Everyone of you uses email, but did anyone of you learn how to write emails? In the old days of the ground mail there we learned how to write a business letter. There are books on how to write business letters with templates for any occasion. Here is my tip on writing a successful business email.

Writing a business letter is time consuming and the time it takes to get to the recipient seems endless nowadays. So the email took over. Faster to write, faster to send, faster to receive a response. What get lost? Not only the form. I cannot actually know how my email is displayed and and on what device. But the worst is, that many times we cripple the message because we are such in a hurry when writing the email.

I write every email like I would write an ad. I’m no copywriter, but I do fine enough. And I try to structure it, especially if I write to a person for the first time, following this advertising rules:

• Who I am (for first contact)
• Reason Why
• Unique selling proposition
• Call to action

Who I am

Introduce yourself in one sentence – if I get an email from an unknown person I want first of all know who he is.

Reason Why

Right after the introduction tell the people why you are writing them. Studies show that if you give a reason why your are asking for something people will be more likely to comply. You must give a reason why they should continue reading and make them know that it matters to them. How many times I get calls where a graphic designer asks me to send him a logo in a printable format. The first thing I ask is: “What do you need it for?”

Unique selling proposition

This is maybe the trickiest part, because you have to think always in a way that you are selling something – even if you ask them to do something for you. In fact if you ask them to do something for you (send you something, give you a backlink) you are actually selling them this favour they will do to you. You must therefore find a benefit for them and possibly one that doesn’t sound bland. Or it can be a straight “if you do this x for me, I can do this y for you”. Don’t try to sell “x” and pay “x” back (say backlink for backlink) – it doesn’t work. Your a genius if you can write this part in a way that the receiver thinks he profits from doing what you ask him to do.

Call to action

I sometimes wonder how many times I get emails where after reading them I think: “Ok, and what should I do next?” No, really. Check if your email has a call to action in the end where you distinctively tell the reader what you expect him to do. This applies also to “informative” emails, where you just want to inform someone about a specific topic – include in the end a phrase like “Please keep this email in your records for further reference” or “You can delete this message after reading”. Very popular call to action phrases for emails, where the request is actually clear from the central part or where you respond to a request “If you have any further questions, feel free to contact me.”

And now an example

A classic example – you are making a brochure for an event and your client gives you a list of sponsors. You have to include all the logos of the sponsors and you have none. The agreement between your client and the sponsors are usually made at management level and therefore the marketing department doesn’t know anything about it. Not all firms have printable logos at hand so the email must include the right information about what you need and that they might better forward the request to their graphic designer or advertising agency.

Dear Sirs,

my name is Frank Neulichedl and I write you on behalf of
Mr. Smith from ThisIsAfirm ltd. I am currently designing
the brochure for the annual spring concert in Holland Park
and I've been told that your firm is one of the sponsors.

I would therefore include your logo in the brochure and would
ask you to send me a high resolution digital version of the
logo suitable for print in order to display your commitment
in the best way.

Suitable file formats are Adobe Illustrator (.eps, .ai)
or high resolution images .jpg .tif (File size larger
than 500 KBytes).

If you do not have a suitable format at hand please forward
this request to your graphic designer or advertising agency.

Feel free to contact me for any further questions.

Yours faithfully

Frank Neulichedl
...

For further reference on this subject I’ve found a nice resource here:

• Better writing – tips, useful phrases and sample letters

Trainees or intern as they are called are part of the responsibilities an art director has. I’m not talking about the bad habit of using trainees as regular workers, sometimes referred to as “precarity” or “underclass”, but about the trainees coming from schools doing a few weeks of internship to learn about the real work in an agency.

I had in the past problems finding the right jobs for the trainees as I was caught up in my daily routine and when they actually showed up at my desk I wondered what would fit. I therefore setup a routine for finding jobs around the year to have them ready. Find out how I did it and the 3 rules for successfully managing a graphic design trainee.

The simple job blackboard

During the year you come around quite a few low priority jobs which are easy to do and you postpone them because they are boring, time consuming and other jobs are more important. Instead of keeping them on your todo list make a separate todo list for your trainee. If you have co-workers make this trainee-todo list public, so they can add their jobs too.

Three simple rules

1. Categorize jobs by difficulty
   When you setup your job blackboard give the single jobs a difficulty level, let’s say simple, medium, difficult (for a trainee) and give the trainee only jobs he/she can master. It saves you and the trainee from frustration. Yes, they should learn something, but you can be sure, that something you claim to be easy for the trainee is not.
2. Split long jobs
   Some jobs are easy but take a long time. Try to split repetitive jobs into junks to avoid that the motivation of trainee. Don’t treat your trainee like a mule – you would split up the job for yourself don’t you? If you have more than one trainee is good practice to split longer jobs among them to avoid envy.
3. Don’t multitask them
   This is fairly new. Against previous studies whom claimed that the young generation can multitask more easily because they are the so called digital natives. Professor Martin from Westwell Flinders University, Australia, found out something very interesting:

   
   

   
   

   WESTWELL: Strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as multi-tasking. What we do is switching our attention very quickly between doing one thing at a time but interspersed. Now what we find is that actually young people are less able to do that because of their brain development. The area of their brain that deals with this switching between two tasks isn’t as well developed in younger people until their early twenties compared to older people. So actually older people are much better at multi-tasking than young people and I’ve done some research to demonstrate that, to show that. Younger people claim that they can stay on task when they’ve got multi-media, so they might be you know trying to read a book or do their homework whilst they’ve got music playing and whilst they might be instant messaging friends or you know something like that, so they’re consumers of different media at the same time. They may claim that they can multi-task in that way, but the evidence is telling us that they can’t and actually the performance on the task at hand, particularly the primary task – let’s say doing their homework – is actually diminished by trying to deal with all these multiple inputs at the same time. (taken from the BBC Podcast Analysis)

It’s therefore good to avoid to rush to the trainee every 15 minutes with a new task and to not have them read the email all the time. Make a daily plan and introduce new tasks only on breaks.

