Little Thoughts…

Package Designs

So I have finally completed my 3 comps using Illustrator and I am going to post them here to my blog! I would LOVE some feedback from everyone so please leave me lots of comments and tips. I am going to have a meeting with my client tomorrow, probably a 15-20 minuet meeting so I can present my 3 designs to him. I am hoping he will pick the one he likes best and I can then tweak it to his liking. Nothing is concrete yet, including layouts and colors. Because I am going to be printing on direct cardboard it’s a little hard to know how the colors are going to turn out exactly so that’s one concern I will express to Gary when I meet with him tomorrow. So without further adieu, here are my designs:

4pc Intent Cooler Be Green

4pc Intent Cooler Be Green v2

4pc Intent Cooler Be Green v3

Chatper 10, How Not to Annoy People ;-)

Berkun begins the chapter by telling his readers how people out in the work place can get annoyed very easily. He says the 3 things that annoy people most in the work place are e-mails, meetings, and team processes. Berkun then goes on to give a small list of different reasons as to why he gets annoyed easily at work and I can find myself identifying with a few of them. One of the categories that jumps out at me is the “waste my time” section of his list of things that annoy people. It doesn’t happen very often at my job now with Libbey but when I was at my internship working for Adam Street Publishing there were several occasions where they made me waste my time and pretty much gave me busy work. I can remember once instance when my boss asked me to design a t-shirt for an event the Toledo City Paper was going to be throwing and I spent most of the day drawing out a design for the shirt (it was a back to school themed shirt so I drew lots of school related objects). After my design was complete, I found out that they had had another employee go behind my back and create his own t-shirt design that the company ended up using and no one was going to tell me my design wasn’t acceptable. I was furious because I had wasted a lot of time and effort on my design for no reason.

Next, Berkun begins to explain what a process is and how teams use them. A process is a systematic way of doing something, or the steps taken to get a job done. Every job has a different process and as Berkun says, ” any idiot with power can come up with the most mind-numbingly idiotic system for doing something and force the team to follow…” which is very true. At my job right now we have a process we must follow when preparing artwork for screen printing and if we miss or leave out a step it can cause major problems down the road. The author says, “The trick in creating good processes is to understand two things: what makes projects and teams successful in general, and what makes the current project and team different from others.” This is crucial because a lot PMers want to use the same process over and over and sometimes that process doesn’t apply to the current situation. A good PM should know how to adapt to their situation and create new processes when needed.

Another important topic Berkun touches on is the formula for creating a successful process. He says DT+LT+(AT*N) = a good process. He talks about you have to figure in the time to design the process, how it takes people to learn it, the actual work the process takes, and you multiply it by how often it’s done. The author’s next big topic in this chapter deals with annoying e-mails and how to write successful ones. This is becoming a major thing at my job because most of my communication to sales people is through e-mailing and not very many of the sales people I deal with e-mail me properly. I don’t like it when I receive e-mails with no capitals, misspelled words, poor punctuation, and half ass messages. It happens to me all the time and most of the time if I get a bad e-mail I will call the sales person to have them explain to me what they were trying to say. I could literally type up a book on this subject so I am going to restrain myself 🙂 E-mail is a HUGE part of the workforce and I think people should learn to e-mail properly and have to on a daily basis. Like Berkun says, if the group leader e-mails his or her group and uses proper spelling, ideas, etc. then the group will be encouraged to respond in the same manner. Berkun then goes on to touch on the topic of what a good meeting is and how you can achieve one. He says the only way a meeting is going to successful is if people can facilitate with one another because otherwise it will be a big waste of time and everyone in the meeting has to get paid so it can be a huge waste of money that could’ve been spent on solving problems or getting work accomplished.

Relationships and Communication

Chapter 9 in Making Things Happen is a very important chapter because it discusses how important effective communication is as well as how people must maintain relationships to keep that communicate afloat. Berkun says, “Today, communication is still important, but two things have changed. First, speed is no longer the primary problem (how can you get faster than instant messaging?). Instead, the problem has become the quality and effectiveness of communication. Second, communication isn’t enough for complex work: there need to be effective relationships between the people who are working together.” I really like this statement because he touches on the idea that there has to be effective relationships with people who are working together in order to have good communication.

