Category Archives: WRITING

March 17, 2010 – 4:48 pm

The 3 Best Professional Moves I’ve Made (So Far)

Everyone likes numbered lists. Here’s mine of my top three best career decisions so far:

1. Work as a bartender

I had Askaphobia when I was a kid. It’s true—I was afraid to ask anyone for anything, especially over the phone. The only way I could be in front of people was hiding behind my little Suzuki violin. And still, it scared me senseless.

In college, while interning at Midwest Living magazine as a editorial assistant, I took another job as a bartender at The Grand, now Blues on Grand, almost on a dare. Silly college bar, you think! Well, this was no regular college-y bar—it was the place most kids in my college steered clear of. Yeah, it was full of normal Des Moines folks who liked blues music and OK, maybe there were a lot of motorcycles parked outside and yeah, we didn’t have a blender to make foofy drinks, and sometimes things got a little nuts. But it was the best job I ever had besides running this show here. And I got over my fears almost overnight.

Lessons learned:

  1. Even if you’re a 22-year-old 5’3″ red-headed lady, you can still break up a fight. And it kind of rattles people when you do.
  2. You’re going to have to (wo)man up, ask for things, coordinate everything, keep people in line, figure out how to make people love you and give you their money.
  3. Tequila helps.
  4. And mostly: you’re on stage, holding the keys to what everyone wants, and it’s fun.

We won Best Blues Club when I worked there. I designed the shirts.

View from Brooklyn Bridge

2. Move to New York City and then back to Chicago

Given the choice of 1. only going to New York City for  vacation or 2. being able to go anywhere but never NYC, I’d choose #1. Really. It’s my favorite place in the world to visit. You’ve got to be ON all the time, which I love. NYC will catapult your ego into the universe and smash you back down to the earth in one day. It’s a well-oiled contradiction of glorified excess and romanticized poverty.

In 2004, just after I quit my job and started LimeRed, I picked up and moved to New York, specifically to Brooklyn. Why? Because I could. And you know what happened? I did really well. I made some of the best friends of my life and my most lucrative professional moves.  Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, my Chicago clients didn’t seem to mind and business continued to grow.

In September 2008 I moved back to Chicago, specifically to Oak Park, IL, for all sorts of personal reasons. And professionally, it seems to be working out. I moved at the beginning of the recession and have so far kept my head above water. I doubt I could have done that without learning these lessons in NYC:

  1. You can fake it, but you won’t last.
  2. Don’t overpromise. But if you do, make sure you know a lot of people who are really smart.
  3. When you spend all of your time staring at a computer screen, you should start gardening. I did at Tompkins Square Park in the East Village and it changed my life.

Fast Company just published an article: Why You Should Start a Business in Chicago. I have two here now. I love New York, but I live and breathe Chicago.


3. Work with Ita Olsen, professional speech and presentation coach

When I had a semi-real job in New York, my role changed from Art Director to VP Client Services. Sounds like the last thing an Art Director would want, right? Wrong! I love being in front of people and giving presentations (thanks, bartending…). But when that job shift happened, I had no presentation skills because I’d been stuck in the art department, and for some reason the Boss never wants Clients to talk to the Designers. I’m still not sure why that is.

Enter Ita Olsen over Skype from Malibu, CA for presentation and voice coaching. I needed to ooze confidence, magnetism and give terrific presentations. I needed to avoid at all costs the wildly annoying, mostly female conversation convention: Little Girl Uptalk, also called Growly Valley Girl Voice. You’ve heard it—it’s absolutely everywhere. I’m not sure why this way of speaking ever caught on: it frames every sentence as a question and strips it of validity and confidence. Not that my voice was ever as annoying as that Loud Girl on the Train on Her Phone OMG, but it was a little hesitant and definitely needed refining.

Lessons learned from Ita Olsen:

  1. Stop and breathe. Use tons of air when talking.
  2. Relax your face, throat and neck.
  3. Speak from the back of your head.

I was interviewed on NPR Marketplace about voice coaching. And Ita and I were on Good Morning America for like two seconds, too.

Here, she’s doing free phone consults now. No, I’m not getting paid for referrals. It’s just a great thing to do and will make a huge impact on your professional life.

By Emily | Comments (0)
February 23, 2010 – 4:37 am

5 Things I swore I wouldn’t do. And then did.


I used to be an annoying fancy-pants graphic designer. I thought design was arty and it was the most important thing ever. Everything needed to be a battle. Oh, how silly that sounds now! Here’s a list of things that I said I would never do and then ended up doing at some point in my six-year stint as owner of LimeRed Studio. I hope you learn a thing or two from my mistakes.

#1. Use gradients.

Some designers won’t use gradients. Really. I just read a post somewhere about this very topic. And it made me think about how annoying designers can be. Fancy designers like things flat and I have to admit: so do I. I like flat, MoMA-esque design. I like Marimekko and Crate and Barrel and musem books and plain, arty design. I even liked the Tropicana packaging design. But as you can see from that link: sometimes deisgners make stupid choices based on personal taste. Some people (clients, consumers) don’t like flat blocks of arty-farty color because it’s unfamiliar. A lot of users are used to buttons and navigation that have gradients. So there’s a fine line to walk here. There’s a big difference between designing for the design crowd (think museum) and designing for everyone else (who doesn’t care and just wants to find what they are looking for). And when a client asks for something to *pop* or to make it more *exciting*, sometimes a silly gradient does the trick. And if a gradient button gets more traffic than a flat button, then I’m all for gradients. Whatever works, people!

#2. Give design away.

I do free work all the time. I almost always get a tax credit. It’s not a bad thing to do, but I recommend to everyone who isn’t me to do this sparingly. Once you start doing anything pro-bono, it will surely eat up all of your spare time. People assign value to things that cost money. It’s just how our culture works. If you get something for free, there’s a good chance that you will treat it with a little less respect and diligence than if you had to pay for it. It’s why we join gyms. Think about it.

