Recently in Design Management Category

Aquent partnered with Monster to uncover the key to "attracting, keeping and developing Web talent in an uncertain economy" and we presented our findings in an AMA webcast today (I've embedded the slides below for your viewing convenience).

It would seem that, while others in the creative class may be struggling, the web folk are feeling fairly confident. 72% of our respondents said they would rate their current position as moderately to highly secure. 52% feel that they would have a good or excellent chance of finding another web position were they to look (a belief that is semi-bolstered by the fact that 37% of our client respondents said they plan on hiring web talent in 2009). And 51% saw their compensation increase over the last twelve months.

This level of confidence amongst the web-enabled is understandable. From the standpoint of companies looking for web talent, it also makes these folks "available." Indeed, 43% percent of the people we asked said that they will actively seek another position within the next 12 months, while an additional 35% said they would make a move if the right opportunity presented itself. In other words, 78% of working web talent are "out there."

I'm not a math guy, but all signs point to this being a good time to be looking for web talent (and a good time to actually be a talented web professional). If you are in the hiring game, you might want to consider the following to lure the interactive moths to your particular flame: web folk are looking for stable positions, flexible schedules, and access to professional development. If you've got that on offer, then get busy offering!

As mentioned, the slides:

This post was written by Aquent's Alex "Anytime/Anywhere" Weaver. This is a picture of him.

As fluid and uncertain as it has become (thanks in part to companies shedding full-time employment opportunities faster than A-Rod is shedding fans), the career landscape isn't really a landscape anymore. Its more like a wormhole where traditional job search conventions go in and something entirely different emerges.

Some claim that we are now looking at a 24-hour workplace, but I think it goes beyond that. Thanks to the web, the workplace isn't even a real place anymore; it's been replaced by the nowhere-in-particular of cyberspace.

The question now is: How do you go about looking for a job in the anytime/anywhere world of work in which the internet is your office, a solid web presence your resume, and what you do (your specialization) matters more than where you do it (your geographic location)?

I'll tell you this: it's not easy. Where once you could focus the bulk of your networking attention on the city you call home, now you could potentially be working for a client in Kuala Lumpur on a project that needs to be delivered next day to Sao Paulo (their time), while your toast gets cold in Idaho. See? It's complicated!

We've been responding to this brave new wormhole by shifting around the way we work. Our agents are now focusing less on covering a specific geographical beat than they are on mastering a particular area of specialization. It's technically possible for a web agent in Seattle to find a web designer in Montreal to work for a client in Dallas, so why shouldn't we make exactly that happen?

Obviously [BLATANT SELF-PROMOTION WARNING!], one way to look for gigs (or talent, for that matter) in the anytime/anywhere world is to partner with an organization capable of being anywhere/anytime (I can recommend one if you're curious). But what I'm dying to know is, how are YOU doing it (without the aforementioned, nameless organization)? Have you been able to shift your mind and efforts successfully into the de-spatialized, temporally fluid workplace? Do you work in a certain specialty rather than a certain place? Does your client list span the globe while you, uh, butter your toast in Idaho?

To put it another way, do you now or have you ever worked for someone you have never met in person who lives in a place you've never visited? How did you make that happen? I gotta to know! Talk to me!

I wrote a post here advocating greater transparency in the staffing business and someone left the following comment:

"Graphic design is a tough business. That being said, seeing positions posted for a web designer that knows Flash, web design, and print design for the jaw-dropping salary of 35K isn't going to cut it. That is senior-level design knowledge."

I couldn't help but agree with this individual, and not just because recent salary data published by Robert Half puts starting salaries for graphic designers at $36K, with motion graphics specialists commanding salaries starting in the mid-$50Ks.

I thought that we had put the days of kitchen-sink web positions well behind us. Overlooking the significant and long-acknowledged differences between print and web design, a position description like the one above indicates a failure to recognize that certain sub-specialties of web design, as one might consider Flash, for example, have actually become viable career options in their own right.

