A decade later, however, and the vast majority of organizations have come around to the web as a primary marketing medium. As such, most sites on the web today use a CMS. There’s plenty of choices when it comes to picking a system, and this post isn’t about the benefits of one CMS over another. No matter which CMS you choose though, it’s important to understand what you’re buying and what it will do for you.

Again and again, we see clients coming to us with half-baked implementations of a CMS. Sometimes these clients are looking for a new site as the current one is out-of-date, doesn’t reflect their new position or brand but sometimes, they simply aren’t able to perform the functions they need in order to effectively market their business. The CMSes are almost invariably good quality applications like Drupal, WordPress, ModX or Expression Engine. But, they way they’re implemented makes no sense at all.

Oftentimes, we see a CMS that’s poorly or only partially implemented. Just this week, a prospective client came to us looking to be able to add a few pages to their CMS-powered website. The previous developer had set the site up so that the client could only modify the content on existing pages, but they were completely unable to add new content.

This is asinine. This is like web design firms that price their sites based on the number of pages in the site, and the number of images permitted on a page. Hint: if you see this pricing scheme on a web company’s site, run away. Fast.

When I expressed surprise at this on Twitter, some suggested that it only makes sense to implement exactly what a client needs and to hide the rest of the features of the CMS. Any firm that doesn’t recognize that someone might need to add a page to their site in the future, even if they didn’t need more than the existing content pages at launch is offering incredibly bad counsel to their clients.

While it’s true that content management systems can be quite robust and it’s rare for anyone to need all of the features in a CMS, making it impossible for the user to create new content, and instead insisting that the user need to contact the developer to update the site, is not using the technology properly. There is very little value in this kind of maintenance work, both for the agency and the client. So now, instead of expanding their marketing focus, creating new content or exploring marketing that will expand their reach, these clients are having to reinvest in their web platform to gain access to ‘features’ they should have had from the beginning.

As we’re fond of saying, handcuffs have a place, but that place isn’t the boardroom.

You can tell the stories you’re passionate about. Everybody’s good at a couple of things. Usually these align with the things that they’re interested in. I’m good at design, business, cycling and barbeque. I’m interested in lots of other things too. And those are usually the things I’m interested in talking about.

When I got accepted at NSCAD, they used to make you take this english test to prove you could write well enough to handle the tough art history essays. Having been a french immersion student, I flunked this one pretty hardcore. But it’s no wonder. The first question was: “If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?”

Well, how the hell should I know?! I went there to learn about art! And design! And photography! I’ve never wanted to be an animal, much less write an essay about becoming one.

I have no interest in that kind of foolishness. Which makes coming up with an acceptable essay on the spot damn near impossible for me. So, I sat through an entire semester of a remedial english class, learned absolutely nothing, but I was able to write an essay that fit the criteria at the end of it. I’m sure they were still thinking, there’s no way this guy can write well enough to pass. But once I got into the actual art history classes, I LOVED it. It was fascinating to me. I could retrace the lineage of the things that truly interested me to ancient Roman Art. Greek Architecture. The Renaissance. 20th century modernism! Holy shit, I was in heaven. I wrote essay after essay, scoring nothing less than an A-. All this to say that if you tell the stories you’re interested in, they’re going to be better than the ones you know nothing about. They don’t tell writers to write about what they know for no reason. It works, and it’s a lot more interesting to read stuff written by someone passionate about the topic.

The best thing about social media is that it’s actually really hard to fake it. It used to be relatively easy to pull the wool over someone’s eyes if you were a fast talker and had a couple of ‘facts’ to back yourself up. Because there was no one there with an alternate viewpoint or other experience. Now though, there’s literally dozens of people hoping, just WAITING to show that they know more than someone else and they’ll take any opportunity to prove it.

It makes it a hell of a lot easier when you meet people. It’s a lot easier to stick to a schtick when that schtick is who you really are. Can you imagine trying to be nice on the internet when you’re an asshole in real life? It would be exhausting! This way, people know exactly what they’re getting when they meet you.

At the same time, you can use your influence to help shape things the way you want to.

