There is a perceived wisdom that when it comes to
clients, bigger is better. “Big clients are more willing
to pay, and pay reasonable fees, for our services,”
notes Lauri Baram of Panarama Design, a one-person-plus-freelancers design firm in Clifton Park,
N.Y. “They have a better sense of the cost of design
services, and they understand the value. They’re
more willing to invest in the totality of the project.”
BIG EXPECTATIONS
Sounds like a dream come true? Well nothing comes
without a price, and big clients are no exception.
The small design shop owner needs to look past the
shiny dollar signs before hiring more staff, eyeing
that new Mac, and signing up for expansive space just because you got a project with a real budget.
The truth is a big client can make you … but it
can also break you.
Equal consideration
Experienced designers know there are several major
misconceptions about working with big clients.
Brett Traylor worked at Pentagram before starting
Thinkso Creative, in New York, N.Y., so he understands
the differences between working with the
big boys when you have the support of a multinational
firm behind you, or just the 10 folks in your
own studio. No matter the size of the checkbook,
it’s still all about the quality of the work. “There’s
something to be said for securing everyone’s salary, but that’s not the only goal,” Traylor notes. “Simply
designing schlock for a moneybags client isn’t a big
win as far as I’m concerned.” And large clients will
rarely provide the same creative blank slate of an
entrepreneurial company. Brand guidelines that control
typography, color, logos and lock-ups are often
deeply entrenched.
While a larger company needs a lot of collateral
pieces, not all of them are going to be big-ticket
items. Traylor notes that in between the high profile
projects he worked on for United Airlines, “there was
a lot of designing barf bags and cocktail napkins.”
But it’s making the most of the work you’re given
that wins you better projects. He says, “We work
within the rules, but try to add value and creativity
wherever we can. The work shouldn’t look or feel
like it came off an assembly line. It’s also an important
way of endearing yourself to the client, so when
interesting opportunities do come up, they think of
you first.”
Proper compensation
While big clients may come with bigger opportunities,
they also come with bigger account- and
financial-management headaches. Just like the innocent
girl on a date with the star quarterback, a small
firm can be easily coerced into giving too much
away. Gabe Kean of Belle & Wissell, an exhibition
and retail design firm in Seattle, Wash., extends this
cautionary note: “People get excited by the opportunity.
But no matter what, you have to make sure
you’ve covered your time, you’re not bending your
own rules, you have solid contracts and are being
properly compensated.” Otherwise, you may find
yourself not only out of time and money, but also
in a costly legal tangle against a much betterresourced
opponent.
“Smaller firms can sometimes be manipulated
by a big company with a beefy legal department,”
Traylor notes. “If there’s a dispute, a client may
[adopt] a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude.” Like Kean, he
suggests making sure “proposals, contracts and official communications are professional and maybe even
on the formal side.” And he adds, “Get a good lawyer
who can review contracts and provide counsel.”
Bad connection
Another challenge of working with a large company
is managing all the people who now have a voice in
the project. Unlike, for example, working with a sole
proprietor who is the owner, marketing manager
and bottle washer, large companies tend to have
many layers of bureaucracy that can be challenging
to navigate. You may never meet with the big decision
maker and find out only too late that his wife
hates the particular shade of purple you plastered
all over the brochure mock-ups. You may have to do
many more versions of things to accommodate all
the different bits of feedback from everyone up the
reporting chain. Like a game of telephone, directions
can get lost in translation as they come down
to you.
In addition, there are that many more people
who want a piece of you. Dustin Woehrmann, creative
director of Dustin W Design in Los Angeles,
does a lot of work on microsites for the entertainment
industry; he points out the disadvantages of
having so many different creative people at any one
table. “In this industry,” he notes, “there’s a lot of talent,
so there’s more back and forth, because you have
so many people who need to weigh in. And some
of these bigger clients expect a level of support that
sometimes means 24/7 availability, which you may
not be able or willing to provide,” he says.
Window dressing
Servicing a bigger client may also require you to
make some substantial investments. As the saying
goes, dress for the job you want, not the job you
have. For a small studio, this may mean not just
more computing power or more bodies at desks, but
also a better space in which to work. Kean moved
from a freelancer to self-titled studio, and now has
grown into real-deal space in an up-and-coming,
industrial part of Seattle.
“When we were working with nonprofits and
museums only, the space didn’t matter as much to
them. But with larger clients, there are different
expectations,” Kean points out. For him, the studio
became not just a showplace, but also a lab where
his company can demonstrate the kind of work the
group wants to be doing. “We wanted to do experimental
exhibits and events. And now, when clients
come here, we have a prototyping space. We’ve
designed this space to make it an experience. We’re
telling stories with our space.”
