Design business strategy

Here’s an exercise done to identify bad clients. It delivers valuable insights, especially if you repeat it a couple times a year.

In 2020 we lost a friend, a client and a great designer, Jack Rodgers. To celebrate Jack’s resilience we’re offering a 12 month mentoring scholarship to an emerging studio.

Apart from productivity increases there are two ways to accrue money: firstly by adding a margin, secondly by adding profit. They are different beasts and we would argue you need both to build a sustainable businesses.

Taking on a design intern can be a win:win scenario. It adds diversity to a stable design team. Designers get management experience, interns get studio experience.

Everyone at some stage has to leave an out-of-office message. Why be creative and inject some onlyness into your message?

Fundamentally, new business managers are trying to get clients to buy from their studio rather than another …. so does that mean the only skill new business managers need is persuasion?

It’s a terrible feeling, the realisation the studio you nurtured and grew no longer brings you joy … but do not despair, there are tools and resources to help diagnose the problem and fix it.

There has been much recent social media comment about the branding of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI).
The new brand was developed by a UK firm after a tender process.

We’re appalled at the federal budget and the lack of help for SME businesses – especially those not employing. We think we can help.

We talk to a lot of designers and many want to talk about their price sensitive clients. How much will it cost is a question often asked early in a client/designer discussion. Here’s what to say…

Will Zoom meetings become the post-pandemic new normal? It may be too soon to say. What we do know is there’s a high degree of uncertainty in the design industry.

There are many ways to develop strategies to play to win new business; some are good and some are really good. These are well defined strategy models that are used by businesses large and small.