Think about this for a second: there’s no question that the thing that finally brought Mayor Kelly down was Tim Bousquet’s article about the Thibeault estate. I think the constant social media barrage about how utterly useless he is and how his actions around the concert scandal, Occupy eviction and everything else showed the general public how inept he is also helped to force his hand and withdraw from the election. Seriously, your voice has power and social media helps spread your opinion. I see this as a small victory for those in this city tired of his antics. And it’s a big victory for social media too. We have more power than we know, and social media is a great way to mobilize people who think in a similar way. So, your interests help you to locate others in a similar community with a similar opinion.

A friend of mine who owns a small business called me recently because he was thinking of going into politics and wanted to meet for lunch. I thought it was actually pretty funny when he said that he wanted to get my opinion on his position on issues before I blasted him on Twitter. To me, that says that those in the political arena, at least on a municipal and provincial level have begun to understand that there are real people out there with real ideas and we’re tired of their crap. Another great reason to speak your mind on Twitter–you can help shape the political process.

It’s better than posting inspirational quotes. Scratch that. It’s better than reading inspirational quotes. Seriously, if I wanted to read that stuff, I’d go and buy Chicken Soup for the Bitter Designer’s Soul. Or watch Oprah.

That’s not to say that you should just be mean all the time either. I read an interesting post the other day about how you should look for opportunities to gives kudo to people when they deserve it because that sort of positive reinforcement isn’t often forthcoming. I probably got that link off of some stupid inspirational quote tweet, but it’s still true. I’m nothing if not complex. Or was that confused? Anyway.

Everybody loves to receive a compliment, especially if it’s genuine. So don’t say it if you don’t mean it. If I’ve got the time to tell someone they’re awesome or have made something cool, I try to take the time. Especially if it’s a competitor. Getting a personal DM or email from your competition has to be some kind of unnerving. Or nice. Either way, it’s a win!

It’s a hell of a lot more interesting than talking about social media itself. On social media. Too meta for me. This was cool four years ago when it was very much a new thing. But Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare are so baked into our daily lives that I think it’s no longer useful or interesting to talk about the tools any longer. Sure you can do this when something new comes out or Facebook buys Instagram. But, my personal policy is to unfollow anyone who talks about Klout.

I remember when Twitter was still relatively new in Halifax. My entire social circle changed in the period of about six months. I went from hating networking events to loving them. I don’t know about you, but there’s a depth to most people that you can’t access in the mingle session before a $200/plate networking dinner. This means that you either end up being that creepy guy that shoved himself into the middle of everyone’s conversation, or you don’t know anyone, thereby making the rubber chicken the best part of the event. And that’s just sad. Whereas, you can easily use social media to get to know people so that when you finally do meet them in real life, you can dive right into the good stuff. The connections will be deeper, more meaningful and interesting.

You’ll get the clients, employees and friends you want. Or at least the ones who will see a fit from a personality perspective. Abe Lincoln said “People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like”. And you can do better work if you like the people you’re working for.

That alone makes it worthwhile.

There are no private messages.

Basically, in Basecamp Classic, we can restrict access to certain messages so that just Kula sees them. In the new Basecamp, every message is visible by everyone on the project—clients included.

A quick look at my Basecamp dashboard shows we sure like private messages here at Kula. But what do we use them for? The last five private messages in my dashboard (as random a sample as any, I guess) are:

• a note from me to Pam about translation requirements on a site we’re building
• a note from Pam to Chris about changes required to an email template
• a note from me to Laura with some feedback on a content plan she’s creating
• a note from Chris to a bunch of us detailing his initial thinking surrounding a new site design he’s working on
• a note from me to Laura with feedback on landing page copy

The first two messages are communicating information the client is already quite aware of—nothing new there. The last three messages are all a bit of work-in-progress… stuff that we’re working on that’s not ready for prime time just yet. I’ve often joked that the work we do is like sausage—it’s best not to see how its made. And the last three messages are just that… sausage making.

But why is seeing the sausage being made bad?

