creative briefing

Like visiting your old high school. Like looking back at your photo albums. Like cleaning out your closet. It’s always great to revisit the past and see where everything started. There’s just something about dousing yourself in memories of what used to be that suddenly makes what is make so much sense. And for a moment, you catch yourself feeling like a kid again - and enjoying every moment of it.

For me, it started with drawing. Before marketing, entrepreneurship, web design, the internet even - there was just drawing. Unfortunately I sort of fell out of it midway through highschool and traded in my 2B pencil for a mouse, keyboard, and 56k dial-up connection. It was a natural evolution for me, but still, it’s always fun to get back to the basics.

A few weeks ago, in preparation for the much-anticipated Game 4 of the Raptors vs. Magics NBA playoff game (which we scored tickets to), my girlfriend and I got the kooky idea of making a sign. Not just any sign though, a legendary sign. For me, it was a chance to dust off the old artist wings I put away so long ago and really get back into what has essentially shaped me into who I am today.

We took pictures along the way and because I’ve always been fascinated at “the making of” processes, I thought I would share them with you. And plus, we were both fairly proud of our work at the end of the day, so we thought it’d be something worth showing off a bit. :)

Enjoy! Drawings by yours truly, coloring by the lovely and talented Cheryl.

If you need the story behind the sign, read this.

Our sign landed us on the jumbotron for a good 10 seconds or so, and some friends told us we got some air time on tv too. As for the game itself, let’s just say the sign was the best part.

Hey, it’s been a while. How are the kids?

Yes, I’ve been absent for some time. But for those of you who have been paying attention (all 3 of you), you’ll know that if I’m absent here it usually means I’m drowning in work elsewhere. But have no fear, I’m alive (for the time being) and am just making a much needed visit to the surface for some air.

What have I been up to? A crap load. Remember what I said about the up-and-down nature of the freelancer lifestyle? Yea, it’s definitely an up time. In fact, it’s getting up-er as we speak.

But I thought I’d leave you all a quick update on a few items so that you don’t feel neglected and start to hate me. So here goes (in no particular order)…

FITC

I wanted to do a full write-up on my experience at FITC but after some thought (and some serious lack of time and energy), I realized it wasn’t worth it. In all honesty, the 4-day conference fell below my expectations. It was very Flash-focused this year, which is fine, but in many of the presentations there seemed to be a lack of enthusiasm for the material being presented. But there were still a handful of sessions that I really enjoyed - namely that of Grupo W (”The Madness of Interaction”), Gmunk (”Gmunk Kickdown 08″), and Joshua Davis (”New Works”).

Musical inspiration

It’s the season of [awesome] concerts as I’ve had the privilege to be in the musical presence of my favorite artists: Jason Mraz (last Sunday), Lifehouse (last night), and Jack Johnson (August 3). Music has always been my second creative love and immersing myself in live tunes is a truly inspiring experience. Aside from the auditory sensations, I came away from last night’s Lifehouse concert with some pretty sick visual stimuli as well. I’ll be sharing them in a later post.

Taxes!

As you know, today is the last day of tax season. If you haven’t filed your taxes yet, you’re either fortunate enough to not owe the government anything, or you’re now panicing because I’ve just reminded you that you have to do your taxes. This year was the first year I’ve had to incorporate my business transactions into my personal tax process and I’ve learned a lot in the process. I wanted to do a write-up on some of the things I’ve learned (i.e. rule #1: get an accountant), but I realize that it would have very little relevance now that tax season has passed. If anybody shows enough interest, I’ll do the write up. Otherwise, I’ll save it for next year.

I’m on the WinMo train

To satisfy my tech itch, I recently swapped my Blackberry 8320 Curve with a HTC Touch. I’m big on productivity and staying connected so any new phone I get must perform well on both counts. Of course the big difference between the Blackberry Curve and the HTC Touch is that the latter runs on Windows Mobile. While I still very much have my old MS juices running through me, I’ve always been reluctant to jump into WinMo because of poor market reviews of the mobile OS. I was told that version 6 (which is what the Touch came loaded with) is a leap ahead of its predecessors, and that the newly released 6.1 is even better. Comparing the two devices, they are both great business tools. WinMo has the one-up however because it syncs perfectly with my Outlook data and can run Word, Excel, and PowerPoint seamlessly through its Pocket Office suite. Ironically though, WinMo blows as a phone. I have a post in the works for those of you who are looking to add a smartphone to your on-the-go arsenal and are contemplating between Blackberry and Windows Mobile. And no, the iPhone is not part of that comparison.

I’m not going anywhere

Thank you for all the kind people that emailed me about my biggest mistakes. Apparently, it might have come off that I was leaving my business behind, but if you read carefully I’m simply making changes to it. It’s a really exciting time for me as I’m just starting to get knee-deep in the planning process of the next big thing. So you can all rest assured that I’m not going anywhere.

