Creating a Personalised Design Process

Ian Paget: In 2010, you decided to pivot from a traditional print-based graphic design role to offering web design services. As a starting point for this conversation, what was the reason why you decided to make that transition?

Evelyn Powers: It was twofold. One, I had already been running a traditional graphic design business for, gosh, almost 15 years. The work, albeit every project I was always excited, just the process of print is, it's a pretty predictable process and you usually just print on a substrate and then the job is over.

All my clients were repeat clients, and I have wonderful graphic design clients. What I was noticing is that the budgets for print were shrinking because, obviously, companies were allocating their marketing dollars to the web.

And so, the kinds of things that they wanted to do print weren't as exciting as they had been, say, a decade earlier. Then the other part of it too is every time I would get a graphic design job, like a logo or something, inevitably someone would say to me, "Oh, do you design websites, because I need a website too." At first I was like, "No, that's not what I do."

And I just felt like, gosh, if I don't start learning this, I'm basically going to work myself out of a career because I'll just be an antiquated. I'll be like the shoe maker or the barrel maker. I don't think that print design has disappear, but it has definitely taken a back seat, no question, to everything that's going on on the web.

Ian Paget: Yeah, definitely. I've seen people say that print is dead, but it's still very much in use. But with everything you could do online, through your website, or your online marketing as well, it's definitely more important than any brochure would have been around 10 years ago. So you definitely made the right choice to make that pivot when you did.

Something I'd love to find out, especially because I think this is something that will come up in everyone's business at some point, people will see a new opportunity and they want to move into the area of expertise. Whatever it is, you're very likely to need to learn new skills.

So in your case, you had that print-based background already and you wanted to move into web design. I assume at that point you had no prior experience. So how did you go about learning everything that you needed to know to get to the level where you could offer this as a service?

Evelyn Powers: At first, I took some general web classes. And to be honest with you, they were frankly a waste of time. Then it dawned on me. I was like, "If I really want to monetise this, if that really is my goal, I have to get very specific about what it is I want to learn, and I need to go to a place that is going to teach me that." In the US, it's called General Assembly. I mean, they may be international, but they do very focused classes on front end web development, backend web development, not just CSS and HTML and JavaScript, but they do Ruby on Rails, Python, all kinds of stuff.

And so, they get very, very specific and you can take these incredibly intensive classes, which I couldn't do because I still had a business and I have a family. But I did do a three-month all-day every Saturday class. It was all front end web development, and it was taught by two guys that were actually developers. I felt like it was a really, really good, intensive experience. It was just the foundational studies that I needed to really understand it.

Then the other thing I did, and I highly suggest this to anyone who wants to pivot to anything, is get a job in it. I actually bid a really very super ambitious web design job and wound up getting it, and the pressure of just like, "Wow, okay, now I have to do this. There is no wiggle room." What I found is, for all the parts where I was ignorant, I at least was able now, because I had a little bit of a community, and connections, and a baseline knowledge, to find other people that could help me build this site. And that really was a trajectory that I needed.

It was twofold, getting very, very specific about what it is that I thought I wanted to learn. I think nowadays you can probably take online classes and still get that because we now have Zoom and just much more interactivity online. That just wasn't really available then. But I do still recommend, obviously not while it's COVID, but in-person stuff, because there's just a lot of sideline conversations that happen, and connections that you make, that can become valuable later on.

Ian Paget: Yeah. As well, in-person, you can't walk away from it because that's something that I struggle with any online training, it's making it a priority. You get distracted by your phone or what's happening around you. But when you actually go to an in-person training session, you have no choice but to dedicate all your time and energy to it. So I think there's a greater commitment when you do it in person. Obviously, you can't do that at the moment because of COVID, but in general, it does make sense to do that.

I think, in general, the web design space has changed so much in the last 10 years, because I know myself, in the web design job that I had for 10 years, I stepped away from that position about three months ago now to go full time with what I'm doing. But when I first started, unless I knew code, which it sounds like you do, you learn all of that at scale, unless you know that, it was very hard to build anything.

