See your world from another perspective

During the recent tube strike, I took advantage of the free river boat service that was running from Westminster Pier to the Millennium Pier at Tower Hill where my office is.  Despite the stress on the streets of resigned city workers trying to get to their offices, there was relative calm once people had boarded the boat.  In fact, once we got going, many of us turned into excited tourists, pulled out our camera phones and started snapping at the London landmarks that we usually pass every day – just on the Tube, underground.



It struck me that there are things that we do every day that are so habitual that we don’t realise we’re doing them, and in doing so, we may close ourselves to the possibility of a new experience and a different perspective.

Finding a new perspective on a well-trodden path or a clichéd theme is a common challenge, whether you’re a designer, a copywriter in a particular field, or even if you’re a speaker at events that the same people attend all the time: how do you not give the same speech on the same subject over and over again?  More challenging still, putting yourself in the shoes of your client’s target audience with whom you have absolutely no connection; how do you know what a refugee, newly arrived in a foreign city, feels like?  Or a victim of rape or violence?

Changing the way that you do things in your every day routine has its benefits.  For example, I’ve started to eat lunch away from my desk with my colleagues.  Not only do I get a break from my screen, but I’ve been privy to the water cooler chat on work related topics (and some not so work related!) that has made it easier to understand why certain projects are meeting barriers, or they’ve offered suggestions to in-house resources I didn’t know existed.  I decided to work out of a different café right across the street from the one that I usually frequent and discovered that they have a writers group that meets every week; I now have cards from two great copywriters.

It’s difficult – we are creatures of habit.  But changing up the way that you go about your daily routine makes it less… routine, enabling you to connect and actually engage away from the mundane.  And if you can apply this attitude to your work, putting yourself in the shoes of your client’s target audience won’t be so difficult, it will be a challenge that you’ll relish. 

Here’s the situation: you’re the Information and/or Communications Officer of a small non-profit organisation. You need to get some artwork designed – perhaps your annual report, an information flyer or even a toolkit or an entire website  – and your Director instructs you to ‘get a designer’.  You have no clue where to even begin looking and even less idea of how to choose a designer once the offers come rolling in (they will).

When I was at the Greater London Domestic Violence Project, I lead the tendering and commissioning process for the layout and design of the Stella Project toolkit.  In the end, it was a fairly painless process once it got going; however, I had to put in a lot of research online to find out the best way of executing this process.  Now, having been on both sides of pitching table, here is a guide for tendering for a designer that should cover most types of projects.

Tendering for your creative

Write your brief

Agree in-house what it is you need and put together a detailed design brief.  You can read about what should go into your design brief here.  This is the stage at which you should consult any stakeholders.  However, going forward, agree a signing off process for each stage of your project.  Nothing is more frustrating, holds a project back or guarantees an end product that no one is happy with than something ‘designed by committee’.  I recommend no more than three people should have a say in signing off each stage or each proof that comes back.  Nominate one person who will be the point of contact for the designer.  Where possible, going forward, no one else but that person should need to contact the designer.

After you have integrated or packaged your design brief to the other standard documents that your organisation issues when tendering for contractors, you have your invitation to tender.

Distribute your tender

It’s quicker and cheaper to distribute your brief online and electronically so, if you can, upload the brief onto your website.  If your organisation itself does not have a website, ask around for anyone that does – a board member, a member of staff, a local association or membership group to which you might belong.  It is always useful, and more accessible, to distribute a link rather than a document e.g. a Word file.

There are a number of ways to distribute the link to your brief.  You can get recommendations from other organisations in your field and send it out to their designers.  If you have seen work that you like, find out who did it and send it out to the relevant designer.

If you use any kind of social networking tools, like Twitter, post the link, and get other organisations to do the same.

You could search online for designers in your area.  A more specific but wildcard approach would be to search for graphic design, web design or web developer forums, and post the link to your brief there.  These forums are optimised for social media purposes so designers should pick up on your post quite quickly.

Although there are many others, these forums attract UK based designers.

Forums for web design
Web Designer Forum
Web Design Forum

Forums for graphic design
UK Graphic Design Forums
Graphic Design Forum
Freelance UK Graphic Design Forum

Forums for graphic & web design
Design Forums

Collect your responses to tender

If you are tendering for print work, be sure to clear some space in your office to store the responses to your tender; I’ve previously had boxes of examples of work delivered.  On an associated note, hard copies of previous work may be the only samples that the designers have so they will want them back.  Instructing them to include a pre-paid self-addressed envelope will cut down on your costs and admin time, or you can stipulate a time and date when they can come and collect their work from your office.

Selecting your designer

One of the age-old questions is freelancer v big design firm.  Whilst the most obvious answer may be ‘big design firm – capacity in abundance’, Jacob Cass has written a great article on what freelancers can offer that big design firms can’t.

