This was originally written by me on Medium years ago, but now it's here.

Over the past few years, as a founder of a product design and development company, I’ve been thinking a lot about a little question. What is the impact of technology on humanity?

Among startups and traditional companies, I hear an onslaught of terms about the user. But the user is one person. What about the impact on all people? That’s what led me to humanics.

Merriam-Webster defines humanics as “the subject or study of human nature or human affairs.” But I think there’s a lot more to humanics than that, and we’re only getting started.

Consider this: Only 29.4% of the global population has a smartphone. Just 2.1 billion people, while the global population is at 7.4 billion.* With that in mind, we have to realize a lot of what’s being made today is going to be adopted by people who won’t necessarily understand why a floppy disk icon means “to save”. Or why you need to swipe to unlock. Or what the hell Yelp is, or why it matters.

While these new markets are being on-boarded to a pre-existing infrastructure, the existing smartphone market will be throwing away their year-old devices and getting shiny new ones. What happens to these old devices? The technology within them is not useless, but software upgrades often cripple them to a point that renders them unusable.

What you’ll read next, if you’re willing to follow me on this journey, are questions asking why we design and build for business models and existing infrastructure first, and human needs second. A proposal for change. And questions about the feasibility of this idea itself.

Rethink about it

Take what you think of as an operating system is and light it on fire. Burn it to the ground. Now let’s clean up the ashes, and ask ourselves, “What’s the point of this technology we carry with us everywhere we go?” Think about why we’re glued to these tiny rectangular objects that travel with us more than our significant others — more than our loved ones — more than our friends. In more places than we carry cash, we carry our phones.

In more places than we carry cash, we carry our phones.

This wasn’t the case two decades ago. Two decades ago I remember going to a friend’s house and knocking on the door to find out if they wanted to hang out. A decade ago I was using a Sony w810i to text my friends to find out if they could hang out. I browsed text menus with roughly 20 keys. 10 of them were numbers. Now I have 20 different apps that do the exact same thing. How should I contact them today? Should I text them? Message them on WhatsApp? Google Hangouts? Facebook Messenger? Twitter? We’ve really been solving the same problems a thousand different ways, while adding the burden of maintaining each product we now use.

I’m talking about you, Widgets on Android. I’m talking about you, folder systems on iOS. I’m talking about you Windows Phone app store. This paragraph isn’t to rag on applications, most of them have a point. They have an economy. They solve a problem. They do something. But at the end of the day, 99% of these applications do the exact same thing as something else, just slightly different. Everyone is a snowflake.

Given that technology has improved so dramatically in the last ten years, we should be looking at the way things could be, rather than the way things are due to the technological environments we’ve constructed. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a useful tool in determining human needs, but we don’t really have an equivalent set of rules for a technology settings.

Shouldn’t we start to look at the way we use our phones? Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs might not be the worst place to start. But that pyramid graphic I’ve seen a million times, and can vaguely recall from my anthropology class in college, should be questioned as well. The majority of applications out there solve for one of two things. Wants, or needs.

Companies today are building applications to solve problems at scale in order to generate revenue at scale. There’s only so far that you can scale now before you have Earth as your target demographic. Companies of tomorrow will be about creating invaluable assets and services that contribute to the users and ecosystems of the future. In order to be competitive, and gain the business of users, companies will need to consolidate and dismember the very applications they created to hone in on the elements their customers find most valuable. When users have the option to obtain anything they want within a matter of taps, why will they choose you over your competitor? It’s going to be because of the assets you have, the services you offer, or the experience you provide–at a cost that makes sense. Most companies today try to synthesize all three of these things into one full package, but few are actually good at it. Not only that, but because these experiences are not ubiquitous, it means every experience will inevitably be different, which means further experience atrophy for everyone.

We’ve seen this time and time again with any number of companies and applications, legitimate or not, trying to force a user to live in their own experience regardless of user demand. It’s as simple as this: People want access to stuff. And if you’re going to try to get in their way, they’re going to get around it. It doesn’t matter if you’re an industry that’s existed for 100 years, or a platform that’s existed for 5. Users have the power to make you powerful, and they have the power to destroy you. And if you’re not going to be on the side of the user, or you’re going to try to tell them how they should access their stuff, history points to a future for you that is largely unfavorable, and ripe for disruption.

There’s a reason Walmart hasn’t burned to the ground and why Comcast is still in business. It’s not because of their wonderful customer service. It’s because of consolidation.

…there’s only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling.
Jim Barksdale

There’s a rich and healthy environment we’ve discovered with the advent of mobile platforms that’s helped move the power and reach of consolidated behemoths to many startups who half the world hasn’t even heard of. But what’s been overlooked, and seemingly forgotten during the last decade of application development, is the human experience. I’m not talking about 44px tall buttons that Apple describes in their Human Interface Design guidelines, I’m talking about the mere existence of humanity. Remembering who we’ve been building businesses and applications for to begin with. Who are we solving these problems for?

It seems like a lot of this has been overlooked because operating systems and development environments today encourage application development. It’s not like it doesn’t make sense.

Think about what you spend the majority of your time doing on your phone. Nine times out of ten you’re looking for something. You’re checking your email, you’re getting directions, finding a place, searching for an answer, checking in with friends. Now think about the number of applications you use for this. Chances are it’s not three, it’s about a million. Or maybe less — but still quite a bit right? Now think about how many of those do the exact same thing, and they deal with the same thing. Content.

Content is king. But–content doesn’t need to be presented in a brand new way every time you pull your phone out of your pocket. Why do we need to design entirely novel ways of interacting to find out the same information? I’m not asking why we need to iterate or improve. I’m asking why we don’t share a common core. Some applications borrow from each other sure, but each experience is about as varied as can be. Current mobile operating system environments hide information by masking it in the form of applications. This forces users to learn new ways to navigate in order to acquire the same information they could find in competing applications.

Here are a few examples:

I need a place to stay, so I could check AirBnB, Hotels Tonight, Kayak, HipMunk, Bing…you get the idea. But I need the same information from all of these sources. I need prices, location, availability, and images of the location. Each of these applications has a completely different interface, and costs the user significant amounts of time and energy. They need to download each application, create an account, and follow that up with learning the interface for said application. Each application has its own set of terms, payment, checkout process. If you can imagine a step along the way, it’s different across the board.

Say I want to check up on friends or family: I could check Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr…etc. The media is the same. It’s all going to be photos, video or text, yet the application traps all of the content. Why? To drive user behavior towards an end goal of more clicks, more ads, more…whatever. One could argue applications help push experience forward by creating competition. Tinder changed the online dating scene by reducing browsing to a swipe. The same could be done for many other contexts.

These examples are just a few of literally tens of thousands, but now is as good a time as any to step back think about why we’re actively building forward in this direction.

Why isn’t there an operating system that caters to the needs of humans first?Why aren’t we solving for the way humans function, and not the way the market or environment happens to be? As humans we’re solving for one of two things — wants or needs. I want knowledge, answers, services, or a wide array of other things. Wants gets very hairy, very quickly. Needs on the other hand are very rudimentary. I need food. I need water. I need shelter. If you’re with Maslow you’re also needing sex here, but I’m less interested in going down that rabbit-hole right this second, so let’s just go with food, water and shelter.

Whether or not this manifests as an operating system itself, or an all encompassing application like Finder in MacOS, what’s most important is what the resulting environment ends up accomplishing.

Part 2: The Concept and Foundation

The following tenets explain the of concepts and foundation of a theoretical operating system called Humanic. A system centered around human needs first and foremost.

The goal of Humanic is to get out of the way in order to become a digital companion to human nature by addressing basic human wants and needs. It’s less important that something is or is not an application. What is important is addressing user intent as quickly and efficiently as possible. In order to do so the focus is on creating a lightweight structure that can work together harmoniously.

What is important is addressing user intent as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The structure of Humanic is comprised of three pillars: Experience, Functionality, and Media. Each pillar is defined by a series of elements.

1. Experience

The experience is what people will be directly interacting with most. They may not understand the way something works behind the scenes, but they will know what they are looking for, and how they expect to get there.