When I look at the work the Kula team performs every day, it is the work of craftspeople. They have an intimate, expert understanding of their craft and they work hard each day employing it, getting better, making the mistakes that need making, learning, doing… and, to me, I don’t think it’s all that different from the fine craftspeople at, say, NovaScotian Crystal.

And every summer, what do we see on the Halifax waterfront? Visitors and locals alike lined up to catch a glimpse inside the door of the NovaScotian Crystal workshop, eager to see how it all gets made and to watch the work in-progress. If somebody thinks the work looks messy… that beautiful crystal cannot come from such a rough, messy process… I’ve never heard them say it. And what if they did? I doubt they have a better idea about how to make crystal. Again, not that different from creating stunning websites. Got a better idea about how develop x or create y? Then take up the mouse and have a go—I know I can’t do it.

So where does this leave us?

My guess is, this is likely more about us than our clients. They’re smart… they understand that there’s hard, messy work behind what we create. But in agencies, we’re just not used to working like that. In agency life, the tradition has certainly been to largely hide the creative process, with the client only seeing things after a certain level of polish has been achieved. The big reveal, etc.

The more I think of it, the more I think the old “big reveal” way of working is out of step with the level of craftsmanship Kula seeks to bring to the web and the marketing programs we create. And beyond that, the fact that we’re a touch uncomfortable about making such a move to full transparency is likely a good indicator that we’re knocking on the door of something worth doing.

What do you think? As a client, would the mess scare the hell out of you? If you work in an agency or as a freelancer, does this feel like lifting the agency skirt a touch too high?

People Matter, Objects Don’t – it’s the world view that shapes everything at Kula Partners. We create marketing programs, build websites and apps, and develop content that connects people to each other. Basically, we see the evolution of the internet, the rapid adoption of social media, and the increasing role technology is playing in our lives as being more about people than the technology itself. And that means we really care about design. Not in the “design is the stuff in front of our cool technology” sorta way, but in the “design craftsmanship matters because amazing design makes people’s lives better” sorta way. 

Joining our small team in our Halifax studio, you’ll find our People Matter approach applies to how we work too – we prefer fun over drama and think proper espresso and a nice record player are must-have’s in the office. Plus, you’ll enjoy a competitive salary, vacation and the right kit for the job — including a 15″ MacBook Pro, and a Haworth Zody chair.

You can:

• hand-code with HTML5 and CSS3
• design incredible interfaces that are both beautiful and functional
• tell the difference between Helvetica and Arial
• juggle a number of projects at once
• write and speak with confidence

It’d be even cooler if you:

• have built responsive websites
• can program in Javascript or PHP
• shoot great photographs or have illustration skills
• tweet, blog or Tumble regularly
• understand prepress, because print matters too. sometimes.

How to apply

We’re most concerned with your work, not where you went to school or what agencies you’ve worked at. While we appreciate any and all applications, keep in mind that if you can’t hand code your own interface design work, we just aren’t interested – print designers need not apply.

Get creative and get in touch jobs@kulapartners.com.

Since I get to give a ton of talks for my business that usually have something to do with the web, design, social media or the like, I like to give presentations on subjects I don’t normally get to talk about. Last year I discussed saving the oval mixed with typographic trivia and this year I spoke on how to start and run a business. There isn’t really time or space enough to recap the entire talk here, but I thought I’d share some of the major points. 

Before you start

If you’re going to start your own business, make sure you work for someone else first. This way you can learn about how things work in your industry, and make some mistakes on someone else’s dime. Freelance on the side (every agency I’ve ever worked at doesn’t want you do this, but everyone does it). If it looks like you can make a go of it, jump. I once ran a website that got 80-100,000 unique visitors a month, but none of us involved in the site had the balls to leave our ‘real’ jobs.

It may sound obvious, but talk to someone you trust and get a recommendation for the following people that you likely do not already know: lawyer, accountant, banker, and see if you can find someone who’s willing to mentor you as well.

Write a business plan. There are plenty of resources for this online, but there are also programs at CEED and SMU that can help you with this task. Do your research. Figure out who your competitors are.

