I WOULD LIKE TO TALK ABOUT FISH

I was going to write about design as a business, but I’ve decided not to, at least not today. Today, in lieu of design, I would like to talk about fish.

Oh? Sure, I’ll repeat that: I WOULD LIKE TO TALK ABOUT FISH. Okay? Ok.

I have a fish tank. Ten gallons, plastic plants, very quiet internal filter, gravel, and a little rock that was quite neat when I bought it but under the water and the lights looks like a Gay Pride float.

Anyway.

I had a fish tank as a kid, but as an adult (I’m allowed to use that term, right?) I am enjoying the fish experience in a whole new way. I like to call it “fish-o-vision.” I will literally spend an hour watching the fish interact, swim, move, eat. For fun and to screw with the fish I have several games like “tap the fish tank when they get really close to the glass,” and “squash two identical cubes of tubifex worms on opposite ends of the tank and see which one they think is bigger.”

In short, it’s fun to be God.

But, the best game ever, in the minds of my fish, has to be…”Poop or Food?”

The rules are simple: if it’s floating in the tank, suck it into your mouth. If it’s food, they eat it. If it’s poop, they spit it out. Sometimes they have to suck and spit a coupla times, apparently making absolutely sure it’s food (or poop)

Oh, it’s fun. Sometimes the poop in question just came out of the fish trying to eat it. More often than not, the poop comes from a fish who’s been swimming around with the rest of the fish, but the moment, and I mean the MOMENT it ‘breaks free’ it’s a free-for-all game of Poop or Food. Occasionally, and this is pretty revolting in human terms, they won’t spit the poop out – they’ll just eat it and swim away. From the top of the tank to the bottom, and occasionally across the tank floor, Poop or Food is a game of chance no fish can resist.

I sense you might find this entire thread revolting. “Come on, Tom,” you groan. “Come on, why would you tell us about fish eating their own crap?”

And my response is: “Yup, it’s gross…imagine how I feel when I see humans playing Poop or Food?”

I read through massive amounts of online postings about people with difficult bosses or clients, who make their lives hell, and then I hear justifications for continuing with those clients. Every day, there’s another “client from Hell” or “Ultimate PiTA” that graces the HOW or the About forums. You can call it job security or “trying to educate the client” but in reality, it’s Poop or Food.

You are not a fish. Don’t play Poop or Food.

Here are some helpful hints in avoiding the preferred sport of aquarium fish everywhere.

1. Escape the fish tank. My fish are trapped in ten gallons of water. They have Poop or Food or Torture by Tom. You are not a fish. If you are self-employed, expand your horizons. Go to your chamber of commerce meetings. Create postcards you can hand out that demonstrate your skills. Make your website accessible via search engines. If you are employed in the Ninth Circle of Hell, practice your skills and get out.
2. If another fish craps it out, it’s probably poop. Remember the old adage where women marry men and hope to change them and men marry women and hope they won’t change? A client who has gone through three other designers doesn’t need you – they need a reality check. You will not save them. Do them a favor and let them fall into the gravel, where they will either rot or fertilize a better idea.
3. If it tasted like poop before, don’t eat it again. I think this is pretty self-explanatory. If you got screwed by a client once before, think REALLY hard before you take them up on another project. Or at least get some money up front.
4. Food becomes poop, and never the reverse. Do some genuine research into how other people work. Freelance, self-employed or in-house, remember that knowledge is power.
5. Remember that you are not a fish. When all else fails, stick to your humanity. There are plenty of humans willing to play Poop or Food out there…remember that while you chase after the good stuff in life.

until the next
Dyer Straits‘
Tom

Thomas (Tom) Stephan | Director of Something Clever
BoDo Author | Dyer Straits

1 Comment »

You thought PITA was bad? Try PICA!

“The client is always right, even when they have no defined vision.”

This is a fun constant in the design world, and when it works in favor of the designer, they profit by the bucketload, either in billable hours or, in the case of in-housers, the six-day design vacation at your desk as the boss frets whether the font color should be white or green.

But that fun comes to an end quickly when you hear the phrase, “I don’t know what I like, but I’ll know it when I see it.” Perhaps you’ve never actually heard those words, but I have….I heard them with the boss standing behind me, hands folded, waiting for me to crack open the file and start designing. Their beady little eyes, staring at the back of your head, searching for flakes from dry scalp…the horror…THE HORROR!

Sorry…flashback.

Where was I? Oh, oh yeah, as I write for BoDo, I think to myself “Well, this must be great, a design business online! No back-of-head staring, no hemming and hawing meetings, how paradisiacal (it’s a word, trust me) can THAT be?

And then it occurs to me that online collaboration has the potential to be ten times worse.

“But Tom,” you ask, marveling at my genius and innate sex appeal while simultaneously wondering if I’ll ask you to hang out with me “Why would that be worse?”

And the answer is…PICA.

Ah yes, PICA, the worst of all online design diseases. PICA is subtle and insidious, like belly-button lint and fingerprints on your glasses. Suddenly it’s all over you and it won’t stop.

A relative of PiTA, PICA attacks unexpectedly and viciously, grinding you to a halt. PICA: Passive-aggressive Internet Conflict Avoidance. Like a plague it seeps through your emails, with such phrases as “Please make ten variations and email them.” And “We’re going into a meeting and we’re going to discuss this very issue,” and my personal favorite. “It’s still on somebody else’s desk.”

Here’s how it starts: They ask, you design, they look, they like it but they don’t like it and they either don’t know how to criticize or they designed this really cool logo with a swish in it and they’ve been sending you telepathic messages and you won’t listen to them. So you email them with a “Just touching base with you,” and they freeze up. They believe that if they say “we hate your ideas,” then there’s a possibility of the designer getting huffy and quitting, thus restarting the process. They ALSO know that given the advent of technology, the ability to stall people on decision-making has virtually quintupled. And as a result, all they have to do is stall you. You can’t prove that they’re stalling. You’re not likely to show up in person, and the worst that can happen is that you call and get the message machine.

Online services are indeed the wave of the future, but riding atop that wave is a whole herd of PICAs hungry to sludge your creative pipes. BE VIGILANT! Be wary, B-postive.

’nuff said.

Thomas (Tom) Stephan | Director of Something Clever
BoDo Author | Dyer Straits