+ WalkingStick Design +

The failure rate of business is so high due to the naive and unnecessary use of debt. Debt magnifies risk in business. The lack of it magnifies your chance success :) Posted via email from Eye Say Design • The Web Log

I think better with a pencil in my hand and start each project with a blank piece of paper. Folks that ask me how I do what I do always seem to miss the connection between how my ideas pour onto paper and then how those ideas are interpreted through software on a computer. We all do it though, we value the outcome rather than the process and attempt to quantify the worth of the outcome with dollars. Maybe that’s why folks don’t understand the high price of great work. You pay for the process when it comes to great design. Moving on, I view my dull carpenter pencil and my computer in the same light. Both are means to an end. The end being a compelling idea represented visually, simply and beautifully. Most folks think that design happens only on a computer…that, the computer is the thing that does all the heavy lifting. From a production stand point that may be true but that’s where the computers ability ends for me. “Computers still don’t have ‘idea’ buttons.” Art Chantry Updatin...

A business goal of mine is to find nice folks that are doing awesome things and to help them do even more awesome things via excellent graphic design. I researched and collected a list of one hundred Non-Profit organizations in the Oklahoma City metro area that I felt met that criteria.  One month ago I send them each an research/qualifying email that asked two simple questions: 1. Do they hired the services of print designers? 2. If so, what do they hire them to design? All the emails were sent to an actual human that worked for the NPO I was qualifying. The following are my results: • 89 did not reply • 6 use in-house designers • 4 said they’d keep my info on file • 1 prospect meeting It is impossible to not receive an email that someone sends to you. Every email is date and time stamped to the second. So I wasn’t worried about folks not getting my qualifying email. Each email contained text only and was sent directly to a human so I was not worried about my email going into a j...

The author Phil Cooke says, “We live in a visual culture. In a visual culture, perception is king.” He’s absolutely right. What folks think the moment they see your brochure at a conference or the nano second they look at your logo and the instant they shake your hand, is the reality. I makes no difference what you think you look like? THe reason is because your not doing business with you. You’re already sold on how great you are or how great your organization is. The challenge is to step outside yourself and to view your organization through the eyes of a total stranger to who you are and what you do. The brings me to the absolute necessity of using a professional designer to create the materials that potential clients/customers/members see. It’s their view of you that will make or break your organization. What is communicated when a conference attendee stops at your booth and picks up a brochure. That brochure has mere moments to make a favorable impression, and that impression l...