You will pay

“I will solve your problem for you, and you will pay me. And you don't have to use the solution - if you want options, go talk to other people. But I'll solve your problem for you the best way I know how, and you use it or not, that's up to you - you're the client - but you pay me.”

Paul Rand

Looks matter

“Business owners need to realize that their design is a reflection of their business even if it is not intentional. If you don’t care about your design then your design is telling people that you don’t care about your business.”

Marco Suarez*

* At the time of this post, I couldn't access Marco's website. So I linked to his Etsy store instead. 

This is how I celebrate my 100th post

By Colin Harman. I need to get one for my studio. You can order a print here.

useful design

“There are some people who come into graphic design and find it a bit ephemeral and vacuous. People who like to do useful things are attracted to information design. There is something quite useful about designing traffic signs so people don't get lost or medicine bottles that people can understand. It's a way of making a difference. It's public service.”

David Sless

Good, fast and cheap

A few friends seem to be frustrated lately with local service provides. If they manage to dodge expensive quotes, they're stuck with contractors who never seem to make any progress at all.
And while they managed to find someone who promised to design their business' website quickly and inexpensively, they were rather unsatisfied with the end result. After endless revisions, they managed to launch their website a few weeks behind schedule.

It reminded me of something I came across a few years ago involving a triangle and the relationship between Quality, Price, and Time. I looked it up and found the project triangle.
The idea is as follows: with any project, you can only pick two out of three items. So you have the following three options:

Price + Time/Quality  or  Fast, cheap and bad
If you've managed to find someone to work fast and cheap, chances are the quality of the work will be shabby and will fall apart in no time.
Eventually, you'll have to pay more for repairs, maintenance or re-design.

Time + Quality/Price  or  Fast, good and expensive
It has to be spectacular and it should be ready by tomorrow. No problem. As long as you don't mind paying extra to have done and delivered.
Being pressed for time means you haven't a spare hour to look for a better deal. Not to mention possibly covering rush job fees.  

Quality + Price/Time  or  Good, cheap and slow
It takes time to find the lowest bidder for high-quality work done on a budget.
Even if someone agrees to deliver excellent work inexpensively, they are likely to prioritize the higher paying jobs. Or it might require them time to search for ideas without sacrificing the quality or stretching the budget.

Small Studios vs Large Firms

“The only disadvantage of the small studio is that most very, very large branding projects tend to go to very large international firms. From my point of view, this is entirely misbegotten. If you look at the successful brands worldwide, almost all of the successful identities have been designed by single entities, from Nike to Apple to IBM. It's partly because they come from a time when Paul Rand or Saul Bass designed them.”

Stefan Sagmeister