Cheap-fast-good and the power of automation

Make it work.

A triangle with the words “fast,” “good” and “cheap” on each point and an arrow pointing to the triangle with the caption “Pick 2”.

This diagram is my visual equivalent of “talk to the hand” in professional conversations. Clients want it all, but the crux of it is that you can’t have all three.

And yet this pyramid has haunted me lately.

When I think of it these days, I can hear myself ask: “in this economy?!”

With labor shortages, inflation, and the pressure on tech companies to shift from growth to profitability, leaders often wonder how to get more for less. How can a company scale up without sacrificing quality?

What would it look like for us to have it all (without selling our designer souls)?

Here are the problems we need to solve for:

Sacrificing fast to make something good and cheap.

• If you’re using external resources, it’s unlikely that you’re their top client. If it’s in-house, this is a low-priority, low-impact request for other teams or business units.
• It’s also important to note that “fast” is relative to the type of work required. Static social ad and end-to-end video production outputs will have different timelines. (The more people, teams or expertises are involved, the slower things will be.)

Sacrificing cost to make something fast and good.

• You’ll pay a premium for having creatives work overtime, or under stress, to meet your deadline.
• You’ll also “pay” for bumping all other priorities out of the queue by delaying other deliverables and potentially impacting other areas of the business.

Sacrificing quality to make something cheap and fast.

• Lower rates mean less experienced creatives tackle your problems. This likely comes back to bite you; the hours are more affordable, but there are more of them. Even so, there isn’t enough time or money to achieve the intended vision.

I propose a redesigned triangle that lets us have all three:

A triangle with the words “fast,” “good enough” and “more” on each point and the words “creative automation” inside the triangle.

In this model, cheap is replaced by more (you get more for less). Lower costs become a long term goal, as automation requires investment — startup costs for tools, enterprise accounts, time invested in training and onboarding and upfront time spent on designing templates, among other things.

Shift towards your design being good enough

Quality is usually the main concern for creative teams, whereas project owners are invested in time, budget and results. There is room for compromise — if we can accept that not every project requires a creative [wow, viral, award-winning] solution.

This shifts the original diagram to show that great work takes time and resources.

A triangle with the words “fast,” “cheap” and “wow, viral, award-winning” on each point and an arrow pointing to the triangle with the caption “Pick 2”.

To control the factor we care about the most — quality — while respecting the others, automation becomes the core of the triangle. This might look like:

• Templating solutions in order to save time and effort. Quality control can be “baked in” to the template using locked layers or constraints.
• Tools that allow for reformatting and application of changes to high volume assets
• Have your concepts ready to go: proactively dedicate time to the creative process of known, upcoming projects so that you aren’t dependent on or limited by tight timelines.
• Selecting preferred sources of ready-made or made to order content and services (music, sound and visual FX, voice over talent)

Creative Automation refers to removing the need for design intervention, while maintaining the standards and quality outlined by their guidance. It can be a heavy lift on a design team to get things rolling, but once in place, smaller, recurring requests will disappear as groups are empowered to produce their own materials- confident that their output is on brand and helping their work shine.

In the end, it will always come down to compromise — your best work will not be the apex of your creative potential, it will be the best result you can achieve, for the investment possible, in the time you have.