But now you've got things like Webflow, Squarespace, WordPress, Elementor, and stuff like that. I think the point to entry with web design is so much easier now than what it was 10 years ago when you started.

Evelyn Powers: Definitely, but I do want to add that from the General Assembly class, I did make a discernment for myself, and that was that I decided I did not want to do development, that I was going to stick to design and strategy that...

Learning code and even CSS and HTML, even if you're using these builders like Elementor and Squarespace, if you really want to customise things, you still have to be able to know CSS. There's no way to not be able to do anything that's just not complete boiler plate template without at least doing CSS to it.

But I don't really want to do the development or even putting them together. I've graduated into, "I love the strategy, the design, and really the business relationship." My niece works with me and she does all the development.

But I made a discernment early on because I just felt like it didn't interest me as much. So I think a lot of people, when they're first getting into it, whether they're pivoting from graphic design or they're just getting into web design, they wind up doing everything. There's a lot that goes into doing a really quality website, not just the content management system.

As you know, from your job, you have the user interface, you have the experience, you have web accessibility, you have security, the various devices, maintenance, load, speed compatibility. Then you've got SEO if there's any video. A website is never put to bed. That was the term that they used to call after you got a job to the printer. It was called put to bed. Well, a website is never put to bed. I mean, you're always constantly having to make sure that there is fresh content and that things are up to date with...

Even like Google last week announced some kind of a new way of measuring SEO and the whole SEO world was talking about it. It's like you're just trying to keep up with that. I find, for my own sanity, that it's easier for me to partition what I'm good at and what I'm going to have other people do. I think that's something that anyone who's getting into web design should be aware of because you can drive yourself crazy if you're trying to do it all.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I know that myself working in that job, in terms of the role that I had, I focused only on the graphic design side of things. I didn't do any of the development. I didn't do any of the copywriting other than some minor things, just to give some direction. But with anything like that, you need a team. It sounds like you're collaborating with lots of people. Is that right?

Evelyn Powers: Well, I have my niece who I work with, and then, yes, I have trusted vendors and partnerships, depending upon... Really, it's based on the client. I actually have a joint venture with a colleague for when we get WordPress sites for mid-size companies or nonprofits. The reason that I structured it that way is she already had an existing business and I already had an existing business, but we liked working together. So we created this third entity between the two of us, and we're essentially business partners.

We probably only do one to two projects a year together, although now we're going on year five. We do have six dedicated clients. And because they're bigger, they do have pretty constant recurring needs.

It's almost like having a second business, but really what it does is it allows me the opportunity that, should I get a client that doesn't necessarily fit into my Squarespace niche, which is service-based small businesses, usually one to three people on the... There's a little bit of variation. It's a very different target market than the market that I'm dealing with when I build WordPress websites with my joint venture partner.

It's a way for me to not have all my eggs in one basket. Then I also still have some legacy graphic design clients. They've gotten less and less because I've just not been focusing on getting them. But I still have a couple of clients that I've had for a very long time who still give me a recurring work, and I love working with them and keeping my hand in the graphic design world.

Ian Paget: I'm curious then, have you really just gone all in on the web design stuff and created products and packages in order to offer those services, and then basically you're not really promoting anything else other than the web design stuff?

Evelyn Powers: Yes. Yeah. So it's not that I don't do other stuff. I only promote though on my website, and I actually, Ian, don't have a lot of various packages. I have one service, but what the service is, is I named each phase to make it very, very easy for someone who comes to my website to understand the process. My name is Design Powers, it's because my last name is Powers. And so, I named all my services because there is an actual perceived value if you name a service. That's just a human psychology kind of thing, and for sales and marketing.

I named my lead product, which is what my Power Plan is. Essentially, the Power Plan is paid discovery. So anytime you do any kind of a project for anyone, you have to understand the goals of what it is the client wants. And oftentimes, that process is not just talking to the client and asking them very targeted questions. You then have to do a lot of research. Some people do all that, and they'll do it for free, then they'll give someone a quote. And I thought, "I don't want to do all that for free."

