It's been a great few weeks as a Noisy Decent resident and the time has flown by. But like all good things it must come to an end. Normality must resume, Ben must come home, the standard of writing must go up, and I must go to Dorset.
But I'll look back on the time here fondly, remembering the happy hours spent with Ben's toys and friends, collecting birds eggs and running in the long grass.
It's been a pleasure.
Thanks. Matt.
The second thing is that a friend of mine, a very talented friend, a suspiciously autistic-natured friend, held a private view this evening of his most recent illustrations. His name is Jim Stoten, and the exhibition is called Studies of Another Place which runs until September 25 at Super Superficial, Fouberts Place, London.
Of the work he's got on show is a piece measuring just A2 in size but which took 3 years to finish (not the one above). This might sound a touch self-indulgent until you see the style – the most intricate pen work with fantastic designs within fantastic designs. Really rather special.
I've got a dilemma – I'm off on my summer holiday from Saturday so set aside this evening for the penultimate Noisy Decent Graphics post, but there are two things that I really want to share. So I'm breaking a key blogging rule by publishing both at once.
So onto the first thing...
Stefanie Posavec evaluates words, rhythms, and punctuation within writing.
This image is taken from Part One of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. What Stefanie has done here is divide the text into chapters, chapters into paragraphs, paragraphs into sentences, and sentences into words. Everything is colour-coded according to key themes in the literature. It's a style of representing text that aims to visually compare the writing styles of different authors. A beautiful style of information presentation that I haven't seen before.
It's an interesting one that.
I was chatting about this very thing to a mate over a barbecued sausage over the weekend. There's an argument which says that the most reproduced image is one taken of the Earth by the astronauts onboard Apollo 17.
But I can understand that it had an massive impact in the way we saw the planet, and I imagine that there aren't all that many other options of the Earth from this distance to choose from, and not to be underestimated – it was, as still is, readily available for reproduction. But what I found interesting is that it's not the kind of image which springs to mind as being super common.
The ones that jumped to the fore tended to be the iconic ones like the Raising the flag on Iwo Jima
or Phan Thị Kim Phúc
or a windy Marilyn Monroe
But these are no-doubt in the shadow of the portrait of Che Guevara
and a little black mouse.
But I'm going to challenge the Apollo 17 image of the Earth with the Queen. Of the different media that carry her mug – stamps, coins, banknotes, and err mugs, I think that the coins might be more heavily reproduced than the others as her portrait turns up on the face of all Commonwealth coins, whereas this isn't the case with stamps and banknotes. Of her four coinage portraits I reckon her most recent one by Ian Rank-Broadley used from 1998 might be the most common.
But I'm prepared to be challenged on this...
Meets the dirtiest shoes.
Squeezed between the boxes of wine and rounds of cheese that I brought back from France this weekend was a packet of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Why? Because the mascot – Cornelius Cockerel – had a pupil! The Corn Flakes mascot that I know doesn't have a pupil. What's going on?
(French Corn Flakes)
(UK Corn Flakes)
This might appear fairly insignificant for the amount of valuable Terrett blog space it occupies, but hang on there - I've got a case to make.
Kellogg's Corn Flakes has a rare spot on our shelves – it's a cereal that has a mascot which isn't a caricature; it's not a Tony the Tiger, Coco the Monkey, Snap, Crackle or Pop.
The Kellogg's cockerel has suffered at the hands of a redraw or two that introduced beveled edges, highlights, gradients and drop shadows, but it has kept its integrity.
If we begin down the line of introducing a pupil, pretty soon we'll be back here. And let's face it, no-one wants to look at that first thing in the morning.
A combination I've never seen before.
I've been trying to find a commercial design with these three combined, but the closest I've been able to come are the AnimalFlowers posters by Hanna Werning.
I thought I'd come up with a great idea the other day. I had to wrap a friend's prezzie in a rush, so grabbed some song lyrics off the internet, type set it all nice, and printed it out. Hey presto – rapping paper.
I'd got my business plan halfway done, ordered the stationery and was all ready to go global, when I discovered someone out there had already thought of it. Oh well.
