MetaLab

For some reason, the design industry really pushes the idea of paying your dues. There’s this sense that you’re going to have to do your time at the school of hard knocks before you can make it to the big leagues - that you have to start small. I think this is a cop out. I always hear designers say that they want to cut their teeth at a big company before they start one of their own; then, years later, they finally leave feeling drained and have to start from square one. The more fortunate ones decide to freelance, but far too many get stuck doing local work or fail to attract bigger clients.

Want to avoid this fate? The answer is simple: start where you want to end up. If you want to be a big design agency, start building on that idea from day one.

Do One Thing Well

Too many designers convince themselves that they need to work locally, bill out at a low hourly rate, and sell a range of services (“We do catalogues, websites, wedding photography, copywriting and more!”). This is a bullet train to nowhere. Do exactly the type of work that you want to be doing from day one.

This isn’t to say that you should be a prima donna, but rather that you should take on projects that will enable you to cultivate a unique style. The best restaurants focus on a specific type of cuisine - you need to do the same with your work. Clients want experts, and experts get that way by focusing on doing one thing very well.

London, New York, Tokyo…Wichita?

Your ability to land clients is based squarely on your website. We no longer deal handshakes and oyster luncheons - Don Draper’s glory days are long gone. While our parents might have had to climb the ropes at a large company in order to gain a reputation before going it alone, a college dropout with some Photoshop skills can learn CSS and bill himself as a design agency overnight.

Design your website for your ideal client. What would they want to see in a design firm? Remember, potential clients have no prior knowledge of who you are, where you live, or where you’ve worked. And frankly, it doesn’t matter. You need to provide 3 key pieces of information:

• What you do: One to two sentences, maximum. What you do. Who you do it for.
• Your Work: Only show off your best stuff. If you only have three good pieces, show three pieces.
• Contact Us: A way to get in touch.

Let your clients fill in the blanks. They don’t have to know that you’re some guy working out of a duplex in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. They don’t need to know that you’re a certified member of the Michigan Graphic Design Association. They don’t need to know where you went to school or that you have a dog named Mocha. They like your work, that’s what matters. Sure, you want to tell people what you’re about to some degree, but your work should be front and center. Selling yourself too hard is unattractive. If your work is good, let it speak for itself.

Choose Wisely

Showcasing a wide variety of work doesn’t show that you’re flexible - it shows that you’re unfocused. Take on projects that will tell potential clients what you’re about at a glance. Whether you like it or not, the projects in your portfolio will become your company’s DNA. Your portfolio should be reserved for the absolute best work you have. If a project doesn’t turn out well or isn’t inline with the type of work you’d like to be doing, it’s better to leave it out altogether than use it to fill space.

If you have to take a less than ideal project, give it your all. If you can’t find paying clients, do projects for free - your own creations or otherwise - and ruthlessly publicize them. See a Fortune 500 company in need of a facelift? A celebrity with an ugly blog? There’s your chance to shine. Pro bono jobs may not put money in the bank, but they’ll look great in your portfolio, get your name out there, and become an invaluable source of income in the future. More importantly, they’ll prove that you’re capable of doing great work - even if you weren’t paid to do it (and most clients won’t know that anyway).

In Closing

I’m not saying this stuff happens overnight. It’s going to take a while before you start landing some big fish clients, but if you keep the course, it will happen eventually. In the words of the ethereal voice in ‘Field of Dreams’, “If you build it, they will come…” The man’s right. Jump in head first, regardless of your level of experience, location, or client base, and start building the company that you want today.

In the past couple of years, email has become a haven for casual communicators. We’ve seen brevity take precedence over clear writing, the emoticon migrate to the inbox, and, little by little, the Compose page turn into a glorified IM window. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when sending an organized, well-formatted email went by the wayside, but this reduction of expectations presents a bit of a catch-22 for us – we want to have a meaningful, open dialogue with clients, but email itself has become a difficult way of doing so.

Of course, we still conduct the majority of our business via email (alongside tools like Basecamp and Ballpark), but we’re always surprised by some of the emails we receive, especially the ones that prospective clients use to kick off our relationship. The first email always sets the tone for the coming days, weeks, and months, so why not make it count? After all, first impressions are still everything, and that isn’t likely to change. Here are some ways that you can help make it easier for both of us when emailing MetaLab (or any company that you want to engage):

Use Your Full Name

• We want to talk to a person, not a screen name. Aside from being an odd exclusion to an introductory email, it’s just confusing as to why I should receive an email from “Chris” as opposed to “Chris Smith”. We aren’t going to track you down on LinkedIn or see if your Facebook profile is up to snuff, but it is nice to know who we’re talking to. It’s totally reasonable to want to protect your identity if you’re flaming a forum or spewing vitriol on a TechCrunch thread, but if we’re going to be doing business together, there’s undoubtedly a need for us to know who we’re dealing with.

Respect Our Time

• Even though it’s easy for you to send an email after a 2 AM flash of brilliance telling us about your grasp at web immortality, we’d prefer to hear about your idea once there are some supplements that would allow us to start a real dialogue. Send us something tangible: wireframes, a creative brief, or even some rough sketches to help us understand what your project is about. We receive a huge amount of email every single day, and a thread with a potential client, no matter how kind (or sycophantic) they might be, can fizzle out pretty quickly if there aren’t real concepts on the table.
• We’re more than happy to provide some basic advisement – but only to a very limited extent. If you have a functioning app that you’d like to demo over the phone, that’s approaching reasonability; if you want our feedback on your game-changing new Twitter desktop app that you conceived yesterday while high on peyote, then we’re not on the same page.

Type in Complete Sentences

• This runs deep. A good writer – or at the very least, a thoughtful one – is a good communicator, and a good communicator has respect for the recipient of their message, in addition to the ability to get their ideas across in a humane and understandable way. The irony is that this isn’t even a matter of comprehension – we don’t look at an email with improper grammar and complain that it’s too difficult to decode. What we’re looking for in your email is some indication that a certain degree of thought was put into the presentation, and that it wasn’t simply on a whim that you sent the message. Keep in mind that you’re not only representing your project, but yourself as well. Even if your idea is revolutionary and brilliant, we’d be wary to reply enthusiastically if it didn’t seem like you put any thought into the first contact. Maybe we’re just old fashioned, but if you’re not taking the time to send us a thoughtful, well-structured email, then you aren’t taking us seriously, and your project probably isn’t that serious either.

Be Patient

• Email is not an IM thread. Even though we work primarily in email, this is not the be all and end all of our tasks. We have meetings, client work, and a day that ends just like everybody elses. After an appropriate amount of time, gentle nudges are in good form; Facebook messages, Twitter replies and bothering our other clients regarding our whereabouts are all ill advised. Just because we didn’t reply to your email within 72 hours does not spell disinterest, apathy or irritation – it means that we’re working to finish up something else, so we can send you a reply that means something. We’d rather take the time to write you a thoughtful reply that will move the conversation forward, as opposed to one that will just assuage you for another 72 hours.

Ultimately, these are just a few of the day-to-day gripes that we have with bad emailers. Even though it might seem antithetical and senseless, we firmly believe that you should email as if we were sitting across the table from one another. You’d never make any of the mistakes listed above if we were sitting together at a coffee shop, so why should they be disregarded when writing an email? It’s no stretch to say that basic social skills and some sense of human decency will go a long way in being a good online communicator.