Intent

This is the most fundamental part of why Humanic exists. Without intent, there isn’t a purpose for a Humanic Operating System.

Constitution

An set of expectations established by users that define the methods by which users aim to pursue intent.

Interface

What the user sees, interacts with, and assumes is doing the work in the pursuit of their intent.

2. Functionality

This is how the sausage gets made. This gives people the ability to turn intent into useful information.

Behavior

The interactive layer that helps design the feeling of a mechanism.

Mechanisms

An instrument that is used in the pursuit of function.

Engine

The functional methods by which intent is actually being pursued.

3. Media

This is the information people want, they way it should be, from the sources they choose.

Content

Any information or media provided by a source.

Context

Any meta or contextual information that needs to go along with content.

Source

A contributor, creator, or curator of content.

Besides helping create definition, the three pillars of structure allow for elemental growth paths. This means that elements within the structure of Humanic can evolve as needed without refactoring the entire operating system.

Abstraction in harmony

While structure helps define a backbone for Humanic, the pillars and elements should exist as a cohesive experience. No single pillar’s abstraction is useful without the the harmonious entanglement of its counterparts. This is why harmony as a concept must be understood and respected when envisioning, or extending the Humanic experience. Without harmonious abstraction, Humanic is an amalgamation of ideas.

Where the intention of this structure is to define elements, and abstract them at scale, harmony is intended to consolidate these elements in order to seamlessly addresses user intent. The easiest way to understand harmony within Humanic is to conceptually build the system from the ground up. Let’s start at our most crucial element — intent. Without having an intent, there is no rationale for a user to interact with a system to begin with.

Intent is the first thing a user will participate in–knowingly or unknowingly.

Think about pulling your phone out of your pocket. Chances are it’s not just to put it back in your pocket, you want to create a note, ask a question, or check the time. All of these are intentions.

Once an intent is defined a Function becomes defined. Any defined Function requires an Engine in order to fulfill a users request for that intent. This is what powers any given Intent, and is made interactive by the use of Mechanisms. Mechanisms are interactive tools for users to understand and communicate with the operating system. Think of Mechanisms as translation points between the user request and a system function. They could be radio buttons, combo boxes, date/time pickers, or any method in which a user interacts with the system. Mechanisms are made more evident to users through the use of Behaviors. Behaviors are allusions or metaphors that lead the user to understand how a mechanisms will affect a function.

If the previous paragraph was too much of a dive into this logic, here’s a more practical analogy. Imagine you’re in a car, and you want to go forward. This is communicated to the literal engine through a throttle mechanism. The throttle is interacted with through a behavior, and since you’re in a car, this is likely you pressing your foot into a pedal. If you were on a motorcycle your intent, engine, and mechanism would be the same, but your behavior is what differs. You use your hand and twist on the a handle in order to control the throttle (a mechanism).

Let’s stick with this car analogy for a minute. In the paragraph above, we described an intent being transformed into a function. If we were to analyze the parts described we had one user defined concept, and three system defined concepts. The user defined the intent, and the system (or company) defined the engine, mechanisms, and behaviors. If we were going to go further down this path into the experience spectrum, we would see that the interface, and constitution were also not user defined. If those were to be analogized, the interface would be the way this pedal, in this particular company’s make and model of this car, looks. The way your foot rests on the pedal is setup in the way the company intended, and is the color and material it is because that is what the company intended. And every one of this company’s cars comes ‘standard’ with this sort of pedal. It’s not defined by you, the user. Nothing you interact with in the car is. The way you roll down the windows, the way you turn it on, lock the doors, open the gas cap, or even the colors available to you aren’t defined by the user. They are defined by the company.

It’s not defined by you, the user…They are defined by the company.

Now let’s take this analogy a little further. For the sake of adding some additional tangibles to this situation, we’ll say the car we were using was a Fiat500. Now having driven a Fiat500 recently, I can tell you there were at least two strange behaviors, mechanisms, and interfaces that I dealt with in the car itself. One: In order to lock the doors, you push in the door handle. Two: The controls for both windows are buttons in the center console. These were all selected by Fiat. I did not select the mechanism for the door handle, or the behavior or interface for the window controls. Now in almost every car I’ve ever been in, these functions (locking the door, rolling up/down the windows are done via some interaction with the door). The function here is not the issue for me, the user. The issue for me is the other three parts. I didn’t find it intuitive that the door handle being pushed in was the way to lock it. I would have preferred a different mechanism, let’s say the same one found in a Honda Civic where a rocker button engages or disengages the lock along with an indicator that shows a lock/unlock icon or color. Say I also wanted to move the window control mechanism to the door, but using a button found in a Nissan Altima. I as a user, have an idea of how I want things to look (interface) and how I want to interact with them (behaviors and mechanisms).

I don’t really care what Fiat, Honda, or Nissan want me to do. Nor do I think any of them single handedly can build the perfect car for me, and everyone simultaneously. But that’s the constraint they deal with working in the real world, with physical objects. But those who build digital things have the capability to stop building an application for the lowest common denominator while allowing ourselves to contribute in our strongest suit. Maybe our Map engine is the best one out there. Maybe it’s our scroll bar interface. Maybe it’s our swipe to like behavior. The point is — we don’t all need to rebuild everything, every time. We can build, iterate, and contribute to the best human experience possible, by focusing on the original user intent, and the requirements for that intent.

Why are we doing any of this anyway?

As designers, developers, and entrepreneurs we need to think about this holistically.We need to remember why we as humans are carrying these devices around, rather than focusing on how we’re going to make money with it.

In an era where people have access to such a wide array of information, so much is done by operating systems, and application creators in order to churn a profit in their direction. So much developer time, designer time, and more importantly user time could be saved simply by better examining human nature.

Is it almost noon? Chances are we’re about to look for lunch. But rather than putting answers within arms reach, everyone is required to enter a slog of unpredictable behaviors in order to find an amalgamation of results from a few different sources. For the sake of proving a point let’s just walk through the idea of getting lunch.

1. It’s 11:45am, so it’s lunch time.
2. A user pulls their phone out of their pocket
3. The user unlocks their phone
4. The user finds an app like Foursquare
5. The user searches or browses for lunch spots
6. The user examines reviews, tips, etc
7. The user exits the application
8. The user opens Yelp in order to find similar, but slightly different information.
9. The user searches or browses this application
10. The user finds a restaurant near them
11. The user looks to find out how much the restaurant costs
12. The user looks to find out when the restaurant is open
13. The user determines this restaurant to be suitable
14. The application by default uses the systems default mapping software which the user does not like.
15. The user does a long hold in order to copy the restaurant address
16. The user exits the application
17. The user finds their preferred mapping software on their phone
18. The user pastes the address in the search field
19. The user taps a button to get directions to the restaurant
20. The user goes to the restaurant.

Time Spent: 1:48

So much time can be saved simply by thinking about this system not just based on user intent, but by human nature and the experiences we all go through everyday. We might all be unique snowflakes in our own wonderful way, but if there are fifty applications completing the same task, chances are the human experience throughout is common, it’s the minutia that’s different.

Part 3

Can a Humanic operating system become real? How feasible is it as a concept?

In exploring the idea of a Humanic Operating System, I’d like to question the feasibility and realities of how it may come to be, and begin a dialogue with you to determine next steps.

Neat idea, but how does it make money?

A great and important question. The answer can vary depending on intent, feedback, and execution. An even simpler way of answering this question is this: It’s up to you. That’s not to say I have no idea, I have some idea. However, I’m a designer and an entrepreneur, not an economist. An economist would be better equipped to answer this question. I am however…the one writing all of this, so here’s a few thoughts, ideas, and considerations.

1. By abstracting the functional components of any given application or service, we create a larger pool of capable workers, customers, and paths to new revenue models.

Let’s look at someone like AirBnB as an example. They’re known for creating a market where there wasn’t one by using design and compelling photography — making a questionable inventory sellable. If I was to tell my Mom that I was going to stay in Flagstaff, Arizona at a strangers house I found on the internet, she would think I’m setting myself up to get murdered. By introducing picturesque photography and designing a robust product they’ve made the idea of staying with strangers feel safe and appealing rather than risky or scary.

