I received an e-mail the other day from a woman named Kathee. Kathee was irked because without realizing it, when we updated the site a few months ago we inadvertently left off what city the studio is located in. I still can’t believe I made such a rookie mistake. I am genuinely grateful to Kathee for taking the time to let me know. I think most everybody who reads the blog regularly knows it, but I’ll state it again for the record: 989 Design is located in Bay City, Michigan. We are located at 701 E. Midland Street, in the heart of Bay City’s historic Midland Street business district. 

I think what really bugs me about the omission is that sites who leave out that sort of information is a real pet peeve of mine. There are a lot of business sites which deliberately leave out location information. I really don’t understand the rationale behind it, but I suppose they think it makes them seem like a bigger business than they really are.

For example, somebody mentioned a business in Saginaw (whose name I will not divulge, I’m not trying to be nasty I’m just using them to illustrate my point) and I had never heard of them before, so I looked them up online. If you go to the site and read through it, you would think that it’s this giant business employing scores of people. Everything is written in this really silly, puffed-up style. “Our team of experts” and stuff like that. In reality, it is one person operating out of their home. 

For years people have been saying that the internet is a great equalizer and that it levels the playing field for small business. I suppose that is true, to a certain extent, but I can’t help but wonder why people think it’s so important to look big. Personally, I think that being a small business gives you a big advantage, especially given the current economic climate. I like the idea of being more nimble and better able to respond to client needs because I don’t have the same overhead as a big studio.

Granted, there are times when being a small studio excludes you from certain jobs and clients. For certain projects, size really does matter. You need the manpower to keep up with the demands of a big client. These clients are few and far between, though. For every client like Hulu.com, who recently awarded their $50 million account to a new agency, there are hundreds of clients with much smaller budgets, but the demands of these accounts are easier to keep up with as a small studio. I think that one of the most important things you can do with your website is to be sure that it accurately reflects what your business is all about.

Also, remember to put what city you are located in.

I remember having a conversation with my cousin Jamey a year or two ago. Jamey is a senior in college now and we were talking about Facebook. She was saying that she didn’t like non-students on Facebook. Jamey isn’t an agist or anything, but I took her to mean that she felt like the newcomers were kind of ruining a good thing. I guess it’s like when your favorite band starts to make it big and suddenly everybody loves them. It sort of ruins it because they were your band.

It wasn’t until Facebook first began allowing non-students to join (much to Jamey’s chagrin), though, that the true power of this networking juggernaut became apparent. What was once solely a social tool opened itself up to allow people to use the network to promote themselves or their businesses in a friendly and comfortable manner. 

I will admit that I am a very reluctant networker. I go to the Chamber of Commerce events and I talk to people, but I’m not one of those folks who enjoys making the rounds and introducing myself to everyone. I enjoy meeting new people, I really do, but going around and handing out business cards to strangers feels awkward to me…it’s outside my comfort zone. Networking is not about closing sales, it’s about getting your name out there and letting people know what you do—Facebook is a great venue for doing just that.

A lot of businesses steer clear of networking sites because they write it off as something for kids. Facebook is definitely not the right venue for every business, but that’s okay because there are a lot of different networking sites. So it’s important to think about who your core customers and clients are. Once you have an idea of who you want to target, you can figure out what networking sites work best for you. Maybe it’s myspace (event planners, for example) or maybe it’s linkedin (great business site with a wide variety of individuals and professions represented). Maybe what you really need to to is to set up a blog to let potential customers about your business. 

Take the time to look into networking sites and decide if there is one that makes sense for you and your business. The best thing about these sites is that most of them don’t cost a dime. The only investment to be made is the time it takes to put the page together, so what do you have to lose?

If you think you would like to look into this further, but would like some help putting everything together, give us a call. We’re pretty comfortable with new media and would love to help you out in any way we can. We can make recommendations on which sites work best for you, create the pages you need, write the blog or anything else you need help with.

Almost every time somebody comes into the studio for the first time, I get a comment along the lines of:

“You use a Mac?”

I generally don’t comment much beyond affirming that the studio is, in fact, entirely Mac-based. I am a very happy Mac user. I drank the Macintosh Kool-Aid a VERY long time ago (1988), but I don’t talk about it much. It seems like most people who bring it up (author’s note: the folks who comment on the Macs in the studio are not trying to spark debate, it’s just that an iMac is one of the first things you see when you walk in the front door) only bring it up to debate the merits of Mac vs. PC. 

The question has come up a few times in the past couple of weeks, so I’m going to give you a little bit on my history as a Mac guy. I don’t care if you agree with me, I don’t care what kind of computer you use, I don’t care if you convert to Mac or not. If you have a PC and you love it, that’s great. Don’t change a thing! If you are thinking about buying a Mac, this is not meant to sway you. I don’t get a dime from Apple no matter if you buy one Mac or one hundred.

