日本語

I have a new one. Some dude calls me. He likes “iA design and concepts and stuff”, and he “absolutely” wants to work with us. BUT! Actually, he is kind of a designer himself (owner of a mid sized boring enterprise office), and he has pretty good ideas with “links and flash and movies and 2.0″, so, “to be honest”, he’d “rather work together on the designs from the start”… Which, of course would be a “smart way to keep cost reasonable”. Yeah, sure. Hasta la vista.

After about 2 rounds of me asking them ‘what, exactly, did you intend this widget to do’ only to hear ‘we don’t know yet, don’t worry about it’ I realized that they didn’t want me to design anything, but rather just slice up their PPT presentation into HTML and ship if off.

One of the few times I politely stated “I don’t think this is working out and I don’t think I’m the best fit for your needs”

The core problem in our business is that most good creative work comes from people that don’t fit into standard corporate culture. It is in the nature of the creative mind to be daring and swim against the stream. This is especially relevant here in Japan. It is mostly freelancers or small companies that do the good work for bigger companies. I know a couple of designers that have to passwordprotect their portfolio as it would cloud the credibility of big agencies if people knew who really did that logo, that website, that campaign.

Big agencies have the contacts and the power. They hire freelancers, give them a couple of coins, and sell the work for horrrrendous money. Now within the new media consulting business, that vampirism has reached a new dimension.

It is pretty obvious if someone uses your creative work without paying you, but it is very very difficult to find out if someone used your know-how and sold it to a client.

I have had a couple of situations, where big companies asked me millions of technical, conceptual, strategic questions with the prospect of a big 100% sure job, and then somehow the job never happened – never happened for me, but – as I then heard through the grapewine – happened for them.

Now small companies often don’t deliver good work, as they cannot afford to hire good designers or use good freelancers (the best designer at a small design company is often the owner), and/or they don’t have the jobs, the name or the power to trick good people into working for low wages or even for free.

Design is not a good business, talent only won’t get you very far, unless you’re talented and famous you just have to do it for the fun of it – and deal with the vampires and tirekickers as good as you can.