Their content and design helped turn an idea into a market. There are many elements of what they built, and what other product companies have built, that are — by and large — ubiquitous elements. And it’s this ubiquity that I think is not only an beacon for a better experience, but an opportunity for a new way to generate revenue.

When you go to airbnb.com, or open up their app, the first thing you see besides a giant background picture or video, and a search box for a location, an input for a start date, end date, and number of people.

Can you guess how many people use this same series of objects within their website and applications? The answer is far greater than zero. Just to name a few off the cuff: Kayak, HipMunk, Orbitz, Travelocity, Booking.com, Priceline, Google Flights, or really any travel, hotel, car rental application. This isn’t even taking into the account this general concept is used beyond the idea of travel related booking — just in order to determine a simple set of parameters.

I want to go to X at Y date until Z date.

Yet here we are — at the DMV version of form hell. Frequently filling out the same information with an inconsistent experience model.

What if as a user, you were able to determine the way this was done — always — no matter who or where you were getting this information from, or where you were sending it to? What if you had an expectation, and it was always met? Would that be a valuable way to save the energy your mind is expending figuring this junk out constantly? I think so. And this place, start date, end date, finish thing is just one example of the repetitive inconsistency we experience constantly as humans. And all we want to fill out is a dumb box.

And here’s the thing. I don’t know about you, but I pay for things that save time. Or things that do something better than something else. The easier it is to sell me on something, the more likely I am to buy it.

If you’re trying to sell me on using Orbitz over Kayak, we’re going to have to talk about it. What are you selling me on? The price? The experience? The service? There’s so much to sell, and the cost of selling is high.

My bet is this:

1. Selling components is easier than selling an application.
2. Markets can be created and defined by establishing and evolving intent.
3. More profit can be generated by not maintaining a staff to manage incompetencies within a company.

Here are a few scenarios to illustrate this point.

Scenario A

I’m trying to sell houses in Las Vegas. I know that these houses exist, but I don’t know anything about photography, which might be crucial in order for me to you know…sell houses. In todays terms, we’re talking about going out and finding a web designer or developer and a photographer, hoping that somehow we can pay these people to make something so that I can sell these houses. Here’s the thing. This is going to cost me money. I don’t know if it’s going to work, and I definitely don’t know how to fix it if anything breaks. So the service I’m about to provide — will not be my core competency.

Now let’s take this same person, and imagine a world in which Humanic exists. I can now simply be a Source of information, and generate revenue as a Source. I know these houses exist, at XYZ place, and that information is valuable, just not without the parts I’m not competent at providing. Perhaps if I’m able to market myself as a source of great information, I’ll lead myself to greater streams of content creators such as photographers, or videographers — working to help me sell my houses. We both have vested interest, and can both profit in different ways.

Scenario B

I’m a person who shops online. Believe it or not, just like in real life, I don’t only shop at one store, I shop at many. Amazon, Delta, Frank and Oak, Flexibits, Adobe and who knows where else. You get it — I don’t buy everything from one place. I buy many things, from many places. Unlike real life however, the way I check out is without fail, a shit show of inconsistency.

There are a couple of quick and easy points about the checkout process itself that are simply infuriating, and definitely do not mimic real life payment procedures.

In real life — I’m paying cash, credit, debit, or check (If it’s 1992 and I’m watching Coming to America. Or if it’s 2016 and I’m paying rent). I have my widget or whatever it is that I’m buying, and sure the cart process is different, but when it comes to paying — it’s always the same. And if it isn’t, I’m definitely confused. On mobile and online, you’re dealing with people like Amazon that are A/B testing their checkout process to make it as flawless as can be, and people who sell widgets on their website who paid some web developer to make them a Wordpress site with payment plugin they found. How do you think that is from an experience point of view? Security point of view? Or literally any other point of view? It’s awful, inconsistent, and unreliable.

What if you could say, “Look, I don’t care where I buy anything from, the payment goes through this checkout process every single time. I the user have determined that I enjoy using Stripe’s checkout and payment process the most. And if I’m buying anything, I’m using this familiar experience to do so.” This idea leads to idea 2 for revenue generation.

2. Sharing is caring.

By abstracting the processes used throughout this system, payments can trickle through so to speak. I’m not trying to use Reaganomics on this, but trickle-through is roughly what I would see happening.

What Humanic is most dedicated to doing is translating intent into action and information. We should not be focused on designing and developing custom applications, but rather the components that can improve the methods by which user intent is best translated. What this means is not only can we better meet user intent, which is great, but we can more easily track the components that impact the bottom line of any service or sale as well. Assuming we can do that, perhaps we can share profit accordingly.

If I’m AirBnB, and I have the listings I’ve got, and I can track that this Map view results in more sales than another map view, should I not be paying some sort of kickback there? If I’m Best Buy and I see that users browsing my inventory in Interface A buy more than Interface B, should the inventory not get a kickback? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. But either way I believe those are monetization options. Maybe the user just loves browsing in a certain way, so much so that they would pay to do so. Maybe they should be given the option to do so, and it shouldn’t really be the choice of the provider of inventory, content, or what have you.

When it comes the the Humanic economy, I see a correlation between user behaviors and economic impact. A place where inventory holders are able to provide content and generate more revenue by allowing those who build better functionality, and experiences do what they’re best at.

If we look at the way apps have connected us to the real world without having to physically participate. Think about what impact abstracting the world in our pocket would do. Not just to the bottom line, but to how we can solve problems, hone in on solutions, and ultimately build better human experiences.

If you build it, does it matter?

A large part of why I started thinking about this concept was simply because I was wondering what happens to the devices we’ve used and discarded. And what this means for emerging markets. Does this mean we’re about to do 200% more damage than we’ve already done building new devices and distributing them to even more people, just to have them discarded? Would it be feasible to build a lightweight barebones system for older devices while delivering basic content to them? Would that benefit emerging markets? Could we give old devices new life, and an update that makes them useful to those who never had a smartphone before? Or maybe those who have but just don’t want new stuff, they just want basic stuff.

Can you just tell me how the heck to get home? I don’t know where I am. I have to visit my family for Christmas, when can I go, and how much does it cost? Is there any decent food around me? I’m starving!

I’m not asking for some sort of CryEngine test for phones. I’m asking for the opposite. What’s the lightest thing I can build to make an old device useable. And if I’ve got a device that is new, or powerful, can I give myself a ubiquitous experience that I enjoy, am familiar with, and can customize to my liking? Where’s that device? Where’s that system? How do I get it?

How does this happen anyway?

The questions, “How does any of this become real? Should this be real? Does anyone care about this?” come to mind. It would require a lot of work, and may not end up being exactly as I’ve written, but that’s how most ideas end up. Not exactly as described. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. But it’s hard to know without trying, and I’d rather start somewhere.

If any of this is resonating with you, the next step for you would be to engage with me in a dialogue. Whether that means discussing how humanics as a concept may apply to other industries, or feasible technical paths to making Humanic as an operating system a reality. I don’t want to build this thing alone, and I certainly don’t have the answers to it all, but if we can start to question the ways and reasons we’re building things—I’ll be happier than I was when I started writing this.

Reading Complete ✅

If you’ve managed to read this far, you have read all three pieces of the Humanic trilogy and I can’t thank you enough. I’m not looking for shameless promotion…but I am. So please share this with your friends and say hi to me on the internet somewhere. Or shoot me an email at mark@budbud.co

*

The statistic depicts the total number of smartphone users worldwide from 2014 to 2020. For 2016, the number of smartphone users is forecast to reach 2.1 billion. The number of mobile phone users in the world is expected to pass the five billion mark by 2019.

Number of smartphone users worldwide 2014–2020 | Statista

In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living. As of August 2016 , it was estimated at 7.4 billion. The United Nations estimates it will further increase to 11.2 billion in the year 2100.

World population — Wikipedia

All of this was published in Jun 21, 2017, probably worth reviewing and seeing what stuck, what didn't, and if any of it makes sense in todays world.