Incorporate your company immediately, rather than simply registering a sole proprietorship/partnership with the Registry of Joint Stocks. First of all, you’ll save massively on your taxes, since corporations pay less income tax than individuals. You can also withdraw over $30,000 from your company as a dividend without paying a dime of personal income tax. If you configure the company correctly, you can also income split with your spouse, assuming that they play a role in the company. Also, if you take dividends exclusively from your company, realize that you will not need to contribute to CPP (because honestly, it’s not going to be there for you when you need it anyway) but you also won’t increase your RRSP contribution limit, so you may need to draw some salary just to keep that option available to you.

The other thing with incorporating a company is that you’ll be able to call it whatever you want, whereas the Registry of Joint Stocks requires your company name to also describe what you do. There’s a reason that the Registry is in the same office as the DMV. What these people understand about running a business would fit in the fine print on the back of your driver’s license. Don’t risk it. Incorporate, and brand things properly.

Once you have incorporated the company, call the Canada Revenue Agency and get an HST number. If your revenue exceeds $35,000, you will need to collect HST, and if you don’t have a number and you do go over that number in one 12 month period, you will have to pay the HST on what you’ve earned even if you didn’t collect it.

Assuming that you’re setting up a service type business, you’ll need to figure out your hourly billing rate. The best way that I’ve found to do this is to first prepare a personal monthly budget, taking into account all expenses that you’ll have. Multiply that number by 12. That’s the salary you’ll need in order to survive. Then, divide that number by 52, that’s how much you’ll need to bill in a week (not including taxes, of course). Keep in mind that you won’t be billable every hour, so you should likely increase the number significantly. Keep in mind that it’s hard to up your rate once you’ve established it, so try to be at least a little aggressive with the number. It’s worth it.

Define who you are

What’s your business going to stand for? It’s harder to define what you are going to be, not what you aren’t but it’s worthwhile.

Remember, you can’t be all things to all people, so don’t try. Focus your business either on a core skill set to a broad client base, or perhaps a larger offering to a small industry vertical. Either way, it allows you to become an expert in a niche and be more valuable to your clients, not less.

Selling

If you can’t sell, you can’t run a business. It’s essential to always be working on your business, not just in your business. A client and friend, Talbot Sweetapple once said to me that there are three elements to a project: money, people and the project itself. You need two of these to be good in order for a project to succeed. For example, if someone’s a jerk, but they have lots of money and the project itself is awesome, go for it. If they have no money, but they’re cool and the project is interesting, it might be worth taking on.

Only you can decide what your criteria is, but it’s important to not just take everything that’s thrown at you. Also, saying no just makes a client want you more. People often want what they can’t have.

Take a meeting with anyone. Even if it doesn’t look like the project they have is all that interesting, it’s essential to continue expanding your network.

Tell your entire family what you do. Perfect your short pitch on them, and ask them to refer you to anyone that might need what you do.

Create a weighted sales funnel and update it monthly. Input every project into a spreadsheet or CRM and include the total value of the project. Then, estimate the percentage chance that you have of closing that business. Be conservative and honest. A $50,000 project that you have a 5% chance of closing is only worth $2,500. Maintain the funnel, and you’ll be able to tell relatively accurately how business will progress if you keep selling.

Marketing and PR

Be a mentor to someone else. It’s good karma and you’re expanding your network of contacts.

Be careful with business referral groups. They tend to only benefit realtors, insurance sales people and lawyers. They don’t offer much value to other types of businesses, but they are a great way to meet lawyers, accountants and bankers.

Social media is exceptionally useful at introducing you to people in your area, but it’s essential to actually meet those people in person. Small businesses live and die on the relationships you foster and nurture.

Use your ever-expanding network to try to meet some people in the media. If you can get on TV or radio or quoted in the paper talking about things you’re an expert in is fantastic for your professional reputation.

The art of running a company

As soon as you finish reading this post, go and watch Fuck You, Pay Me by Mike Monteiro of Mule Design. Absolutely required viewing for anyone in a service business.

