At 01:32 PM 8/17/98 -0700, you wrote:
>You may end up as the funnel for all their ideas, since it sounds like they
>might not have someone at their organization who is doing that. You can
>either define yourself as their "web designer" and define exactly what that
>means, or you can start putting on extra hats. Just be sure that you're
>making those decisions consciously, rather than just taking them on as their
>off-loaded from your client.
Thanks for the comments, Jack -- always nice to hear others saying things
that back up my gut feelings.
I think one of the problems here is what was eluded to in another message:
hero worship rather than their own identity. Instead of understanding who
they are, they look at Cisco and daydream. They do have an identity (i.e.
Logo, data sheets) in progress, but I think it's still a little too new for
them to have taken it to heart. And I think they may have designed those
data sheets, picked out those colors, etc., without really going committing
to the process. It's a problem I see at a lot of startups (which are
starting, slowly, to become our main target). The personalities of the
individuals in the meetings take over from the personality of the whole
company -- in other words, they haven't been together long enough for a
true synthesis to take place, so whoever speaks loudest at a particular
meeting gets their choice (i.e. a certain color for the logo) and the
others in the company suffer. These choices -- fonts, colors, style -- are
being made on a purely emotional basis, rather than on whether or not these
choices are right for the company.
I'm working with a marketing person (writer, contractor) and the graphic
designer (also a contractor) who created their data sheets and trade show
booth. Both of them (Leslie and Jan) are good at what they do and
understand the difference between design that communicates and design
that's in the Marketing VP's favorite color. They can both describe the
company in a clean manner -- it's just the actual company *employees* who
seem to resort to the "like Cisco but different" descriptions. Hero worship
indeed! Luckily for me, neither Jan nor Leslie resent my pulling on an
extra hat (or two!) if we're in a meeting and hero worship (or someone's
favorite color/style) seems to be taking over. All in all, I think it'll be
a good project, it's just that the startup mode problems are a little more
evident than I'm used to, and it's got me thinking pretty hard.
--Tamra Heathershaw-Hart
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