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.

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. 

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.

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.

“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

Of course your graphic designers love to design, and your programmers love to develop, your copywriter loves to write, and your AE (hopefully) loves client communication! But do they all have the ownership mentality? It’s undervalued, and it’s what gives smaller studios an exceptional capability to stand up against those larger agencies. It’s not just one person taking the lead with this thought process- it’s everyone taking every fire drill seriously and going to extremes to make sure their end of the job is taken care of- all to satisfy the needs of the client. 

Pride in getting something right should absolutely be the enjoyment of the owner of a small studio, but every owner would want to share that with his/her employees- everyone who touches the project and everyone who doesn’t

You can do things right 28 days out of the month, but when one of those remaining days doesn’t go as planned, there’s a chance you could be fighting so you don’t compromise the quality, effectiveness or bottom line of a  job done on your watch. So, what happens when that inevitable mistake makes its way to the surface of your carefully managed workflow?

To be more honest, most of them on that list would not argue. If they were fantastic designers, they wouldn’t need us. If they could art direct, they would attempt to do so. But, after this purposefully tacky intro, we have something uplifting to say; your taste is relevant, and it’s important even if it’s not what insiders would consider “good.”

Email survival
If you are responsible for a significant portion of your company’s communication (i.e. are an owner, a sales person, or account executive) you know that the effectiveness of your correspondence is tantamount to virtually all other attributes of your skill-set on a daily basis. If you’re like us, you started out being a good designer or programmer, or copywriter, and have (abruptly) evolved into a digital communicator.