This is obvious, but pay your taxes. Set aside money from the beginning and pay them on time. It’s really easy to make this mistake, and hard to get out from under it. Also, if you need help or more time, call CRA and ask for it. They are actually generally pretty helpful if you’re actually open and communicative with them.

Communicate payment arrangements with your suppliers and pay them as soon as you are paid.

Ensure you have procedures for signoffs and approvals at every stage in a project. Do not proceed without written approval. It only needs to be an email, but you must have a record to avoid getting burned.

Buy life, health and disability insurance. You may never need it, but you’ll be screwed if you do and you don’t have it.

Growth

Hiring people is hard. You really need to be certain that you can afford an employee. My test has been that when I’m working 80-100 hours a week to make up for the lack of assistance, I need to bring someone on to help.

Make certain you talk to their references and do your research. Often the fit of a person is more important than their skills. When in doubt, hire the person with the great personality that gets your organization.

Teach at a local university, community college or night class. You’ll learn an awful lot about yourself, and it will force you to focus on how you do what you do in a way that makes it easy to explain to others. This is also a great way to get early access to top talent before anyone else knows about them.

Find an office or a co-working space. You’ll appear more professional, and it helps to separate your work and home life.

Subcontracting with a larger competitor is a reasonable sales strategy but these relationships never last, and you’re always subservient to someone else.

Working for free

Don’t.

Instead, reduce scope, remove components or functionality.

If you do decide to do work for a not for profit or charity, charge appropriately and remember that tax receipts for work in kind will have no impact on your tax return. None. So if you want to do this kind of work, do it because it’s fulfilling not for any monetary benefit.

Lessons I’ve learned

Minimize your spending. For example, we use a rubber stamp with our address on it rather than printing custom envelopes. It’s cheap and easy.

Don’t be afraid to fire a client if the relationship isn’t working for you, and your work isn’t valued.

Try not to let any client become more than 10% of your total revenue. that way if something goes sideways, you won’t risk losing a huge chunk of revenue. In year two of my first company, Brightwhite, I lost one client who accounted for more than 50% of my revenue. It took me months to recover, but once I did, the business was much more diversified and sustainable. Without family support, it may not have been possible to continue. This isn’t a fun situation and there are always factors outside of your control, so mitigate this by not putting too many eggs in a single basket.

Organize and do things for others. Start a conference like Podcamp. Save an oval. Whatever. Just do it because you enjoy it. Do not do it with the hope of a return. It will pay dividends in ways that you simply can’t calculate at the time.

Reply to emails quickly. Promptness is inspiring.

When you make a mistake, apologize and fix the situation, even if it costs you time or money. Your reputation is worth saving.

Be positive. If a client asks for a change in a meeting, and it’s out of scope, first congratulate them on having fantastic taste, and then find a way to tell them that this wasn’t included. Don’t agree to it on the spot, but don’t disagree either. Offer to get back to them after reviewing the initial documents if you don’t want to make a commitment on the spot without thinking out the implications.

Principles

Quality should always be your primary goal. When you worship at the altar of quality, it becomes the primary driver of everything, and it’s how people think of you and your business.

Make it easy for people to work with you. Use online tools to communicate with your clients. Take credit cards if you can get a merchant or Paypal account. Although you’ll lose 3% of the invoice total, it could mean the difference between getting paid in a week instead of 120 days.

Arrive on time, and if you’re late, you better have a good story and it better be true. I was once a week early for a meeting in Saint John, but it made for a good story when I finally did meet with the client!

Be the kind of person you would want to do business with.

Paul Arden, a British ad man once said: “Give away everything you know and more will come back to you.” I truly believe this and issue it as a challenge for everyone to follow. You have knowledge worth sharing, so give it away.

If you want to know how I started this business originally, have a read of that post. The basic gist of it is this: my oldest child was born on this day in 2004. The company I was working for (who had attempted to recruit me for most of a year) laid me (and the rest of the department) off one week later. I vowed to never be an employee again and here we are eight years later, and I seem to have kept that resolution.

