Blogging is hard work / Good design grows good design

It has been pointed out to me that my "thought leadership" is lacking because of the lack of postings on this blog. I don't disagree.

But here is the reality of the design world. When you do good design, people want more. Good design is easy to sell. Good, meaningful blog posts are difficult when design is what brings home the bacon.

Of course I don't want this to completely sound like I am on the defensive here, so I will say this...

I have learned many valuable design lessons over the past few months. Some that I can share on here and other, because of their sensitive nature with our clients, will remain unpublished.

Most recently, I have been impacted in my daily work by work that I did many months ago. And in the process, I learned a lesson this week.

Late last year, we embarked on a very successful design project for our wonderful client USTelecom. We, and they, were very happy ultimately with the design we envisioned for their site. It was work of course, but in the end I think we all feel we found a little magic in the design. I was as excited and surprised by that as anyone. It was nice. But that was last year. Right?

Well over the last few weeks I have had the pleasure of working on designs that are the direct result of that previous work with USTelecom. I am not really at liberty today to say who I am working on designs FOR... but it was partially the design work we did on USTelecom that resulted in the project I presented today. And the client spoke these words... "I am REALLY happy with these designs!" What a great thing to hear from a client. Made my week for sure.

The point here is... treat ALL of your work like it will lead to more work. Do your best to make your work transcend the singular project you are working on. Find ways to evolve your concepts. Grow your inspiration by looking back at your successes and turn them into more successes. This week I learned that work I am doing today has a definite impact on the work I will be doing 6 months or a year from now. It is a continum. An organic process that helps what you design evolve into the NEXT great design.

My dad always used to tell me... "Do the job right the first time and you will never have to do it again." I respectfully disagree. In this business, if you do the job right the first time, you will have people lining up at your door to do it for them too.

Today was a perfect example of that for me.