The agency I have now is not the agency I wished for!

What do I mean by that? I had a dream of being the ‘best’ agency around, with work that everyone would envy, designs that would make people say wow to, an agency that people who are passionate about the web would aspire to design like and want to work for, basically an awesome agency. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got great staff, I’ve got a great office environment and we work with some great clients but we’ve bent too many of my/our morals on the way.

My agency would be amazing, if it wasn’t for clients.

We would produce stuff of dreams, with no boundaries, no ‘make my logo bigger’, no compromise and no IE6 but we would also be out of business. At the end of the day we have to pay wages and bills and the only money we get are from clients, so although they’ve ruin my dream they also make my dream a possibility.

Don’t get me wrong we have tried to draw a line, we have tried to explain to clients that a bigger logo isn’t the way forward, we tried to explain that it’s not wasted white space, its part of the design and brings balance to the page and increases usability, we’ve tried really hard to explain that it’s not what you want that matters it what your visitors want to see but in the end it’s up to the client. The only analogy I can think of is trying to explain to a child that sweets aren’t good for them, no matter what you say, no matter how many white papers or proofs you bring to them they are still going to eat sweets.

I have come to a few conclusions

  1. That to produce something amazing we have to produce it for ourselves for no other reason that we simply can; without the annoyance of clients, money or a brief. The only issue with this great idea is time and money.
  2. We need to produce a product that we can love, like a web app with features and designs we decide upon, with users that want to use our software without the ability to interfere.
  3. Sometimes we need to stand up for our principals and tell clients that we are unwilling to make the changes they want, despite the cost or emotional turmoil that may bring.

So what are am I going to do about it?

We are going to dedicate 1/5 to 1 day a week to a internal project of our choosing, but until we make our millions from our internal project we will still be saying “yes, if you really want.. but you really shouldn’t because…” to clients.