"I'm just that breed of cat"
A passion for visual communication "of any sort," an "inner sense of professionalism," and a sincere interest in "people asking me to do something new," characterize Betty W., who has been working through Aquent for the better part of 10 years. Having done her time in the design and agency world in Boston, and run her own design business for 14 years, Betty told me, "When the last company I was working for went belly-up, I realized that I was not meant to have a full-time job. I started telling people to call me 'Betty D. Temp,' because I knew I was meant to be this way."
"This way," has meant going into high stress environments, such as the office of the chairman at a major accounting firm, and to consistently succeed. "At that place, there were no weekends, you were on-call 24 hours a day, and it was a real pressure cooker. We had to produce proposals that were like annual reports in terms of their quality - they even had their own high-end, duplex color printing equipment. They made you take a test when you first got there. They'd give you the materials and you had from 8-5 to put together a proposal. I passed the test and was off and running."
Betty's success there, along with her ability to communicate with people at all levels of the organization, from partners and department heads on down, ultimately landed her an interim role as the firm's assistant director of marketing and communications. The job entailed doing all the creative work of the assistant director, carrying a full client load, and a round-the-clock commitment. "I'm very organized and had built a reputation for reliability and always striving to make things excellent," she explains to me. Indeed, it was that reputation and proven track-record that had landed her the role, with the blessing of the director of marketing, in the first place.
As much as Betty has impressed Aquent's clients, in many ways her tenure with us has served as a sort of "third act" for her career over all. The skills and self-assurance that she brought to Aquent had in fact been honed through work with clients under her own auspices. As she describes it, one of the most rewarding client relationships she cultivated during her days of self-employment was with Philips Medical Systems.
"We used to form very close relationships with our clients," she says. "and our relationship with Philips, up until the time they moved to Washington state, was a good example of that. It got to the point where it felt like we were part of the landscape and that we were really meant to be there." One of Betty's most lasting contributions at Philips was the design and creation of an elaborate icon system that was an integral part of the teleradiology - the ability to transmit x-ray images to remote sites - equipment they were marketing. "I worked with the physicists on the project, which was really fun. My husband, who is a very skilled illustrator, drew the icons, and then we digitized them. They became 'coin of the realm' for explaining the system and were even copied by competitors."
Although she started out in the traditional print world - "I had a passion for typography" - this story highlights her willingness to branch out and take her design acumen into new areas. She started doing web design, for example, while working with companies like HB Communications, where previously the website had been designed by their internal tech teams. "I really enjoyed that, especially working with the dynamic content people."
This introduction to web design, and the dynamic elements that differentiate it from print design, led her eventually to do a number of web and interactive projects for the New England Air Museum. There she redesigned exhibit kiosks on the Tuskegee Airman and an interface for a database used by veterans of the 58th Bomb Wing. "It's been a real honor to work on these projects, preserving history, and creating resources for some of our nation's unsung heroes."
When asked if she has any advice for people starting out on their design careers, Betty says, "You have to enjoy designing first and foremost. A lot of people think now that if they know the software well, they're designers. I think they need to make sure that they have an understanding of design basics like type, color theory, and all the rest."
"Of course, you also have to have talent and you have to feel confident that you can handle any project you get. Your clients can really knock you down sometimes, and you need inner strength to deal with that, something that tells you, 'I can do this.' You also need to bring a certain commitment to every project. You need to have the conviction that says, 'I'm here and I know I want to do this.' You're attitude can't be, 'I'm just here because I need the money,' although, sometimes you do need the money!"
"Experience can often be the best confidence builder, so you have to stick with it. I get asked to do project management a lot since I know what it takes to get things done because I've done them before. I can see if a deadline is doable or not and I won't commit to something I can't do. There's no substitute for experience when you are pushing back or trying to educate a client on how things stand."
Talent, confidence, and a personal commitment to doing things well have brought Betty to this stage of her career and will carry her far into the future. "I always want to make sure I'm doing things that help me build and maintain my reputation," she says, "I'm just that breed of cat."
Image courtesy of Madame Trapo.
