A view towards the Giant's Causeway

Guinness at Sligo

View towards Ballyliffen

Welcome to the FIRST Cartwright Design BLOG.                                19th May 2006

A moan to start with...

Here In Saffron Walden we try to ‘educate‘ our clients into realising that good Graphic Design works and needs to be supplied by professionals rather than relying on ‘in house’
office staff with an artistic bent and a basic graphics package on the office PC. Their work often resultis in our staff having to make significant changes before the work can be committed to print.

We have seen some remarkably good ideas by frustrated amateurs, but is this practice really cost effective? It must take the ‘creative’ secretary much longer to supply passable solutions rather than giving it to a professional. Not only would  their time be better spent on work which they were employed to do, but the end result would be more effective.

My guess is that  because most companies are run by accountants, constantly having to watch the  bottom line, ’doing it yourself’ is acceptable as this leaves out a cost column and masks the time spent on these exercises only to be left ‘hidden’ in the general administration column.

Grumpy old man? Perhaps, but I have seen this practice more times than I would like to remember. -Starting at the beginning of my professional career when a client told me that  I need not commission a photographer as he would supply the photographs. His wife had bought him a new Nikon for Christmas! The pictures supplied were desperate, but for the reason that they were his pics and he was the CEO, he couldn’t be wrong.

Now with digital cameras we have it all again!

Enough of that.

Let me tell you of a wonderful experience I had on a recent visit to Donegal which I think illustrates the Irish way of life and the way they look at the world. I was looking to find a car park in Letterkenny and noticed that the information screen at the car park read ‘Almost Full’ -How wonderful!  It left me with wondering how many places there were left out of the the total available. I wanted to wait for them to announce ‘ Only a few spaces left now', and 'Be quick before we’re full up - I hope you make it in time!'

At the Exit I wondered if they'd say. 'Hope you managed to find a place OK' or “See you when you get back again”

The whole pace of life is different from England and whether the humour is intended I do not know. Nevertheless, people smile a lot there and it’s not always the Guinness. Everyone I met was interesed to talk and listen and willing to assist in any way.

We could certainly learn better customer relations by putting our staff into this environment for a while rather that the seemingly aggressive ‘your fired!’ strategies being encouraged today.

Because we at CARTWRIGHT DESIGN are involved a great deal with the food and drinks industry I visited shops and supermarkets just to see how different things might be in Eire.

I called into the Dunnes Supermarket in Letterkenny and although it appeared cluttered with all manner of goods, it gave the feeling still of the ‘local’ shop, somewhere where you spent time - not just for shopping. Whether this is intentional or not I cannot tell but I am sure just as much revenue was taken - if not more. It felt like a foreign country, as indeed it was, but one I will try to get back to as soon as I can…, are there any potential Irish clients that need our help?

If you have got this far - thanks for reading the blog and if you like it, I’ll be continuing my travels in Ireland in the next rambling- together, if you’re really lucky with more Graphic Design!

Chris Cartwright
Principal