My paid discovery is called the Power Plan, and it is the lead product. It's a 90-minute meeting where we talk about everything that trying to accomplish with their website. I charge $500 for it. Then afterwards, I give them a written, actionable plan that they could shop that around. So if they decided afterwards, "Hey, I don't think I want to use Evelyn," they've gotten a product from that $500. Then also, within the plan, the strategy, is I give them a quote, and then I have a contract. So that's what comes with the Power Plan.

If they decide to hire me for the Power Launch, that is my web design and development process that is very, very clearly delineated on my work together page. I tell somebody, "You get content, you get logo design. Here are the potential pages that you can get." It starts at $5,000, but the Power Plan does go towards it. So it's like a little bit of an incentive.

Then I have other... Like the Power Hour is really just what I charge for people if they just need an hour of advice or services, but Emily and I, Emily's my niece, this summer, we're going to actually put together a year-long membership, because what we're finding as we're getting more clients is they do have a lot more recurring needs.

The one thing I wanted to get away with, with the WordPress world, was the whole maintenance agreement thing. I just never really liked charging people to update their plugins. It just wasn't something I was interested in. But this is really more of what we're going to structure it, to be like a membership that will... If someone joins our year-long membership, we will, on a consistent basis, be updating their site with fresh content in visuals in a very strategic way. Then if they need help, we can do that on an hourly basis.

So it's really more of a sales funnel, if you will, or a process, and it's the only thing that I talk about on my website, but I still do graphic design. I still do logo design. I actually have been getting a lot of logo designs lately. But I don't really promote it. It's not that I don't want to do it. I find that people are so inundated with information that if they don't really, really understand very clearly on your home page in like a three-step simple plan how to buy from you, they're going to bounce.

And so, I just want to make it as clear and give them the confidence, "Yes, I know what I'm doing. This is how we're going to do it. This is everything that is involved." I can't say hard and fast, "This is going to be $3,000 or five, but this is about where it starts, and this is what you're going to get." Inevitably, every client I have, none of them fall exactly into my laid-out process because obviously everybody has different needs. But it does at least give a baseline of expectation and then expertise too.

Ian Paget: Yeah. I think the great thing of it is, as you highlighted it, it makes it very simple and easy to understand for customers. I think it's interesting that you said that you still do accept those graphic design projects, but you don't necessarily promote it. That's similar in terms of what I'm doing.

On my website, if you go on there, it pretty much looks like I only do logo design or brand identity, but I've got clients, after I work with them on one project, they'd be like, "Ian, can you help with this?" And of course I can, but I have started to notice that it's much easier to stick within something that I've already sold, that I've already got a process for. I feel like it's more profitable to stick with some kind of productised service, which is what you've ultimately created.

Evelyn Powers: This is really under advisement with Emily and I too. This is something that we've talked about, but have not implemented, and a lot of people that have been doing this a lot longer than I have recommended, and that is really to niche even further, to not... Like I'm still pretty general in that I say, "One to three people, service-based small businesses." Well, that's still is a lot of different kinds of businesses. And what we have found over the year of doing Squarespace only is that even though we're very specific about it, there's still so many variables that hinder us coming up with a really ironclad process.

I have to admit that I'm conflicted about it because, we did a site for two women who were lawyers, and it went beautifully. They paid us, they did everything we said. The site turned out... I mean, it was just a really ideal situation. And afterwards, we said to each other, we go, "Well, maybe we should just do law firm sites. Maybe we could just become the experts in doing small law firms."

But then, ultimately, we both decided, well, we don't feel like we're in a place yet to be able to say that that's only what we want to do, and that we were going to give ourselves a little bit more time, and we just kicked the can down the road, to be honest with you.

Like right now we've done an executive coach. We're doing a yoga studio. We just did a facilities management business. We were doing all these different kinds of businesses that still require doing research. And that's the thing, is if you do decide on an industry and you're really dogged about it, then that's when you really become expert in it, and we're not there yet. It's undetermined.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's an interesting thing to discuss really because niching down the pure basis of focusing on web design and building the sites in Squarespace as you are now. That in itself is a niche. I've had conversations with people that have taken that further. I think the way that I would do it, because where I really see one of the sole benefits of it is from an SEO perspective, you can really hyper-focus your content, and the messaging, and the images, and there's loads of benefits to it.