The first time I ever touched a Mac was in 1988, working on a few-year-old model in student media at Central Michigan University. It was a self-contained beige box with a keyboard and mouse. No hard drive, swapping 3.5″ floppy disks back and forth to use applications. It was completely different than any computer I had used to that point. The mouse alone was enough to distinguish it, but you also had the white screen with black type (as opposed to the black screen with green type). It allowed you to change type size and style and it showed you EXACTLY what you would see when you printed (WYSIWG was pretty novel in the mid- to late-eighties).

Over the next few years as I began dipping my toes into the world of design (by way of publication design) I used our Mac more and more frequently. When I got my first job at Kinko’s, my familiarity with the system allowed me to work as a typesetter in addition to my other job responsibilities. I kept working on Macs and kept loving it more and more.

Apple made a conscious decision to focus on the niche market of computer graphics very early on. They knew that they couldn’t compete with PCs, whose market share was pretty close to 100% when Apple first came on the scene. With their focus on design—both physical design of the Mac as well as the completely innovative user interface (the mouse and desktop)—they were catering to a very specific user set.

The strategy worked very well. Macs are the go-to computers of graphic designers around the world. In the early going, it was your only real option. As the hardware of both Macs and PCs have changed over the years, the software manufacturers have worked hard to make design an option on both platforms.

In the early going, design and publishing software on the PC was pretty dismal. Early PC versions of PageMaker (a blast from the past!) and Illustrator couldn’t hold a candle to their Macintosh counterparts. Over time, though, I have to admit that other than little things like key commands and the way certain menus are organized, the software packages are pretty much the same thing. You can accomplish the same thing on either platform, so now it does come down to personal preference of platform.

I’ve worked on both platforms, although my exposure to PC is very limited compared to my Mac experience. In my experience, though, I prefer the way the Mac works. The operating system (I can’t remember if we’re on Leopard or what other cat-name we’re on now) works very well. One of the things that I love about Apple is that they spend a lot of time and money on the actual design of the software—being innovative is a part of the culture at Apple and I appreciate that. And not just in the computer division, either. Sure you can get an MP3 player for less than an iPod, but I like the way the iPod works.

You can see Apple innovations turn up in non-Apple products all of the time. For me, it’s not about being cool or cutting edge or anything like that (when I bought my first iPod, it was the only game in town and I’ve stuck with it), it’s about supporting a company that actively works toward innovation. That being said, I have thus far steered clear of the iPod, although with my cell phone contract coming up soon, I may end up making that switch. Once again, though, not for the cool factor. I rarely take my cell phone with me when I go out, but it would be nice to have a phone that integrates all of my vital information with my computer so easily. I digress.

I think I have purchased about 10 Macs over the years (including the five I currently use for my home and the studio) and I’ve never had a significant problem with any of them. Sure, I’ve lost a hard drive or two over the years, but that is something that happens in the normal course of a computer’s life. The machines themselves are reliable. Very, very few random crashes (I think my two laptops have crashed a total of 8 times or so in the past three years), reliable performance, etc.

I’ve been a creative professional for a lot of years now and I can also say that no serious graphic designer I have ever worked with uses a PC. I’m sure there are some, but in every agency/company I have worked with/for it was all-Mac, all the time (web guys and other animators often use PCs, I know, but they are a different type of creative pro from pure graphic design).

Honestly, I’m not sure what got me on this tangent today. I guess I just wanted to wave my Apple flag. 

I’m out of the studio while I’m writing this entry so I don’t have access to most of my photos. Instead, I pulled a photo from last February.

We’re still about a month away from the official start of winter, but we’ve already had a few light snowfalls. I’ve not had to shovel yet (the broom has handled these early season snows), but it won’t be long before the real snow begins to fall.

With the change in weather, the Midland Street neighborhood takes on a whole different feel. In the summer you have a constant stream of traffic walking past the studio windows. In the winter there are still a few passers-by, but they’re all bundled up and rushing to get to the tanning salon or the bar or wherever they are headed.

I really love this neighborhood. I was driving to work in the half-light of the morning a couple of days ago and they already have the Christmas lights up. I’m not a fan of Christmas lights before Thanksgiving, but I know the city has to get them up while the gettin’s good, so I don’t mind. I’ll be hanging the lights in the windows of the studio either this weekend or next week, so stay tuned for more photos.

Sorry for the really vanilla entry, I’m just in a reflective mood. I am looking forward to our second winter in our studio. If you are one of the few who brave the winter, please feel free to stop by and say hello. Maybe we can play ping-pong or something.