Interactive design has always been a team sport precisely because it is interactive. The web is undeniably a visual medium, hence the importance of visual design in the creation of websites. But a web site must function in addition to looking pretty and the technical complexity of its functioning demands skills and expertise that are more math than Matisse, if you know what I mean.

The classic division of labor on web projects has always been design AND development. Although most designers will have some technical chops, and developers, on the front-end anyway, will understand design basics, this just means they can communicate and collaborate with each other, not that they are interchangeable. Indeed, they are less interchangeable than ever as the "classic" division of yesteryear has been replaced by today's "baroque" arrangement of sundry strategists and marketing mavens corralling a shifting constellation of user experience specialists, designers, copywriters, Actionscripters, programmers, and analysts, and more.

I know that money is tight and that the web is critical to everyone's efforts. Nevertheless, you don't do yourself or your business any favors by trying to cut costs by hiring one person to do the work of four (or more). Instead, you will be better served by starting with a comprehensive plan for your web efforts, which may in the end be "owned" by one person, and then hiring talented specialists on a project or contract basis to bring the plan to life. Just like it takes a village to raise a child, it ALWAYS takes a team to create good web stuff.

Image Courtesy of elvissa.

A recent survey we conducted with the American Marketing Association showed that, even though most marketers are turning to online marketing for salvation in these dark times, they are finding themselves in a bind because they don't want to outsource these efforts but they don't necessarily have the in-house expertise required to get it done. Turns out that, although online marketing was a stated priority for many in 2008, few were able to actually make the online marketing hires they'd planned earlier in the year.

Lesson 1: Unfettered demand for online marketing translates into unflagging demand for interactive designers and developers.

The cultural revolution unleashed by web technology is ongoing and has produced an increasingly refined level of specialization. Whereas ten years ago we primarily distinguished between creative, front-end designers on the one hand and technically-oriented back-end coder/programmers on the other, today we see a proliferation of web-specific roles ranging from Flash gurus to user experience managers to web analytics wizards and beyond.

In addition to this morphing, expansion, and multiplication of web roles, we've witnessed an intense transformation of the way web work happens. The nature of the technology allows for teams to function without regard to geographical location and the fact that the web is always "on" means that web projects know no temporal limitations; they can and sometimes must be executed at any time, day or night.

Lesson 2: Innovation on the web isn't just about what people do, it's about where and when they do it.

The demand for interactive talent obviously means a wealth of opportunities for web professionals whether their focus is design, development, or marketing. The innovations brought about by the web mean that companies who hire web professionals have an amazing variety of options when it comes to engaging the people they need. The fact that the web and what people do with it continues to grow and change means that no one can predict exactly what new opportunities it will create in the future. However, it is undeniable that understanding these opportunities and their implications will mean the difference between success and failure for businesses and professionals alike.

Lesson 3: To take advantage of new opportunities, you need to have a grasp of the possibilities engendered by technical innovation as well as the limitations imposed by the demands of the marketplace.

On that note, if you want to get a better handle on the opportunities offered or precluded by the current interactive talent market, you ought to tune in to this webcast that Aquent is putting on in conjunction with Monster: Hiring Interactive Talent in the New World of Work .

Tell 'em, Matt sent you.

T'other day Amber over at Altitude wrote a post called, "5 Things Good Agencies Do (And one they don't)." She is talking here about any kind of agency - PR, Web, Marketing, etc. - but it struck me that the behaviors/attitudes she describes would also distinguish good consulting firms from bad and even represent standards to which any company could hold their vendors (or to which customers could hold a company). For example, the "good" care about you and your business, can readily point to the results of their work, and, interestingly enough, will tell you when they can't help you.

How would your organization, or you personally, fare if held to these standards?

In other words, how "good" are you?

Image Courtesy of TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³.

Five long years ago, I wrote a piece entitled, "Return on Creative." The crux of that essay was that design was critical to business success and, naturally, that a clear understanding of business principles and a focus on creating value was critical to successful design.

