creative business coach

Innovation whooshes past designers steadfastly committed to producing innovation solutions that keep their clients products and services up-to-date. But while we keep them relevant, who keeps us relevant?

To grow a design practice, it’s obvious that you need a constant supply of work either from existing clients or new clients. We know that 80% of your growth will come from existing clients. And we know that many agencies have clients scattered across a range of industry sectors

In a crowded marketplace, designers need to explore different ways to find new business. Our design value chain, evolved from Michael Porter’s value chain, works brilliantly to identify where an organisation uses design, how effective it is, and the benefits of using more design.

Of all the line items in an estimate of costs, clients seem to question design management the most. They seem to think that paying for design management is like paying for bottled water…

Our industry is rife with prejudices. We are a long way from gender equity when it comes to ownership of large agencies, in spite of equity at graduation. We slavishly follow the bright and shiny new designers and we are ageist.

This research report titled ‘What client’s think’ is based on 500 individual client interviews conducted on behalf of (and paid for by) UK design agencies. We think the results are relevant to the Australian design community and worth sharing.

We’ve been working with designers to discover their ‘onlyness’ and that reminded me of the research I did in a previous life. It’s still relevant so I thought I would share…

Clients are under increasing pressure to get quick results. This has caused them to rush the design process and turn it into a production process.

Great pitchers don’t just chuck the ball in the general direction of the plate. They lean back and pitch it with all their might at a well-researched target with a well-researched strategy. They have a clear goal in sight.

Clients are from Mars... I am seeing many more design agency owners being asked to supply rate cards or to do a package deal to reduce costs. This has always been an aspect of running a design business but it seems to be more prevalent particularly on large jobs needing a lot of implementation work. Clients [...]

Design Internships: opportunity or exploitation In my work with design agency owners I'm often asked for advice on employing interns. This got me talking to a lot of colleagues. I found there are a myriad of reasons and motivations behind agencies taking on interns. The more altruistic owners do it because they want to help [...]

Am I a designer who writes or a writer who designs? And does it matter? Both words and images are integral to clear communication.