IDD 480 - I can't think of a good title

In this weeks Shaughnessy's reading, we read about dealing with clients and self-promotion. Dealing with clients is more familiar to me in the pseudo-design studio setting from when I personally dealt with clients while I worked at a sign shop. Keeping clients (happy) and developing new clients is usually what happened while I was working there. In fact most of our business came from repeat customers. The book talks about 'first job syndrome,' which I can't say I ever saw first hand, that happen to us. Although, now that I think about it, there were some clients that were a little more difficult and demanding than others. Usually they didn't understand the wait time involved and wanted immediate products, just as if they had gone into Wal-Mart and PRESTO there sign was all done the next day.

Developing new clients was always important in that business. Luckily, the company I worked for was one of the few in the area and benefited from the "Location, location, location" aspect of business. By default, most people came to that company because it was one of the few in the area. I did witness my boss maintaining communication with clients that had not requested any new business from us to generate work. In the beginning, my boss said that he would actively attempt to develop new clients by going out and looking for work. He would create signs for smaller businesses that needed signage.

In Baron's reading, she talks about the different formats for a portfolio. She starts by talking about portable media. The first topic almost made me laugh as she gave a short paragraph about Zip disks. I haven't heard of people using zip disks in years! I guess, however, that some people still use them for storage and wanted to make it clear not to use them for making a portfolio portable. Out of all of the mediums she discussed, I believe that it is safe to say that CDs, DVDs, websites, and perhaps a laptop (if absolutely required) are acceptable mediums for a portable portfolio. If creating a demo reel, I would make sure that it is easy to create a VHS tape on the fly if that format is requested, but I would not to waste the time in converting an entire demo reel to VHS tape in the beginning. DVD players are probably at this point more common than VCRs are since they come on just about every computer these days.

The book also mentions the site Sharpe Online and after visiting it, I encountered that it has changed since the book was published. In fact, each associate no longer has their own personal feel to their portfolio and they all follow the same format now. This could possibly be a sign of the company changing and perhaps changing internally or even growing since the associate list is longer than the original 7 and some names are no longer there.