design: May 2004 Archives

My cellphone arrived yesterday. A Motorola v300. It's beautifully put together. Feels much more substantial than the older model I played with at the T-Mobile store. It charged up fairly easy. Came with the typically impossible to digest instruction book, which was promptly forgotten about. Activation simply involved inserting the SIM card, turning it on, and waiting 30 seconds. I've had excellent reception everywhere so far, except the subway. (Which is to be expected... Verizon has a monopoly on cell access in the subway, and doesn't like to share).

I need to write the letter D wanted to send to the clients concerning the transfer of authority/jobs. With about a week and a half left, I can't afford to wait for him to write it. He'll no doubt want to edit it. If he fucks it up too much and refuses to reason, I'll just write a letter on my own.

Need to work on a logo this weekend too. Which kind of means deciding on a name. I think The Design Works is ruled out. It got the least response of the people i polled. And its pretty blatantly marketing-ish, or at the least cheesy. You could replace "design" with "coffee", and have as interesting a name. Meanwhile, people seem to love or hate The Design Foundry. Several people, presumably those who hate the Foundry name, say they like Hero, but none of them are willing or able to tell me why.

J #1 tells me he may have some shit work for me. Shit work is better than no work. And J is a nice, successful guy. Printers L and H have offered to hook me up with jobs as well. (Which is funny since they never hooked up the company I was working for, where I met them). L already gave me one name. I'd bet printers R and C have some work as well. I have one or two personal freelance contacts as well, who I will let know I am available full-time. And I am hoping J #2 will be able to provide me some contacts in an ad agency or two. And all that is without an cold sales work.

So I ordered a cell phone on Amazon yesterday. The one thing I've heard from every schoolteacher and small businessman was that you need a cellphone. Your clients need to be able to reach you at unreasonable times.

I checked out... what is it... the big six? Verizon, Cingular, Sprint, Nextel, AT&T. and despite the fact I pass their office every day, I forgot about T-Mobile till the last minute when I was reminded by an office-mate. Good thing too... They have the best rates of the bunch. Nicest phones. Most realistic plans (though without rollover yet). And the office-mate says the reception and customer service is good. (Advice which I take, over the protestations of all those Verizon customers who, you know, never actually used T-Mobile.)

It should be here tomorrow.

New Toy!!!

And I talked with an accountant... sorta. Sara hooked me up with her mother. Gretchen also offered me her husband. But I know Joycey, (said Mother), better. I've given her a list of what I need to do to legally start the business in DC, and pointed out specific places where I need advice.

Advice for those calling the DC Basic Business Licensing office? Once you get through to the automated voice system that never actually tells you how to connect to anything, and just keeps sending you to the website, (the website which sends you to the phone system)...

Just press 3.

They won't tell you to press three. The only buttons they tell you to press take you back to the beginning of the same message. But button 3 was the first one that worked for me when I started hitting random numbers. The person that answered it said something about Corporations... but he still was pretty nice and helped he anyway.

And for the record, you do not need a business license to run a design studio within the District of Columbia.

You apparent do need one to run the following though:

Au Pair Suite
Ballet
Barber Chair (As opposed to Barber Shop)
Bird Control
Block party
Business Street Photographer
Churches (!!!)
Circus
Dealers in Dangerous Weapons (I just love the name)
Dumbwaiters (Hand Driven)
Dumbwaiters (Power Driven)
Elevator (Hand Driven)
English Basement
Escalator
Gumball Machine
Horse and Buggy (As opposed to Horse Drawn Carriage)
Marathons
Mom and Pop Store
Parades
Sidewalk Elevators (Power Driven)
Street Photographer

I've come up with at least 3 names I would be willing to use:

(The) Design Foundry
The Design Works
Hero Design Group

Explanations follow, (if you're interested).

Design Foundry was originally Design Factory or Washington Design Factory. Someone mentioned that Washington Design Factory reminded them of Burlington Coat Factory. And Design Factory is awful close to the well known Logo Factory. So Factory became Foundry, which was great, because it even better expressed the gritty-hard-work feeling I wanted, and which is in my background. (I grew up 2 blocks from a ball-bearing foundry). Plus.... it sounds really cool to me.

The Design Works sorta just popped into my head, but it has all kinds of good connotations. It's also got the factory idea, as well as the idea that everything about design is offered... "The Works". And, slightly marketing-ish... it can be read as the sentence "Design works.".

Hero Design Group was my ode to indirect names, (a la Starbucks). The 'design group' is a somewhat common name extension in this field, blatantly lifted from Serif Design Group and others, to make yourself sound a bit bigger. Hero is a good, short, powerful word. All positive connotations. Goes well with some of my interests. And I think it has a lot of marketing possibilities, (a la "We want to be your hero")

Meanwhile... I have finally talked to my boss about my plans. It went over remarkably well, considering the audience. And it was kind of important, as most everything else hinged on the outcome.