I deal with communication everyday while working at Libbey in the New Product Development area. My job consists of screen printing on glassware and I am constantly keeping in touch with sales people who are in turn communicating with their clients who are the people who place the screen printing orders. Sometimes communication fails and problems can arise. I have noticed it is much harder to communicate through e-mail and a lot of the sales people like to e-mail. The problem with this type of communication is it can be very slow and with my job things can pop up quickly so you may need to get a hold of the sales person quickly. I like to call on the phone because it’s a bit more personal and you can discuss a lot of things at once, also not all of the sales people are in Toledo, they are scattered throughout the country so sometimes it’s easier to call them. But after reading Chapter 9 and experiencing it myself, I can relate with Berkun and talk about how important it is to have a good relationship with someone before you can communicate effectively with them.

Berkun goes on to talk about people who ask for others opinions while working and how he used to not ask any questions and do all of the work himself. I am the opposite, I love to ask questions and for help, especially if the person I am asking has a lot more experience than I do. I do this all the time at work. Berkun also talks about this two employees he knew that would talk to other team members all the time and he thought they were just socializing but in fact they were learning about their co-workers which in turn helped them to communication more effectively. There are five basic states of communication and they are: transmitted, received, understood, agreed, and converted to useful action. Berkun says, “Good communicators think about how deep into this five-step model they need to go to be effective, and they craft communication to make that possible.” He goes on to talk about common communication problems known as assumption, lack of clarity, not listening, dictation, problem mismatch, and personal attacks. I already talked about my most common communication at work, and that would fall under the lack of clarity because it’s not always clear if me and a sales person should e-mail each other or call.

Overall this chapter was very useful and I can relate to what the author is saying because I use communication and my relationship skills everyday at work. I think a lot of people forget that you have to have a good relationship with someone before you can communication well with them so it’s a great rule to live by.

Client Update

It’s good to be back after a refreshing Spring Break! I can’t believe the semester is already half way over, or more. I got to take a small trip to Reno, NV over break to watch my boyfriend and his Dad bowl in the USBC National Bowling Tournament. It was fun, they both did well and may have won some money. Reno itself is a smaller version of Las Vegas, we gambled but didn’t win anything! It was still a fun experience though.

My client update this week is going to be a bit short because I am still working on sketches for the packaging. I have just about completed the logo design after showing Gary my second round of comps. He picked a logo and now I just have to refine it and pick the final color scheme which is going to probably be a brown and a green or maybe 2 different greens.

Like I mentioned, I am working on 3 different designs for the package and I will post them as soon as I finish them up. I will also be showing them to Gary as soon as they are done. I want to give him a few different options to look at before deciding on one. After having a small meeting with him a week ago, he gave me the die cuts for a eco friendly package they designed at Libbey. It has no lid so it uses 18% less cardboard and I am going to use this layout for my design so it’s nice to have the die cuts and the files to work with so I know exactly what the final package design will look like! That’s all I have for my update for now, until next week!

We Have a Winner!

I am proud to blog about my client update for this week. I talked with Gary this morning for about a half hour on my packaging/logo project. I provided him with a new set up mock-up’s for the “Be Green” logo that is to accompany my new line of green friendly packaging. I am going to post a picture below of the logos I came up with so I can get everyone’s opinions!

I would love it if everyone could give me some feedback on this new set of logos! But I am proud to say that my client has chosen logo number…. 8! I am now going to work on refining that logo to his liking. I think I am going to dark up the “Be” section of the logo and make it the same weight as the word “Green” because it will be printed on a brown card board color so it will need to be nice and dark and a little more thick.

Now that the logo has been chosen, I am going to work on refining it and continue working on my package sketches/concepts/ideas. I have talked to Gary about the packaging and he has set down some ground rules for me. Because I am going for the cheapest and most eco friendly packaging I can come up with, I am going to follow some of the guidelines that Libbey has come up with for their packaging such as what type of die cut to use and the size, etc. I will be coming up with my own color scheme which may be limited to two colors due to costs and I will be coming up with the design/whole look and feel. As soon as I get some sketches drawn up I will post them here on my blog to get everyone’s inputs!

Thanks.