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Many processes that were done exclusively “behind locked doors” ten years ago are now transparent to the customer.

Noel Wiggins, the owner of No Pun Intended, a professional graphic design studio, recently decided to “give the studio away.” He believes that open access between himself and his customers (and potential customers) makes for better business.

In 2010, members of the public can learn many things through the internet. Anyone can find out how to do pretty much anything through Google and Youtube.

No Pun Intended is a professional graphic design studio that specializes in designing websites, logos, brochures, print ads, banner ads, and e-blast campaigns. The firm has never shied away from a project their mantra is “if it can be done, we’d love to do it.”

Wiggins believes that documenting the creative process and demonstrating it to non-professionals, with an emphasis on customers of design products, will positively impact the marketing of the studio’s business. He has started off with a series of “how to videos.”

The first two of these videos are “How to get your business on Facebook” and “How to get a custom branded tab for your Facebook fan page.” Each video encourages the technically inclined business owner to give the process a try saving their business money while learning something new.

Wiggins says, “my goal is to educate people on how to do something without holding anything back. I want people to be able to accomplish the projects I do.” Wiggins has been asked if, by explicitly laying out detailed steps of the creative process, he has ruled out the customers’ need to hire him.

Wiggins believes there are three distinct benefits of the “design unmasked approach”:
1) When I help someone out, and they are able to accomplish a task because of something I freely shared with them, then hopefully I will have earned their trust for future design needs

2)If a prospect is convinced they need this project for their business but want to thoroughly understand what their monetary investment is getting them, then hopefully the tutorials will give them a better understanding of the creative process, why it takes as long as it does, and how cost is determined.

3) The approach keeps Nopun current. Nopun designs anything that can be designed, from logo designs, powerpoint presentations, custom fonts, 3d graphics for awards shows, and many other dynamic projects. We know it is impossible to be all things to all people, and we know that the nature of the business brings us clusters of projects that require focus on particular skills for finite periods of time. But in preparing these videos, we document our workflow, which helps us serve our clients more effectively.

Wiggins shares a recent period of about 3 weeks where all we were doing was
Facebook fan pages. Facebook makes a lot of things easy but creating a custom Facebook fan page presented several user challenges. Although some other need will pull us away from fan page design, having the tutorials at our fingertips helps us refer back when necessary, ensuring that the next project will be as powerful as the last one.

The process that Nopun does to create these tutorials is outlined below, if you would like to give it a try.

1) Document everything you do, set up some cameras, and hit “record.” Don’t worry about delivering a performance just simply work, by doing this you can later review and document the process in a more objective way. If you asked me how to design a logo, I wouldn’t have a clue what to tell you other than “you just do it.” But when I filmed myself doing them for clients, I saw the process objectively during the editing process and can now outline a more detailed tutorial.

2) Once you have the script together, try and present the process as user-friendly as possible, making it easy for folks outside your industry to understand (reducing the use of technical jargon, for example).

3) Then launch your Youtube video on Youtube and link to it from your
Website. If possible, prepare a version for a podcast to be distributed on itunes.

The first time you do a tutorial, it will be a bit overwhelming but as soon as you do, you will have something that you can be proud of, which will help give something of value to your prospects and future customers

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 9:24 am and is filed under In The News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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One Response to “Website Design Unmasked”

1. Wow two awesome brochures content ideas in 15 minutes! Bah-bam | No Pun Intended Says:

   March 1st, 2010 at 9:20 am

   [...] Education tools like my youtube tutorial videos [...]

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