— Andy Jacobson

Following are re-postings. If you would like to view each in their original context, Khoi Vinh’s, “The End of Client Services”, can be found at his blog “Subtraction” http://bit.ly/qRQzjB, and Erika Hall’s, “Until Gotham No Longer Needs Batman”, can be found at Mule Design Studio’s blog, “Off the Hoof”, http://bit.ly/roV0Pb.

The End of Client Services

By Khoi Vinh

Last week, I marked a year since my departure from The New York Times by starting to talk a little bit about what I’ve been doing (see this blog post). Today, I’m going to talk a bit about why I decided to jump into a startup, one in which we’re building a product of our own, rather than starting another design consulting business.

Some longtime readers will remember that about ten years ago I co-founded a design studio of my own. In fact, until I went ‘in-house’ at the Times, I had spent the entirety of my career in the design services industry, working with all sorts of clients doing all sorts of projects, and generally enjoying the variety of challenges and the exposure to many different kinds of businesses. But in the long stretch of months leading up to the day I resigned my position at the Times, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t return to that kind of work.

There were lots of reasons for this, but one of the main ones is that I think the design industry has undergone a significant and meaningful change, one that opens up opportunities that are not to be missed.

The traditional model of design services rests on the notion that a design studio or agency offers a unique value, a set of highly specialized skills and competencies that their clients do not possess and cannot nurture within their own organizations.

For most design companies, and for most of the history of the design industry, that unique value has been storytelling. The client makes a product or service and then turns to the studio or agency to help them tell the world about it. Look at the portfolios of most design companies and you’ll see that they’re full of works that are essentially marketing narratives — graphic solutions intended to communicate a story about a client’s product to the world.

Digital media requires something different, though. It’s not sufficient to just publish a narrative to the Internet. You have to build an experience around it, a system that lets the user experience the narrative but also one that responds to his or her inputs and contributions. Basically, to create anything meaningful in digital media, you need to think in terms of a product, not just a story.

However, it’s very hard for a design studio to create digital products on a contract basis because the messy timelines and continual course corrections that are required to launch a truly effective software product are anathema to the way clients like to be billed. No matter what a design studio promises, it’s very likely that in its first iteration a digital product will take longer to complete, will cost more, and will be less effective than originally promised. The most critical time for designers to be involved in a digital product is all the time, but it’s perhaps most important for them to stick around after the launch, when they can see how a real user base is using it, and then amend, refine, revise and evolve it. But it’s at just about this time that most studios are preparing invoices and shuffling their staff on to other clients’ projects.

I had this experience when I was doing services work, and I knew so many other people who did as well. The familiar refrain was, “We designed a great first pass, but our contract ended and we weren’t able to stick with the product. Now the client has gone off and made so many changes without us.”

What’s more, it’s not as if the services model works so well for clients anymore, either. It’s one thing to manufacture a widget and turn to a design studio to create a logo, a package, a brochure for it — to basically tell its story. But more and more, every business is becoming a digital business, is responsible for digital products. If a company is not able to design, develop and maintain their own products without outside help, then what kind of future does that company have?

Basically, I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to design great user experiences then that old model of being a design contractor or a studio or an agency would not work. Instead, it’s necessary to be a part of the company that owns the product, to be in a position where I can continually work on and improve the product without the artificial constraints of a services contract.

Had I reached this conclusion a decade or so ago, the obvious next step would have been to join another company, but the Internet has changed so much since then. Today, the cost of starting a new digital business has plummeted, and the support infrastructure for first time entrepreneurs has become incredibly robust. There is no shortage of advice and experience freely available for people, like me, who are jumping into the entrepreneurial pool for the first time. Why join a company when you can be the company?

More than that, though, the fabric of opportunity has changed, too. A few months ago I wrote about what Paul Saffo calls the creator economy. He describes it as a new economic paradigm in which the act of producing and consuming are one and the same, and he believes it’s upon us right now. I subscribe to this theory, and I believe its most fascinating expression takes the form of social software, in which there is no consumption unless its users produce, and there is no production unless its users consume. The secret sauce that starts this virtuous cycle is not just technology, but also user experience design.

We use the term ‘startup’ and ‘tech startup’ interchangeably, but the latter is becoming less and less fully accurate over time. Many recent startups are powered by design as much as technology, because the technology has matured so greatly that the difference-maker is design. Design is playing a key part in the success of Tumblr, Instagram, Flipboard, Groupon, Kickstarter and many, many others. These are the great new design companies, not the studios and agencies you read about in the design press.

There is so much that remains to be resolved in the digital landscape, and so much of it will depend on great design. In my view, the very existence of this opportunity alone has changed the design industry, because it presents an amazing alternative to the client services model, and will hopefully unleash a torrent of creative energy and invention that clients never would have brooked. When I realized this, I decided that I had to take part in it.

ADDENDUM

While I was drafting this post, two highly related blog posts from authors I greatly respect popped up on my radar.The first was “Will Ford Learn That Software Isn’t Manufactured?” by Alan Cooper. As the founder of a premier user experience design consultancy, Cooper might disagree with me on the viability of the design services model. But I found myself fully agreeing with him when he says, “Automobile manufacturing companies like Ford need to acknowledge that they are no longer making automobiles with attached computer systems. In reality, they are making computer control systems with attached motion mechanisms.” This is a sterling example of my contention that, more and more, all businesses are becoming digital businesses.

Second, there is this article from Ben Pierrat of Svpply, titled “Dear Graphic and Web Designers…” It᾿s a much more succinct version of some of my thoughts here on why the most interesting opportunities for designers are not necessarily with clients.