Much has happened in the three years since I wrote that post. Two years ago, Carman Pirie, then VP Social Media at Colour and I decided that we wanted to build a new kind of agency. One that used the power of the social web to help advance the marketing goals of our clients. It was really just an extension and focusing of Brightwhite’s core abilities.

These posts have a way of becoming braggy, and I don’t want that to happen, but I do want to share a little of what we’ve managed to accomplish in eight (short) years.

• Grown the business from one person in a tiny spare bedroom (seriously it was 7′ by 9′!) jammed between my daughter’s crib and the bathroom in our minuscule 150 year old farmer’s cottage to seven people in a beautiful loft space on Grafton Street in downtown Halifax
• Worked with hundreds of wonderful people at companies as tiny as we are up to huge multinational corporations and governmental organizations
• Advocated for a better life in a city that I love
• Travelled all over Canada to meet with clients and partners
• Started speaking professionally and had the opportunity to offer lectures and train people all over the Atlantic Provinces

And there’s much more to come. Our client list continues to grow, and the projects are getting bigger, more challenging and technically interesting. Our processes have been refined to a point where I don’t need to worry about work getting done when we’re out meeting new prospective clients. Our team is incredibly capable and the work we’re putting out there is the best we’ve ever produced.

I’m incredibly excited for what’s coming next. We have some amazing internal initiatives, awesome clients and projects, and we’ll be looking to add to our growing team throughout 2012.

All that to say this: if you’re thinking of working for yourself, do it. There is no better time than now. It’s as rewarding as it is stressful, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.

We are on the hunt for an exceptional project manager to join our agency full-time in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia.

As the ideal candidate, you have experience managing numerous projects at once—keeping a small team of very focused designers, developers and marketers on task and on time. Further, you possess strong client service skills and instincts and are keen to contribute to the creation of successful marketing programs, working to craft great strategy backed by flawless execution.

People Matter, Objects Don’t – it’s the world view that shapes everything at Kula Partners. We create marketing programs, build websites and apps, and develop content that connects people to each other. Basically, we see the evolution of the internet, the rapid adoption of social media, and the increasing role technology is playing in our lives as being more about people than the technology itself.

Joining our team in our Halifax studio, you’ll find our People Matter approach applies to how we work too—we prefer fun over drama and think proper espresso and a nice record player are must-haves in the office. Plus, you’ll enjoy a competitive salary, vacation and the right kit for the job—including a MacBook Pro, a Haworth Zody chair and an iPhone 4S.

You can:

• Handle dozens of active projects of varying size and scope
• Keep a team of in-house creatives, developers and strategists (plus outside consultants) on task
• Perform website content entry, do basic image editing and document preparation for proposals and client documents
• Work closely with a small team and sweat the details, because, in the end everything is a detail

It’d be even cooler if you:

• Write and speak with confidence
• Have used 37 Signals’ Basecamp previously
• Tweet, blog or Tumbl regularly
• Have experience managing events

How to apply

We’re more concerned with your attitude and work than the number of years experience in the industry. Get creative and get in touch jobs@kulapartners.com.

When I was 16 I worked for a summer with a graphic design agency in Halifax. It made me realize that my destiny was to become a designer. I started at NSCAD in 1991, and spent five very full years exploring as many aspects of the school as possible, eventually graduating with a bachelor degree in Communication Design (at the time, the only degree of its kind in Canada and among a very small group in the US).

In the 15 years since graduating, I moved away, worked for several companies, came back to Halifax and started a family here. I also used the lessons I learned in the NSCAD design programme to start a successful web design & marketing agency that currently employs seven people in downtown Halifax.

I have had the honour of serving NSCAD as a sessional professor, as a marketer and designer, and now as a member of the alumni association board of directors. Virtually all of my classmates are working in their chosen field and we are spread across the globe. They live and work in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, London, Milan, NYC, San Francisco, Tokyo and beyond. These designers, business owners, agency professionals and independent artists make a huge mark on the global economy. And I’m just talking about the 16 people who graduated from my department!

My fellow alumni are also quite likely to be entrepreneurs, and many of us lead successful companies all over the world. These companies make a major contribution to our respective economies.