But I still like what I've done so I thought I'd share it with you.
If you like any of them, you can download the top one here, the second one here, and the last one here to use for your own rapping paper.
Points go to those that can name the Song, Artist, Typeface and Typeface Designer.
Road markings are commonplace but it's rare you actually see them get painted. It is a sight to behold.
I used to do jujutsu (before I got a girlfriend), and once-upon-a-time I went to the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham for this jujutsu competition. It was pretty special because you got to watch the dans fight. They were super-elegant, and so full of power and control. This fella writing 'bus stop' on the road was no less graceful than those jujutsu masters.
No errors, no repeats, just complete confidence.
I had a few ideas on posts lined up as I approached my term here, but to throw the net out I asked my friends and family if there was anything they thought was worthy of your attention.
Now, we've all seen box office figures - week gross, ranking change on last week, number of weeks on release etc. It's normally presented in tables - nothing special. But my friend Emma told me about this, and it has totally blown the posts I had in mind out of the water.
It's easier to understand than the conventional way of presenting this type of information, you can track the success of films over time at a glance, you can see how oscar success impacts on ticket sales, plus it's beautiful. I'm scratching my head wondering why they don't use this method of presenting information more often.
Thanks Emma.
Welcome to August, I'm Matt Dent.
If you're here for the insightful design commentary and the witty observations you'd be best to come back from September. But if it's mindless blogging that you're after, then welcome – you're going to enjoy this month.
I've got some big shoes to fill and I'm going to give it my very best efforts. Fortunately, Ben has told me that his readers are all very nice and I have nothing to worry about.
It's been a long hard first half of the year and the team at NDG deserve a break, so as is traditional we'll be taking the whole of August off.
I don't want to leave you without any high quality design blogging, so following on from the runaway success of Henrietta and Mike, Matt has kindly agreed to Guest Write for the whole of August.
Matt Dent needs no introduction apart from that picture up there.
As with all guest writers he's been given a free reign as long as it has some tenuous link to design.
To be clear: it won't be me writing on this blog in August it will be Matt Dent.
Be nice to him. I'll sit back and wait for the "Oooooh, and he's cute!" comments.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Marcus Brown surely needs no introduction. Germany's most Internet Famous Printer. Stop laughing at the back, he wrote one of the most popular Guest Posts ever on this blog 'Green(ish) Printing.'
Marcus works at Peschke Druck in Munich. Let's finish this week and this series with his advice on how to deal with your printer in a recession. Read it, it's good.
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Printers in general, at least in the countries that I have worked in, tend make the same mistake when the market takes a nose dive; they drop their pricing and flood the market with cheap print, which is a short term win for the people procuring print but fatal for the printing company.
So my recession advice to any printing company would be;
If you’re buying print, I have some advice too:
Richard Williams is co-founder of the award-winning brand consultancy Williams Murray Hamm, whose clients include Hovis, Unilever, and McVities. WMH were recently acquired by the Loewy Group. He appears regularly on TV and radio programmes (including the Today Programme) and now on this blog. Prior to all that he set up Design Bridge, one of the biggest design firms in the UK. He's also on the council of the Design Council. So he knows what he's going on about.
Here's what he has to say.
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Being 59, this is about my third recession. They are survivable.
Cash is king
Manage it like a hawk.
When you start a project, make sure you get client sign off.
Make sure each stage has an order number. Don’t start work without it, it’s tantamount to a contract that assures you of payment.
When the work is finished, get the invoice out immediately and chase for payment the moment it is due.
Make friends with the clients accounts department.
If you can, devote someone in the company to debt chasing.
Charge interest on overdue bills.
Charge for work outside your contract, but do agree a fee in advance.
New business
The best new business is with your existing clients. Take them out to lunch, send them stuff that’s relevant that you’ve seen on the web or in the press – become completely engaged with them, but don’t prostitute yourself. Don’t work for them on cheap rates or for nothing. They won’t respect you.
Pitches
They are often the biggest waste of resource in a design firm.
Here’s a simple guide:
Ask yourself, if the pitch will deliver a long-term client or a one off project? Don’t bother if it’s the latter. The investment won’t be worth the prize.