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Until Gotham No Longer Needs Batman

by Erika Hall

Within the context of this piece, interactive design refers to the practice of conceiving of and creating useful, usable objects, services, and systems that people (users) experience through a digital device. Branding and graphic design are typically involved. A designer is a practitioner in this field who may specialize in any of several sub-disciplines.

Whew, I got that out of the way.

Recently, several designers I respect have celebrated their decision to join or start a Product company—a company that makes services or systems on its own behalf rather than for others—in the form of an obituary for Client Services. This declaration has cropped up in personal conversations and public writing. No longer a viable professional path or a model of creating value, the agency is dead. Ownership and the “creator economy” are the future. Excelsior.

As a survivor of the first New Economy (and the subsequent Return of the Old Economy like Jaws on the fourth of July) absolutist pronouncements make me itchy.

Also, such pronouncements are absolutely wrong.

I totally understand the appeal of ownership, especially for skilled, thoughtful designers who have earned their Decade of Service badge. Client services, while incredibly rewarding in many ways, requires accommodating people and practices from other professional cultures. This can lead to painful personal interactions, and a gnawing feeling you are spending more time debating than designing.

As a designer you trade control for variety, opportunity, and adventure. On good days, it’s exciting and stimulating and will push you towards greatness in the service of worthwhile objectives. On bad days, it feels like Dante’s fourth circle of Hell (unceasing fisticuffs while attached to boulders). And on the worst days, you see something you have poured your energy into for months or years corrupted by neglect, ignorance, or competing agendas because you are not the ultimate owner.

So, yes. An experienced designer might very well cry “Enough! I am going to do it my way.” And bully for them. Because of recent developments in technology (availability of low-cost infrastructure) and the economy (availability of early-stage funding), there is a lot of opportunity.

But what is true for individuals is not true for industries. And the opportunity for ownership for some is not the death of services for all.

In terms of a career choice or offering, product vs service is also a false dichotomy. It is frequently more a case of emphasis, emphasis that can shift over time. Many product companies in virtually every industry offer consulting, design, development or support services, and many service agencies make products. Whether the relationship is on-the-side or side-by-side can shift.

The traditional model of design services rests on the notion that a design studio or agency offers a unique value, a set of highly specialized skills and competencies that their clients do not possess and cannot nurture within their own organizations.—Khoi Vinh

This is true. It’s still true. It will never not be true.

I would love to be able to snap my fingers and reorient every company on this planet around user-centered design, while simultaneously sowing horn-rimmed glasses to reap an army of designers. Ain’t gonna happen.

Many companies are not solely digital product companies, but need a digital experience as part of their business. Many companies who might benefit from design might have a culture that is antithetical to design work. There are countless reasons why clients doing worthwhile, interesting work don’t have, don’t need, or can’t build in-house the level of design expertise they require, even for their core products:

• There is no substitute for an outside perspective, when needed.
• The need for top-flight strategic design may be occasional, while a competent production team serves perfectly well in the interim.
• The advantage of design to the business outweighs the appeal of the company to designers.
• Talent is scarce.
• Internal resources are consumed by core products, when an opportunity to innovate or expand presents itself.

And there are just as many reasons why a designer would want to work in client services:

• The give and take with great clients pushes designers to perform.
• It’s possible to have a small-organization lifestyle with large-organization impact. (Sure, start-ups are small…at first, but not after they’ve been acquired.)
• Solving problems in many contexts is designer cross-training.
• Constant critique from peers and clients sharpens thinking and skills like nothing else.
• Completing a project with agreed-upon goals, scope and timeline is very satisfying. And helping people is awesome.
• External designers are often offered more leverage and leeway than a member of an internal team, as long as they deliver what they promise.

Yes, the work can be difficult to scope and manage, because work of any complexity is a challenge to scope and manage, particularly when you are bringing two different operational processes into sync.

And just because a client hires people from the outside is not a guarantee they’ll meet their goals. The designers might be bad or self-indulgent (watch out for overuse of the word “creative”), or incapable of pushing back. And the idea just might be stupid, so fundamentally flawed or unnecessary, that no designer can save it and they should have told the client that in the first place.

But here we are at the bottom line, which is:

The designer-client relationship remains one of many ways to accomplish great things. And it’s one of which we are quite fond.

This past month I posted an article titled, “Graphic Designer Note May Never Get Printed” where, because of the decline of print and the increased number of people calling themselves “graphic designers,” I questioned how much longer we graphic designers could continue referring to ourselves as such without that title becoming diluted and meaningless.

With well know designers like Nicholas Felton and Erik Spiekermann contributing to the conversation the article attracted over 3,000 readers.

The overwhelming response was, it doesn’t really matter what we call ourselves—with several readers, including Mr. Spiekermann, suggesting (perhaps tongue-in-cheek) graphic design has never been understood by anyone.

A Twitter comment by Paul Soulellis really resonated; “…it’s precisely because of the issues @andyjacobson brings up that “graphic designer” should be claimed & owned, not discarded”.

I think Paul is right. Though the technology may be broadening the definition of what a Graphic Designer is it is up to each of us to clearly communicate, to both clients and others, what it is we do.

The U.S. Department of Labor defines Graphic Designer as: Graphic designers—or graphic artists—plan, analyze, and create visual solutions to communications problems. (see http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos090.htm)

What’s missing in this definition is that we also help to create an editorial framework—which is essential before thinking about a “visual solution”. In fact, I think that’s one of the key attributes of a professional Graphic Designer.

So let’s come up with a definition. As TED’s Chris Anderson taught me through his development of the Email Charter, let’s do this as a crowd.  It’s a shared problem. Let’s come up with a shared solution. Please post your thoughts below (or email me directly).