I Need A Vacation
I told myself when I started this blog that I will probably forget about it after a while because I just won't have time to write. Funnily enough, that's exactly what happened...
In the last entries before this looooong pause, I was getting ready for the NAB show in Vegas. Well, that's come and gone. It went quite well aside from some issues and the fact that we missed our flight in Munich and had to take a turbo-prop plane to Basel and drive a rented car back to Geneva, adding a very mind-numbing 4 hours to the nearly 20 hour trip from Las Vegas.
Rewind one week to the NAB; I suppose things went well for eveyone but there are some things that really angered and disgusted me. The major one was the fact that I over-heard people in stands trying to sell their products by bad-mouthing the competition. When I mean bad-mouthing, I don't mean stating actually facts as to why their product is better than the competition's but acutally using very "choice language" to describe entire companies. I just don't understand how people can stoop as low as saying "So-and-so's products are really shit" to a potential client. This shows no respect whatsoever and it's no way to sell a product. I believe that marketing and sales is a "gentleman's game" (or gentle-woman's (?)) - a game of wits and creativity. If your products are so great, prove it with tangible evidence, not childish bullocks. It's really sad when people put down others to make themselves look bigger - in life or in business. Some people will tell you "Oh, that's how the game is played". Well no, it's not...
Art Director - Since NAB, I have been getting further away from actually hands-on graphic design work (which I quite miss) and have handed a lot of it to my extremely-motivated and newly-hired graphic designer. I've realized that it's not very easy to convey ideas to people that have no prior knowledge of your company's visual communication, especially when for the past few years, it's been all in your head and on the results you produce. What's even more difficult is getting someone with a certain "style" to conform to your needs. I think asking someone to giving up their "style" is like cutting off one of their limbs. They still feel that it's there and they keep trying to use it. Anyway, for the meantime, I try take any chance I can get to open Illustator or Photoshop and make pretty pictures.
Workflow/UI Design - This is the part I really find challenging about (one of) my job(s). Designing workflows and interfaces. You'd probably never think about how much work goes into creating a good, solid workflow and user interface. I'm working on two tools now (can't tell you about them) and they are seriously doing my head in (in a good way, of course).
Bedtime now...getting sleepyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
In the last entries before this looooong pause, I was getting ready for the NAB show in Vegas. Well, that's come and gone. It went quite well aside from some issues and the fact that we missed our flight in Munich and had to take a turbo-prop plane to Basel and drive a rented car back to Geneva, adding a very mind-numbing 4 hours to the nearly 20 hour trip from Las Vegas.
Rewind one week to the NAB; I suppose things went well for eveyone but there are some things that really angered and disgusted me. The major one was the fact that I over-heard people in stands trying to sell their products by bad-mouthing the competition. When I mean bad-mouthing, I don't mean stating actually facts as to why their product is better than the competition's but acutally using very "choice language" to describe entire companies. I just don't understand how people can stoop as low as saying "So-and-so's products are really shit" to a potential client. This shows no respect whatsoever and it's no way to sell a product. I believe that marketing and sales is a "gentleman's game" (or gentle-woman's (?)) - a game of wits and creativity. If your products are so great, prove it with tangible evidence, not childish bullocks. It's really sad when people put down others to make themselves look bigger - in life or in business. Some people will tell you "Oh, that's how the game is played". Well no, it's not...
Art Director - Since NAB, I have been getting further away from actually hands-on graphic design work (which I quite miss) and have handed a lot of it to my extremely-motivated and newly-hired graphic designer. I've realized that it's not very easy to convey ideas to people that have no prior knowledge of your company's visual communication, especially when for the past few years, it's been all in your head and on the results you produce. What's even more difficult is getting someone with a certain "style" to conform to your needs. I think asking someone to giving up their "style" is like cutting off one of their limbs. They still feel that it's there and they keep trying to use it. Anyway, for the meantime, I try take any chance I can get to open Illustator or Photoshop and make pretty pictures.
Workflow/UI Design - This is the part I really find challenging about (one of) my job(s). Designing workflows and interfaces. You'd probably never think about how much work goes into creating a good, solid workflow and user interface. I'm working on two tools now (can't tell you about them) and they are seriously doing my head in (in a good way, of course).
Bedtime now...getting sleepyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
posted by Peter at 10:01 PM
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