1SUMMER 2015

1400 R Street, Lincoln, NE 68508 (402) 669-0975RendezvousMag.com

Volume 01 Summer Issue 01 May 2015

40 WAYSTO ENANCE

WORKFLOW

STEFANSAGMEISTERTALKS “HAPPINESS”

TOP 5 REASONSCREATIVE

PEOPLE FAIL

SHOULD DESIGNERS USEDATA ORINSPIRATION?

4

In its simplest form, Rendezvous is a magazine

dedicated to bringing all that goes without

celebration in the creative process of advertising,

marketing, and art, into the spotlight. It is a place

for creative minds to meet up and discuss their

art, process, objectives, and style outside the

constraints of a client brief. The magazine will

uncover business and financial strategies, client

testimonials, methods for successful project

completion, and much much more. The hope is

that creatives will buy this magazine in search of

community within their craft.

06101418

5SUMMER 2015

The Top 5 Reasons Creative Peope Fail

How to Manage Your Freelance Cashflow

Should Designers Use Data or Inspiration?

Stefan Sagmeister talks “Happiness”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

6

7SUMMER 2015

LIKE IT OR NOT,WE ALL FAIL.But knowing why can help stop it happening again, says Rick Albano. We creatives can be a fragile bunch. The harder we come with our ideas, the harder we fall when those ideas fail. And the agency world can be a ruthless arena, from interviewing for your first job to pitching a campaign to a CMO.

Furthermore, in social media marketing, the consumer ends up being your harshest (and most valid) critic. When something you created for a brand fails on a social channel with 40 million followers, you feel the sting instantly.

There’s no way to avoid failing creatively. It happens. It’s even encouraged. “Fail Harder,” says a big wall at Weiden+Kennedy.

A client recently told me we weren’t doing our job if we didn’t “fail forward.” Where I work, “Get it wrong to get it right,” is one of our mantras. It’s all part of the process, but learning from those fails is critical to your morale and success in this business, as is fine-tuning your creative process to limit fails and increase wins.

What follows are my top 5 reasons creative people fail — things I have done at least once in my career, and will probably do again...

B Y R I C K A L B A N O

8

01.You’re too focused on the industry.Too often I have met, for example, young copywriters who know

more about the agency world and award circuit than they do

about the craft of writing.

Usually their work reads like formulaic lines from famous

campaigns by Nike and Apple, but not as good. Sanam Petri of

W+K (via RGA) wrote an article in The Guardian that goes deeper

on this very subject.

The best advertisers I know are actually just really creative

people who want to make cool stuff. Of course, solving problems

for brands is our job, but doing it with a genuine passion for

creating something that actually moves people (to laugh, to cry, to

buy) is paramount to success.

02.You’re taking yourself too seriously.It’s hard to tell creatives that they’re taking themselves too

seriously. This is their Creativity™, dammit. Their juice. And to

make matters more serious, this juice is the main ingredient in

their own personal brand, dammit.

Our industry is built on pitting one creative’s branded juice against

another person’s branded juice. Bearing your teeth yet? But

staying loose is critical to doing great creative work. The trick is

tapping into the creative child inside that makes things simply,

based on instinct and passion.

To experiment and play, and to start each day with a smile. It’s

really easy to get uptight with a deadline or pitch looming, but in

the end we’re just using marketing as an artistic outlet (see point

1 above), so let’s try and have some fun with it.

REASONSCREATIVEPEOPLE

FAIL

THE TOP

Rick Albano was the creator of trailblazing surfing blog Sissyfish, an A&R associate at Warner Brothers Records, part of the legitimate Napster.com team and a copywriter for

Nike before becoming executive creative director for Swift

9SUMMER 2015

03.You don’t have a creative outlet outside of workThere has got to be something else in your life. There HAS to. Are

you a photographer? A cook? A gardener? It’s essential that you find

time to make things for yourself. It’ll keep you inspired and ultimately

positively influence the commercial creative work you do.

Instagram requires very little effort, but at least gets you to think

‘visual + headline’ and to broadcast regularly. I’ve also found

blogging to be incredibly helpful in satisfying my personal creative

urges, while also opening my eyes to inspiring work by others that

can influence my day job.

04.You don’t learn from your #failsFail Harder: then what? If you don’t look at your mistakes critically

and make adjustments based on feedback, you haven’t just

failed hard, you’ve failed bad. Agencies hang their hats on an

ability to analyze work and change rapidly, especially in social

media, where you have the luxury of making quick adjustments to

strategy and pivoting based on consumer reactions.

Stubborn creatives will stick to their ways of doing things

regardless of what other people say. Those who look at their

creative careers as a constant evolution and education will not

only continue to grow, but have a long lifespan in this business.

Which leads us to...

05.Hellooooooo? You’re not listening!It’s a great time to be a creative. We have so much access to

inspiration, from Tumblr to Pinterest to We Heart It to Instagram.

Never has it been this easy connect with other creatives and

ask them questions about their craft. Consumers, our ultimate

audiences, are open books. But it’s up to you to pay attention.

Spend time listening to that massive collective of creatives at

your fingertips who are posting new, raw ideas every day.

“LISTENING IS A REQUIREMENT FOR

SUCCESS”

Listening is a requirement for success. A good idea, or a ground-

breaking piece of feedback, can come from anywhere. Planners

are our friends. Junior level creatives are our future.

Criticism, as hard as it is for us artists to take, is an opportunity

for growth. And who doesn’t want to grow creatively? The long

and the short, by being aware of bad habits and creativity-stifling

tendencies, creatives can approach their work with a fresh point-

of-view.

