Podia Project: Price Your Online Course With Confidence Using These Seven Strategies – A Case Study

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by Ben Toalson | Jan 7, 2017 | Uncategorized

This is test post content. Let’s see how this works.

Nobody Sees, Nobody Knows

by Ben Toalson | Apr 16, 2015 | Uncategorized

The Blah, Blah, Ice Cream

I recently enjoyed an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Back to Work, where Merlin Mann, one of its hosts, described with unbelievable accuracy a scenario I’ve experienced often with my children. When we’ve set aside a day to do something fun for one of my children’s birthdays, we’ll often ask the question, “What do you want to do?” Because you can’t ask a child an open ended question like that, we usually throw out a few options. “We could go to the zoo, we could go to the park, we could go for a nature walk, we could go get some ice cream, etc.” What they hear is, “Blah, blah, blah, ice cream.” Turns out, this doesn’t necessarily get better with age. Generally speaking, we listen for important information, but if it sounds like stuff we already know or don’t really care about, we tend to gloss over it. This happens not only in conversation, but with written articles, radio commercials, and even video. This is why there is such thing as visual hierarchy, and why the voice over person for the car commercial repeats the phone number of the dealership 10 times. As a person who’s worked with video, I’ve benefited from this phenomenon. People see what they expect to see. That’s why, when pointing out a small mistake I’ve covered up or some kind of visual trick, I hear, “Wow, I wouldn’t have seen that had you not pointed it out to me.”

Not As Close

I often forget when communicating to another human being, that they don’t care about what I’m saying as much as I do. They aren’t thinking about what I’m saying the way I am. They don’t have nearly as much context for what’s coming out of my mouth as I do. Details I think are important, they may brush aside. Hidden meanings I am afraid might be coming out, don’t even occur to the listener. No one is as close to what you’re saying or thinking as you are.

Lazy or Efficient?

You may chalk up our lack of attention to detail as laziness, but the truth is that our brains work this way out of efficiency. There’s WAY too much data to process were we to take in the full detail of every moment. Our brains would literally melt. So it takes shortcuts where it can so that it can give the most processing power to the really important information. Not long ago, relatively speaking, this processing power was reserved primarily for managing threats and securing our livelihood. In more recent history, there are fewer threats in our environment and food is more abundant, but our minds will still give priority to things having to do with basic survival before sharing resources with higher thinking. Breaking into human attention is an art that has been practiced and honed into a science over the past hundred or so years. Methods have changed over the years, but if you’re paying attention (see what I did there) you may notice a pattern. A “new” type of attention grabbing stimulus is introduced. People respond to this stimulus. Other marketers notice and employ the same tactic. People notice the overuse of said stimulus. It decreases in effectiveness until it fades into a category called white noise. This happens over and over and over again.

Under-Sharing

So you’ve recognized a rising marketing trend and you want to use it to your advantage to share your message with people, but you don’t want to be overbearing, so you make an announcement. Or you post a status. Or you share a video. Is that enough? Effective as that marketing method may be, unless people really care about you, they will likely miss your single share. It will pass through their feed (if at all) faster than a walrus covered in olive oil sliding down a water chute.

Over-Sharing

So is there really such thing as over-sharing when people seem to be paying such little attention? This is where it gets tricky. People may not be paying close enough attention to see your single announcement or post, but they are paying attention enough to know when someone or something is polluting their environment with noise. While this is a form of attention, this is not the kind of attention you really want. Noise, after-all, gets in the way of our ability to process important information.

Consistent, New, and Valuable

This approach trumps all tactics, and transcends all trends: Be consistent. Consistency gives you the “top-of-mind” position you’re looking for. Be new. Don’t say the same thing over and over. Actually, say the same thing, but offer a new angle every time you say it. Offer value. A majority of communication is focused on taking. Not only is giving a form of novelty, but it also has a somewhat irresistible quality. It’s the reason why I stop by the sushi counter at the grocery store every single time I go shopping. I will suffer through the sales pitch because I love free sushi samples. How consistent should you be? Remember, people don’t see or hear nearly as much as you think they do. I would start with weekly and work your way up from there. If you can share something new and valuable and do that consistently, you are well on your way to getting people to see, to hear, to know your message.