But the way that I see it with what you're doing now, if that is what you wanted to do, what I would do is rather than actually pivoting your central core company, I would just create a side business, a new website. And as those law firms come up, put them on that website and do it as a separate thing. And then, if it picks up, if you get more and it becomes more popular, then obviously you can start to transition over. I mean, with niching down, there are other benefits to where, if that's the only thing that you're talking about, then other people know that that's what you do.

But I think as a starting point, when you're in your position, I don't see any harm in creating a side business that's just doing that. Then you get the online SEO marketing messages, you get all the benefits that come with having that dedicated online location.

Evelyn Powers: Yeah, that wasn't even really something that I thought to do. So yeah, I will definitely think about that. But in terms of being able to take different kinds of clients, it does make it a lot more fun too.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Yeah. I like working with lots of different types of companies. In my case, one minute I'm working with a donut shop, the next minute I'm working with a lawyer.

Evelyn Powers: Yeah. Like we just finished a logo, or it's in process, but it's towards the end of it, for a guy who wants to do a food truck and he wants to offer vegan and meat. He has a very, very sort of Spartan menu, but he's going to be doing both approaches on separate grills.

But he wants to be able to offer them both and within the same food truck. He's a super nice dude, and he's got great ideas, and it was really fun to work on the logo. And now we're going to do a landing page for him. Stuff like that is just really fun too. Getting back to the lawyer example, our clients were really, really wonderful, but not all the time, if you're in the same industry, are you always going to get that ideal situation.

Ian Paget: Very true. I wouldn't mind going back to your service offering, because you mentioned about this Power Plan, which is your 90-minute call. For listeners, we had a separate conversation prior to this interview and we spoke about this for some time. But I'd like to give a little bit of focus on this because it's interesting because the way I do it at the moment, client gets in touch, I'll arrange a telephone call, and then I could be speaking to them for an hour. Sometimes they can be quite long calls. But what I would hope is that that call would then turn into a sale.

But what you're doing is charging for that initial call, charging for that initial consultation to work out what it is that they need. I mean, I've got loads of questions. So would you mind explaining what it is and how do you go about selling something that is basically understanding what they need?

Evelyn Powers: Well, what's the one question that anyone asks you right off the bat? They want to know how much something's going to cost. And so, if it's something that's super straight forward, you can do the math in your head and you might say, "Okay, logo for this, doing that, I could do this." You may say $2,500 or 5,000. I mean, I find, a lot of time, us as designers, we can be very flexible with our quoting, depending on the size of the client and how much time we think, or if it's a full branding job, it maybe $10,000.

The thing though that I found with web design is, because there are so many complexities and third-party integrations and functionalities, to do a quality web design, you just have to have a very, very clear baseline of the goals of the client, who it is that they're talking to, what it is their plans are. I mean, minimally, that takes 90 minutes.

I was telling you about my joint venture. When I do this for my WordPress clients, where the clients are bigger and more intensive, I charge $2,000 for it and spread it out over a three-week or a three-appointment conversation and even map it out in terms of, the first week, we're going to talk about you, your history.

The second week, we're going to talk about your ideal client, your business processes.

And then the third week, we're going to talk about how we're going to engage, because especially like a nonprofit that may have three different kinds of target markets that they're talking to or ways to donations, volunteers, the people that use the service. I mean, there's just a tremendous amount of strategy, and thought, and research that has to go into it, way before I could ever give you a quote

How can I give you a quote on a project that could take four to five months if I don't even know what we're doing?

And so, in order for me to really know what we're doing, and that we're going to agree to what we're doing, I've got to ask you all these questions, and I've got to do research based on the answer of those questions, and that takes time. The nice thing about doing paid discovery, and this is how I sell it, is at the end, we're agreeing as to what we're actually quoting on. So we've now decided on all the strategy and the target market and how we're going to go about doing everything. Then I give you a price, but we're all we're already in agreement.

