How to Fail at Your Design Business

February 7 2010, 12:25pm

Today’s guest post is a special piece from Jeff Archibald – a graphic designer hailing from the Great White North – Canada. When he’s not building igloos, fighting polar bears or writing tongue-in-cheek articles about failing at design, he runs a modestly popular design blog over at Paper Leaf Design. This is it. You’ve worked many long, hard hours developing your Pen tool skills in Illustrator to the point you could probably add “Pen Tool Ninja” to your business card. You’ve learned so much about graphic design that your head is bigger than Rush Limbaugh’s waistline. You know so much about web design that you pretty much invented the Internet. Now’s the time. You’re starting your own design business. Running your own design business is part awesome, part OHGODWHATHAVEIDONE. You’ll find tons of How to articles online, dealing with how to be a successful designer slash businessman. But where can you find an article on how to fail at your design business? Right here, readers. Read on for step 1. Suck at design Step one to failing at running your own design business is to be terrible at design. Use Comic Sans. Have a cute mouse follow the cursor on websites you build. Why use a subtle gradient when you can use a yellow-to-purple gradient, plus embossing, drop shadows and letterpress technique? Be careful though; you can learn to NOT suck if you listen to your peers and seek out constructive criticism on your designs. Avoid this at all costs. Lesson: be good at what you do, and seek feedback to keep getting better. Do everything yourself If you want to fail at your design business, then you should do everything yourself. I’m talking about developing a marketing plan; doing all the accounting; sales; project management; web design; print design; content-management-implementation; identity design and more. Yup – if you do everything yourself, not only will you fail spectacularly – you will probably be bald and malnourished by the time you get to the point of fail. Lesson: learn to let go. Hire or subcontract to people you trust, and give them the power to make decisions. Deadlines are for losers You know what sucks? Conan O’Brien getting the boot from the Tonight Show. You know what else sucks? Deadlines. Deadlines totally hinder the creative process by making you work efficiently and in a focused manner. Plus, deadlines mean that you actually have to get your work to your client at a pre-determined date so the project can move forward. Such rigid structure in a creative field? No thanks. Plus, your clients actually don’t want you to hit their deadlines. By missing their deadlines, you’re essentially saying to them “You can’t hold me down. I’m a creative REBEL – like a deadly combo of James Dean and David Carson”. Clients find this sexy and will totally call you the next time a project comes up. Lesson: learn to work with, respect, and hit both yours and your clients’ deadlines. Tread design like art, not business

The phrase “design business” is sort of an oxymoron, because design is art, like everyone knows. It’s sort of like saying “check out my wicked angel tattoo” – we all know angels aren’t wicked except in that new Legion movie (which totally looks great and definitely not like the worst movie of all time). I digress. Make sure your clients know that design is art, and if they don’t like your proposed design concepts, it’s because “they just don’t get your art”. As well, a surefire way to effectively gain new clients is to speak YOUR language (art) and not theirs (business). For example, if you’re trying to land a new web design job, be sure to talk about very specific art principles and theories in order to impress them. Avoid, at all costs, talking about how the website you can build for them will increase sales/their bottom line/conversions/anything  measurable. Your clients are business people, and business people hate measurable results. Lesson: if you’re starting a design business, recognize it is a business and treat it like such. Learn the language and best practices of business and combine that with your creative skills to be successful. Remove ‘No’ from your vocabulary

If you want to your design business to fail, always say “Yes”. No matter what the deadline is; no matter what the budget is; no matter what else you have on your plate – always say yes. This will ensure failure just like signing Michael Bay on to direct your film will ensure lots of explosions (and deep, thought-provoking dialogue). The problem with saying “No” is that you end up being selective with your clients and taking on projects that suit your style and goals. Since we’re talking about failure here, we need to say “Yes” to everything – that $50 logo design job that needs to be done tomorrow, that $200 web design job proposed by that guy whose belt is made up of the bones of past designers – everything. So make a rule and hang it in Comic Sans above your workstation: “No is not in our vocabulary”. Lesson: sometimes it’s tough, but you have to learn to be able to say no in order to succeed. Not every job is ideal, and not every client is a great match. Learn to see the good ones in advance, and know your limits. These are only a few way to fail at your design business – there are many more. What are your favorite ways to fail?