One Concept Approach

by Ben Toalson | Dec 22, 2014 | Uncategorized

You had a few questions about the logo design process, so I thought I’d go ahead and outline that here for you.

First of all, the short answer to your question is that I do not provide options, nor do I show concepts along the way. This seems unconventional because there are many designers who do, but I believe they do so to the detriment of the project, and I’ll explain why.

Design, at its core, is problem solving. The designer’s role is to take the content (i.e., name of the organization/business) and goals (i.e., capture the attention of the target audience and move them to seek more information through an effective visual representation of our organization/business) provided by the client and, through objective decision making, craft a solution tailored to meet the client’s goals. So a professional designer doesn’t ask questions like, ‘which solution will the client like best,’ or ‘which solution do I like best,’ but instead asks, ‘which solution is the most effective at helping the client reach their goals?’ The reason the professional designer is able to make objective decisions is because he/she understands in great detail how color, imagery, space, shapes, type, proportion, balance, etc. all work together to speak most effectively to the intended audience.

So for designers who are making subjective design decisions, basing their solution on the stylistic preferences of the well meaning, but non-design-educated client, or even on their own personal stylistic preferences, the design may be very pleasing to the client, but will fall short when it comes to accomplishing real goals.

In logo design, if the client happens to represent the target audience, then it is likely that they will also find the design appealing, but the sole purpose of the design should be to meet the client’s goals.

As I said before, this approach is a deviation from what I believe to be a very unhealthy convention in the design industry where the professional is subjecting their clients to design decisions they themselves are capable of and responsible for making. In other words, if I come to you with more than one design, I haven’t completed my job as a professional. If I ask for your input during the concept phase, I am putting my responsibility off on someone else. When I come to you with a completed design I should be able to (and I will) walk you through my design process and demonstrate for you how each decision I made along the way was made with your stated goals in mind. By the end of my presentation, regardless of whether or not the logo matches your stylistic preferences, I should have you convinced that the design I created is the best solution for meeting your goals.

So, in a nutshell, here is my process:
1. Gather information from client: I collect info about content, goals, existing branding requirements, etc.
2. Research: I learn more about target audience, the history of business/organization, and whatever else I need to make informed decisions during the design process. Here I learn what stylistic direction will be most effective in meeting the goals of the client.
3. Gather inspiration: Once a style or set of styles is found to be most effective, I immerse myself in that style, so I can refresh my mental store to effectively design in that style or style set).
4. Sleep on it: I allow the gathered inspiration to sink into my subconscious. This is vital for unlocking unique ideas and creative approaches to styles.
5. Conceptualize: Here I do a quick sketch of several ideas, not putting pressure on myself to be perfect, just letting the ideas flow onto the paper.
6. Identify Solutions: I look through the concepts and identify the strongest solutions. If I don’t feel I’ve yet created any effective solutions, I will continue to conceptualize until I do.
7. Narrow Down: If I have more than one concept, I take a little time to refine the concepts so I can make a better decision about which will be the most effective solution. Sometimes this entails combinations of the best parts of each idea.
8. Hand Draw the Design: Rather than jump right into the digital world to create the final design, I find it absolutely necessary to create a version of the design by hand. This slows me down enough to see the little nuances that I can bring out to really make the design shine. It also gives me another run through so that by the time I sit down with the design on the computer, I’ve already drawn it out several times.
9. Digital rendering: Here I have the design in the digital realm and make the minute adjustments necessary to make the design perfect. I also dial in the color.
10. Once the design is complete, I save the file in a universal format that can be used by almost any designer for almost any medium, and deliver it to you with the final invoice.

The reason many clients like having options is that they are afraid they will not get an effective solution from the designer. They believe that the more involved they are in the process, the more likely they are to get a solution that they like. Unfortunately, this shifts the focus away from meeting actual goals. There are many designers out there who are making good designs, but are not providing good design solutions that actually accomplish their client’s goals, so it makes sense that there would be hesitancy when it comes to entrusting a designer with such a large task.

I stand by my work. I am confident that I will be able to demonstrate for you how my design will effectively meet your goals and reach your intended audience. I want you to do this project with me only if you feel can trust me completely with this process. I’m excited at the possibility of working on this for you, and I understand your decision either way.