On: running a design studio.
As I mentioned on our last story, we’re not total experts when it comes to running a studio. We keep learning and developing our process everyday, and we keep finding what we’re better at as individual team members and as a unit. Being that said, here’s a couple things that have worked for us on this journey. (We’ll try to update this part of our story every once in a while)
First of all: who get’s to do what? We find ourselves asking this every time something new comes up. Our team has been changing dynamically since we started, going from 2 members, to 5 team members and then back to our actual 2 member squad. Being a small teams means we can have a really tight communication and collaboration structure. It also means we’re both janitors, account managers and designers.
Being a 2 person team means we can and have to get involved in every single aspect of our business.
Sometimes one of us focus on the numbers and the other one is mood boarding or designing. Sometimes one of us is getting ready for a meeting while the other one is working on a naming list or wireframing for a website. Another dynamic we’ve found to be useful is to act as designer/art director. This means that if I’m the one “designing” for a project, my counterpart is the one “directing” me, and vice versa. This way we can ensure full attention to detail and a more focused approach.
For our “business” stuff we like to keep things online. We use a combo of google docs for the spreadsheets and dropbox paper for our documents ranging from naming lists and briefs drafts to our shop rates and client prospecting list. I’m pretty sure most of you already know google docs, but, if you’re looking for a clean, beautiful and practical tool for team collaboration in mostly text documents, you should definitely check out dropbox paper.
That’s about everything. Running a small design studio is not rocket science, but it does requires a 100% commitment to be true to yourself and your team, and a whole lot of passion to keep up with the everyday challenge.
Keep tuned for more stories and thoughts from the Born Co. team. www.madebyborn.co