The Humanic Operating System: Part 1

Over the past few years, as a founder of a product design and development company, I’ve been thinking a lot about a little question. What is the impact of technology on humanity? Among startups and…

MediumMark Johnson

The Humanic Operating System: Part 2

The following tenets explain the of concepts and foundation of a theoretical operating system called Humanic. A system centered around human needs first and foremost. The goal of Humanic is to get…

MediumMark Johnson

The Humanic Operating System: Part 3

In exploring the idea of a Humanic Operating System, I’d like to question the feasibility and realities of how it may come to be, and begin a dialogue with you to determine next steps. A great and…

MediumMark Johnson

Service design is a part of your brand, and bad design can ruin your day.

I know it's not a big deal. And I know this title is dramatic.

But...the sheer amount of wasted human energy in order to half-design something, or worse–Intentionally design something that's horrible—can ruin a persons day, week, month, year, or even their life! I mean just think of bad service design at hospitals. I think about it all the time. Literal life or death situations are designed poorly, every single day.

Again. Dramatic, I know. But not untrue.

To chill things out a bit, and be a touch more practical, check out this awful downgrading experience from Spotify. I recently downgraded from Premium down to Free, after paying for it for...ever? Since they offered paid plans probably.

Why offer your product for free in a way that doesn't behave similarly to the way the paid version does? This is just called Pandora, isn't it? Whatever. Fine.

Why are you giving me so much aesthetically massive information trying to persuade me not to cancel? I'm just trying to cancel this service. It's not a big deal for me, but you're making it a big deal. Am I about to die because of this? No. So why are you making it feel like I'm about to die?

Oh great. Guilt. My favorite feeling.

Part of this is clever, I'll give them that. I like that the tracks spell out something, that's neat. But the messaging and feeling overall is guilting me to keep my account.

I never write negative support in those "Would you recommend." or "Why are you leaving" forms. For this one. I did. And I left a lot. And now I'm writing this about it. That's how frustrating this experience was.

Why did I write a lot about this, and why am I still writing right now?

I've used Spotify forever. I get they didn't pay people well, but that's a problem that's industry/world/everything-wide really. I'm not letting them off the hook, but they provide a lot of value generally...However. I started shopping around and seeing who pays out more to artists. And also who offers a better service, and for the last year or so I landed on a combo of Tidal and Soundcloud. Which is probably wrong and I'm out of my mind for doing that, but I kind of don't care? It works for me.

Spotify has lied to me for years and I'm tired of that.

Remember when Spotify announced Spotify Hi-Fi in February of 2021!? 2 years ago?! I do.

Since then, Apple Music has had Lossless audio, Tidal has, and I believe Soundcloud has too, but I'm too lazy to look that up right now. (Just being honest).

Both Apple Music and Tidal sound significantly different (better) to me, and I'm not being some snob telling you what speakers or headphones to buy. I'm just saying—everything I listen to on there sounds better. Just by default. I pay literally double just for that. (And because I hate Apple Music with a passion, but that's an entirely different topic to write about)

5 days ago Spotify's CEO said "coming at some point."

Great. So maybe it'll arrive eventually. What a great announcement. Also love that they introduced and stopped shipping the Car Thing—A somewhat random device that presumably very few asked for, given it's ultimate demise.

Looking for the opposite of a bad time?

Check out TunnelBear.

TunnelBear was such a memorable experience, I'm literally happy to pay them anytime I need a VPN or other things they offer. I just feel like they care about what they're doing. They're having fun. And crucially—They're not making me feel like trash for doing a trivial task any human with technology may do—Cancel a thing they were using.

The logo: Questionable. A few other design details: Questionable. The service: Functional. The energy: Silly and contagious. For a thing that could be boring and make me hate my life (VPN stuff?) they could go all Verizon or New York Times and make me call them or talk to a human or a chat bot to confirm that I indeed would like to cancel my service, but they don't do that!

They make it fun to cancel. They make it memorable. And I've not only come back, but I've told friends about it. I've shown it off at meetings at multiple jobs I've had. It's just a good example of humans doing human things, and not business bros making stupid KPI moves that ruin human lives, but move business metrics.

Things you say, and the way you treat people affect the way people feel about you. If you say one thing, and do another, it's a bad time. When it comes to Spotify's service and design—it just doesn't behave in a way I believe in anymore. So until that changes, I'm pretty alright being done with it.

The boy compressed time in a way only he knew how. He did as much as he could to live his life. Flying from Los Angeles to Tokyo to see the world. He ate cuisine that wouldn’t have been possible just two hundred years prior. He bought wares manufactured by dozens of hands from dozens of lands. The materials within contained rare metals and magnets dug from the depths of the land he stood on.

Hundreds of years ago he would have had to board a ship—risking his life—and sail the sea for months just to step on that very same soil.

Little did he know he was collapsing time and the course of humanity with every step he took. He felt as if he saved time and lived life by jamming these experiences through his body and mind. Unconsciously he crushed the resources and ability of the planet to contribute nourishment in the form of fuel. Whether it be in the form of gasoline or food.

In his lifetime the boy would not experience his own effects. Like the plane flying him to Tokyo, it only knew where it was going—not the wake it left behind.

The boy stole from the planet. He stole from future generations. Unintentionally of course, but stolen none the less.

Future generations lived a live of scarcity and confusion. A pure sense of wonder as to how civilization centuries past had built such massive structures. How they transported so many people to so many places. How they moved these gargantuan objects? How did they survive?

Their collapse seemed all but obvious.

They expect greater fuel than they consumed.

They collapsed their own time and expanded ours.

Months after sharing a look back at the Vegas Vernacular project, I returned to Las Vegas to check back in on as much signage as I could within the time I had there.

More photos to come.

Looking Back at the Vegas Vernacular Project

It’s been nearly 9 years since Bryan McCormick, Geoffrey Ellis, a handful of photographers, and I spent months capturing as much of Downtown Las Vegas as possible in an effort to preserve the vernacular history remaining in Downtown Las Vegas.

BudsMark Johnson

In my 10+ years working in various editorial workflows, the ability to offer feedback on writing has been table-stakes.

Whether in newsrooms or on marketing teams, at public broadcasters or Fortune 500 companies, the writers and editors I’ve worked with have all taken the skill of giving (and receiving) useful notes for granted.

Learning to edit is something writers pick up while honing our craft. Although some people may seem like innate editors, we've all spent time learning this skill. Whether in journalism school (like me), on the job, or in classes, mastering the art of editing is part of being a writer.

And, as writers, receiving a heavily marked-up draft is just a part of the process.

“That’s cool, but I’m not a professional writer. What do you want me to do?”

— You, probably.

For my entire working life, I’ve usually been the assignment editor, writer, story editor, fact-checker, copyeditor, producer, and publisher on the majority of my projects.

If you’ve ever worked in editorial, you’ll know each of these are typically distinct jobs (and for good reason). After all, even just catching your own typos is hard enough, let alone questioning your own voice, tone, and execution of a piece.

If you haven't worked with a writer before, these jobs probably all sound the same. I assure you, they are not!

Much of what I'm collaborating on these days requires getting feedback from non-writers (like you!) on text that I've prepared for them. Because they've never done this before, they have no idea where to start. Completely understandable!

Instead of being pedantic about the different kinds of editing (honestly, who has the time?), my strategy is to give non-writers pointed instructions on how to be helpful when providing feedback.

And guess what? With a little guidance, they generally do a great job!

"Ok, so what kind of edits are actually helpful?"

I'm glad you asked!

First of all, it can be helpful to think of edits as feedback, not criticism.

The unspoken agreement of giving and receiving edits is that a) it’s not personal, and b) we're focusing on what needs to exist instead of what's on the page right now.

Second, our shared goal is making the writing better through collaboration.

Useful feedback does two things:

1. Names what is working so it doesn’t get cut in a later draft
2. Identifies what needs to change to take the work where it needs to go

Edits that do either of these things are helpful. Yay!

If your edits don’t do either of these things, you’re probably a Kevin — sorry, I don't make the rules!

10 tips for giving useful copy feedback (even if you’ve never done it before and aren't totally sure what to do)

AKA surefire ways of adding notes that do one of the helpful things noted above.

