Studio Update #13
Submit 1–2 RFPs
Finalize my buildspace idea
Ship new case study (for the love of god) on HEX
Time for another update. Not the most productive or exciting week for us, but we did get progress on some of our checklist items from last week:
- Get out a new case study. This did not happen. Another week goes by without a new live case study. The goal is to get new work on the website every week but we’re not seeming to make much progress here. Mainly since after managing client deliverables, replying to new leads and keeping up on socials, there’s not much time left to work on our case studies.
- Decide a buildspace project. This was a personal goal for me and I wanted to work on a poster / print / design store. After thinking about it for a bit, I realize that I’d rather stay heads down and build HEX. It’s easy to start something new but more fulfilling to take your existing ideas to completion. I don’t want to divert any energy into side projects at this stage. I’ll instead continue to post my progress, learnings, and goals weekly here on Medium.
- Submit RFPs. Today I’m wrapping up our RFP that’s due tomorrow. This isn’t the biggest fish in the pond but still something I want to push out.
Last week was great progress, this week not so much.
Other than that, we did:
- high-fidelity design for a big website project
- iterations and presentations on a branding project
- design sprint for landing page
- getting ready for launch on a key brand / web project
- preparing technical docs for a RFP + prepped proposal
- sent a proposal for a new brand project we got via referral
Today I also learnt we’re going to be wrapping up a website maintainence retainer for one of our clients as they’re now fully equipped to manage the site independently. Happy that we were a part of that project and rooting for their team to grow the web team in the next couple months.
Personally, I was able to catch a couple Cricket World Cup games out here in Barbados and will be heading back to Toronto and then Vancouver in the coming week. Things should be more spaced out then.
For this week, I want our focus on distribution. As we wrap up our RFP, I want to try out a new video format for sharing work on IG. Watched this video by Oren where he gives a lot of solid ideas on creating and sharing using short form video. Defo dont want to get into any tiktoking but adding some motion to our work is a good idea. I’ve also previously experimented with that format on Twitter and IG where we did a video walkthrough of our WIP work so this shouldn’t be something totally new to us.
The other goal for this week is to submit our Black Jays project to Creative Boom. They’re a great publication and a source of inspiration for me personally, and I think this is a shot worth taking. I’m super proud of our NY-cafe-themed brand work for Black Jays, and I would love to share the background in more depth. If we make it to the publication, I’ll share my pitch here on Medium. But I think getting features on these brand publications are super important for small studios. It’s the best shot we have to get in front of a large audience of people. Vastly superior to any internal case study we could publish.
Finally, I want to work on 2 new RFPs we’ve seen with the goal to finish one of them by the end of this week. These RFPs are no joke and require a lot of research, documentation, and effort but I see potential in this space. As a part of this, I’m also going to be applying for an open contract retainer that could be key for our studio.
For IG, I also think we can start posting a little bit more regularly to gain some momentum. I’m thinking twice a week. Once after I publish my weekly update and once during the week where we do a short Reel. Giving it a shot for this week.
One thing I also wanted to call out is that I’m really happy with the way we’re managing to add one design (minimum) daily to the HEX Swipe File. It’s a very easy and scalable way of sharing rejected design work.
Summary for the week
- Post one short-form video on IG
- Submit Black Jays project to Creative Boom
- Submit upcoming RFP & submit for Retainer
That’s all for this week. See ya.