When reviewing all the supporting materials and examples of work, bear in mind the requirements of your project.  With each particular example, ask yourself if you like their work and why.  Is it effective in getting a message across?

Call their referees and ask them what they were like to work with: did they respond to emails and phonecalls promptly?  Did they communicate with such jargon that they had to have a glossary on standby?  Have they used them since?

Be thorough – if you have any questions that aren’t answered in their tender package, feel free to pick up the phone and ask them.  You want to pick the designer that you feel the most comfortable working with, that can work independently and efficiently and that is the most effective at conveying your message.  Bear in mind that, at this stage, they have yet to put the proverbial pen to paper on your project.

A note about ‘designing on spec’

‘Designing on spec’ can be summarised as ‘Design something – we’ll pay you if we like it.’  It’s a practice that any legitimate or serious designer will refuse to enter into and one that, as an ethical organisation, you should refuse to support.  As summarised by the AIGA, the professional association for design professionals, there are three main reasons for this:

1. The quality of work that you receive is compromised, as little or no time has been put into submitting speculative work; often, the most important elements of the design process – research, development and testing – are negated.
2. The value of the designer’s work – and consequently of work across the industry as a whole – is reduced. Designers are also at risk of organisations taking advantage of them by seeing this as a way of getting free work done.
3. Both parties may be subject to legal implications further down the line, including copyright and intellectual property disagreements.

Consequently, be very thorough about reviewing the responses to your tender as you are picking the designer that you feel has the best chance of being the most effective based on what they have previously demonstrated.

Working with your designers

Find out what everyone does but get a single point of contact

You should know who is working on your project, especially the person/people that will actually be designing your artwork.  However, ensure that you have one single point of contact. This is especially important if you are working with a big team.  It will also help that team if they have their own internal production sign-off processes.  Your single point of contact is that person that you bug, the person to whom you send any changes and the person that you cc on any communications pertaining to your project.

Let the designers… design

This may seem like an obvious point, but please try to remember why you hired a designer to begin with!  While feedback is always useful, try and refrain from telling your designer how they should go about doing something - after all, you wouldn't tell your dentist how they should extract teeth, or a pilot how to fly a plane, so refrain from 'advising' your designer on how they should do their job.  Even though you may have a strong idea of what you want – which you should have put in your design brief – keep your mind open to new ideas, as it may set you aside from your competition in the long run.

Give useful feedback promptly

Saying ‘I don’t like that’ or ‘That’s not working for me’ is not useful.  Saying why you don’t like something or why it’s not working for you – even if it’s just in abstract terms – is more helpful in getting back a more satisfactory result quicker.

Get your feedback back as quickly as possible, even if it means grabbing the other sign-off people whilst they’re making tea.  If you tell your designer you’ll have feedback to them by Friday, make sure you do, because they will plan their next step around it.  Remember the person that you nominated as your point of contact?  Ensure that only that person is communication with the designer.  I once had six different people email me six differing critiques on a website header - it wasn’t useful.

Thanking your designer

If you like your designer’s work, be sure to mention them and recommend them to other colleagues and organisations.

If you had a website designed, allow the designer to keep the ‘designed by’ line in the footer or credits of your site.  If you had print work design, see how feasible it is to have a ‘designed by’ strapline in superscript in an unobtrusive part of your artwork.

And make sure you pay on time.  A great designer is likely to drop you or de-prioritise your work next time you come calling if they’ve had to wait several months for your last cheque.

The process of securing a new designer may be daunting but the end product of having something designed from scratch is highly satisfactory, and often a moment of great pride for most organisations.

How have you handled tendering for a new designer?

I was recently contacted by a community group who wanted to issue an invitation to tender for a designer to work on promotional materials for a project that had just secured funding.

Whilst their steering group had, in their various professional capacities, tendered for various services – cleaning services, printing, stationery suppliers – none of them had ever put together a tender for a creative agency or briefed a project into a designer.

An invitation to tender for a designer or creative agency includes one very important component – the design brief.

There is no set formula or standard format for putting together a design brief. Some designers have their own pro forma brief that they have their clients complete.

In this article, I’m going to cover useful information to put into your brief to get the best out of your project and your designer. You can either append or integrate this into your invitation to tender, along with the other information that your organisation needs as part of your tendering process, or, if you already have a designer in mind you can use this guide to brief them in directly about your project.

Information about your organisation

Do not assume that the designer responding to your tender knows anything about your organisation, or even the field or sector in which you work. Explain what you do, where/how you work, your stakeholders, your organisation’s size and mission statement. You may also wish to list other organisations active in your field as this will help your designer contextualise your organisation. Try to be as concise as possible and avoid using jargon.