The other thing, too, especially with bigger companies, they can bring that to their board, or they can... I mean, usually you want to have the decision makers in the room. But if there's ancillary audiences that need to be in on the decision, they can bring that written actionable plan. Or in the case of bigger companies, I actually do a presentation to that audience to get their buy-in, their insights.

So everyone's in the room, everyone's in agreement. I've gotten paid for all this time and research that I've done, and then everyone's happy because everybody knows where we stand.

Then you give them a price, a schedule, and a contract. And there isn't really any misconceptions because everything's already been discussed and agreed upon.

It's actually two different processes, but one really needs to be done before the other one can begin. Why are you going to do all that for free? That's crazy.

On my website, for smaller businesses, I boiled it down to 90 minutes because I've now been doing this for about four years. I usually, with a small business end, or can get it pretty quick. And they generally only have one service and one target market, and it's not nearly as complex.

Also, of course, their budgets are going to be lower, so they may not want to spend two, $3,000 on paid discovery. But it's a way for me to really read them into my core service, which is doing the design strategy and the website build. So it's more of a phase. The very first thing in my three-step process is that initial phone call. I mean, no one's going to hire you for a service that cost several thousand dollars without talking to you first.

I usually will spend at least 15 to 30 minutes talking to someone, figuring out, are we even a good fit for each other? And sometimes the answer's no. Maybe Squarespace isn't the right thing for them or they need a functionality that is not good for Squarespace. Or maybe it's just something that I might not feel like I'm the right person for it. So it's that call, then it's the Power Plan, and then it's the Power Launch.

The Power Launch has a lot to it and that's why I'm very, very clear on my work together page. The other part of it too, just as an aside, what I have found is clients, especially small businesses, you just have to offer the content for them.

If you rely on your client to write the content, you might as well just forget it. I used to try and get my clients to write the content. Now I just say, "No, we're going to do it." I have a couple of different content writers, depending upon the industry. But one that I use a lot, she's actually in Ireland, and we pretty much talk every week. She writes all the content.

It's much easier for the client because it just takes that off their plate. And I think it's the biggest holdup for any kind of web design, is that. Then meanwhile, while she's writing the content, I'm doing any kind of logo design. Then those two things get agreed on, and then I do the design for the website. Now I've been using Figma, which is great because it's cloud-based and you can share stuff, and clients can make comments on it. And it's free.

It's a really just clean builder, mock-up tool. We also then do all what we call the Google plumbing, just the domain name, the hosting, the setup, all the integrations, whether they're going to be using an email, BuzzBuilder. Squarespace has one now. There's MailChimp, ActiveCampaign. There's tons of them. And then, Google my business, Google search console, Google analytics, so many business owners have no idea about any of that stuff, and we just do it. It's like, "Okay, that's just baseline stuff."

Then after we launched the site, we have this really nice PDF that we've put together. It's like a manual. When we could do in person, we would do in-person trainings. Right now, of course, we're doing them virtually. I much prefer the in person, but yeah, so that's the process.

Then the Power Hour is really just post nits and gnats that they have until, as I was telling you, we get the membership thing together. Then the Power Play is just what I call my email marketing newsletter, which I just started. I have not gotten consistent with it yet, but really trying. So that's my next couple months trying to get a little bit more consistent with my marketing strategy.

Ian Paget: I really love the concept of the Power Plan because, basically, it's tricky when we use the term strategy. I mean, that can mean a number of different things, but you're basically, rather than having a call, having to work out what's needed, scoping it all out, and then putting a quote together, you're basically charging for a scoping exercise or the strategy for the website, how are you going to build it, what needs to be put on there, why it needs to be put on there. All of that stuff, all that effort, all that time or the energy, you're getting money from it.

I was going to ask you about pricing because I did see that you do present your prices online, but actually you only present the price for that specific initial Power Plan. So, obviously, people can see how much the point of entry is. And then, I assume, based on all of the work that you put together in that plan, that's when you can work out exactly how much it's going to cost to proceed accordingly. But if they don't go ahead, you've already made some income from it, so it's all good.

Evelyn Powers: Yeah. On the, how it works, further down on that page, I give the nine steps. It just boils down the Power Launch process. Then I have a testimonial. But then after that, I do say, "Your investment in the Power Launch, which is complete with content branding and website starts at $5,000."

