Productivity Away From the Office Desk.
Monday thru Friday, for about eight hours each day, you’ll find some of us in the office. But that’s not the case for others of us. As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, we’re stationed all over the place, including overseas. It’s not just us. More and more people are embracing the flexibility their jobs offer, and doing their best work at home. There are elements of being at home that are drastically different than being in the office, some of which have taken us a bit to figure out. We thought we’d share a few tips we’ve found helpful along the way.
Office hours.
Establish them. Even at home- especially at home- this is an important thing to do. While perks of working from home include being able to stand up and chat with family members for a few minutes in the middle of the day, or access the coffee machine any time you want, or even pet the dog while doing something that doesn’t require a lot of brain power, there are times when you need to remain uninterrupted.
Entermotion
in General, Home Office, Working Remote
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Are You Tracking Your Workflow or is it Tracking You?
A design studio or agency does a perpetual exercise in organization. Every day, there are jobs that need to get done. Some are very small jobs. Some are larger. Others are in between. There are also the parts of whole jobs… they all need to get done. They’re all a priority. Is it even possible to manage them? How do you keep track of client issues that need to be followed up with? How do you juggle the project you’re working on with all the other projects you’re overseeing? There’s got to be a way.
Every studio has to come up with their own method of tracking jobs through its workflow. And the system in place probably varies depending on how many employees there are within the company, whether or not there’s an account manager in place, and the number of clients the studio has at any given point during the year.
The Happy Studio- Make Your Studio Like a Home.
As creative people, we often find that our creativity translates into lots of aspects of our life beside design. While Gestalt, “variety within unity” and color theory apply to all the great design arts, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re good at everything design related just because you know the basics. It’s true that you could probably have a great conversation with a fashion designer or an architect about how similar graphic design is to their professions- but it doesn’t mean you can sit down and design an award winning skirt, or esplanade.
Still, we for one, would like to believe we at least have the skills to make our space comfortable with a little thinking, and study.
Our studio
A creative space is what you make of it. Some people are inspired by the blankness of white space, others are claustrophobic about it. Some people love loud busy areas with lots of activity, some are irritated and/or terrified by it.
Our studio is wide open. Bigger than we need. If one person is on the phone, everyone hears it.
Great Headline, Anyone?
“I hate to break it to you, but there is no big lie, there is no system, the universe is indifferent.” -Don Draper, Mad Men.
Writing for the web is, as most people know by now, completely different than writing for other mediums. There are things like the structure and length of the paragraph, the use of bullet points, and the sheer amount of content that isn’t quite the same online as a piece you might see in a newspaper. One aspect of writing holds the same level of importance across the board, though, and that is a headline. While a visitor might be indifferent when they reach a site, once they get there it’s up to us to impress. We dazzle with design, and they stay a minute longer to poke around a bit. Then they start actually reading the content, and that’s where we want to hook them.
It'll Take Time. A Lot of Time.
There’s a great link on Daring Fireball about SEO. It’s a nice opinionated article about how SEO is bunk, -but there’s another bit that makes it worth reading. At the end of the article is the secret to web marketing. Print it our and pin it up somewhere.
“Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.
That’s it. Make something you believe in. Make it beautiful, confident, and real. Sweat every detail. If it’s not getting traffic, maybe it wasn’t good enough. Try again.
Then tell people about it. Start with your friends. Send them a personal note – not an automated blast from a spam cannon. Post it to your Twitter feed, email list, personal blog. (Don’t have those things? Start them.) Tell people who give a shit – not strangers. Tell them why it matters to you. Find the places where your community congregates online and participate. Connect with them like a person, not a corporation. Engage. Be real.
Then do it again. And again. You’ll build a reputation for doing good work, meaning what you say, and building trust.
It’ll take time. A lot of time. But it works. And it’s the only thing that does.”
Read the rest here: http://powazek.com/posts/2090