The announcement that I was going into business for myself was greeted with quiet, and presumably suppressed doubt. Maybe he was sincerely gracious... he certainly never suppressed anything I thought inappropriate before. How like me.

There was also an offer of advice.

He easily agreed to letting me take two repeating projects I have been doing for years. And while I didn't 'ask' to take other clients, we did talk about it. I had no intention of asking, but it cannot hurt to make it known. Likewise, when he asked for a list of clients I wished to take with me, I see no reason not to oblige. If it's less stressful to give them to me, then why not.

It's very difficult in there, sometimes. There are times where he bounces around with a child's joy and energy. There are times where you can see him trying every way he knows how to fight off everything closing in around him. And there are times when he seems too worn out -- too tired -- to even raise his eyelids. It's very hard to see someone's dream -- someone's very nature -- to be wearing down on them so harshly, after so long.

What the hell do I call my company?

It's a stupid little thing that I absolutely hate obsessing over. It's such a ridiculous detail. But I need to get business cards printed. I need to put up a website and get email working.

I do want something I won't mind seeing and saying a million times in the future. It has to lend itself to an easily understandable domain name when spoken. I should be interesting but not obscure. And it wouldn't hurt if it was meaningful about about a new stage/change. Maybe something meaningless, but interesting?

I've never liked the idea of naming your company after yourself. Too many people assume you work by yourself. And most people I know who use their name have a hard time separating their business from themselves.

Among the "this is a new stage/thing in my life" ideas, I've only really had two half decent ones: Breakaway Design and Dream Designs.

I considered Emanon as a cop-out, but rather quickly discarded it. (Emanon = NoName).

Having loved William Gibson's last book, Pattern Recognition, I half considered using Blue Ant. It falls well on the meaningless category. I do think you need to be careful with the meaningless, though.

I'm trying to think of anything from any book I loved. Not a whole lot of usable names, though, for a respectable business. Especially as most of my reading lately has been cyberpunk. Would you do business with Chiba Design or DatAmerica? I don't think so.

I have a friend who used Serif Design. Some little professional word is interesting. But outside of serif... what is there? Pica Design? T-square communications? Maybe Ligature?

(I actually kind of like that last one)

Not to mention, that every successful businessperson I've ever heard speak suggests, that once you've found your passion, You write down your goals and how you plan to achieve them.

You don't have to like Trump as a person to see that he knows business. Something my last boss never quite grasped.

Though y personal taste in bazillionaires runs more towards Richard Branson of Virgin.

I'm seriously into starting my own business. I am in a kind-of-forced-self-instigated-leaving-of-my-job thing. I've got about 3 weeks left before I HAVE to go. (Which conveniently coincides with both an annual trip and my upcoming jury duty.) After that... nothing.

I started out looking for a job. Duh. Applied for some truly cool openings. But besides never hearing from anyone, I know my heart was never fully in it either. I've been six and a half years at a job that was more social challenge than professional career building. (I'll take up the issue of "careers" later.) I can't see myself immediately dropping into another company where it's someone else's vision.

I've been quietly egged on for a couple years now by a local photographer to start my own business. I always dismissed the notion, because I have no experience selling myself, (insert joke here). But when he mentioned it again about 2 weeks ago, for the first time since I found out my old job was coming to an end, the idea took hold. In just a day or two, I was seriously considering the idea. In less than a week, I was seeking out advice from a friend who runs their own design business. I have since asked for feedback from many of my closest friends and relatives.

The advice has been cautious, but encouraging. The idea feels right. The work, while challenging, is in no way a stretch. I have proven I have every skill necessary, except for the selling. And even in that area, I've had limited success when allowed, at my current job.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of research online. Online research is the modern equivalent of running for the encyclopedia. Unlike the anonymous blurb you get from an encyclopedia, though, the web is still a little bit of the wild, wild west. You got people selling, and people searching for gold, and people out to take advantage of the unprepared, just like the old west. But the beauty is in the anarchy.

"I've got my opinion and the biggest microphone mankind has ever invented, so let me tell you something."

The most useful stuff here inevitably comes from the little person stealing time in their cubicle, who was upset that there was no officially sanctioned solution, and solved it for themself. Through ego, or altruism, they put their newborn idea out there and see if it sticks.

Many people now use the web to document their projects, their work, or their research. I've even found answers to my own problems within my website, most recently when I couldn't remember when I last served on jury duty.

Many companies are also starting to have ... slice of life ... weblogs. More often than not, they tend to be more about justifying their business decisions. (Never justify, or you'll make an ASS out of U and ME.)

All this in mind, along with my unnatural obsession for openness and sharing, a thought popped into my head the other day. There's not much else up there, so you know, it kind of stood out.

So the idea was, to document this all. Not the corporate, 'look at us, we know what a blog is' thing. It's doubtful I will ever even link this journal to the company in any solid way. Call it a what to do/not-to-do manual. Call it a place to sort through everything. Call it whatever you want.

But this is my dream.