If you're ever asked to provide copy feedback, consider this a list of instructions for what to do next.

1. Before giving edits, ask, “What kind of feedback are you looking for at this stage?”

An experienced writer will typically tell you what types of editing are most helpful when they deliver a draft, but sometimes we forget.

If the writer hasn't indicated this, clarifying what they need from you at this stage makes the process faster and more satisfying for everyone.

2. Read the copy twice before making notes or suggestions

The first time, you're reading to see what is on the page.

The second time, you're using a critical eye and seeing what stands out or needs attention.

Add your notes on a third pass through the text.

3. Get very specific

Identify the exact word, phrase, or idea that isn’t clicking, or ideas to cut out.

Think “The word ___ isn’t appropriate for our brand,” not “This isn’t on-brand.”

More “This sentence is too long and confusing,” and less “This doesn’t make sense.”

4. Offer suggestions for what you want to see instead

Even if you feel like your idea is only half-baked, indicate what you want to see or needs to change in the next draft.

“Can we try a more playful tone?” gives more direction than “This feels flat.”

5. Don’t rewrite

You’re working with a writer — let them do their job.

Asking clarifying questions like “What do you mean by this?” or "What point are you trying to make here?" is more helpful than replacing what we wrote, I promise!

6. If you have more than two people giving feedback, consolidate the notes

Delegate the task of providing edits to a single person.

This makes it easier for the writer to know when all the notes are in and with whom they should be following up.

7. Track changes

If you must edit a draft, use “Suggesting” mode.

8. Indicate things you like

Leaving comments like “Love this” or “Good headline” shows the writer they’re barking up the right tree.

9. Provide examples

Show the writer what you’re looking for and indicate what, exactly, resonates with you.

Is it the tone? Structure? Length? Get specific, even if it means looking at what your competitors are doing.

10. When in doubt, cut it out.

This old chestnut from journalism applies everywhere. Err on the side of trimming anything that doesn’t quite fit.

"See, not so bad!"

— Me, definitely.

Of course, your mileage may vary with these tips depending on who you're working with. But, at the very least, you now have a sense of the kinds of edits that are genuinely productive.

Christine is the founder & principal of Flic Flac, a words-only creative studio.

Preface

It's been nearly 9 years since Bryan McCormick, Geoffrey Ellis, a handful of photographers, and I spent months capturing as much of Downtown Las Vegas as possible in an effort to preserve the vernacular history remaining in Downtown Las Vegas.

This piece is intented to summarize what we can remember and what we captured as part of the Vegas Vernacular Project. It's broken into a bit of story for context, a map, an outline structure, and photography of the work itself.

There are plenty of stories to be told, themes to be explored, artists to highlight, and photographers to talk to. But this is our starting point. We may add, remove, refine, and do whatever it takes to best showcase the work we captured.

The Story

It's 2012 and my good bud Bryan McCormick and I crush a couple of Slap and Tickles (A PB&J with oven roasted bacon. What's not to love?) at The Beat Coffeehouse while discussing Zappos' upcoming move to Downtown Las Vegas.  CEO Tony Hsieh was about to kick off one of the most ambitious and bizarre entrepreneurial adventures in the country.

He was moving the Zappos headquarters from the dry suburban landscape of Henderson, Nevada to the former City Hall building in the heart of Downtown Las Vegas. The move itself would be the equivalent of moving buildings in any other city with a robust downtown area, but in Las Vegas it meant moving thousands of employees to an area with high crime, common meth use, and effectively no food, drink, or retail. Not ideal.

City Hall was effectively a cocoon connecting the larvae of city government officials from their isolated suburban lives to a parking garage with an elevated walkway to the City Hall building itself. Literally elevating them, and obfuscating the "undesirables" struggling below them. The city had a hard time providing for, protecting, and generally speaking—caring for the homeless population.

Las Vegas is a city without limits, and often assumed—without history. Not without merit. It's a city that doesn't really preserve buildings as often as they blow them up. Much of that attitude makes Vegas exactly what it is. A place that's always new. Always re-inventing itself. Always saying yes.

How bad is your idea? Make it bigger. Make it dumber. There isn't room for a middle ground in a place full of ideas pushed so far they become good. Or at least interesting.

Do you have a number of Chuck E. Cheese animatronic characters laying around? Great. Let's swap those faces and bodies out with  the members of Kiss. Load them with songs, and make a ridiculous mini-golf experience around that idea. Kiss Mini Golf.

What's your budget for giant snails and a cast of incredibly talented circus performers. A lot? Great. Cirque du Soleil.

Do we have water? Not really. But we have a reservoir... Great—let's build a city that can support over 2 million people. Las Vegas.

Where most American cities have some semblance of an urban core, Las Vegas's was effectively suburban shell with a hollow and forgotten core. But, with Zappos moving dowtown, that was all about to change. The largest part of this move downtown was an endeavor called the Downtown Project. A $350 millon dollar project to transform Downtown Las Vegas into the most community-focused large city in the world. Investing $100 million in real estate, $100 million in residential development, $50 million in small businesses, $50 million in education, and $50 million in tech startups through the VegasTech Fund.

Knowing this project was about to kick off—and knowing Las Vegas's propensity for blowing up the old to build anew, Bryan and I talked about documenting as much of Downtown Las Vegas as humanly possible via a collective effort called the Vegas Vernacular Project. We were particularly concerned with the actual vernacular of the city from a signage and typography standpoint. So much of Las Vegas's character comes from what locals don't even realize is there until it's gone, or until they leave. The neon and metal signage of Betty Willis. The hand painted murals of Wendell Edwards. The hand lettering of King Richard.

With white-washing a common practice in which an abanonded building are quickly and entirely coated in white paint—a prominent practice removing the history of any building in a hurry—we had to move fast.

Fortunately we were nearly immediately connected to the wonderful and talented photographer Geoffrey Ellis, who joined us in the project. Speaking for myself; Geoff and Bryan by far owned and elevated this project far beyond the kernels of conversation Bryan and I had. Most of my input was early on and from a locals perspective. I helped map where to find the work I was sure would disappear. Identifying the neighborhoods, alleys, and building that were sure to be targeted next.

We decided to work in the open and encourage folks in the community to come help us document as much as they felt able with whatever equipment they had. From there we documented.

Below you'll find photographs taken and contributed to the project by...

Geoffrey Ellis, Bryan McCormick, Mark Johnson, Nicholas Leonard, Krystal Ramirez, Pam Stuckey, Gulch Collective, Thomas Lee Bakofsky, Danny Szeto, Mike Manzano, Chris Shepherd, and many others...

Places

• Downtown Las Vegas
• Arts District
• Gateway District
• Boulder Highway
• North Las Vegas
• Historic Westside
• Las Vegas Boulevard South

People

The majority of this work was done by as far as we could identify—five artists. Surely there are more, but it's challenging to identify artists when names or signatures aren't found on the work itself. Without doing the artists a disservice, we want to be careful in identifying their work and make sure we're portraying them and attributing them to their work correctly.

Of what we do know, we can safely say much of Fremont Street in Downtown Las Vegas tends to showcase Jon Peterson's (Atomic Liquors, Gamblers General Store) and Joe Jones' (Bunkhouse, The Western) work. King Richard's work tends to be up and down Main Street, from the Gateway District, into the Arts District and into North Las Vegas. Wendell Edward's work was primarily illustrative and located in the Arts District. Betty Willis was a graphic designer, best known for designing the Welcome to Las Vegas sign, but we found she designed many of the signs we came across including the Blue Angel.

The Neon Museum Las Vegas | The history of Las Vegas through neon - Betty Willis: Neon Sign Artist

The Neon Museum is a non-profit 501 (c) 3 organization dedicated to preserving the city’s most iconic art form - the neon sign. Tour the Neon Boneyard today!

The Neon Museum Las Vegas | The history of Las Vegas through neon - Betty Willis: Neon Sign ArtistDerek Weis, Neon Museum Education & Engagement Manager

Artists

• King Richard
• Wendell Edwards
• Joe Jones
• Jon Peterson
• Betty Willis

Themes

You'll come across a number of themes in the work that follows, but capturing it together on a post of it's own may better showcase contrasting approaches to a single constraint or idea.

