Feb 27

Creativity has no price!

Posted by Julek in general updates


Today, the stock market *stumbled. The stock market fell because of one country - China. We’re so caught up in outsourcing and Chinese affairs, when people realize that what they’re paying pennies for is worth less than pennies, our whole NASDAQ and DOWJONES markets crash (or plunge). Look at this:

Today, a video was released with hundreds of stats, predictions, and facts. The Coming Crisis. It presents some accurately interesting facts, and gives many predictions on what the world will be in coming life.Over these recent years of “renaissance“, with more creative business, strategies, start-ups, knowledge, thinking, all of this 2.0-new-era / new-gen, there have been thousands of books written and published on social/humanism, outsourcing, asia, quality of life - et cetera. My favorite book I’ve read so far on these subjects has to be “Mindset” (by John Naisbitt). The book gets into modern life, business, outsourcing, creative thinking, and prediction. It provides sets of mindsets for new outlooks on life and the future. It gets into how the payroll finds its way around Asia and India, much better than (for instance) the US.What am I telling you? What word have I been using and defining throughout that introduction? Outsourcing. Its who you thank for losing your job. In this new world of ours, we need stunningly ambitious attributes to survive. We need creativity, we need ambition, we need hard QUALITY work.For many many days, weeks … months, even, I’ve been thinking about this subject and topic. These are my thoughts compiled.Its tougher to outsource things like design to places like India and China. To design, it takes creativity. People are slowly learning how to be creative, scientifically. They’re learning about the halves of your brain. They’re learning how it works, scientifically, and how to become creative. They’re taking what they learn, and they’re teaching it to willing and ambitious citizens of the overpopulated “outsource” countries. They’re all willing to learn, they’re all willing to work for cheap, they’re all willing to spend hours and hours in the toughest conditions to support their families.But here you are, you need to stay alive too. You need to support yourself at some point of life or another. You need to be smart, and not just think you’re smart. If you live in America, you may think you’re very smart. You may think you’re going through one of the best education systems ever established. You’d never think there is some guy in some country in some third-world city that is incredibly smarter than you are, that has a better future than you do. But, there is. The United States has one of the worst education systems in the world, the United States used to be the massive world power. Now, its China. Its a 1.3 billion population against a 300 million population, only 5% of our nearly 7 billion.So how do you stop this?

  1. Don’t be lazy. People who are determined are not lazy. They’ll start something and finish something, they’ll work as hard as they can to learn, construct, and perfect every detail and element there is. Their ambition to learn, their determination to surpass and succeed the current powers … surpasses and succeeds our current powers. People begin to think they have “the life”, and the slack off. America is one of the most guilty countries of doing this.
  2. Quality over quantity. You’ve heard of this millions of times before, yet I can find an example in less than 15 seconds of this ‘motto’ being put to shame by desperate people (see point 3 for desperation). If you stick to quality, quantity will come. You have to work on perfecting your quality to receive your quantity. Think about it, this is an only logical thing to say. Let’s take a popular example from the design world. I find many early designers find instant gratification most valuable. They under-price themselves to simply have a chance in competition with the higher standards designers. They’ll try to create 10 designs at $100 each, or sell 10 designs for $20 each. I don’t even open up Photoshop for $100. There is one definite remedy, cure, for this. Practice (and patience). Its undoubtedly more valuable to spend your time learning and perfecting quality designs, and entering the market as a confident, experienced designer than a desperate, unskilled “newbie” hoping to make $50 as quick as they can.
  3. Desperation kills. If you’re desperate, it shows. It shows your belief in needing something and it looks simply terrible. Desperation shows weakness, and that’s when you get pushed and taken advantage of the most. What do you think will happen if you normally price your designs at $300, never get hired, drop your price in a promotion to $150 (cut them in HALF), and you finally get a client to even ask you how much you charge. The client won’t hire you for $200, they’ll bargain it down, using your desperation against you, probably cutting it in half to $100. Why do you agree? Why do you cut your price in the first place? If you can’t get hired for the price you think is right, then that means you have some knowledge to catch up on. If you don’t have a portfolio, you have to make one, and in the meantime experiment with your creativity, new effects, new styles - everything.
  4. Firmly set your standards. Us designers are “lucky” in our line of work. True clients won’t go for some skill-less, moral-less, standard-less newbie-designer. They like and respect designers who not only design astonishingly, but have an astonishing attitude. Set a minimum for yourself, and never go below it. Let’s say you want to (EXAMPLE) charge $750 per design. A client approaches you, and says “You know what man, I’ve only got $500 to spare, what do you say?”… Personally, I’d not take the job. I’d kindly say these words. “I’m sorry, my minimums are at $750 for the work you’re looking to get done.” - And there’s a perfect example in this episode of Tweak. Basically, the situation is, Josh Itawa doesn’t go below his minimum price. For doing that, the client sees his standards, his self respect and self value, and hires him for a job with a budget double his minimum price.
  5. Determination. This ties in with point #1. You have to be determined to meet all requirements, and go over the requirements. Set the benchmark for quality. Be determined enough to care about meeting your deadlines that your client and you agreed on. Be determined enough to cover ever detail and element to flatter your client. Be determined enough to not just hand over the completed design, rather, take your own time to make sure the source files are neat, there are directions, and (my personal favorite) … a client thank-you note showing your respect and thankfulness to the client. Go above and beyond, it’ll be worth it.

This isn’t all, at all. Though following these tips is an excellent start. I’m sure if you’re an experienced designer, you know the benefits these qualities reap, and you know these qualities are the kind that clients look for when hiring their designers.

Clients will not pass on a designer with the 5 qualities listed above, incredible skill, and a great attitude to simply save them money. They know that hiring you, with everything I’ve mentioned so far, is much more profitable short term, and in the long run, than hiring someone from an “outsourcing” country for half the price, attitude, knowledge, and quality.

This is how to keep your job, and how to compete with all of the lowballers in the world. I’ve seen very many people complain about designers lowering their prices, and diminishing the market. That’s not true, they’re not touching the market. Those designers are either desperate, lazy, have no morals … no standards, aren’t determined, and flip the equation to say “quantity > quality”. They attract clients with low standards, who don’t know what they want, yet won’t like what you make because its “not what we want”.

And of course, this all leads to creativity. One of my favorite words. To accomplish what I’ve told you, you have to be creative.

And that’s all! If you enjoyed reading this, please comment and discuss it… And hopefully you’ll give it a digg (this is the right link now). :)

Ciao!

(PS - I know China and India can also have some very creative, very smart people. I’m not being and “ist” (racist, internationalist), nor am I against anyone who tries. I understand people have to make a living somehow, and hopefully you don’t take my post as stereotyping those countries. All I’m saying is, its common for companies to outsource to those countries because the workers there work for half the price.)

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