Then I have FAQ because people are still are going to have questions. But I feel, with my expertise, all that we do, having now built many of these sites and knowing just the nuances, and the integrations, and the functionalities, especially if there's any e-commerce involved, this is time-intensive stuff.

And I will tell people, "Your website really is the engine of your business. And if it's set up correctly, you can really maximise your marketing capabilities with it."

Honestly, though, Ian, if somebody... And this just happened to me. I actually was almost trying to make somebody put more importance on their website than they wanted to, and really in the end they just wanted what you would call a brochure website. That's valid too. And so, for those people, once I've cleared... I still made them do the Power Plan. We still had a target audience. I still hired a content writer, but we didn't have to do any really of the marketing stuff because he just literally wanted a very professional presence online because it was mainly geared towards the government and you can't really be doing digital marketing to the government.

But that still wound up being just shy of five grand. I mean, in this country, that seems like for that amount of work, it's a good starting point. And if you have a quality designer, developer, in doing all the necessary stuff with Google and basic SEO, that's just what it's worth. And people who get the one page or the overnight and all that stuff, the price of entry may be lower, but you're still going to wind up paying for the functionalities that you need eventually. So it's either you get it set up right at the get go, super quality, or you just do it in stages.

Ian Paget: I want to flag up something that you briefly said. Your Power Launch, you said it's a nine-step Power Launch. I find that fascinating because it takes everything that you said one step farther. So you've got your Power Plan, Power Launch, Power Play, but then they're broken down into steps. Would you mind talking through what those are?

Evelyn Powers: Yeah. Number one is the kickoff. Two, asset coordination. That's just where we get everything that is... Well, back to number one, we do use Asana, a project management tool, and we actually have a video on our site. So once the client has signed the contract and paid a deposit, we send them to the page on our site with a welcome video.

And then we teach them how to use Asana, which is not... We don't ask much of our client at all. I mean, it's basically, we have templates in there of the entire process and we assign them the things that we need from them. They get those assignments in their email and they can respond via email, and it goes back into our project management. So that's number one.

Number two is our asset coordination. We get everything that they have in hand, photography, graphics, if they have content or specific brand guidelines that need to be followed.

Number three is the content writing. We create the copy with the relevant keywords, based on what we found out, again, in the Power Plan, with their ideal client.

Number four would be the brand development. That's when we're doing the logos, the fonts, the colour, and if there's any custom photography that needs to be done.

Then five would be the home page design, and that's where we, we would present a mock up of the home page. And often, I will usually tell the client one to two, maybe even up to three sub pages, depending upon the differentiations between them and what I feel is needed. We also put up a branded Coming Soon page, and that gets the client really excited.

Six would be the site development and we're keeping them abreast of what's happening through Asana.

Seven would be the final revisions, and eight is to go live, and to train, and make them feel super confident about being able to manage their own content, which is really, really important to us.

Then the last one, nine, is our post-launch support. We're going to check that with them and make sure that they don't have any questions or they're not struggling with anything. And honestly, inevitably, they always are, which is why I said our next thing is to do this membership because any business that is active and actively trying different things out, a month from their launch or two months, they have found something else out and they want to implement something else, a new functionality, or a new content, or new pictures, or maybe they've...

This happened to us with a site that we launched eight months ago. It was with an executive coach. She had a very, very specific ideal client. Well, eight months later, she has decided that is not an ideal client and she wants to completely restructure her home page. So basically what's she's figured out... Now, this person's been in business for over 10 years. It's not like she was a new business person, but she was trying out different services and now she's made some new decisions.

That's what's so beautiful about website design. That's actually why I love it so much over print, is that you can be iterating all the time. And it's so dynamic and interesting, and there's so much human psychology involved in it too. That's the other thing that I really, really get excited about, is all of the user experience, colours, what people see, how they read, how they don't read, accessibility. I mean, all those things are just so fascinating to me, and you get to do all of that when you do web design.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Yeah. I love all that sort of stuff too. Yeah. I mean, I know in logo design, even though you're focused on the visuals, there's a lot of underlying thought and there's a lot that you can research. I love that there's a lot more to everything, and yeah, it's a great topic to go into.