• Ampersands
• Office
• Illustrations
• !
• →

Downtown Las Vegas

The Ambassador East - Classic Las Vegas History Blog - Blog

Word comes from Friends of Classic Las Vegas supporters Brian Paco Alvarez and Allen Sandq...

Blog

Arts District

Gateway District

Historic Westside

Decades of segregation and mistrust complicate efforts to rekindle vibrant history of Las Vegas’ Historic Westside

Two efforts to achieve this goal — one led by community organizers and the other by the City of Las Vegas — are running concurrently, sometimes aligning, sometimes colliding. Both groups are aiming to incorporate the neighborhood in their work, but a history of racism and tension between the city an…

Savanna Strott

Gaming regulators hear pitch for $2B project in historic west Las Vegas

<p>The state Gaming Control Board on Wednesday told developers of a $2 billion project covering a five-by-16-block area in historic west Las Vegas to go back to the drawing board following a three-hour licensing hearing.</p>

Las Vegas Review-JournalResorts World is a rare finished project on north Strip

North Las Vegas

Boulder Highway

Las Vegas Boulevard

What's happened since 2012?

A lot.

What's Next?

Well, next year is our ten year anniversary so—who knows. Maybe go back and capture the same areas to see what changed. Investigate new areas? Make a book? Sky is the limit, but for now we're happy curating things here. There's still plenty of work to add, show, and add story to.

If you have any stories, imagery, or ideas to share please reach out to me at mark@budbud.co. Hope you enjoyed this.

Relevant Links

Photo project chronicles Las Vegas history via unheralded downtown signs

Geoffrey Ellis and a crew of three volunteers are on a treasure hunt at Main Street and Bonanza Road. At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much to discover, just a few buildings with names like “Don’t Do It Bail Bonds” and “Arrowhead Radiator Service.” Their signs aren’t printed, ...

Las Vegas SunBrian Nordli

Betty Willis (1924-2018) | American Experience | PBS

The “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign was created by one of Las Vegas’ pioneer commercial artists, a woman by the name of Betty Willis.

American ExperienceAmerican Experience

Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground

My friends and I fear for the day that the Blue Angel pulls a Wings of Desire and falls to earth. It’s coming. The iconic sign, designed by Betty Willis — she of the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas”...

DTLVGeoff Carter

Geoffrey Ellis Photography

Visual Storytellers: Capturing the ever-changing face of downtown

Vegas Vernacular on Facebook

Las Vegas Weekly: In Search of Mysterious Downtown Sign Artist King Richard

Photographers Bryan McCormick and Geoffrey Ellis Present a New Intimate Look at Blue Angel

TL SHOW FINAL from Bryan McCormick on Vimeo.

Abstract

In 2020, my friend Thayne, under the moniker The Travel Guide, released a second album. I drew some art for it. Album art prefaces sound. What you see sets the stage for what you hear. It's a fun communication opportunity in visual design.

Try it sometime, if you haven't. Here's how I go about it. And what I learned from a recent experience. My ultimate goal is to share with you a repeatable process for creating conceptual art, told through a case study.

Ideas in brief:
• Collaboration is the strongest salesman.
• Everyone is creative.
• Shared moodboards add clarity to abstract conversation.
• Copy is art (and art is implicit copy).
• Experimentation creates understanding.
• Discover, concept, experiment, execute.

Discover

Thayne has a strong mind for conceptual ideas in songwriting. I brought him along for the journey. Collaboration is brilliant. I'm not a good salesman. I'd rather we get to ideas together. Go with the river.

The album would be heard primarily on Spotify (or else, live). We looked at album covers from artists that inspire Thayne. I asked questions to understand his interests. What do we see? How is communication happening? What can we learn from the art & copy?

We talked about themes in the record. What is the tone? How does it feel? How might we give art and story symbiosis? The songs explore austere, pleading, and accepting experiences. Intriguing themes for visual fuel.

We exchanged reference images. A shared moodboarding approach adds clarity to abstract conversation. We gravitated to artful typography, a full canvas, and mechanical composition with human intervention.

Book jackets are a strong analog for album art. You want to communicate a key theme, without giving away the ending. You want to send a coded message that reveals itself after experiencing the content. Creativity thrives in constraint. We zeroed in on a lyric that captured the spirit of the whole.

"Nothing ever ends. The void gets into everything. Light is forever unwinding. We're adding nothing into none. Values cancelling. Pushing hard against the sea."

Concept

The album is titled "Good God! I Want to be Whole. An Album by the Travel Guide." That name contains wonderful emotion. We explored concepts that put the title on display. We felt these ideas could be beautiful if analog-printed on a 12" vinyl sleeve. They felt less impactful in a 160px Spotify thumbnail.

Other concepts explored austerity, absence, counterpoint. The ideas manipulate foreground and background to create interplay between art and copy. The graphic technique felt interesting, but lacked the optimism heard in the music.

We began to explore out-of-focus, textural photography. We selected images that evoke the interstitial experience of calm before or after a storm. Melancholic blues giving way to warm light. We wanted to capture how it feels to be just on the other side of resolution. Optimistic liminality.

Experiment

After deciding a concept, we discussed how we might bring greater meaning and intent to its elements. How might we enhance the communication without losing what's singing in the concept sketch? It was important for us to guide our refinement with decisions rooted in the music.

We aligned on a shared vocabulary of design elements. Then unpacked available creative affordances. We decided to explore variations to typography, composition, and gravity.

The sketch was typeset in Mercury Display. We aimed to test confidence in that selection. I typeset the album title in a range of serif families of disparate characteristics. In doing so, we discovered Cooper Light evoked a humbleness inline with the album's lyrics.

In the concept sketch, breaks and columns help readers to parse the title and artist. We sought a composition that would feel unimposing on the art, but also not invisible. It's tough to make a decision here without experiencing the relationship of the copy to the image.

We riffed on the texture of the artwork. The image is isolated from a photograph of the sea (or perhaps the forest?) at sunset (sunrise?). Film-grain and blur disguise time and subject. We sought to preserve the interstitial feeling. By adjusting how the image is cropped, we could steer interpretation. Am I looking at the sky? The shore? The sky reflecting off water? Am I underwater?

We distilled to three variable concepts. To make a decision, we looked back to our key themes. Which variation would best express the intended mood? The second concept, underwater, puts the listener into the perspective of the writer. You are not watching someone push against the sea — you are that person.

"Nothing ever ends. The void gets into everything. Light is forever unwinding. We're adding nothing into none. Values cancelling. Pushing hard against the sea."

Execute

Executing local album art for digital release is a much simpler process than physical release. You're designing the primary display panel. No back cover nor interior jacket. No dielines, mechanicals, press checks. I miss the camaraderie of that process, but appreciate the effectiveness and efficiency at which artists can now produce and distribute music.

I exported the art at high resolution and sent to Thayne via iMessage. He uploaded the album later that week. It released a month later. Easy breezy. Listen to "Good God! I Want to Be Whole. An Album by The Travel Guide" on Spotify.

Reach out if you'd like to share how this process has benefited you, what you learned, what you'd change, or if you'd like to collaborate.

I know there are a million articles on the conceptual niceties of value based services.  What I haven't read as much about is why hourly rates are bad. I'd like to focus on that in the hopes of  better understanding why value- and project-based pricing make more sense than hourly rates for design.

Here's what I'm covering —  from the lens of a designer.

1. Hourly rates are the worst. Here's why.
2. Sometimes hourly rates can be helpful.
3. How can you effectively charge people?
4. What you should charge and how you should do it.
5. Practical realities of pricing.

1. Hourly rates are the worst. Here's why.

They just are. Who likes being commoditized? I sure don't!

How many times has a client come to you, asked your rate, and then complained about the rate? Every time? Nearly every time? Your cost somehow becomes a problem, no matter what it is. It's the worst.

“Well my executive assistant’s son is in high school studying graphic design, and he said he'd do it for free, and it'd look great in his portfolio,” says the client.

