Jeff Koke Design Blog

Everyone has heard of “writer’s block”, the inability for a professional writer to get the right words down on the page. Designers experience a similar thing, that I call “Creative Block”. Sometimes it’s just something that happens on a particular day — I can’t get going on anything, and nothing I design pleases me. Other times, it’s a specific project that I’m stuck on and I end up frustrated and tossing out design after design. This usually happens on a deadline.

When I first started my own business, creative block terrified me. I felt paralyzed, knowing I had to get the project finished, but unable to start, or stuck at a certain point with no idea how to finish. I wanted to deliver projects that were both great and on-time, but creative block threatened either one or both of those. I was tempted to give up on some projects, and wanted to just call the client and tell them I couldn’t finish. My creative block could last a few hours, or a few days, and I never knew when it was going to happen. And the anxiety I experienced when it did happen made it worse.

Over the 11 years that I’ve run my own design firm, I’ve developed several strategies for getting through creative block and keeping my clients happy with great designs.

Learn to Recognize It: The first step to beating creative block is to see it when it’s happening, and to accept it. There’s a difference between simply struggling to come up with a good idea for a design, or having difficulty laying out content on a page, and true creative block where nothing you do seems to satisfy you or you can’t see any way to even get started. Pushing through a design difficulty is usually the right thing to do, but pushing through creative block is nearly impossible.

Don’t Freak Out: Anxiety is not a great tool for creativity. Creative block is going to happen, and it will sometimes happen a the worst time, under a tight deadline for example. When it happens to me, I acknowledge that I’m blocked and that I’m going to have to get the project done when I’m not, even if that means pushing a deadline, or pulling an all-nighter.

Do Something Else: The primary way to defeat creative block is to find something else to do that has nothing to do with design. Take a walk or a bike ride. Do some yard work or clean the house. Play a video game or read a good book. Take a nap. This is a lot harder than it sounds. My instinct at first was always to keep hammering at a design until something broke through, and taking time out of my work day to “goof off” made me feel like I was losing money. But the simple truth is that I can spend three hours pounding away at a project, trying things that never seem to work out, and afterward be no closer to a finished project, or I can spend those three hours not thinking about design, giving my right brain a chance to reboot and come back to the project refreshed and inspired.

Finally, Find Your Rhythm: It took me a while, but I eventually noticed that I tended to get blocked mostly in the afternoons, and I was generally more creative in the mornings. So I planned my design projects such that initial design work that required a lot of creativity would happen in the morning, and in the afternoon I focused on more mundane tasks, like making text corrections, answering emails, writing proposals or setting up project schedules. It’s all work that needs to be done, but it doesn’t require a lot of inspiration.

Ultimately, inspiration and creativity are not qualities that can be called up upon command. By staying calm and working around creative block and not trying to work through it, I can be confident that the inspiration will eventually come. When it does, it always comes back with a vengeance and I can deliver a design and project that I’m proud of and that will wow my client.

When I am approached and given the opportunity to bid on a graphic design project, inevitably I am asked for samples from my portfolio. I am always happy to provide them, and to point them to my Web site where they can view more, but I wonder if they realize that my portfolio only tells a part of the story.  The samples allow a prospective client to gauge my design ability, but give no insight into my reliability.

Occasionally I get a request for references, but I find out later that most of the time those references are never checked (my willingness to provide them being proof enough, I suppose). But what surprises me is that while I hear many clients complaining about designers and firms that they’ve been burned by in the past, so few of them attempt to verify the reliability of the firm beforehand.

Why is reliability so important for a design firm? The simplest and most obvious answer is that most projects are not one-off isolated events. Many times, a project is simply a first phase in a longer campaign. If you turn out to be a flake, and don’t deliver what you promised on time and within the agreed-upon budget, you are likely not to be retained for the remainder of the campaign, regardless of the quality of your work. A stunning portfolio might bring a client in the door, but consistency and reliability will keep them coming back.

Your reliability is also directly connected to how often and how strongly your clients will recommend you to their colleagues. I get probably 90% of my new business through referrals, and if I started delivering late or going over budget, those referrals would start to dry up. I might not even know the reason why. The phone would just stop ringing.

And thus being consistently unreliable can cause a designer to develop a reputation as a flake, which can haunt them for a long time. In a field as crowded and competitive as graphic design and marketing, a good reputation is vitally important. If you feel you’re developing such a reputation, the best remedy is to become reliable fast. Here are three ways:

1. Schedule Realistically: Only you know how quickly you can turn things around, so be realistic about schedules that you develop. Clients are often impressed when I push back on a timeline that I feel is too aggressive. I’ve turned down lucrative projects that I knew I couldn’t get done it time because ultimately I would be blamed for missing the deadline.
2. Estimate Honestly: If you bid low to win a project and then hit the client with changes in scope and extra fees, they’ll usually pay it, but that will likely be the last money you see from them. Give your clients a realistic bid; try to work within their budget; and don’t accept projects that are below your threshold. You may lose a few to competitors who underbid you, but the ones you do get will be more likely to lead to grateful clients and more work (and the prospect may come back to you after the low-bidders flake out).
3. Do Whatever It Takes: Finally, once you’ve settled on a price and a schedule, do whatever it takes to get it done on time and within the budget. If that means, you have to stay up all night to meet your client’s deadline, then that’s what you do (and you’ll be more likely to plan better the next time). If it takes you longer than you estimated and you end up spending more hours than you’re getting paid for, chalk it up to experience and bill the client what you promised.

Reliability is not a substitute for ability, but ability by itself is not enough to establish a great reputation and keep clients coming back. How you deliver what you deliver is just as important, if not more.

What is a “zombie project”?

It’s a project that lingers in limbo, neither alive or dead. For whatever reason, the work has been completed (or mostly so), but the final product has not been launched, printed, presented or used by the client.

We’ve always had a couple zombie projects in the works at any given time, and bringing them back to life (or killing them forever) is always a challenge. Whether it’s a Web site that’s been built and coded, but never launched by the client, or a brochure that’s been designed, but never released, these projects lurch around half-alive, costing mental energy and project management resources, waiting on the day they will come back to life, or die forever.

The first question is the most basic: Why Do We Care About Zombie Projects? Assuming we’ve been paid for our work by the client, why should we care whether the project is ever launched? We care for two reasons: First, we care about our client’s success, and getting a new, well-designed site launched or direct mail out will help their business (else why have us design it?). More business for our client generally equals more business for us.

Second, it’s a point of pride. Every designer likes to see his or her work out in the world, doing what they were designed to do, and it’s a bit frustrating for clients to sit on a final product for months, and sometimes even years, without releasing it.

There are three tactics we use to deal with zombie projects:

1. The elixir of life: The best method we’ve found is to schedule a “re-kick-off meeting” with all stakeholders in the project. Either in-person or via conference call, we gather everyone together and discuss what can be done to get the project to the final stage. Often this is enough to spur the client to finish and release it.
2. Dismemberment: If we are unable to bring a project to life via a re-kick-off meeting, we will try to make use of the design components from the project in other work for the client, offering to achieve the initial objectives of the project with another deliverable. If the project can’t live as it was originally conceived, maybe it can be re-born as a new project. Warning, this sometimes leads to additional zombies!
3. The shotgun: If a project can’t be resurrected or re-used, sometimes the only answer is a quick death. We zip up the files and send them to the client with our condolences and try not to expend any more energy or project management time on it after that. Some projects just can’t be saved.

Do you have any zombie projects roaming around your computer? Let me know in the comments.