This was part of marketing campaign that we were running in order to position Aquent as the company that "got" both business AND design, making us the perfect choice for any organization looking for increased efficiency from creative execution (as we often called it). Of course, it also jibed with the growing (and still prevalent) trend amongst AIGA-istas and DMI-ers to insist that design deserved a "place at the table" - that is, the table where important business decisions are made.

This "place at the table" thinking has been questioned by folks like Michael Bierut and, more recently, Dan Saffer. Bierut sees it as symptomatic of an insecurity complex and insists that designers should focus on being good at design, not business. Saffer says that designers need allies at the table, but should relish their place away from it as outsiders who can "speak truth to power." As high-falutin' as that may sound, Saffer rightly emphasizes that, place at the table or not, designers need to be able to explain their work and decisions in business terms.

When a client or manager asks about the return on investing in "good" design, she wants to translate it into the language of profit and loss. Paying designers is an expense that she must weigh against other expenses and justify in terms of relative profitability. How do YOU handle this question? How do you measure the impact of DESIGN? Do you?

Or is that, ultimately, the wrong question?

NPR ran a story this morning entitled, "Crowd Sourcing Turns Business On Its Head," in which it reported on a sneaker company that asks customers to design potential new shoes, posts the designs so that folks can vote on their faves, then produces and sells the top shoe. The winning designer gets $1000 and 1% of the profits. The company claims that, by using this method, they've cut design-to-final-product time from 12 months to six weeks.

The line in the story that gave me the greatest pause was this: "Like other companies relying on community design, RYZ [the shoe company in question] doesn't need a large marketing or design staff."

Creative competition is not uncommon. Microsoft endorses the iDSA's Next-Gen PC Design Contest, and McDonald's famously ran it's "Big Mac Chant-off" earlier this summer, to cite just two of many examples. It's also far from new. For example, Coke got the design for its iconic bottle from a competition it ran way back in 1915.

The real question is, "Are we entering an era in which competitions and crowd-sourcing will become the primary source for everything from product design to graphic design?" Although this might be an extreme way of putting it, I fear that it's not an outlandish way of putting it.

At the end of the day, the proof of this pudding is in the eating: Will shoes designed this way sell? If they do, the model works. My hunch is, however, that even if they don't sell, it won't mean the model can't work, just that it needs refinement.

We're in the process of rethinking our on-line presence/strategy and redesigning our website. We've already changed the homepage fairly drastically and continue to experiment with it, even as we reconsider our whole approach.

As part of the experimentation, I started a contest at 99Designs offering $500 for a "redesign" of our homepage. We asked contestants to keep all the elements, the colors, and the top navigation, and submit their ideas. In doing so, I semi-wittingly unleashed a boat-load of ire.

I say "semi" because I knew there was some controversy in the design world about the "ethics" of contests or crowd-sourcing more generally. I just didn't realize how much designers hated them. The comments posted on this thread on QBN have been, um, unflattering. People have also been commenting, critically though more civilly, on our Facebook page.

One Facebook commenter suggested that we take a poll of designers to see what they think about design contests. So here it is:

If you're reading this blog, then you probably read this story in ADWEEK, "Agencies Seek the Right Mix." If you didn't read it, the article describes a kind of power shift in agencies from the "traditional creatives" to the "digital people."

The two quotes that jumped out at me were this, from JWT's Ty Montague:

"It used to be a caste system where traditional creatives came up with the 'big idea' and then turned it over to digital... We' re creating a system where the traditional creatives cannot overrule the digital people."

And this, from Mother London's Dylan Williams:

"Great ideas have always been viral. Digital is just one way to fan flames."

The first quotation tells me that, when Aquent's CIO became my überboss by adding marketing to his numerous responsibilities, this was but a ripple in the stream of the Zeitgeist ... or at least a symptom of this broader trend: Marketing is becoming indistinguishable from a technology, specifically, the Interweb, which contains all media without being a medium itself.

Aquent and the AIGA, in cooperation with Communication Arts magazine, recently published a survey of design salaries for the US. Aside from showing how much people make in different design roles, it also comes with a handy salary calculator.

Analysis to follow, but what do you notice about it?