Okay so what is more polite and encouraging of engagement to you?

1: “Hi how can I help you? Now if you let us know how we can get back in touch with you and we will see what we can do.”

or the more adopted standard of

2: “Who are you? How can we contact you? What did you want to say?”

Now if your anything like as human as I aspire to be the former is going to engage you more then the latter, the first understands that you have navigated to the page in order to engage and offers you that chance to engage first before asking you to qualify your message with the mundane contact details. The second asks you for the mundane before engaging with the reason for your navigating there. There may well be some benefits in placing a distraction between the driver of the requirement to converse and the facilitation of the conversation, but I wager they are more of an exception then a rule.

Just to clarify I propose that the layout of a generic contact / feedback form should be:

ASK THEM WHAT THEY WANT TO SAY

then

ASK THEM FOR THERE DETAILS

Quite simple isn’t it and a damned site friendlier and appears more interested in what the user has to say then garnering contact details for your databases.

Go on give it a try, and let us know how it went or simply just add your thoughts in the comments.

This posting concerns two points that I considered making two posts but decide instead to combine them as the needed each other. The first point concerns and open minded response to the creative process the second part deals with a loose definition of steps and tools to help nurture a creative solution, the process is mainly focused on interactive solutions, but are applicable to most commercial creative endeavors.

A non process – creative process

I know it sounds like I’m being obtuse when I say that my process is process-less but its half true (so is the comment about me being illiterate). The fact is I do have a loose process but its never aloud to define its implementation. I’m a firm believer in taking everything on at its own merits and for me to approach a challenge with a defined system would not give the challenge a chance to be met to its entirety and in tern lessens the integrity of the solution.

Defining the undefined

The closest term I have heard in a business sense is ‘An eyes wide open approach’ I quite liked and it helped me form the opinion that there was another way of embracing the natural nature of the creative process, a philosophy that I became interested in just after the burn out of finishing my Fine Art Degree, moving to London and then leaving London a couple of months later. I started reading the work of Alan Watts a a British philosopher, writer, speaker, who held both a master’s degree in theology and a doctorate of divinity. Most notably I was reading his final book Tao – The Watercourse Way. Now I wont blather on about the tenements of Taoism or Zen mainly because my understanding is not deeply intellectual on these matters and because these explanations are best served elsewhere.

Key principles from my explorations into Tao & Zen stuck in my mind as being relevant to the commercial creative process :

The first revolves around the question “Why in a heavy wind do tree’s get blown over but the grass’s remain?”

The second “That it is pointless to try and put obstacles in the way of moving water, it will find its own course”

The key principle that I took away and have implemented is that in order to solve a creative challenge you need to understand the nature of the driving force and move accordingly. This involves at first a lot of listening and a lot of questions before any action is taken. It also involves a lot of saying “I don’t mind” when asked what your requirements are. You have to be very open minded and take on board whatever is available, perhaps with a little poking under rocks to see if there is anymore interesting stuff that’s not instantly visible.

The problem of perception – That’s just lazy

One issue that I always anticipate and sometimes find is that there is a perception amongst many , even amongst those that should know better that they should expect a huge flurry of activity at the start of a creative challenge addressing, with lots of documents and bits of software. Some think that I’m just being none committal, really I’m just listening and observing and taking it all in. I’m not getting involved with issues that don’t concern me or my deliverables, if someone wants me to use a certain communication mechanism, then fine, if you want me to use a project management mechanism also fine, its not I’m not interested, I just don’t care (but in a positive way). I am more interested in letting you do your job I don’t often feel the need to get involved as for the most part I tend to work with project managers, technical developer who know what they are doing and how to do it.

The nature of water – a thin structure to help the child grow

This all being said even water needs a little help to move along so in general I tend to use the following mechanisms as tools, I don’t always get to use them as sometimes clients just aren’t interested in getting a considered response to there creative issue (more often they just don’t have any budget), sometimes its just not practical.