I just wanted to say, those nine steps, that just literally rolled off your tongue. I can tell that you've had a number of calls where people have asked you about it and you've just rolled it out. It's brilliant.

Evelyn Powers: Yeah. Well, again, it's all about trying to make it as clear and as easy for my potential client as possible because nobody has the bandwidth for anything anymore. That's what I've discovered. So many times people just want you to solve their problem. They just want to be heard and then they want you to solve the problem.

I even said this to Emily last week. I said, "I really feel like a lot of times now when we have these needed conversations, is people are asking us to figure out their business strategy. It's not just like we're building a website, we're actually helping people to structure how they're going to interact and get people to buy their services or their products."

That's not necessarily a one and done kind of thing. That can involve a lot of conversations. Again, research, there's a lot of different ways to do things and what actually works the best with this particular industry, this particular person, the clients that they currently have, and the clients that they want. It's all very nuanced and it can be pretty complex.

I look at it and I laugh to myself because I went to art school in the '80s, I'm showing my age. But the art school that I went to was very fine art oriented, super traditional. I would have had no idea that I would be doing what I do now, like none. They're not at all related, other than drawing.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Well, yeah. It's funny when you work as a graphic designer. I do a little bit of sketching, but actually I' haven't drawn in years. My partner does a lot of drawing and I look over and think, "I haven't even held a proper pencil in so long."

Evelyn Powers: Yeah. Like I just had a logo design a couple of weeks ago, and Ian, I... First I want to admit, cop to it, I always look at your stuff because I love what you do. Then I have couple other Instagram feeds for logos Made By James. I love him. I'll hit all my feeds, like, "Oh, I've got to get inspired."

Then I whip out my pencil and within like, I'm going to say, 20 minutes, I'm like, "Oh, screw this." And I'm on illustrator like right away already. I think, for me too, though, I can, at this point, conceptualise a lot in my mind. Then it really is almost easier for me to just draw it out with the mouse. I know that probably goes against what everybody says.

I find I can usually get to where I need to go. I always give myself, with logos, that initial concept process, I always give myself at least like a bank of three to five hours, of hopefully unbroken time. Then I get away from it. I give myself 24 to 48 hours to get away from it. Then I come back to it, and then I get away from it. I have to do that three times for that first initial concept, because it's actually the getting away from it is really more important than the focus time doing it, because I sit there and I mull it over in my mind, and then I formulate new thoughts.

Then when I go back to it, I execute on those new thoughts. So just that initial first drop if I'm going to present. I usually don't present more than four, usually just three, and I try to do very different concepts. I have to give myself that getting away from it time. And so, that's what I would recommend to anyone who is doing logo design, is definitely give yourself time to ruminate. It's the ruminating that I feel like makes the success. What about you? What's your...

Ian Paget: Yeah. I mean, firstly, what you said about ideas and jumping straight into Illustrator, I know you, you mentioned Made By James. I interviewed in not long ago. He does most of his work on paper, and it's incredible to see.

Evelyn Powers: I know he does. I know.

Ian Paget: Yeah. So you see his final sketch. His final sketch is practically what comes out at the end. But in my case, I do a lot of scribbling. So I like to get the raw idea down on paper, the underlying concept of it. But then in terms of finding out exactly how it's going to come together, I do all of that in Illustrator myself. I just need some raw idea as a starting point and it's just quicker to come up with that on paper.

There's one that I've just finished couple of days ago. There's no case study online or anything, but it was for a company called Chef's Table. And I noticed that... So imagine a T and then the C over the top of it. I noticed that if you have the top of the C slightly coming over the T, it looks like one of those covers that goes on the top of food, the dome thing, and I thought, "Ah, that idea is great." But in terms of how that actually came together, I was looking for the right typeface, to have the right look and feel for what I wanted, and it turned out to be a very long, tall, thin, font. And that dictated the oval style of the symbol. I mean, that's how I worked in that.

