I Want to Work With You. For Longer.

A few months ago I wrote about how doing less work for more money saved client work for me. One of the points I discussed was the 15 hours each week I allotted for clients in 2011. It’s amazing how having a wife, a fulltime job (with five six direct reports) and getting a business going will eat up your day, and make 15 hours of anything seem untenable. 

In 2012 I’ve dropped that 15-hour allotment to 10.

At last year’s Brooklyn Beta I had a fascinating lunch conversation with everyone’s favorite polymath Dan Rubin about the potential (and inevitability) that more of us would be engaged in longer term contracts with clients. Dan was getting ready to begin a multi-month on-site contract with a client as their creative director. I was just coming off a string of good, short term client projects (between two and four weeks) and wondering what it would look like to dedicate my client work hours to one client for a longer span.

No one can hire me away from NewSpring right now—there’s too much foundational work to be done as we grow and I love it too much. But I also enjoy working with other clients, helping them solve their unique problems and see measurable success come from appropriate design solutions. And doing what I do—translating business needs into beautiful, functional user interfaces and experiences built around stellar brands—is difficult to do in sprints. This is marathon work. And I want to run with someone for longer than a few days.

My good friend Cameron wrote an excellent article about the state of design (and particularly design on the web) and said, “Nearly every CEO and VC I’ve met in the last six months is on a wild hunt for designers.” With that in mind…

Are you a startup or small business that can’t afford a full-time hire, or needs a high level of experience for specific projects? Are you an entrepenuer in need of consistent, considered visual help to bring your ideas to life? Do you need a Designer-On-Retainer or Designer-In-Remote-Residence? If so, I’d love to talk. I love design, I love my clients and I want to serve them better, for longer, in ways that can exponentially affect their mission.