As far as I can recall, I've never actually written a blog post about one of our own blog posts before. Today that ends. A post I wrote way back in 2008 - before Stokefire offered in-house design - was pointed out to me after my Twitterview with Bryn Mooth. It was the beginning of our move into the design and advertising world from a pure verbal and strategic organization.  Looking back on it I can remember the frustration I felt as I tried to work with some of the very best designers in the area. Their processes and ways of communicating just weren't helpful to me. I couldn't turn their conversations about technique and process into something that would move an audience. Beauty is easy. I know a few hundred designers that can draw a picture that would take my breath away. But unless I'm selling an asthma inhaler that's not something that's going to move product.  I need meaning. I need to get the audience to act. Design has the power to do it... but we so often just let it be pretty or eye-catching.

That sucks.

Technique is what enables you to produce the work (and it's something I will freely admit that I lack) but it's intellect, strategy, and creative thinking that gets you to produce work that moves people to act in ways you want them to. 

I'm somewhat infamous within the walls of Stokefire as having said, "It's not your talent that's holding you back, It's your inability to influence my decisions." And I said it to a member of my own team. I freely admit I can be a cold-hearted SOB sometimes. Technique doesn't convince people. It's like having an incredible vocabulary... It's a great resource, but if you have nothing important to say the huge volume of words aren't going to help you. I don't care how great you are with Illustrator of Photoshop, if you're not trying to get the viewer to take a step that they haven't yet taken then you're creating a work of art, and not commercially viable design.

As you can tell, I'm a bear when it comes to critiquing the work of my designers (and just about everyone else, too.) I give no quarter. I attack the hell out of everything - but I do it so that when the work is put in front of the client... and then in front of the world... it's already shown it can bear the weight of intense scrutiny. I've seen brand concepts pitched where everything is happy rainbows and unicorns in the meetings... and then it launches and both the client and branding firm look like idiots because no one thought to put it under some pressure before it launched. Stokefire isn't immune. We've had our share of projects that go out the door with less than we'd like because we couldn't convince the client to do what we firmly believed was the right thing. That's not the client's fault - it's ours.  And THAT is why I focus so hard on getting the story right - making sure that it is so freaking overwhelmingly compelling that clients can't resist saying yes.

So... look back at the post that kicked off this ramble if you want. It was certainly interesting to me to relive the frustration around trying to integrate with design practices that just don't work with a brand strategy firm. The fact that we're getting the job done (not easily, not cleanly, and not without a helluva lot of bleeding) after having brought the work in house makes me think we may just have done the right thing.