Discounts are even worse than giving things away. I would much rather do a design project for free than discount it any day. And don’t even get me started on trades. No trade is an even trade. Ever.

#3. Not use a contract.

This is just stupid. I got burned so badly in the early days of LimeRed that I learned quickly: always always always get a contract for everything. Especially if a potential client is skittish about signing the contract or sends it back and forth a thousand times. Actually, if a client does this, fire them immediately. In my experience, people who can’t play fair end up cheating in the long run anyway.

I can’t tell you how serious I am about this one.

#4. Design on spec.

I just did this today! I designed a header concept for a potential client before I even had a signed contract. Ridiculous. But you know, I had a great idea. And it looked great. And I just had to do it. Sue me. I won’t make a habit out of this. And doing work on spec is disastrous unless you are a big agency and can afford the time. Even then, though… eek. Do you know what “on spec” means? It’s when someone says: Can you design a few concepts so we can compare you to a few other people and then make a decision on whether or not to hire you? It’s horrible because if you win the job, you’ve already done a bunch of work without getting the whole picture and you’re definitely in store for tons of rounds and changes. Or, you don’t win the job and you’re out all that upfront research and concepting which is usually the bulk of the work. And there’s no way to tell if your concept ends up getting used in in the future. It’s a no-win. Unless you don’t care.

Here’s some great information from the AIGA: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/position-spec-work

#5. Work for The Man.

I work for The Man sometimes. Big companies and big agencies contract me all the time. Most of this work is proprietary and I’m not allowed to post it here or tell anyone that I’ve done it. So I’m not officially telling you anything. The Man has big budgets, pays well, and I end up learning a lot which I then use for my small business and nonprofit work. It makes me feel like Robin Hood.

Is that so wrong?

By Emily | Also posted in EVERYTHING ELSE | Tagged , , , | Comments (3)
July 20, 2009 – 9:58 am

New article: Writing a Creative Brief

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I‘ve written a new article for Winning Workplaces on working with creative types. There’s a sample creative brief download on the site too. Here’s the link to the article.


Demystifying the Creative Process, One Brief at a Time

Emily Lonigro is back for another guest post.  Emily is owner of Chicago-based LimeRed Studio, a firm that specializes in branding creative for small businesses and nonprofits.

This time around she provides a how-to for pitching a project to a creative professional to quickly get that person in the know and – just as valuable – weed out those who aren’t up to the task.  Think about how you can use this for both your vendor relations and internally for your workplace team building and employee engagement ideas.

At some point, you’re going to have to hire someone to do creative work for you.  It might be for an online ad campaign, a print brochure, a website, an identity overhaul, whatever.  You might do a search on Craigslist, post an ad, use a creative job board site, or ask for referrals to find people to bid on the job.

Trust me, this can get messy.  You’re going to have way more responses than you know what to do with.  What I like to do is advertise with a list of three project-related questions or requirements.  If the responder doesn’t address any one of those, then they’re out.

Regardless of how thorough you are with your search, talking to a creative person for the first time can be downright intimidating.  A lot of times it goes like this:

You: Hi, I’m from Company, Inc.  I saw your ad on Craigslist/My friend said you were great/I’m calling out of the blue and I really need a website.  How much do you think that would cost?

Creative Person: Um.  Well… (mutes the phone and laughs/rolls her eyes) that depends.  What do you want it to do?

You: (thinking: isn’t that your job – to tell me what it should do?) I just need something simple to get myself online.

CP: (already frustrated) A website can be anywhere from $500 to $25,000.  I mean, it really depends on your content.  Do you have a wireframe?  (Designy language ensues.)

You: (sigh)

I’ve been on both ends of this conversation and it’s equally frustrating for both sides.  One way to alleviate some of the creative pain is to get your thoughts together before you even talk to or email anyone. What I’m suggesting is writing a creative brief. It’s a shortened, less time-intensive version of an RFP.

A creative brief is a one- or two- page statement of work that you can use to request proposals, compare estimates, and make sure you are comparing apples to apples when choosing a firm or freelancer. The components are:

  • objectives,
  • project description,
  • specific elements,
  • deliverables,
  • timeline,
  • who supplies what, and
  • any other information you can think of that is relevant to the job. Make it brief and make it informative.

I wrote you one to use – access it here.

Related: Read Emily’s previous two posts for us here and here.

By Emily | Comments (0)
April 6, 2009 – 12:08 pm

Workshop: Thanks to my attendees and host!

I taught a workshop at Community Media Workshop on web design for nonprofits last Thursday. What a great time that was, and an amazing group of people too. (Remember: content is FIRST, design is second.) Thanks to everyone who came, their enthusiasm and terrific questions, and to CMW for asking me to do it. If you are interested in CMW's future trainings, sign up here.

I have an absolutely goofy look on my face in this photo. I hope I didn't look like that for the whole three hours.

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Stay tuned… I have some more workshops in development for small businesses! If you have any concerns or topics you would like addressed, please let me know.

By Emily | Also posted in EVERYTHING ELSE | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)
March 10, 2009 – 9:05 am

My second 15 minutes of fame

Ww

Hi folks. I wrote another article for Winning Workplaces, this time about who to hire and why. Yes, it might sound a little ranty, but if one more person comes to me and says: well, I hired my mother-in-law/brother/friend/roommate to do XYZ and now it stinks and I need you to fix it, I'm going to scream. Hire professionals, people! It will actually save you money in the long run and give you a professional start.

Here is the article. Let me know if you have any topic suggestions for my next one. I'm thinking about something like "Major problems with easy fixes for small business websites". Thoughts?

By Emily | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)