What you really want to reply with is, “Well, he sounds like he stinks and has no bills to pay. Sounds like you'll get some great work from that person. Hire them. Fuck. Why are we talking?”

Instead, what ends up happening in these scenarios is we spend ten hours wasting time by emailing back and forth with you asking me to lower my rate and me explaining why I charge what I do.

If you don't like what I charge, do one of the following:

• Go find someone else who costs less. That's your problem, not mine.
• Increase your budget.
• Lower your expectations of what you can get for your budget.
• Raise your expectations about what I can deliver for you.
• Be fair and realistic about engaging a professional for a project.

Freelancers don't go around asking what your profit margins are, what your salary is, and the gap between what you and your average employee earns. I'd be willing to bet the annual difference is higher than the cost of the work being discussed.

Clients like you are paying designers like me to do something that makes you look better. The problem is, we have opposite interests when negotiating hourly rates.

Take, for example, efficiency. Clients usually want work done fast, cheap, and well. They can only pick two out of three.

Hourly rates create a de-incentivized workflow for the client-contractor relationship for two reasons. One, contractors are encouraged to lock in a cost on an hourly basis, which means time is the value that is being determined. Two, the client typically wants things done in a short amount of time. So time is automatically reduced to a low-value object.

If I have a lot of experience, I should value my time more because I can (theoretically) do more or add more value in less time. But, for whatever reason, many clients tend to have some theoretical hourly rate cap, which is less important than a hard project budget. A project budget helps set expectations better for value-based pricing, and for everyone generally.

If I told a client I could design their logo in five minutes, and they wanted to pay me for only five minutes, I’d never do that job, because they don’t value the work that’s being done. They value the time it’s being done in — which does not affect the value of the work.

They should be excited for both of us to save time, and pay a reasonable price for getting what they asked for — regardless of how little time it may take.

Here's a relevant Paula Scher story.

2. Sometimes hourly rates can be helpful. Here's how.

“Wait, but you just…” — You, probably.

I know what I said. They're still the worst. But, they can be helpful from an expectation setting standpoint.

Providing a ballpark hourly rate can help the client understand the general price of a project.

The reality is, for many potential clients, it may be their first time contracting someone to do the thing they’re asking you to deliver. They don't know the rates. They don't have expectations of cost. And if they do, it's probably a hopeful idea on the lower end of what they have heard.

In the same way I know a Ferrari is expensive (but I don't necessarily know how expensive) if I had to get one, I’d hope it's on the lower end of whatever cost I think it is.

For the client, they also very likely do not know or understand the cost-to-value relationship of the work they're asking you to do. They view it as a cost, not an investment in themself or their business.

The way they see it is that they’re paying you to do something for them. It's viewed as an exchange. In the most basic terms, it is.

But in reality if I'm paying someone to make a brand for me, I'm asking them to do something hard, to make me look credible — so other people think their business is a legit thing, a big deal, and they have their shit together.

A logo. A menu. An app. They all do something when it comes to setting and delivering upon consumer expectations. And that value is hard to quantify, which is precisely why hourly rates are the worst.

But, they are helpful in setting budget expectations (and realities) that both you and your client can agree upon.

For example:

Me: “My rate is $375/hr."

Client: “Oh, that's way too high.”

Me: “Well, I work fast. I have plenty of experience. I'll be clear about the process.”

Client: “Well my budget is $125/hr.”

Well... now what?

3. How can you effectively charge people?

The client is giving me new information: they have a budget.

They probably said they didn't have one, but now that you're sharing your rate with them, suddenly they have one and it's firm.

They told me that they can afford $125/hr. How long can they afford that for? A day? A week? A month? A year? What’s the timeline?

I can work three hours at $125/hr and make the same as I would in one at $375. So that feels like a real loss for me. But let's do some quick math.

If they can afford $125/hr for up to 48 hours ($6,000), then I actually know their total budget and time expectations. We can work with that.

Can I reasonably produce the same type and quality of work they're expecting within 1/3 of that time? Do I really work faster, or do I just want to be making more per hour? Both "yes" and "no" are fine answers here.

But my point is, just by talking about the hourly rate, we can set expectations. That’s the point of hourly rates in the first place.

At some point it's up to both parties to decide if it's worth it to them. Is it worth my time to work on this project at all, or do I just need to pay rent? Am I willing to reduce my rate to work with this person? Should I charge a higher rate to work with this person? How painful or joyful will it be? How will I feel doing it?

The client is thinking the same thing.

How much should this cost? How badly do I want this person to work on my project? How valuable do I find this type of work, anyway? And one of the final questions might be, "Should we do this in-house, or hire for this role instead?"

There's an inflection point where contracting just doesn't make financial sense for the client anymore. Maybe that's not true from a value-based pricing standpoint, as designers aren't interchangeable. But from a numbers perspective, it tracks.

For example, your client could be paying a contractor $300,000 to work for six months on something you'd hire a designer for at an annual salary of $140,000 per year. You’d likely get wildly different results.

So what the hell should you do?

The tl;dr is annoyingly common: It depends.

4. What you should charge and how you should do it.

As the client, I'd think...

If this work is just a task, it's basically a commodity.

Don't waste your time figuring out why people charge what they charge. Be candid about what you need, your budget, and your expectations. If someone charges too much for you (remember, "expensive" is relative), see if they're flexible. If they're not, either adjust your expectations or move on. Don't devalue people’s work because it isn't in your budget. Your budget is your problem, not theirs

If this work is valuable to you and your business...

Set your expectations, try to keep it reasonable, and add some buffer.

Do you want it done in less time than what reasonable people would describe as “humanly possible”? Then you’re looking at contracting for the work. If you're going this route, it's going to be more expensive than hiring; that's what contractors are for. They help you in a pinch.

If you want to hire a full-timer, expect that hiring process to take an appropriate amount of time (AKA more than four seconds). Hiring the right person who is going to add value in the way that you want is hard. Don’t rush it.

What should I do as the designer?

My general advice for freelancers is to run your freelance career as if it were an agency (whether you think of yourself that way or not). Doing this sets you up for success in many ways. When you do this, pricing decisions are clearly about business, and not about you personally.

If it's about you, the client can ask (rude) questions like what your rent is, why you need the money, and really insensitive stuff like that. I don't know if that's legal, but it's definitely happened to me multiple times. It's a shitty relationship and a pitfall I learned early on. Clients easily consider you as a person who has bare-minimum expenses, and that is a really low starting point. You don't want that.

There are also often some weird expectations that the client's work would be good for your portfolio, or that you’re desperate for work. Well, you’re adding value to their company. If you do a good job, it’s mutually beneficial by default — or it should be. You have no penance to pay to some random company telling you that it’ll be great for you.

Agencies have overhead and these costs are often mysterious. Even if you are an individual, if you're perceived as an agency, then you (the person) aren’t as much of a focus. You aren't expensive. The agency is and they are taking care of your fee for service. This gives you some separation from work and boundaries for the client to respect. There are so many questions when setting up a contract gig, so clients usually stick to the easiest one: "What's your hourly rate?"

Whether or not you’re actually an agency is less important than the fact that you are providing a service. I’ve run an agency and freelanced. I used the same pricing model in both capacities and it made life easier.

We used block-based pricing at the agency and I’d recommend designers try this model.

Clients tended to find timeblocks easy to understand and it made the benefits of our hourly pricing clear. We could tell them what our hourly rates were, while also saying, "Of course, it depends on what you need."

Using blocks of time as a commodity gave us control of the expectations for both our time and pay. This did two things: It set expectations and gave us levers to control when managing clients.

A client could pay $275 by the hour, and basically have no scope defined.  That's our "hourly rate" if the client asks.

But if a client booked a project over the course of a week, the hourly rate dropped to $250/hour. A two-week project meant an hourly rate of  $225, and a project running four weeks or more dropped the hourly to $175.

This model gave clients an incentive to work with us for longer periods of time, which created more certainty and stability for us. Even though it's an agency model, I'd apply the same framework to freelance gigs.

It's also totally fair and reasonable to offer value-based pricing for specialty work. Plenty of people pay a premium for experts to do what they're good at. If you're a pro at design systems, charge an insane amount to consult on that. But, you can't just do that willy-nilly.