Never, ever pitch for nothing. Get at least 60% of your normal fees covered and all of your costs.
Never pitch against more than two other agencies (the more agencies in a pitch, the less chance you have of winning.)
If the pitch is abroad make sure they cover your travel costs too.
If the client asks for ‘sketches’ for nothing, don’t do it. Sketches contain the idea – the rest is mere execution.
Marketing
This is the one activity you shouldn’t cut.
I have a personal aversion to cold calling. It’s a numbers game and delivers the wrong sort of meeting. One day, you’ll find yourself on an industrial estate in Burnley on a dark, rainy Friday afternoon having just met a halitosis ridden yoghurt pot manufacturer with a comb over, who the calling agency managed to lure into having a meeting with you. This is to be avoided.
Spend time defining the right clients for you. Filter out people you couldn’t help or would hate to work with. This will probably leave a reasonably small cluster of people to write to or network with.
Write intelligent letters that are not about you, but about what you think might be keeping the client awake at night. Follow them up, but take the hint if the client refuses to speak to you.
Think of witty stunts that will engage them (we once had a student walk up and down outside United Biscuits offices dressed up in a sandwichboard saying ‘Jaffa Cakes needs WMH’ and won the job).
Go to conferences and network like hell.
Get your website working for you, track those who come onto it and follow them up.
Keep your profile in the news. Journalists need good stories – feed them interesting thoughts and news and you’ll be in all
Your staff
You’ve taken ages to find and develop them and probably paid 18%+ of their salary to recruitment consultants.
Keep them by being fair to all of them.
If it’s getting tight, cut your own salary first, put on a pay freeze if you have to and, at worst, cut the week down to four days. Remember you’ll need them in the upturn.
Your work
Don’t do work that’s below par because you want to get it out of the door – great work gets repeat clients, poor work lets the competition in.
Here's the second in our series of Guest Posts on the recession. And it concerns the most important bit - the bottom line.
Nick Forsyth is a Partner with Lambert Chapman LLP a firm of Chartered Accountants and Business Advisers in Essex. (I can personally recommend them, they even have a blog). Here's what Nick's got to say.
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I’m not sure that I appreciate not being a recession virgin but if you saw Gilzean and Chivers play for Spurs you’ve been around the block before and maybe earned the right to shake your head at Bent and Pavlyuchenko! My experience of recession was gained in a small accountancy practice that has now grown to the £3 million turnover level and in which I am now a Partner. As I recall the “r” word started being used when large companies which no one expected to suffer began falling over without warning – a little like the Banks have done this autumn. Parkfield was one, a listed company in the video industry who took my favourite client with them.
In those days we had base rates of more than 10% all of the time so you could easily be paying 20% once small business rates were put onto base rate so interest cover was particularly important. Mortgages payments were also high through the rates of interest rather than the amounts outstanding and negative equity was a real problem for me and many of my peers.
How long did it last? Easily a couple of years. Once a business comes under pressure it can build up debt quickly. Costs continue unabated whilst income comes to a stop producing instant cash burn. Once Management have brought the situation under control at first break even is reached followed by small profits. In my experience it takes three times as long to pay back losses as it does to make them and this means the period of difficulty is extended over and above the length of the recession.
So what advice can I offer to you at this time? Firstly understand your costs. These will continue at their current rate unchecked irrespective of income and you need to understand which are fixed and which are variable. I often tell small businesses that as a rough rule of thumb most costs are 85% fixed and 15% variable so the opportunities for cost cutting are a bit limited. You may be able to reduce some fixed costs but there may be extra costs associated with doing that. Have you looked into what those might be? If you are an employer head count might become an issue. An early assessment of redundancy issues and cost is always useful should this become necessary.
Secondly, keep close to your customers and suppliers. We all recognise it takes a lot of effort to win new customers yet all too often we spend insufficient time with existing clients and all efforts into PNC’s. In good times one can keep income streams alive but when it gets hard those with the right balance will do better. Expect attacks upon your customers as with a downturn in their own incomes they may become shoppers, testing your rates and value for money. This suggests that you need to be upfront about bills with clients so that they are informed rather than ambushed.
