Design Work Life: Cataloging Inspiration Daily

One of the HOW Conference pre­sen­ta­tions I really enjoyed was “Write More Good: Copywriting for Visual Thinkers” with Wayne Geyer. A designer-turned-copywriter, Wayne gave a great pre­sen­ta­tion about how we can improve our writ­ing skills as design­ers. Aside from pro­vid­ing us with some really great tips to incor­po­rate into our work; he also put on an enter­tain­ing pre­sen­ta­tion on a topic that could have eas­ily got­ten dry. (I think you’ll see what I mean as you read on.) Recently I asked Wayne if he would answer a few ques­tions in order to get a bit more back­ground on how he got to where he is now, as well as some more spe­cific advice about writ­ing, design and busi­ness; and he was nice enough to oblige.

1. Can you give us a lit­tle back­ground about your switch from design to copywriting?

It was a two-step process. Step One occurred on February 16, 1998 — the day I left my last job and started out on my own as a free­lance designer. Step Two came approx­i­mately four days later, when I was dri­ven to near insan­ity over the process of design­ing a self-promotion. I lit­er­ally said out loud, “If I never designed another thing in my life, I’d be happy.” And that was it. I told myself that if I was going to do one thing every day, I wanted that thing to be writ­ing. So I trashed the logo pro­mo­tion, asked my office-mate and men­tor to design my first copy­writ­ing promo, and never looked back. The longer answer involves the fact that I’ve always been a closet writer. In fact, if I had it to do over again, I might have been a copy­writer at a big ad agency. I just didn’t know enough about how the indus­try works. For me, it’s the purest part of the problem-solving process. I’ve never been able to design for design’s sake. There has to be a mes­sage. Even as a designer, I would start brain­storm­ing on a logo project with a legal pad and a ball-point pen. I still love, appre­ci­ate and respect design. There are just parts of it that I don’t want to deal with. Annual reports used to make me nuts. Once the prob­lem was solved and the con­cept was bought, I would com­pletely lose interest.

2. Any advice for design­ers about what to do (or what not to do) when work­ing with a copywriter?

Q: How many copy­writ­ers does it take to change a light bulb? A: “I’m not chang­ing a f**king thing.” I don’t think copy­writ­ers are prima don­nas by def­i­n­i­tion. I think every cre­ative has the poten­tial to be one. As design­ers, we know what kinds of crit­i­cism / direc­tion is help­ful, and what makes us roll our eyes. So, I guess I’m say­ing, “Do unto your copy­writer as you would have your cre­ative direc­tor do unto you.” I can’t speak for other writ­ers, but I encour­age every­one in the process to just jump in and write in the Word doc­u­ment if they’re not see­ing what they want. The only thing I ask for is what I call a “final pass” at the entire doc­u­ment — just to make sure that it all reads like it came from the same per­son. I only get my feel­ings hurt when I sub­mit what I believe to be final copy, and then I see that the words have been changed in the printed piece. Makes me think, “What did I do wrong,” or, “Gee, I wish they would have let me try to solve that.” It’s the equiv­a­lent of a client or a printer get­ting into your InDesign file and chang­ing the type­face before the brochure goes to press.

3.You def­i­nitely have a clear voice when you write. Did that develop over time or does it just come nat­u­rally? Any related advice?

I hope that peo­ple see some wit, a dry sense of humor, and a very direct approach. I can do “fluff” with the best of them. But I’m so dri­ven by the need to have an assign­ment — and a pur­pose — that I tend to make even the “pretty” stuff very direct. For bet­ter or worse, I think dead­lines have a lot to do with the style. If I pro­cras­ti­nate enough, there’s no time to mess around. I have to get to the point. Also, I’m a bit of an under­achiever, but also a per­fec­tion­ist. So in my mind, my style is a care­fully planned, method­i­cal approach to, “I give up.”