Details about the project itself

Provide as much information as you but be specific. What are you trying to achieve with what you’re commissioning? Who is the target audience? Where will it be seen or distributed? Does it need to be evaluated and, if so, how? Is this project simply following on or slotting in with existing materials or is this something brand new and/or standalone?

Identifying all the possible uses for your artwork also lets your designer anticipate how they will create and prepare your artwork files so that you have what you need when they hand them over at the end of the project.

Context of the project

Will your new artwork be used in a campaign that you are launching? Are any of your ‘competitors’ launching campaigns at the same time or do they have similar materials already out there? Has anyone done anything that you particularly like/dislike? Remember, whilst a good designer will undertake their own research of your field, no one knows what’s already out there better than you because you see it every day.

Any specifications

The design may need to fit on a lip balm case because it’s being distributed to domestic violence victims, or the design may need to fit on a specific size of card to fit into pre-cut folder pockets in your conference packs. Your target audience may be colour blind or visually impaired. You may also have existing branding guidelines around your logo, so make your designer aware about anything related to size, colour or any other specifications.

Text and pictures

If you’re having your annual report laid out, your designer will obviously need your text, or ‘copy’, sent over. If you have yet to finish writing it, realistically estimate how long it will be either by the word count or number of A4 pages. The reason for this is that the designer needs to work out how long it’s going to take them to lay out x number of pages.

If your copy serves more as a strapline or a tagline on a postcard, ask them if they think it works. Your designer may be able to recommend a copywriter that can help you.

If you are using any photos, your designer will assess how they will print or if they need to be saved/converted to another format so that they load quicker online. If there are people in your pictures, ensure that their permission has been obtained to be used for your project. This is particularly important if you are using pictures of children, victims of violence or other at-risk groups.

A timeline with clear milestones

A timeline is especially important if you are working towards a launch date. Start at your launch date and work backwards.

3 March: final proof delivered

7 March: final proof sent to printer

17 March: flyers delivered to office

20 March: launch date

Before you set your timeline, make sure that you check the availability of all involved parties, including your printer or programmer and anyone in the organisation involved in signing off any proofs. Don’t forget to include school holidays and religious festivals – I’ve had more deadlines moved because of these two factors!

No one produces their best work on a tight deadline, so give your designer as much time as possible – we’ll thank you for it!

Budget

Some people may think that not including a budget will mean that designers will tender at all points of the price scale and you can just pick the lowest. However, different designers have different ways internally of pricing their work. Established agencies may overcharge their corporate clients so they can afford to work for charities for next to nothing whilst freelancers may quote more because they work on a smaller volume of projects. The inverse is true as well. The bottom line is to set your bottom line, however low. I’ve also found it useful to include a sentence stating that the budget includes the designer’s expenses e.g. travel, which may be a sticking point if you are several hours by car/train away from each other and many physical meetings are required.

Append or integrate your brief into your invitation to tender. As well as the other required information that your organisation needs for good practice e.g. the company’s equal opportunities, diversity or environmental policy, be sure to request references and examples of work, and set a clear deadline by when the tender needs to be returned.

It may seem like an awful lot of work, but a great briefing document returns greater design work and it will save you time answering questions over the phone in the long run. A thorough, concise briefing document also tells a prospective designer that you have seriously thought about the requirements of your project so are therefore less likely to encounter problems working together.

A few years ago, just after I was out of university the first time around and about to spend a year in Canada, a friend suggested that I keep a blog to keep everyone posted about what I was up to. Back then, I didn’t really have anything to blog about other than my travels, and really, no one needed to know about that.

When I got back from Canada I spent three years doing everything ‘techie related’ working for a charity that worked on policy and good practice standards for agencies addressing issues around domestic violence in London. I got my MA in Media & Communications, focussing on alternative politics and new media, and then I went freelance.

Now, because of the projects that I have been blessed to be a part of, I get a lot of emails from friends, colleagues – old and new - asking me how I put a certain website together, or how a particular film project came about, or what my thinking was behind a certain design. I also get emails from people I met in my non-profit days asking for advice on all things ‘techie related’.

In part, this blog is a place to put all those emails that I have forwarded several times over, like how to manage a tendering processing for a piece of artwork or how I deal with working across different time zones.

I am currently the Associate Producer on B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye, a lesbian comedy web series filmed in Toronto. I am developing a follow-up to Brent Talking Heads, a documentary that I wrote and directed for the London Borough of Brent around the specialist domestic violence court process. I continue to work on design and media projects in a freelance capacity and I am the Online Marketing Specialist at PayPoint.net, a role that has been, and continues to be, an incredible learning curve for me.

So whilst this blog has no one particular focus – design, media production, alternative politics, or just life as a creative freelancer – I hope that someone somewhere finds some part of it useful. Or amusing. Or supported in the knowledge that there is some other freelancer somewhere trying to make it all work!