Finally I just want to say a last thing about the extended benefit of having trainees. Finding graphic designers who fit well into your organization and the projects you work on is often difficult. Often you hire someone to find out later that he can not adapt or doesn’t have the right capabilities. Trainees, especially if you have the opportunity to have the same come in for a couple of years, can not only be judged but you can also train them to your needs, make them fit well in your organization and develop exactly the skills needed. This is a huge advantage and can boost the success of your projects. So invest into your trainees and you will be rewarded.

A minimalistic approach uses as few graphical elements as needed to transport the message to the user. No decoration or other distracting elements are added. The message is the protagonist. The graphical elements to focus on the message can be simple shapes, but the result is a rich experience.

A design that is just “simple” on the other hand does not give you a rich expirience – it gives you the feeling that something is missing.

If you do a minimalistic design and you get the feeling that something is missing, then you probably (1) didn’t focus enough on the message, (2) the message is too weak or (3) cannot be transported through minimalistic design:

1. To much decoration or complicated layouts can blur your message. Get rid of graphic elements without a function.
2. Weak messages are often the main problem. Minimalistic means reduced to the bones and a message which is blurry and not focused can’t work in this context. Talk again with your copywriter and client if you can get a message with a tighter focus.
3. You cannot transport chaos with a minimalistic approach. Period.

As a conclusion we could say: A minimalistic design uses only graphic elements with function to maximise the message, simple design ignores the message to maximise simplicity.

Foto by Dirk Dallas

Following rules is not often seen as something positive in design. “Break the rules” and “Be different” are more common to be heard. And while it’s true that design should be different and break the rules to attract attention, it’s advisable that you establish a few rules if you want to get along with you co-workers.

We had in the last weeks a few meetings in our department where we tried to polish our teamwork and we established these 5 simple rules:

1. Language - No tongue is discriminated and everyone can express thoughts, opinions and present in their mother tongue as long as all involved understand everything. If someone has problems to follow, everyone helps to avoid misunderstandings.
2. Feedback - We follow the feedback-rules for positive and negative feedback.
3. Information - We inform ALL members of the project team about changes, improvements, new ideas, conclusion and everything else concerning the project
4. Competence - We respect the fields of competence of the co-workers and believe that they are willing to do their best for the project. It is though allowed to discuss about the solutions and bring new input.
5. Reaction - We react promptly upon requests (from inside the department or from outside) by confirming that we have received it. We also give a statement on how we are going to proceed.

The first rule about the language is quite important for multi-lingual environments, in my case German/Italian. Sometimes firms tend to prefer one language over another, in most cases the smallest common ground, and cripple the interaction. You probably can express yourself best in your mother tongue and you may be even capable of transmitting your ideas in a simple way that foreign-language speaker can understand it. On the other hand if you are forced to use another language to express yourself you maybe miss the point without noticing it and misunderstandings are quite often.

Another good thing about allowing more than one language is that you can avoid the “YOU have to speak my language in order for me to understand you”. Everyone knows that he has to understand the other languages of the department – the more the better.

Brainstorming is the best known creativity tool, but still is one with the poorest result. Just because everybody uses it, doesn’t mean that anybody is doing it the right way. Even if you look around the web you will find no good source on how to get great results through Brainstorming. So let’s bring down some of the myths in order to use the tool the right way and get better results.

It has no rules

Brainstorming is not a license to mayhem – it has rules, just a few but very strict ones. Break one and the whole session falls apart. Here they are:

1. Time constrain (every session should be exactly 30 minutes, not more not less) The good ideas come after 10-15 Minutes, but after 30 minutes of Brainstorming everyone is done, believe me.
2. Build up an idea: Just one talks at a time – the next builds up on the idea of the first taking it further. If you don’t know how to take it further, write it down. Start with the next idea. This way you know which ideas to write down and when. The one who writes does just that and moderate – he is not involved in the storming.
3. NO EVALUATION – It’s easy if you follow the first to rules. As just one talks, the others can’t tell their evaluation Validating the ideas is made in a second moment.

If you follow these rules everything is fine. To optimize the results you might destroy some other myths.

Everyone can do it

Not only the most creative people can do it, but certainly not every person is right for this tool. It’s not the right tool to get people or departments “involved” in the design process. Most of the time is difficult for them to understand, that not every idea is good, payable, or gets the right message. You may want also, that the persons in the team trust each other in order to not be laughed at. If you have people in the Brainstorming which want to show off and stand out, you have to throw them out. No single member of the team gets the credit for the idea, as it is build by the idea parts of all the team.

It brings finished ideas

Brainstorming is the birth of an idea, not the end. After the evaluation, maybe three or four ideas may be tested for the best results. You cannot know out of the Brainstorming session if the idea really works or if it’s possible to do. So if you have to change it while you produce it, no big deal, but make sure that also the other members know it.

All participants evaluate the ideas

It’s not necessary that all the originating team is part of the evaluation process. In fact it might be counterproductive. The ideas should be evaluated in a second moment and against strategy, cost, RUI and other factors. If you see that an idea doesn’t stand up then get rid of it – it’s just an idea, there are plenty of them – just the best should survive. Some idea is great, but it’s too expensive. Try to save it, by finding out what makes the idea great and, then try to do it cheaper.

It has always a result

Brainstorming is made by people, so not every time you will have the same results and sometimes you get no result at all. Sometimes the topic is too complicated or because the team doesn’t play well together. So if you see that there has been no result don’t be frustrated but try another technique.