Step one: Try and understand the characters of the key project leaders (this will teach you a lot about what to expect from the working relationship and how to present responses back)

Step two: Try and understand the background to the creative challenge, whats driving it why does it have to happen, where does it have to go.

Step three: Try and understand the brand behind the creative challenge as if it where a person. I prefer to create or get the client to create a brand persona that defines who the brand is, what they where,listen to eat, value and act.

Step four: Try and understand the audience that the creative solution is to be interacting with, and how the owners of the creative solution would want its audience to react back. I prefer to establish a set of user personas for this stage.

Step five point one: Try and establish an over all aesthetic for the creative solution initially away from any technical architectural issues. I prefer to create a set of mood boards for this step as an iterative process.

Step five point two: Try and resolve the architecture and technical requirements. I prefer to create a set of wire frame documents that illustrate whats needed, what priority it has and vaguely where about it should be.

Then when all these elements and probably a few more or less are in a healthy state they get put in a comfortable room with some nice music a pot of fine strong coffee and are encouraged to dance sing and fornicate with each other until a fine child is born. This child who we shall name, rather dispassionately and unimaginatively – Uwe Concepts is then given all the valid markup and fine coding nutrients and love until he is ready to be presented to his audience and do his thing.

Sometimes the starting points will be different, sometimes they will not, sometimes the steps will differ sometimes they will not the important fact is that I try not to pre-conceive what Uwe’s face will look like before I see it for real, I try and not anticipate what stages his parents Wifram & Moody have to go through to make Uwi, but I do have an idea about what basics are going to need to happen (I do have three children after all).

In Summary

• Be alert
• Be responsive
• Be open
• Forget the ego (he’s not anyone’s friend)
• Don’t rush to do the colouring in before the outlines are drawn
• Go with the flow of the requirements of the creative solution

Happy to get feedback, comments and criticisms.

I had been a while since I had been back in the UK properly, several things struck me:

1. There are hell of a lot of us humans rattling around that part of the world, all busying around and bumping into each other.
2. It only takes a little self training to differentiate between nationalities based on demeanor and costume, especially with the males.
3. People look at you funny (even policemen) when you refer to them as ‘Sir’

Anyway, the coach journey lasted a little bit longer then I would have hoped and my mind wouldn’t let me sleep (probably over stimulated form the great meeting) so I started twitching with my pocket digital camera, there was nothing about to take photos of but myself and the traffic, so I combined them by setting the camera to ‘Night’, and I suppose digitally double exposing the photos. All these images where created in camera (just the type was added later).

larking about and seeing how far I can push the camera whilst bored in a traffic jam in the UK

Now if only I could get sponsorship of a nice Digital SLR to experiment with,  to really play silly buggers with.

Most of my photography stuff is at Little Hellos and a growing collection at The Mushroom Farmer.

All comments are gratefully received especially from fellow tinkerers, camera companies and anyone who isn’t a spam bot.

I’ve put blogs into there own section apart from web site design / interactive because whilst they strictly speaking are still web sites a different approach is taken from my more bespoke design service. Blog designs are normally much quicker to bring to market and cheaper to commission and in these tight times that proves a great cost effective marketing tool to add to your arsenal. The flip side to the ease and speed of implementation and the power of an off the shelf CMS is the sacrifice of a lot of visual creative freedom and in some cases functionality, but nothing that cant be rectified by good creative though and a bit of technical jiggery pokery by a good 3rd party technical developer.

My blog design and design implementation service involves the use of an off the shelf content management system (CMS) that allows the blog owner to administrate the content them selves without the added expense of commissioning a CMS.

To date I’m mainly working with the Blogger.com and Word-press blogging platforms but all the ones I’ve looked at so far are much of a muchness and I’m fairly confident I could pick up nearly all of them and pull them apart enough to know how to put them back together again to suit the projects needs.

