Farewell

July 11, 2007

Not farewell for me, but for a colleague who has decided to take the reigns of a hot new design job at a Boston advertising agency. Juliet is one of the good ones from the world of design and here’s why:

She doesn’t sneer at writers. Too many designers missed the memo on how important words are to marketing and advertising a product or service. Juliet isn’t one of those people. She understands how much weight needs to be given to different elements of a project, and respects the weight that copy has in respect to an entire piece She is brilliant in seeing the whole picture – it’s this skill that makes her valuable to any firm.

She’s fun to work with. You can’t measure the value of a smile and teamwork when faced with an insane request from client (e.g. “We got this tagline from a friend of my wife, see if you can’t use it on all packaging going forward.”) She can initiate a heated debate, but the debate never turns into a personality conflict – it’s always about creating the right work for the client.

You’ve heard me rail in this space and at cocktail parties about how I can’t stand designers who decide to cut corners and write headlines, blurbs and entire passages themselves. I believe that’s akin to me choosing which plants belong in the background of a catalog spread (behind the featured products). I think things work better if people stick to what they’re good at.

Juliet is great at what she does and I’ll certainly welcome the chance to work with her in the future.

Happy Trails J, and good luck!

More to come…