scalable.

According to the Design Council, 95% of design consultancies have less than 5 staff and a turnover of less than £250k a year. I wonder if The Hairdressing Council have similar stats?

Imagine a hairdressing salon pitching for your custom, how would they differentiate themselves? Could they differentiate themselves? If Bob cut your hair at British Hairways, would you change supplier when he moved to Curl Up And Dye? If The Cutting Corner was busy one Saturday and you needed a haircut quick would you chance it and get it done at Head Masters? Apply that thinking to your agency and your clients. Ever wonder why they find pitches so confusing? Worth thinking about that.

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. It's just something I've noticed. What do you think?

More pitch stories

Here's a form I was asked to fill in for a tender the other day.

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Key information about your agency

1.    Key skills and experience
Please list any key skills or experience that you think are relevant to XXX and make you stand out against other candidates

2.    Relationship and Communication
Please explain the relationship that we would have with you in terms of the way our account is managed and your preferred frequency and methods of communication

3.    Quality procedures
Please explain the quality procedures that you have in place to ensure the work that you deliver is of the highest quality standard.

4.    Project Management procedures
Please explain how you would go about managing complex projects, for example we often have projects that involve the production of several different versions of a piece of literature to serve all of our European markets. What procedures do you have in place for complex project management?

5.    Responding to a brief
Please explain your strategic approach in terms of responding to a brief.

6.    Capacity and capacity planning
What procedures do you have in place for capacity planning and dealing with capacity issues?

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What do you think of that?

Chalk Outlined Shadows At Night

Here's a lovely set of photographs from Michael Neff. Chalk outlines around shadows. Lovely. Really good. Just sat there waiting to get ripped off by an ad agency...

 

At last! The Design Police!

Very funny. Read more at Iain's place.

Nice Type

Some lovely type over on Christian Robert-Tissot's site. There's some crap as well, but most of it, like these the picture above, is great.

I'd love to do some big type like that.

Rodchenko Quotes

I've just found some quotes from the Rodchenko exhibition that I jotted down when I was there. Here they are.

Rodchenko's maxim was "Our duty is to experiment". Isn't that cool? Imagine if in your job description it said, "Your duty is to experiment". Rodchenko pushed boundaries precisely because he kept on experimenting.

Here's another one, "Enough depicting, time to build". God, I love this. "Enough depicting, time to build". I feel like getting a tshirt done with this on for meetings. After 20 minutes I could stand up and grandly declare, "Enough depicting, time to build".

How many good ideas die of over "depicting". Too much talking no enough doing. You know that bit in the middle of a conversation when people say, "That's it. Do that." But then they keep on talking for days. Let's just stop at the "That's it. Do that" bit.

As my old boss used to say, "The work doesn't get any better the longer it sits around, old son".

Good agency website shock

I love this.

Now, there are probably people who hate it. That's fine. I like it and this is my playground with my rules.

Instead of building the usual wank agency website Modernista! have utilised the tools of web 2.0.  So the work is shown through Flickr.

Easy to use, easy to find, easy to access, easy to comment on, easy to bookmark, easy to share. good, good, good.

The About Us page utilises Wikipedia.

The best way to get what I'm on about is to take a look at the site.

Found via this month's issue of Creative Review which is also The Annual issue and very good. In the shops now.

Not sure about the jeans Michael...

But this is how you get a D&AD pencil.

Jumpers Required

The picture above was taken in January 2005. Reckon you can jump like that? Read on.

We've got a bit of a favour to ask. We need some people to turn up to our office on Friday morning and jump around a bit. There will be a trampete and there will be a video camera.

We can't pay you I'm afraid, but we will reward you with a case of beer and some lunch.

We need you to be there at 11am and you might have to wait around for an hour or so. A little bit of jumping in front of the camera and you're done.

You have to look cooler and more athletic than I do in that picture. Interested? Email me ben at thedesignconspiracy dot com.

Lego men iPhone unboxing

Absolutely brilliant. Perfect for a Friday. More here.