4. One thing I really like about your site is the “words that cost extra” sec­tion. I think most design­ers would really ben­e­fit from hav­ing a “design ele­ments that cost extra” sec­tion on their sites. So the ques­tion is, despite being up front with prospec­tive clients about what to expect (and not expect) when work­ing with you, do you still run into sit­u­a­tions where a client insists upon some­thing you know is not right for the project? How do you deal with it? Fun stories?

If I see any more “vec­tor doilies” (all that visual noise with vines, swirls and what­not), I’m going to puke.

There are some instances where “biz-speak” has become ingrained in an indus­try. I recently wrote for a hi-tech con­sul­tant, and I delib­er­ately replaced every instance of “imple­mented” with words like “built,” “deliv­ered,” or “set up.” I was told that “imple­ment” or “imple­men­ta­tion” were, in fact, very spe­cific terms for this client and their audi­ence. If their prospects couldn’t ver­ify that this com­pany could imple­ment things, then the prospect wouldn’t think the com­pany was legit. To me, it sounded too for­mal and detached. I don’t want my plumber to imple­ment a best-in-class ther­mal solu­tion around the hot-water needs of my home. I want him to change the dang water heater. But in the end, I imple­mented the right solu­tion for my client. And then I cashed their check.

The best client story (and one that may or may not answer the ques­tion) involves a nam­ing assign­ment for a finan­cial plan­ning com­pany. My first round of name options included some abstract, “con­cep­tual” names — and even a few made-up words (Think “Xerox” before that was a word.). They were so afraid of choos­ing a new name for their com­pany, they actu­ally asked me what would be involved in buy­ing the rights to one of their competitor’s names — or just using it! By the way, the competitor’s name was some­thing ter­ri­ble, like “Aspen Glen.” It had noth­ing to do with any­thing. But they liked it, and they couldn’t visu­al­ize a new name on their door unless they first saw that name already out there in the world. These are the peo­ple who buy their suits at the same place as their co-workers — not because they nec­es­sar­ily like the style, but because they don’t want to make a state­ment, and they’re ter­ri­fied of look­ing dif­fer­ent. It’s the same with words. Corporate America has devel­oped a com­mon syn­tax. On one hand, it makes things eas­ier. We can cre­ate world-class syn­er­gies and best prac­tices when we are all on the same page vis-à-vis our ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. On the other hand, it makes every com­pany homoge­nous. It’s as if Corporate America sud­denly adopted Helvetica as its uni­ver­sal type­face. Oh, wait. That was the Seventies. And I guess now, it would have to be Arial. But you get what I mean.

What was the question?

5. And now for the fun one. Tell us your favorite:

• Typeface: Helvetica (all-time); any­thing from Typography​.com (of the moment)
• Book: For a writer, I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t read enough. But Ray Bradbury had a pro­found impact on me. I read “The Martian Chronicles” in the third grade, and it really sparked my imag­i­na­tion. And I read “Fahrenheit 451” at just the right time in my late teens.
• Word: This is a cop-out, but it changes. Although it’s hard to beat “D’oh!”
• Common gram­mat­i­cal mis­take to cor­rect: I have a string of posts on my blog called “Good Grammar Costs Nothing.” It deals with all of those pesky lit­tle things that spell-check won’t catch — and that peo­ple miss if they’re not pay­ing atten­tion. So they’re more pet peeves than favorite things to cor­rect. Next post: It’s “a lot” (two words), not “alot” (one word). Think about what you’re writ­ing, peo­ple. Biggest pet peeve: “Supposably.” It’s actu­ally “Supposedly.”
• Local col­lo­qui­al­ism: Funny. I’m a native Texan, but I don’t have a drawl, and I don’t often say “Y’all” (at least that I’m aware of). It might not be an exclu­sively Southern thing, but I enjoy say­ing (and hear­ing peo­ple say), “Preciate-cha” (trans­la­tion: “I appre­ci­ate you,” or, “Thank you”).

Thanks so much Wayne! Some great advice and insight there. Be sure to spend some time on his web­site and blog. There’s quite a few fun extras hid­den throughout.