Guest Post – Bernadette Jiwa » Why Are Designers Hiding?

November 1st, 2011 by Mat Dolphin

When we meet clients for the first time they’re often quite surprised to find out how long we’ve been established and how many people actually work here. It happens all the time, and even comes from other agencies within the industry too. “Really???” is a common reaction. People’s perception of Mat Dolphin is based on a number of factors. Our creative work, the brands we’ve been fortunate to work with, the exposure we’ve had, our twitter presence, this very blog etc. all go together to paint a picture, and one that is apparently bigger and louder than we are. So why don’t we just be more open about it all? The vast majority of design agencies these days share what they want to be heard or seen. Like well oiled PR companies, they carefully control what the world finds out about them. But that’s kind of missing the point. What makes agencies unique is the people that work there. Designers constantly encourage brands to be open and honest, yet hide behind the typical designer ‘cool wall’.

We’ve been talking about this topic for a while, but the original train of thought came from Bernadette Jiwa ‘brand and business catalyst and verbal designer’ who we regularly chat with on Twitter. She questioned why we at MDHQ portray ourselves in the way we do and it got us thinking. We were going to write a blog post about it but thought who better to write a post than Bernadette herself.

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A guide to briefing designers – Getting the most out of us

September 2nd, 2010 by Mat Dolphin

We started the Mat Dolphin blog as a simple platform to share information – we’re constantly consuming design and we meet a great number of inspirational people involved in our industry which gives us plenty of design-related ‘stuff’ to share. However, as well as having this dialogue with our peers we always saw the blog as being a great way to converse with clients. From previous experience working in design agencies, there’s all to often a barrier between client and designer that, in our opinion, doesn’t need to be there.

With this in mind, we thought it would be a good idea to write an easy to follow ‘guide to briefing’ to make the process easier for clients and designers alike.

The design process starts and ends with the client. A person or organisation has a design requirement and approach the designer – so far, all simple enough. The next stage, the client relaying exactly what it is they want to achieve, can be a bit more complicated.

Keep reading…