As for the incubation period, that's what I've had it called, I wish I did more of that. I need to put that into my process in the same way that you do, because there's been so many times where I've finished something and then I come back like six months later and think, "Oh, I wish I just could tweak that." But yeah, what I tend to do is, I will put my ideas together one day, and then I will put the presentation together the following day. So there is that 12 hours in between, whatever it is, and that helps.

Also, when I present to my clients, I state that it's 95% complete. So, in terms of that incubation period, I do have that, but it's not quite the same as what you do. I might actually show something to a client, but then I'll make those tweaks just before it all gets finalised. So I do have it in there, but I do wish on some projects that I did a little bit more like you did, and step away from it for 24 hours, and then do that again, just to really fine-tune and nail it, because tiny details make a difference and you don't see them when you're working so closely with it. But when you step away, you come in with a fresh pair of eyes and it brings out the obvious things that you might have missed.

Evelyn Powers: Yeah. I think, too, it depends on the client. If it's a small business and you know that the budget is tight, but you still really want to do it, you know that you only can spend X amount of time on it too. For me, that does come into play where, if it's a bigger client and I know it has to go through multiple reviews, with multiple panels of people, and I'm charging more money. I mean, the process is a little bit different. There's variation with that too.

But when I deliver that first draft, they're pretty tight. I mean, I can say, gosh, probably three out of four times, the next draft, there isn't much left to do. I've had a couple instances where it wound up being I had to keep doing more and more, and it's only because who I had to talk to and the different people, design by committee is always a lot harder than if you're just working with one or two people. But yeah, it's funny. I mean, I always joke and say, "I draw with my mouse," which is akin to drawing with a bar of soap.

Ian Paget: Well, you know what? I used to do a lot of illustration work in my very first job, and I did all of that with a mouse. I was actually given a Stylus, a proper Wacom tablet. I just find it awkward drawing in that way. I think it's different. If you can do it directly on something like an iPad, which is easier now, but just the idea of drawing on a pad and then seeing it on the screen, I never got the grips with that early on. So I mastered the art of using a mouse with the Bezier curves and all that sort of stuff. I just find it easier to do it in that way.

Evelyn Powers: I got the view and I have the exact same history. I got the tab, I don't know, it's like 20 years ago or whenever they came out. I was like, "Oh, this is going to be awesome." I hated it.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I didn't like it. I mean, that would have been how long ago? It might have been about 20 years ago. It was tiny. It was like an A5 one. Now you get these ginormous really decent ones. But one thing that I did like is the pressure sensitive. So if you're painting, I totally understand why you'd want to use it for painting. But when you're drawing with Bezier curves, it's just easier and more precise for me to draw vectors with a mouse. I just find it easier.

Evelyn Powers: Yeah, I'm the same. I mean, totally.

Ian Paget: Well, that's probably a good point to wrap up the interview. I wasn't expecting to go into any of the logo design stuff. It was good to keep it a little bit on topic. But I think all of the stuff that we spoke about with how you developed your package into these different names, and then even broke those down into different steps, that's the one thing that I really wanted to bring attention to in this episode because I think that makes such a difference.

If everyone was to listen back to that part where you're talking through those nine steps, you didn't know that I was going to ask that question, and it just rolled off your tongue so easily. And that's the type of thing that gives a lot of confidence to clients when they call. So it's worth developing a process and a framework like this for your own business.

I love that you've made it all unique and you've named it after you, so no one else has a product like yours. It is unique to you. You developed it yourself. That's the one thing that I really wanted to draw attention to, and I think we got that across really nicely. Evelyn, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been really good to chat with you.

Evelyn Powers: Ian, thank you so much for the opportunity. I just love everything that you're doing, and I loved being able to share what I do. Yeah, I hope it does help other people that are just getting into it. Just clearly defining your processes gives you the confidence to get the clients, because then if you know what you're doing, then they know what you're doing, and they're going to hire you.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Exactly. I know in this episode, there's so many directions that we could have took it, so maybe we need to do another episode at a later date to dissect some of those things.

Evelyn Powers: Absolutely. Any time.

Ian Paget: Evelyn. Thank you so much.

Evelyn Powers: Thank you, Ian.