How to Create a Kickass In-House Design Team

So I have finally gotten to the panel that I really wanted to get to here in Austin at SXSW. Thus the title of this post.

Mainly I want to see what they have to say because I want to use this information to countersell our clients on why they should NOT use an in-house design resource. Obviously, it could be a given because by the time they come to us, they are typically looking for design. But there have been those times that the client has really pushed to have their own designer, be it in-house or a contractor, to do the design. For us, this is typically the kiss of design death for our clients. I have seen a number of them fail.

I personally have spent my career learning how to design web sites. And I think that all too often, clients feel that they know better than we do. 99% of the time they don’t. The challenge is getting them to see that. It is so hard to get them to give up control of this area more than any other. It is complicated by the undeniable fact that design is subjective.

We have been having a discussion here in Austin with people we meet and between David Mead and myself about what value we bring to our clients. I think that because we are afraid of not always “pleasing” the client that we tend not to push back when they ask for things that are outside what we would advise doing. Personally, I feel that clients should not be hiring us for ONLY the final product, but should see the value of our experience and counsel DURING the process. All too often we bend over the wrong way, wrenching our backs out, just to please the client. Even though we KNOW that the decisions they are making are simply wrong ones. Over the past several days, I have heard panel after panel tell me that in order to be valued for our experience, we need to really push back when we feel the path we are on is wrong. I think it is our responsibility to the client to protect them from themselves in some way. I am very curious to see what my new friend Mani has to say about this.

This panel I am sitting in at this moment is discussing how to please internal clients. People you can’t hide from. People that work right down the hall. To me, this is exactly the ammunition I need to make this type of case. Now these panelists all represent companies that are Web companies. So they have in house expertise to begin with.

My goal is to build a kickass design team that FEELS like an in-house team. I want our clients to feel like we understand them so well that they trust us to take their brand and represent it online… whatever the media (web site, banner ad, email, etc).

As a side, and no offense to the individuals on the panel,  but I am wondering what Google knows about good design. To me, Google represents “anti-design”. And I think they pride themselves on that. I am probably not saying something that they haven’t heard before. Personally, I can’t stand Googles branding. The brandmark stinks. Sure it is cute when they turn the two Os into Ben Franklin’s glasses, but to me, this is design treason. And on every other level beyond the cute thing, I hate it.  Their pages are sparse to me. I think they like it that way. I am a huge Gmail user. It works really well. But honestly, the design is nothing to write home about. In fact it is as minimal as I could ever imagine it being.

So the basic premise of this panel seems flawed to me considering I see two people sitting here from Google. The guy from Microsoft seems to have a good outlook about it. But you could make an arguement that Microsoft’s design efforts haven’t all been bulletproof.

So  I hoped this would be a better panel that is has been. I wanted to steal ideas on how to COMBAT the in-house team. Sometimes our clients have in-house marketing designers… or have retained an agency to do their advertising. These agencies typically know NOTHING usable about web design. We fight this fight often enough to bring me here to this meeting. But I feel that I already have these bullets in our gun.

Hopefully we can hit the target instead of shooting ourselves in the foot.

A Start is a Start… right?

This is my first post on WordPress. I a hoping that I will continue to DO this. My time is very limited, but I feel I have a lot to share and this could be a good place to share it. Please bear with me as I get it set up.