Why is it that the more prestigious the design competition, the more it costs to enter?

Prices for a single entry can be around $120. But once you are selected to either receive an award, or be published in the awards annual, which after all is part of the exercise, there will be an additional fee of $280 – $400. And that is for just one single entry.

Sure, we play along. Sometimes. As we see fit, and for projects we feel deserve to be honored. But we too draw the line.

Let’s not forget that we are an agency, we have a PR budget and cash flow. How about all the students, freelancers, micro design firms, nonprofits and other entities that may have the big, creative, genius ideas that we should all be drooling over? The ideas that really look different because they come from folks that may not have ‘corporate’ breathing down their necks, or they do it for free, out of passion and just for fun? Isn’t that often when truly great ideas happen? They will never be in any of the ‘big’ award books showcasing the best, the brightest and most amazing ideas. The books that design students get for christmas, that turn into their text books of what they ought to measure their own creativity with, are lacking to showcase just that, the unconditionally best creative endeavours.

Like with any business, a contest revolves around having a budget. The more prestigious, the more funding it requires to produce the top quality books and award statues, to get the great judges, to do the office work and drum up the necessary PR. Fully understood. But in my eyes these contests should not be limiting creative entries based on an individual’s, or a small firm’s, cash on hand. Instead they should find a corporate sponsor that wants to be seen as a forward-thinking-creative-problem-solving-type (Hmmm, not sure I can name a single one of those?) and eliminate the entry fees.

May the true talent win…and give the sponsor a shot at creative bliss while you’re at it.

Glued to the book, I intuitively used the ticket stub as my bookmark and as Mr. Jarrett started playing, I thought of the emotional connection that bookmarks have with the time, the space, the moment in ones life when a specific book was being read. But once the book is put to sleep on the book shelf, that memory is buried, indefinitely. Quite different to a piece of music which can reach your ears unsuspectedly at a gas station, a bar, a restaurant, the car radio, yet it has the same power of almost instantly catapulting you back to a particular scene of your life. The book on the other hand is simply ‘filed away’. I thought it would be great to create a simple web site for anyone to upload their otherwise ‘bookshelved’ bookmarks. Great to have them archived, fun to share and even more fun to peruse other people’s books with their unique or fun bookmarks. Who knows, if a good number of people start using it, we might want to add social components to the site in the future.

The book I was reading, ‘Rework’, has a chapter in it that talks about not trying to produce a finished product, but rather launch it in a bare bones state. If people like it then change the good product to a perfect one (‘Launch now’, Pg 93). Good is good enough. It also declares death to procrastination (‘Start Making Something’, Pg 38). Funny as I run my company in many of the ways described in the book, and many of the others are big aspirations for this year. So here I was at an inspirational concert, an inspirational setting, reading an inspirational book and I had a quick idea.

The next day I showed a napkin sketch of the site to my team and I asked them if they felt it was a good idea. They agreed. I handed it over to our new developer, Tyler, to develop such site in a couple of days time. Sure it took a month, but he was busy on client work and becoming a dad in between, so we estimate his time on the project was less then 4 business days, combined with my input. Technical specs were communicated via IM on the fly until it felt right, and the design did not involve any of our designers (both approaches are usually against our company process when working with clients). It was quick, easy and most importantly fun and very fulfilling for everyone at Geyrhalter Design.

So if you get a chance, read Rework. If you have 5 minutes, look for your hidden bookmarks and add to the collection. And if you have an idea, just go for it. You don’t want to be like everybody else that says ‘I had that idea years ago, I can’t believe these guys did it before me’, because having an idea or transforming a thought into an action are two very different things.

1. E-Mail & Calendar

We use Zimbra, an open source  E-Mail and Calendar solution that let’s us easily sync to our iPhones, which allows me to stay up to date on meetings and e-mails, even while being on the road. I can make appointments and write e-mails from wherever I am and my calendar and Inbox will always look identical, may it be on my phone or my laptop, saving plenty of time in itself.

2. Project Management

Geyrhalter Design relies on Basecamp to be the hub for all our projects, internal as well as client projects. We create timelines, keep deadlines (‘Milestones’) and exchange project specific information as well as files. We even use it to house internal company information such as a contact database, printer trouble shooting tips and log in information that might otherwise be a big pain to search through your inbox once needed.

