Since at the small business level we necessarily compete on design, we use designers heavily to make our products best. there are several points to keep in mind.
1. All designs come from you, your passion and joy, as explained in detail elsewhere. Search "joy" on this blog and you'll find plenty on that basis for starting up.
2. I cover finding designers in my book, How Small Business Trades Worldwide. In it i talk about a contest at an art school for clock face designs, an example of "crowdsourcing design" before the internet (again, the internet has brought nothing new to business, it has ONLY lowered the cost and widened the access to communication and research. Nothing else.) Today we have the same thing with 99designs.com, etc, something else I've blogged on here.
or kindle
3. Designers are necessary because they have a skill we do not, they intuit the zeitgeist and translate it into your products. You can say "ice ax" but they make it "ice ax 2013."
4. It does not take much design to win at competing on design. In the book I emphasize this, but I always forget to say it otherwise. You goal is ONLY enough design to get a product that gains enough orders from customers here to cover the suppliers minimum production run profitably, in a workable amount of time. Better design speeds up order collection.
Once your goal is met, you keep re-designing with the view of increasing the frequency of the orders coming in, with a view to making the same money on more deals... never do we try to make money on volume, always we try to make it on frequency of transactions.
5. Intellectual property rights (IPR) is evil in conception and practice. Few things harm more people in life, and much of our economic malaise worldwide can be directly attributed to the USA intellectual property rights regime. An IPR law firm invited me in to stand and deliver on this topic, and I have. There is no valid argument for maintaining this evil construct.
Having said that, we do live in an IPR regime. So like slavery, how do you work around it. Well, you do not use it, and certainly do not abuse it. Everything both designer and merchants wants in an agreement can be had in contract law, so forget about IPR law. Just write and agreement in you recognize the designer as the "owner" of the design, and you are merely licensed to exploit it commercially. In turn, you agree to pay a royalty to the designer. End of story. No evil IPR regime is in it, and everyone gets what they want in voluntary agreement, not the violence-grounded regime that is IPR.
The designer "owns" the "design" and I get the only thing that matters in business, the customers.
Email me for a .pdf on some pointers in contracting with a designer.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
1. All designs come from you, your passion and joy, as explained in detail elsewhere. Search "joy" on this blog and you'll find plenty on that basis for starting up.
2. I cover finding designers in my book, How Small Business Trades Worldwide. In it i talk about a contest at an art school for clock face designs, an example of "crowdsourcing design" before the internet (again, the internet has brought nothing new to business, it has ONLY lowered the cost and widened the access to communication and research. Nothing else.) Today we have the same thing with 99designs.com, etc, something else I've blogged on here.
or kindle
3. Designers are necessary because they have a skill we do not, they intuit the zeitgeist and translate it into your products. You can say "ice ax" but they make it "ice ax 2013."
4. It does not take much design to win at competing on design. In the book I emphasize this, but I always forget to say it otherwise. You goal is ONLY enough design to get a product that gains enough orders from customers here to cover the suppliers minimum production run profitably, in a workable amount of time. Better design speeds up order collection.
Once your goal is met, you keep re-designing with the view of increasing the frequency of the orders coming in, with a view to making the same money on more deals... never do we try to make money on volume, always we try to make it on frequency of transactions.
5. Intellectual property rights (IPR) is evil in conception and practice. Few things harm more people in life, and much of our economic malaise worldwide can be directly attributed to the USA intellectual property rights regime. An IPR law firm invited me in to stand and deliver on this topic, and I have. There is no valid argument for maintaining this evil construct.
Having said that, we do live in an IPR regime. So like slavery, how do you work around it. Well, you do not use it, and certainly do not abuse it. Everything both designer and merchants wants in an agreement can be had in contract law, so forget about IPR law. Just write and agreement in you recognize the designer as the "owner" of the design, and you are merely licensed to exploit it commercially. In turn, you agree to pay a royalty to the designer. End of story. No evil IPR regime is in it, and everyone gets what they want in voluntary agreement, not the violence-grounded regime that is IPR.
The designer "owns" the "design" and I get the only thing that matters in business, the customers.
Email me for a .pdf on some pointers in contracting with a designer.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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