The new portfolio section includes the following sites:

• Affiliate Marketing Blog
• Christmas Gift Ideas
• Chocolate Reviews
• Easter Eggs
• Funniest TShirts
• MP3 Players
• McCoy
• Toy Robots

If your interested in commissioning a blog design or any of my other services then please either Request a Quote or just Get in contact

The design is based on some photos I got done in order to work with The Pond and is the first time I’ve used an old school image map in many years, I do hope to develop the page further with more interactive elements in time. Before I do that I must do a long overdue portfolio update on McCoy.co.uk I have a stack of over 6 months work festering in the corner hidden from the light of your gaze.

1. You shall not make for yourself an idol

   There are many rock start designers, many are very good, many are just good self publicists, acknowledge and read there blogs them but but don’t worship them, or emulate them or use there ramblings as design gospel.

2. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God

   Like so many of these texts this is open to many interpretations, so far I can surmise that it means, Use semantic markup when building a web site, call a heading a heading a list a list so on and so forth. Another interpretation could be, and this is one I wish some people I have worked with would heed – don’t call your self a Designer if your not one.

3. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy

   This is one I am most guilty of, you’ve got to stop working at some point, just because the client gives you the assets on Friday evening and ‘Absolutely must have the work done by Monday morning’ its okay to push back and explain that its not achievable, and that you need to take some time to rest and do other stuff, if you don’t then you whole week could be whacked out of joint and the quality of the work you deliver will suffer.

4. Honor your father and mother

   We all have influences in our work, honor and acknowledge them, people who’s work we saw as a child, mine are Vaughan Oliver, Simon Larbalestier, Dave Mackaen, Hans Belmer, Egon Schiele & Ralph Steadman, who are yours?

5. You shall not murder

   Don’t fluff it up, if your going to do something to kill the design like ‘Making the logo bigger’ then don’t do it, even if the client tells you to and you know it will kill the design, just explain that you love your client and you don’t want them to be accessory to murder, they might be understanding, if they are intent on this cold blooded act, hand them the knife and report them to the authorities.

6. You shall not commit adultery

   On occasion I’ve been given another designers work by a client and asked to improve it or change things or something else unspeakable, sometimes I’ve done it, sometimes I’ve not it all depends on how pretty the design is, but I’ve always regretted it and felt guilty that I’ve not spent the time and love on my own design’s and ended up hiding the bastard children of my affairs by not putting them in my portfolio.

7. You shall not steal

   Pretty self evident, in design its often regarded as a large crime to rip off another designers work, but behind closed doors we all whisper average designers borrow, good designers steal, but it could also be stated that Average designers steal and get caught, good designers are so good at stealing that they don’t, or they are open about her influences (see commandment 4).

8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor

   If a design sucks its YOUR fault, don’t blame the client for making you do something that broke it, if your in that position, push back explain why it wont work, if your unable to convince the client try two things, the first is try and make there suggestion work, the second is book your self on a assertiveness training or hypnosis course (I’m looking to book one myself as I’m far to accommodating). If neither of these work then just shut up, finish the job and don’t put it in your portfolio, just don’t slag the client off, they had there reasons no matter how bad you thought they where.

9. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife

   I’ve once or twice taken on what where in my perception lesser jobs in order to get a slice of a clients bigger pie, don’t do this, because I found that I was always thinking about the clients metaphorical wife rather then the job in hand ‘so to speak’ and you never end up servicing the current project with any great satisfaction and as a result you’ll probably do a bellow par effort and never get invited to that party where your invited to covet the neighbor’s wife with permission.

10. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor

    This was a hard on to differentiate from the previous commandment as once I had that picture in my head it was hard to shift, but I think it could be interpreted into this… Don’t be tempted to shoe horn a clients design asset in to a Design if it doesn’t fit, no matter how cool you think it is, if it isn’t going to gel well then leave it out, if you don’t there is a good chance that you’ll make everything involved all grubby.

So are you a sinner, go on confess?