3. Daily Tasks & Productivity Overview

This was the last piece of our internal process to take online. Until last week we used a large white board in a central agency space that gave us a 2 week overview of each employee’s tasks on any given day. It meant that everybody had to physically stop by and take a look before diving into a project to ensure nothing has changed on their schedule. It also meant that the Project Manager had to update the board throughout the day to ensure that it was up to date before leaving for the day. For myself it meant that I could only get an overview on how booked the agency is, or who was working on a certain client task by stepping into a different room. Obviously, this has been a far from ideal situation, begging for the perfect online solution, yet to be resolved. As they say, if it does not exist, go ahead and create it. And so we ventured out to develop it ourselves just last week and now the site is fully functional, enabling the team to view their daily tasks online. It also enables the Project Manager and any other Admins to move items, make items ‘hot’ (which means they are hard same-day deadlines corresponding with our ‘Milestones’ in Basecamp) and highlight vacation days. Most of all, it enables anyone on the team to get a virtual overview of their tasks and the overall 2-week in advance agency booking. We might think about offering this tool to the public in the future if there is a demand for it.

4. Cash Flow/Bookkeeping

Keeping a small size agency running means projecting cash flow and staying on top of the company’s billing on a daily basis. It takes smart planning and reporting. Pulse is the online app that enables me to do just that, and there is nothing more soothing (or, hopefully not, worrisome) to accurately predict the income and expenses for months to come. We have now been using Pulse for one year – looking back at how I was keeping GD in good financial spirits prior to using Pulse remains a big question mark.

5. Invoicing

We use Freshbooks to create, send and follow up on invoices. It gives our clients many payment options, and it provides us with a simple overview. Unless you have an accounting firm handling your invoices, using this system also takes the awkwardness out of the financial part of the client interactions, which really shouldn’t happen.

6. Storing thoughts that add to your weight

These could also be seen as small tasks, random thoughts or scribbles, which if not written down, will create that constant buzz in your brain and create that heavy weight you so often feel on your shoulders unless thoughts are filed away until you need them again. I use Things for this. I have my own daily tasks, since as the CEO I have plenty of smaller items to check off any given hour and I am not partaking in our open Schedule software. This helps me keep track of my thoughts. Everything from my daily, weekly and monthly to-do’s all the way to keeping track of places to visit, wines to try, dates when subscriptions run out and gifts to give once the holidays come around. It is all in one place, accessibly from anywhere I am with an internet connection. I literally plug all of these thoughts into ‘Things’, while I work or during play (via the syncing iPhone App). It does not happen anymore that I run out of an idea for a place to eat while being in a particular part of town, or a DVD to stream on Netflix on a chill evening (yes, I do have a list for that). I can not even tell you how much it helps me feel relaxed, organized and free to do the things that I want to, or have to do any given point in time, and not worry about where I read or heard about something and then figure out how to locate it.

This is how I run Geyrhalter Design, and a bit of my personal life, in a nutshell, through 5 tabs in my browser, and ‘Things’ launched. It took us a while to get here and I am thrilled about how easy it made life at GD; but there are always ways to improve and sync these steps and I would love to hear your thoughts and learn about your own personal solutions to streamline and stay organized.

 A while back, I shared a project I was about to undertake for Art Center College Of Design’s designmatters department with you. Time has passed, and about a month ago we travelled to Mexico City to launch this student effort during the 62nd Annual United Nations DPI/NGO Conference.The Vato Verde campaign is a design intervention for civic disarmament that includes environmental, print and multimedia components, which provoke us to take a close look at the complex problem of gun violence in mega cities such as Los Angeles and Mexico City.Vato Verde aims to reach a generation of children and tweens who are at risk for gun violence and often over-exposed to the glamorization of guns in mainstream media. My students decided to work with Claymation for the first time and the campaign has received great interest from educational leaders to be included into curriculums in Puebla, and maybe other states within Mexico.

You can now read an updated essay about this campaign as well as view the videos on Art Center’s designmatters site.

One thing is for sure, we will follow up and find out.

A job applicant like him deserves a little bit of lovin’….