When a prospect approaches me outright with the statement, “We’re looking for the lowest bidder”, I’m tempted to just let them carry along on their merry way. They’ll find their bargain, because with every other twelve year old hanging out their digital shingle, added to the increasing encroachment of slave-labour rates from developing nations, unqualified people calling themselves designers are a dime a dozen these days.

However, before bidding a polite but firm “goodbye and good luck”, I do try to impart a little knowledge and foresight. Because in the end, these people actually end up paying more for a vastly inferior product – and that’s not good for anyone.

Being mindful of your actions is not simply good advice for living… in business, it is a requirement.

A few days ago, my incoming Twitter feed took on a fiery tone. Anger spewed forth with abandon from one of my fellow business owner contacts. He was incensed, having discovered that a particular spammer had gone the extra mile to target his company’s clients as a group.

Once in a while, I get the feeling that everything’s been done. I become bored with what’s being toted as the latest and greatest – and these days, the buzzword is green.

My mother was a carpenter and a forest ranger… also an intellectual, a bit of a flower child, and an intensely caring individual. So as you might imagine, I was raised with a certain amount of appreciation and respect for the natural world. When it became apparent that more people in my own demographic seemed to be acknowledging and embracing concepts like social responsibility and environmental awareness, I was thrilled. I thought, finally – the middle class is starting to open their eyes.

The corporate design field is somewhat unique. It is a field on which nearly every successful business in the Western world depends, yet is simultaneously one about which very few people are actually educated.

The issues are alarming, to say the least.

On the one hand, we have the dime-store design trend chipping away at the integrity of the industry, and the amateurs passing themselves off in the marketplace as legitimate professionals, who happen to think that $100 is a fine price to charge for a thoughtless, conceptually barren logo, assembled from clip-art on stolen software. This is all exacerbated by the actual professionals who succumb to pressures to lower what was a fair market price, in order to compete with contenders whose qualifications, process, and quality of work are not nearly in the same league.

The fields of branding and marketing have a credibility problem.

More often than not, consumers associate brand-speak with trickery, exaggeration, misdirection and outright deception. The sad thing is, I don’t blame them. A lot of brands are disingenuous. What those brand managers don’t realize is that tricking someone into buying once is far less profitable than earning customer loyalty and trust over the long term.

Investing in your Brand for the Long Haul

Branding is so much more than just looking good. You need to pick up where we leave off.

“I want our site to be number one on Google”

The number of times a client has uttered those words to us (or a close variation on the theme) is somewhat staggering.

Sure, we all want it. And for certain parameters, we can get it for you. But while Search Engine Optimization is a very important component of both web development and your overall marketing platform, it cannot stand alone.

The Green movement is in full swing, and in most ways it’s a very good thing. Marketing hype issues aside, many have worried aloud about the future of the printed word/image. With digital alternatives becoming increasingly pervasive, and former print industry leaders abandoning the page in favor of the screen, what’s to become of our beloved magazines and photo albums?

Luckily, in amongst the world of digital photo frames and web based magazines, the paper industry is taking notice and finally stepping up to the plate. Recycled paper has been around for a while, but as with any buzzword, use of the word ‘recycled’ doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot. It could be as little as 10% recycled material, added to the fact that the raw materials are such a small part of the whole picture.

It has been an insane month. We do try to plan our projects and workload in such a way that things are as balanced as possible, but it’s sometimes unavoidable that fate conspires in such a way that your best laid plans are set to ruin.

Maybe not to “ruin”, so much… being busy is good. It’s fantastic, even. I love what I do, and the fact that so many people come to us on their own or through referrals makes me feel great about my work. But in periods like this, I do come to miss things like human contact, sleep, exercise and healthy food.

That’s one of the reasons I was so surprised this weekend to find a notice telling me that we’d been nominated and chosen to receive a CWA Design Award. Nice!

Do you consider the environmental impact of a product before purchasing? What percentage of your print jobs are on FSC-certified paper? Would you be interested in becoming a professional member of FSC? These are just some of the questions the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Canada is asking in our first ever survey of graphic designers, paper and print specifiers/buyers, paper merchants, printers and other marketing and communication professionals.

Two years ago, I put out a short article advising on the projected importance of sustainable and environmentally friendly packaging in the coming years. That was December 2006, and now nearing the close of 2008, with oil prices soaring and just about every third ad on TV touting their own green spin, I can smugly say, “called it”.

In my personal life, I would be classified as what’s been somewhat unflatteringly coined SCUMY. That is, Socially Conscious Upward Mobile Youth. Though nearing 30, I’m not so sure about that Y at the end any more. I’m not an extremist, but I do what I feel I can. I’m a vegetarian, buy local produce, reduce and reuse where possible, compost or recycle the rest, work paperless and get around by bicycle, when it’s feasible. I also love hot showers and drive a pickup truck so… well, nobody’s perfect.