Back to work! Thanks for staying tuned in.

A quick update on the upcoming weekend. I’m absolutely stoked that I’ll be heading down to FITC Toronto for the yearly 4-day (April 19-22) design and technology conference. Not only do they have about a jillion amazing speakers lined-up, but I’ve heard from past attendees that I should be prepared to be knocked off my feet with inspiration.

This will be my first design-related conference and I’m really looking forward to putting faces to some of the big names in the industry. I’m also happy to be attending and meeting up with a few brilliant people as well - namely Nick of N.Design and Damian of Depthskins. If any of you are planning on heading down as well, get in touch with me and maybe we can grab a drink and share some oohs and ahhs.

I’ll be armed with my camera and an itchy trigger finger so I should have a good dose of photos and footage from the event, which I will try to share with all of you as the days go by.

Stay tuned!

My agency will be undergoing a number of changes over the next few months that are part of the natural evolution of the business. With faces, structures, models, and handful of other elements due to be changed, I see the process as an opportunity to hit the reboot button and rebuild certain aspects from the ground up. This got me thinking - what would I change?

It’s not very often that a business gets a chance to tear down everything and start again. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears go into developing the brand, reputation, networks, clients, PR (for the SEOers), and basically every other grain of what you call your business - so much that “starting over” is a concept that is usually quite foreign to most. But let’s entertain ourselves for a bit, shall we?

What if you had the opportunity to do it all again? Over the years, months, weeks, and days that you’ve been a business owner (yes, this applies to you freelancers as well), you’ve picked up an immense amount of new knowledge. Knowledge that sometimes helps you realize that some of the things you’ve done were not the right things to do. Knowledge that sometimes makes you think, if I could do it again, this is how I’d do it.

So what would you change? What would your business look like if you were to start it again today? What were your biggest mistakes and what have you learned?

To get the ball rolling, here’s a few of my biggest business mistakes:

• Not setting aside budgets for internal work: Budgets for client work are a no-brainer and are easy to justify. Why shouldn’t internal work have the same rationale? Your brand, website, and products are all important assets that, when properly invested in, will offer a [bigger] return.
• The ‘we can do that’ mentality: Every small agency’s tagline should be “we can do that” - not because it’s a good strategy, but because you end up saying it so much that you it might as well be a tagline. Trying to take on too many things outside your realm of expertise will thin out your business and leave you delivering less than mediocre results.
• Not having a hiring strategy: When you first start out, your business doesn’t need 30 sets of hands. It probably doesn’t even need 10. What’s more important to focus on is getting the right set of hands to work with you to build the business and more importantly, to run and execute the business and bring in the revenue. Partnering with a developer to match your design skills = great idea. Hiring a team of designers before you even have an established flow of work coming through = bad idea.
• Not having a growth strategy: Hiring is part of this, but a bigger part is having a plan for how your business will grow in 1, 5, or 10 years. If you’re a lemonade stand, you should have a plan on how you will grow your business into some kind of industry leader in lemonade production or distribution (for example). Without a growth strategy, you’ll always just be that same lemonade stand at the front of your house (or in my case, that lemonade stand with a really thirsty neighbor - thanks Satish).

These, and many more, are considerations that I’ll keep in mind as I begin to build the next instance of the agency.

What about you? Leave your biggest mistakes in the comments and share what you’d do differently if you could start over again (if anything).

PS - As further support that this is an important topic to consider, Naomi from the IttyBiz factory has also recently asked the same question to her readers. Check out her blog if you haven’t already - it’s one of the most entertaining and insightful small business blogs around.

As fresh entrepreneurs and freelancers we are often blessed with the consistent inconsistency of work flow from day to day. There are times when it feels like there just aren’t enough hours in a day to meet all the deadlines we’ve committed to. Yet still, amidst all of that work, we can sometimes get uneasy about the following week knowing very well that the work scale might just end up tipping the other direction.

This organic (for lack of a better term) lifestyle is what drives many down this path. And for the most part it’s fantastic; work hard when you need it, relax when you don’t. It’s the flexibility that a desk job, suit and tie, and a 9-to-5 schedule just doesn’t grant you the privilege of having.

On the other hand, it can catch many unsuspectingly, hitting the hardest with those who haven’t yet internalized the fundamental nature of the career they’ve chosen. There are bills to pay. Mouths to feed. Girlfriends to pamper. Friends to entertain. Parents to prove wrong.

Firstly - take a breather. It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. (Say it a couple more times if you need to) Good? Good.

It’s time to see your downtime for what it really is - a blessing. When work dies, the world doesn’t stop turning. On the contrary, there are plenty of other useful things you can do to take advantage of these moments, some of which will also ensure you have less of these downtimes going forward (for those who are still uneasy). Here’s a small list of suggestions of things to do the next time clients give you a moment of rest.

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