This school is worth saving. It gave the world to me and I hope it can continue to do so to thousands of other students. My oldest daughter, nearly eight now, shows enormous artistic aptitude.

I hope when she graduates from high school, an independent NSCAD University is one of her options for a post secondary institution.

PS: we’re profiling some of NSCAD’s current students and alumni on this blog: http://nscadnow.tumblr.com. People can also donate to the school’s annual fund, which would certainly help our case with Howard Windsor.

In the winter of 1992, I was about to start my fourth semester at NSCAD, then the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. My third semester had been hard-fought. I had begun to study design after a year of foundation, photography and art history and I was ready to enter my chosen field of study, or so I thought.

I have very little in the way of hand skills when it comes to design. I can’t draw very well, and I’m messy as hell with plaka, ruling pens and rubber cement. So, after a semester of trying to draw perfect 10cm grids with a 0.3mm Rapidograph pen, I was just about ready to give up on the profession I had chosen when I was 16. 

So it was not without trepidation that I entered Horst Deppe’s 10 credit Typography course that cold, wet January. I was no longer sure that I was really cut out for graphic design. Horst, who always looked older than his years to me, welcomed us to his class and set out the agenda for the semester. We started looking at the history of letterforms, and I think one of our first projects was to take a PMT (photo mechanical transfer) of some word (I don’t remember what word it was, but I bet it had some AY and To combos in it) in 48pt Univers, cut out the letters and typeset them perfectly using hot wax and a piece of Bainbridge. You wouldn’t believe the tracing paper I went through trying to set that word properly. In the end though, I’m pretty sure I nailed it.

And that semester was the semester that I realized that I was cut out to be a designer. That I understood the craft.

Horst was, without a doubt, the best teacher I have ever had in my life. He imbued in me an appreciation for typography and attention to detail that persists to this day. He had a love of design that I don’t think I will ever top.

But there was more than that to Horst. He had a twinkle in his eye like I’ve never known before or since. He always, and I mean always, had a kind word and some encouragement to share with even the most beleaguered design student. He confirmed to me that I could do this, and that it was indeed my destiny.

I regularly use a couple of Horst stories with my clients and students:

When my clients try to fill every ounce of space in a layout, I simply tell them that because white space uses no ink that it’s cheaper to print. They usually look at me funny and then laugh when I explain where that story came from. This works less well with the web, obviously. Horst also smartly pointed out that if there was a typo that it would be in the biggest text on the page, and he was invariably right. That one has saved me at least twice in my career from a couple of very expensive reprints!

The last time I saw Horst was likely at the old Halifax farmer’s market, and I hate that it was at least a year ago. We regularly ran into he and his wife Renate at the market and he always remembered me and asked how my career was going, and showed a ton of interest in my kids.

I always felt like he and I really got each other. I’m very much going to miss him.

I’m attempting to organize a little get together for those who knew him to raise a pint in his memory. It’s the least we can do. Drop me a line if you want to be involved. 

One person mentioned her house regularly “gets” 400+ trick-or-treaters while her neighbour only answers the door to 250 or so (a whopping 37.5% reduction, etc.). The meeting quickly concurred, with each attendee recounting their own similar experience of being on one side or the other of this neighbourly divide. The consensus explanation reached was simple: All other things being equal, the more stairs you have, the less trick-or-treaters you get.

Really? A set of stairs is going to keep a 10-yr old kid on a sugar high away from a fistfull of Wunderbars? While I’m not in a rush to testify to the statistical validity of this little non-experiment, I’ll admit I wouldn’t be surprised. 

It has been my experience that it is really easy for marketers to underestimate the impact of introducing even the smallest barrier between someone and a desired action.

It means that one extra click people have to make might cost you more conversions than first thought. And getting people to enter a contest by submitting a video is tougher than you might think.

Every time you’re thinking through a new marketing initiative, campaign idea, or website, there are inevitably points along the way where you identify what you’re asking of the customer/prospect/visitor/user/etc. Making things easier can be a great place to start.

If you want me to participate, you gotta make it easy.