With pressure on fees you need to be efficient in your design process. In a strong economy this is less of a problem but as things slow and customers shop you may be under pressure to deliver quicker to produce a good recovery on hours spent on the project. Clearly quality should not be sacrificed and pricing needs to reflect the hours required to deliver this before deciding your pitch price and what recovery rate this will be. A good costing system can help to identify levels of profitability on jobs.
Thirdly, in testing times profits are important but cash is king. The Banks have brought this home to us very recently; clearly profitable businesses but without cash rushing to the Government in a state of panic. A cash forecast is a wonderful thing but it is only a guess. Having committed yourself to this guess and maybe secured an overdraft facility based upon it you need to compare your actual performance to it and be able to see how you might vary from it in the coming months. This does not have to take hours to do, but once done it allows you to plot what steps you might need to take to keep onside with your Bank.
Fourthly, take advice if you are unsure. That’s what the accountant is there for; to help you assess your position and provide options for you to choose from. As an example, if you cannot pay the taxman don’t wait for him to come calling. Talk to your accountant who should be able to suggest the types of payment you could make to spread the bill. My firm negotiates on behalf of those clients who need that help and know what line HMRC are currently taking.
Before providing the Bank with bad news talk through your message and reports so that you are happy they are hard to turn down rather than hitting the wall with a “NO”. I would expect to know a local banker and be able to discuss the plan with them if required to ensure that it gets a fair hearing upon presentation.
And lastly, never give up. I expect to lose some clients during any slowdown but I hope to win some new ones to replace them. Don’t allow yourself to lose confidence - you can do this by being proactive. And if things look very bleak remember something can always turn up as a few Sundays ago showed us with a win against Bolton and goals for both Bent and Pav!
Nick Forsyth is a Partner with Lambert Chapman LLP a firm of Chartered Accountants and Business Advisers in Essex who delivers straight talking advice to his clients and is involved in the Firm’s marketing as a speaker and author in the firm’s publications, website and blog. He can be contacted at [email protected] quoting “Noisy Decent Graphics” for a reply to any questions you might have.
Here's the first in our series of Guest Posts on the recession. Good sensible advice for designers.
Adam Whittaker is one of the founders of Reardon Smith Whittaker (commonly referred to as RSW) a new business agency in London. Here's what he's got to say.
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I worked at a branding and design firm during the last recession and set up RSW as a result of my experiences there. So here is my advice …
Get rid of as many non-fee earners (suits) as possible and find your optimum size. You could well find that you could be twice as profitable if you were half the size.
If necessary take out a long-term loan to buy your way out of an expensive lease and move into smaller offices more appropriate for your new, leaner, meaner, size.
It may hurt a little, but cut back on the perks. Personal as well as staff. Do you really need the pool table or the foosbol table? They take up 100 square feet each. And reception; how often do your clients visit you? Is it important for them that you have a swanky reception area?
Get mean with your new business team. If they’re not winning enough, get rid of them and don’t immediately replace them; give it a try yourself. Nothing sells as well as a hungry business owner.
Register at www.agencyfinder.eu if you’re in the UK or EU or www.agencyfinder.com if you’re in North America. It’s a no-brainer and relatively risk-free new business introduction service.
IF YOU’RE A REALLY GOOD SALESMAN then use a new business agency to get you some face time with new prospects. Your time should NOT be spent on the phone, but on the road!
Ditch the PowerPoint. Talk to people (that’s all they are, people, like you an me) about the things you’ve done and show them examples, preferably real-life, if not, then real photographs. You want them engaging with YOU, not a computer screen.
Swallow your God damn pride. Win without pitching? More like fail without trying!! Pitching DOES NOT cost money if you’re paying the wages of the designers anyway and you don’t need to invest in research or photography. Make a commercial decision for each individual opportunity based upon your situation at the time.
Ask for 50% of the fees up front. Sure, they won’t always agree, but if you’ve made them like you enough, you’d be surprised just how many agree.
Pray.
Henrietta just sent this in from Barcelona. Cool, innit?
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