Deadlines

It’s been a crazy few weeks in the creative room and hence I haven’t blogged for a while. It is the usual case of leave your own jobs and get on with the paid work first. But now I have a moment so here I go with a bit of a whinge.

Now I’ve been in this industry a while and know that one thing will never change… “We need it yesterday”.

Everyone is busy, they were busy 15 years ago and will be in 15 years time. This is fine because it is the very nature of our industry and we always do our best to ensure the perfect job. However what is different now to 15 years ago is that often timeline expectations are less realistic now than they were then.

Clients seem to think that because computers are getting faster and more powerful that brands and advertisements are turned out at the quick push of a few buttons.

Back in the so called good old days clients were happy to wait for good design and I can only explain this as they were used to seeing more hand rendered visuals. The perception is that hand drawn must take longer than what it takes by using a computer.

This is true only to a point, but a computer after all is only a flash paint brush that makes some things easier. You can’t say “computer make me a logo that meets the clients needs xyz”, sit back have a coffee and wait for it to spit out the finished product.

It is not the ‘brush’ that creates a campaign or brand but the ‘artist/s’ (be they photographers; artworkers: retouchers; art directors; media agents; designers; copywriters; strategists or printers). A traditional paint brush in the hands of Picasso will give a far different result than if placed in your hand
or mine.

All my work starts with the good old fashioned pencil and stacks of sketching paper. It is the concept that needs to be created first for any design to succeed and like all good things, they take time. The more time you have to come up with ideas, gather resources and craft a project the better the outcome for the client.

Not to mention that when things are rushed mistakes are more likely to happen and if the timeline hasn’t allowed for any possible problems to be resolved before a deadline then what should have been an easily fixed problem becomes a far larger issue.

At Jack in the box we know how long jobs take from our design through printing to delivery and plan as such. It is when clients suddenly notify us that an advertisement has been booked directly with a publication and needs to be there in an hour, then issues such as manoeuvring our current workflows and actually producing the job correctly on time becomes intense.

The solution for the best possible result is simple – talk to us as soon as you know what you are planning so we can get organised to offer you the best service we can.