10

11SUMMER 2015

THE RELATIONSHIPBETWEEN ART &COMMERCE IS AROCKY ONE...And it’s particularly rocky when you’re a freelancer. For all its many joys, being your own boss also means being your own accounting department and occasional bailiff.

Freelancers face three key issues: staying on top of the paperwork, getting paid and ensuring the taxman doesn’t chuck you in prison. Taking care of all that can eat into the time you’d rather spend on designing. So how do others do it?

B Y G A R Y M A R S H A L L

12

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFTOne of a series of map illustrations by

illustrator Elly WaltonAn architectural drawing, Belle &

Bunting, by Scottish illustrator Willa Gebbie

Stickers and packaging for Peaceable Kingdom by Linzie Hunter

Hand Lettering Headlines, by Ely WaltonA hand-lettered and illustrated Label for Noted, by Linzie Hunter

One of a series of illustrated New Year’s Resolutions collected via social Hunter

NY Resolutions, by Linzie Hunter

13SUMMER 2015

Start a spreadsheetElly Walton has been a freelance illustrator for 10 years. Her client list reads like a who’s

who of the advertising, design and publishing fields, but despite her success, she’s been

using “pretty much the same old Excel spreadsheet with my incomings, outgoings and tax

payable on it” all that time.

Walton also records “the jobs as they come in, how I got them and whether it was a result

of promotion or word of mouth,” she explains. “It makes a nice, pretty graph that I look at

occasionally to review my marketing.”

Walton uses an Adobe Photoshop template for invoices, prints hard copies – “I like to have

a stack of physical paper to check through and stamp a little ‘PAID’ on it when it’s paid” –

and invoices jobs on completion.

Don’t procrastinateProcrastination, says Walton, is the enemy: “[Tax] isn’t really that painful, but it’s a hell of a

lot more painful if you leave it until the deadline.”

If you’re a sole trader in the UK you’ll pay Income Tax on your profits (sales less expenses)

as well as National Insurance contributions; limited companies pay Corporation Tax on

business profits; and if you’re turning over more than £81,000 per year (it happens!) there’s

quarterly VAT too.

It may be worth registering even if your turnover is less: under the Flat Rate Scheme

someone in advertising can charge 20% but only pays 11%.

Consider an accountantDoing your own tax return isn’t difficult, but if you’re VAT registered or running a company

you might want to consider hiring an accountant. It isn’t too expensive and there’s

something enormously satisfying about handing over a shoebox full of receipts and never

having to worry about it ever again.

Like Elly Walton, beauty, fashion and portrait illustrator Willa Gebbie used a system based

around a spreadsheet, in this case Google Docs, but in 2013 she decided to switch to

FreeAgent.

“That’s when I finally got around to having a proper business account as well,” she says.

Until then she hadn’t felt it was necessary, not least because business accounts come with

a plethora of charges after the first year.

“A normal account will do, as long as you keep your work money and personal money

clearly separate,” Gebbie says. “As a sole trader, it’s unlikely that you’ll need the benefits

(or costs) of a business account, so it’s better saving those few pounds.”

Chase payment regularlyWhile FreeAgent can automatically notify clients of overdue invoices, Gebbie fears that it

could look “spammy”, so she prefers to do the chasing herself. “I write invoices as soon

as I’ve finished the job,” she says. “Once a week I check payments and chase outstanding

invoices. If they’re really late then I’ll start to chase every couple of days.”

Award-winning hand-lettering artist and illustrator Linzie Hunter is another convert to online

systems.

“Having a cloud-based system means that I can keep track of payments and invoices easily

wherever I am. My favourite feature is the ability to link it to your bank and PayPal accounts,

so I no longer need to enter everything manually. It’s also good at showing you exactly

where you are financially.”

State clear payment termsTempting as it might be, one feature Wave and FreeAgent don’t currently offer is the ability

to send drone strikes after late payers. Elly Walton is unusual – “I’ve been lucky not to have

had a non-payer” – but stresses the value of clear payment terms.

“30 days is reasonable,” she says. “As soon as that date arrives, start chasing – as politely

as possible, of course.”

Willa Gebbie agrees. “Sometimes clients don’t pay on time, but often that’s because of

the finance department rather than the art director… it’s probably quite embarrassing for

them.”

Be preparedOur illustrators have all experienced the ups and downs of freelancing. What hard-won

advice would they pass on? “If you’re only just going freelance, make sure you read up

about how self-assessment works and make sure you understand about paying tax on

account,” Linzie Hunter advises.

“Otherwise it can be a bit of a shock to find that you have to pay an extra chunk in the first

year. And get used to saving every receipt in your wallet automatically from the start.”

Willa Gebbie agrees. “Even if it’ll be some time before you start paying tax, you can offset

the set-up cost of your business against future tax. That’s a really useful opportunity to

take.”

Keep your work money and play money separate, Elly Walton counsels, recommending that

you put a percentage of each payment into a separate account. “I think if all payments went

straight into one account, hoping that by the time the tax bill comes around I’ll still have the

money to pay it is a risky strategy.” We can say from painful experience that Walton isn’t

wrong.

1400 R Street, Lincoln, NE 68508 (402) 669-0975RendezvousMag.com

Volume 01 Summer Issue 01 May 2015

40 WAYSTO ENANCE

WORKFLOW

STEFANSAGMEISTERTALKS “HAPPINESS”

TOP 5 REASONSCREATIVE

PEOPLE FAIL

SHOULD DESIGNERS USEDATA ORINSPIRATION?