Small Towns & Bigger Britches.

I enjoy working with sole proprietors quite a bit. Outside the Comfortable Tyranny of Full Employment© the past 7 years, I worked with a lot of local entrepreneurs; clients not all that dissimilar to myself.

• They tend to be more connected to their work.
• They tend to be engaged and generally passionate about what they do.
• Design outcomes are based on one-on-one decisions made between two rational adults rather than some unending chain of committee and stakeholder meetings that never really settle anything other than to have another meeting later.
• Working relationships feel more compatible when both client and designer…

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Investing in professional design means looking for a few key things in your designer. It’s up to you to judge if they’re the right fit, but sometimes it’s hard to know what to look for, and what exactly it is you should expect them to do.

What To Look For

The right designer will bring a mix of these four things to every project:

1. Taste: A good designer has spent years in the visual landscape. A sense of style should come through in their work. Is it compatible with your market (or could it be)? …

Like its cousins User Experience and Brand Identity design, Experience Design is commonly misunderstood. As something to be had, design is often brought in as a veneer to show you’re ‘doing everything right’. Far too many struggling businesses dipped a toe in, failed to see an immediate return, and are forever skeptical of its value. This might even be you. Given all the press announcing The Return of /The Power of Design, the success of companies like Apple et al., and the various problems with Social Media and Advertising™ you’re curious about taking another pass at it.

First, Let’s Talk About What We’re Talking About

Instead of repeating mistakes, let’s take a step back (or fifty) to take in the more full-bodied perspective of design as the strategic use of graphic messaging.

The language I’ll…