While this kind of investment can be critical to
getting work, it can also become a huge albatross if
that work disappears. Marc Stress of Stressdesign in
Syracuse, N.Y., had an “800-lb. gorilla” of a client
that provided 80 to 85 percent of the studio’s income
for two years. Everything was going great until his
main contact left. “When the new [contacts] were
installed, they came with their own resources. And
we were shown the door, because they wanted to
put their own thumbprint on everything,” he recalls.
This nightmare happened one week after he’d signed
a lease that quadrupled his space.
Stress learned some important lessons. “A big
client has lots of needs, which means you get to do
lots of different things,” he reflects. “But this is also
the potential for disaster. Your entire office is so
focused on [the big client] that you may not be servicing
your smaller clients well. You may lose sight of
the importance of bringing in new clients, and you
can get too fat and happy too quickly.”
After losing his meal ticket, Stress and the one
employee left sat down for a hard look back before
taking a look forward. “We’d gotten into this reactionary
mode with the big client,” he recalls. “We
were focused on just doing everything [the client]
asked us to, and that took our focus off of what
we did best, which was being strategic about brand
communications. We refocused our communications
toward what we’re good at.”
Counting clients
Most people understand the wisdom of not putting
all your eggs in one basket. But this leaves the
questions of how many eggs you should have and in
how many baskets? “From a business sense, I think
having some kind of large business or business that
requires a lot of design work is almost necessary to
staying in business yourself,” says Baram. “It’s very
hard to be constantly working with new clients
because of the pressures of the learning curve and
selling the work. But if you have only one or two or
three clients, it can get boring.”
Baram says the “cardinal rule” is to have no
more than 25 percent of your income coming from
one client. But this may not work in certain markets.
“What works for me is roughly 50/50,” she concludes.
“Half from a few big clients, and the other
half from a broader variety of small clients.” This
blend also has the advantage of providing both financial
security and creative stimulation. “I do love the
mix,” says Woehrmann. “Even as we move toward
bigger clients, I still want to have small clients and
nonprofits who give us more range. Often, those are
the projects where I can experiment and have fun.”
SMALL BUT MIGHTY
So now you’ve been warned. But the question
remains: How do you go and get that big client to
help put your studio on the design map? It’s about
playing to your strengths. “A small firm is more nimble,”
notes Stress. “We can manage the strategic vision
and do all the things that need to get done. At a small
firm, a client is talking directly to the people who are
doing the work.” Many companies are attracted to
small firms not just for the creative, but also for the price. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as Kean
points out. “The reality is they do pay less, because
we have less overhead,” he says. “But it’s not just that
our rates are low, it’s that we work efficiently. We can
focus on one project at a time, and everyone [here]
has worked closely together previously.”
Large companies may have reservations about
the resources of a small design studio, and it is up
to you to assure them you can handle the work
and service the account. “Sometimes I’ve lost an
account because I’m the only one going to a meeting,
and the competitor brings in four or five people,”
notes Stress. “The client may say something like,
‘We love what you’re doing, but we’re concerned
about service.’”
Traylor has a work-around for this scenario:
“Most, but not all, large clients think the size of their
design agency matters more than it actually does,”
he says. “The truth is the team assigned to any given
project at a large agency will almost always be the
same size as the team we’re putting forward. We
can use this to our advantage, because as a principal
of my firm, I have a greater interest in the success
of that project than a hired gun at a bigger place.
And we offer a better price, better service and more
senior-level attention.”
Leslie Pollock, the marketing director at Dustin
W Design, says sometimes it’s simply about reassuring
the client. “Big clients need to have faith that
you’re dependable and will deliver what you say
you will. We tell them we can deliver the sophisticated
work at the level a larger agency brings, but
we’re small and light and adaptable. We’re on top of
emerging trends. And in a larger firm you have one
person who does Facebook ads and another who does
mobile stuff; we do it all, and we think that’s a distinct
advantage.”
In the end, no matter the size of your firm or
the kick-assness of your creative, it all comes down to
the quality of the relationships you make. People can
get good creative from lots of different places. What
they can’t get is whatever alchemy happens between
you and your team and the client. Traylor left the
big-name firm with big-name clients behind for one
reason: “Those clients weren’t walking in because of
me,” he says. “While much of it was my work, they
were walking in because of the people I was working
for. At the end of the day, it wasn’t my firm.”
Ultimately, it’s this ineffable quality of “you” that
keeps clients coming to the studio you’ve created.
So know who you are, sell who you are and don’t let
the big guys distract you from the very thing that
brought them to you in the first place.
