At first, I titled this post, ‘Where are the pictures?’
But then I realized I should probably optimize it a bit more, for search. Keywords, let’s say, would be about communication, branding, and design for strongly expressing what it is you want to say to everyone about what it is you do, why you do it, and why it matters. Okay that’s probably a lot of extra stuff in addition to just plain old ‘branding’ and ‘brand identity design.’ Is it? Well, then.
Let me get to the original story. Here it is.
More than a decade ago, in Seattle, when I had just set up the office for Design Kompany in my neighborhood, Capitol Hill, I met a web developer. This person was someone who had worked for a lot of companies and knew a ton about ‘search’ which I had zero clue about, in those days. I just found the scrap of paper that had the best section of the notes I took in that conversation, the one about ‘What can I do to help people find me, know about my services, and be confident that I can deliver on my promises to create designs that really work?’ The paper told me to put a lot of pictures right on the front page. That people don’t want to see ‘process’ pictures. That designers get carried away with our process and have lost touch with the reality that at the very beginning, most people will have .02 seconds to give your website, and that time will not include an in-depth interest in your creative process, no matter how thorough and cool and fun it may be.
‘The people who commission Design Kompany read, read to the end, and check links.’
For you and the people who move past .02 seconds and, say, read the blog posts, and through the end of the time they are reading everything kind of start to go, ‘Maybe these people know what they are talking about.’ (It’s this person, is the only thing I’d say to correct. It’s just one person at DK doing all the design work at the moment. Me.) I’m happy with that, it makes it clear about what you’ll get since the pictures on the front page are images that document works of mine, personally, leading, and now they are getting put there bit by bi more and more. I can do this. I’m back in the same city now that the camera is. All the projects that were worth holding on to, paper-wise, are with me, too. So it’s a good time to regroup. Honestly, I think the pictures that tell the story of Design Kompany’s work-to-date best are the ones of the hard-copies of things. Digital, while lovely in some ways, just doesn’t carry the same heft as something that gets printed.
So here I am, writing a blog post about this scrap of paper that a certain web developer’s thoughts are recorded onto. I tried to keep in touch with that person but he said some insanely offensive stuff. People around the world are going through… stuff, I guess. Stuff.
Really there was no trick to search engine optimization, in 2006. You just had to have a few things organized and it was easy as pie. That’s why so many people came to Design Kompany from the internet, back then, of course. It was easy to do it. DK was on page 1 of google search for branding and Seattle. Handy. Where I am now, and what I want to do now, however, are going to have to be set up again from scratch. Almost scratch, I suppose. Because the core service is the same. Outside of ‘branding’ and ‘brand identity design’ because I want to get back to basics. Which is this:
Communcation.
Designing clear, and real, communication. For people to use. Like for real. Like, as in, get to the heart and soul of what it is a group, a company or even an individual really stands for (and doesn’t).
Why is it so hard to get people to talk now in this way? To share honestly, directly, and clearly?
Why are we getting splashed with graphics and fancy-ness that distracts from that core thing so, so many people I feel could use some time revisiting, repolishing, touching-up, and redesigning—whatever the case may be—given this soon-to-be-I-hope post-pandemic era. All the rules of the game are changing, with regards to how we meet, talk, see each other, connect, converse, and do our jobs.
But what hasn’t changed is the importance of clarifying, first to yourself, then to the world, what it is that’s your ‘why.’ And in an era of over-saturation in terms of the clutter people are getting all the time, every day, on screens 24/7, it really needs to be quite crisp. No waffling. NO waffling, ever.
But yeah. Finding that bit of paper from 2006 really made me stop and think. Why did I carry it all over the world and save it all this time? Maybe because there was some nugget of truth to it. A reminder that designers love design, and process, and creating, but that customers-to-be don’t care. At least, not at the beginning.
‘They want to see your work. See it instantly. So yeah. Where are the pictures?’
Design Kompany’s portfolio… the pictures… yes. Those. They’re on the homepage.