People have to trust you before going into that arrangement. No one wants to do that with a stranger they've never heard of whose work they've never seen. There's a big difference between hiring a junior designer you don't know to work on design systems for $50 an hour and paying an expert $1k to talk on the phone for an hour about it.

What's an insane amount? It depends on the work. At the agency, we paid some consultants $10,000 for a two and a half day executive coaching onsite session. And I’d say it was valuable. Was the cost high? Sure. But that’s relative. It was high for us at the time, but it wasn’t high for the value provided.

5. Practical realities of pricing.

Pricing is an art in itself. I'd break down pricing into three practical realities that'll lead you to a decent agreement.

1. Qualifying
2. Expectation Setting
3. "Fairness"

Qualifying

This is the dating portion of this game. It's just as important for your client to qualify you as it is for you to qualify them. Asking questions like this can help:

• Is the client right for you? Does their product/service fit with work you’ve done before or want to do going forward? Do they align with your values?
• Do you know the person reaching out?
• Have you worked with them before? How did it go?
• Are you right for the client? Can you provide what they’re looking for?
• Do they like you?
• Do they like your work?
• Do they value your work?
• How does your experience set you up for success (or not) with what they’re asking of you?
• How much experience do they have working with contractors like you?

Expectation setting

Setting clear expectations should be the easiest part, but it's not uncommon to be annoyed by it. Expectations and limitations often include:

• The client only has so much time (rushed, short turn-around times, etc.).
• The client only has so much money (and they want more from you than they can get at that rate).
• You only have so much time (you’re managing multiple projects).
• You need money to be alive (capitalism, man…).
• You only have so much availability (isn’t part of the point of freelancing to have a bit more spare time?).
• Deadlines aren't always possible (yours or theirs).
• You want to under-promise and over-deliver (be real here though).

Fairness

Assuming both parties are happy with the arrangement the following should happen:

• You'll finish the work and think, "That was worth it."
• The client will see the work and think, "This was worth it."
• You'll have established trust with one another.
• You'll be able to work together again in the future.

Assuming all goes well, you should have a repeat client. That means another opportunity to charge what you charged, or adjust your rates and try something new with someone else.

Thanks to Christine Sirois for reading this in a draft state, helping edit it and add some useful bits!

I know what you're thinking—My name isn't Kevin. It's Chad...

Well, frankly Kevin... I don't give a shit.

You suck at giving feedback.

Kevin: But I'm being honest! It's important to be honest.

Well Kevin, here's why you suck at giving feedback. It's not that you're giving honest feedback that's the problem. I want your feedback. I need it! I don't actually think my work is perfect. It's the way you give it. What you are doing, isn't just unhelpful—it's exhausting.

Kevin: But bro. You gotta be willing to listen to the hard stuff. I'm not here to shit all over your work. I'm just trying to tell you what I like and don't like.

Hey Kevin. First of all. Do not call me bro. We are not bros. Maybe we can eat tater tots one day, but today is not that day. I need more from you than you simply telling me you like or don't like something. That is not helpful.

Kevin: But isn't it helpful to know what I personally do and don't like so you can do a better job? It's feedback! It might not always be what you want to hear. Sometimes you've got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do a bit better my man. It's tough. But it's fair.

Well first of all Kevin, let me start with a tough, but fair—Fuck you.

That entire sentiment of what you just said is so toxic and condescending...I don't know where to begin. Let's just say for example, you're heading home to visit your folks. You knock at the door, and you're so excited to hug your family!  It's been so long (global pandemic and all)! The first words out of your Mom's mouth are "You've gained weight."

Feels great, right? Tough. But fair feedback—that you definitely asked for! You love it when she does that. You're there and ready to be part of the family again. And—without asking for, or even entering the house—you are soundly rejected. If that's not farming for dissent, I don't know what is.

Kevin: Bro, my Mom would never say that. Also, that's not a fair description of what farming for dissent refers to.

She's thinking it Kevin. It's there. And my point isn't really about what "farming for dissent" is about. It's about the fact that just because you've heard a cool phrase and idea applied in another company or situation that doesn't mean it applies to yours.

"Best practices" like that are by and large bullshit terms. You have to question what you're preaching. By that logic, if you knew that using blankets to put out a small fire was a best practice, you'd end up believing that to put out forest fires we should make blankets the size of California to put out forest fires.

Kevin: Has anyone looked into that?

I don't know Kev. My point is, what I want is your brain. And you want your Mom asking how you've been and how life is going, not a hot take statement on the fact that you've been eating nothing but chicken fingers in lockdown.

I want the same. Give me the facts, and give em to me straight. And fill them in with details. Tell me why something isn't working for you. Tell me how you see it improving.

Wow, a rusty paper clip is gonna slice my leg on Tuesday and the infection will spread through my body killing me days later? Wow. What a crazy way to die. Thanks Kevin. I'll be on the lookout for stray paperclips in the interim.

See how much shit I can avoid?

I can do something with that.

I can't do anything with "You're going to die."

Yes Kevin. I know that.

Thank you Kevin.

I don't need you to be nice to give me useful feedback. I need feedback notes that aren't just your biased opinion. Opinions are like assholes, and you are an asshole.

Kevin: I don't think that's the saying.

I know that. Kevin.

Here are some places you can learn how to give good design feedback:

https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/give-designers-feedback/

https://hbr.org/2018/01/negative-feedback-rarely-leads-to-improvement

https://www.aiga.org/how-to-give-receive-design-critique

Special Thanks to Christine Sirois for lovely edits and feedback.

A brand is what you do over time.

A logo is an image you associate an expectation with.

A good brand meets expectations with predictable consistency and a predictable result.

Coca-Cola makes a beverage that tastes nearly identical no matter where you are in the world. Coke sells soda. They also sell a consistent and familiar feeling. That’s what makes them a "good" brand.

They have a logo that's virtually unchanged since its inception over 130 years ago.

Familiarity.

They have a product that’s changed very little.

Familiarity.

They offer similar products around the globe.

Familiarity.

Big companies don’t need to have a good logo to build a strong brand. They have already found success as a brand by meeting your expectations consistently over time.

Visa processes your payments whether you understand that process or not.

Walmart is synonymous with low prices and strives for that over everything. Even if it comes at the expense of their own workforce. Their brand is "Always low prices." People have experienced this often enough for the idea to be synonymous with the brand.

Apple makes great products. Their logo is fine. What makes Apple a great brand is that they’ve made multiple generational defining products in the last 44 years. They’ve made elegant and consistently functional products for our everyday lives.

Other companies make phones and other products with an “i” before the name. But when Apple makes it—It means something.

iPod. iMac. iPhone.

The logo doesn't even really matter here.

It becomes an identifiable reminder of the experience they've created.

A bad logo preemptively sells you an expectation for an entity.

A good logo preemptively sells you an expectation for an entity.

The difference is in whether the logo matches the expectation.

A good logo with a bad experience can be worse than a bad logo with a bad result. That's because you've worked to create an expectation that you can't deliver on; the result beyond your means.

Your good logo can be a mirrage covering a bad service, product, or offering.

See: Juicero, Theranos, Coolest Cooler, etc.

A logo simply creates a face for your name.

The brand must ultimately do the work of meeting expectations over time to forge any meaning.

We plant a tree and expect it to grow. When it grows, we anticipate it bearing fruit. We expect these fruit to become peaches. Those peaches should taste good; sweet, juicy, tender flesh, fuzzy skin.

When these peaches do taste good, the tree is good. We love what this specific tree does. We'll come back this tree. Again, and again. And again.

Special Thanks to Christine Sirois for lovely edits and feedback.

Welcome to Budshaus. A collective and open writing space for of a group of friendly designers, writers, and engineers who met via a Slack group called Buds.

Most of the folks here work in, with, or around the field of digital product design. The writing shared here explores our interests and ideas in the open.

Budshaus is a digital garden where we actively add, prune, and adjust our pieces over time. We're more interested in making things real, rather focusing on perfection.

We hope you find words that resonate. Pieces you wish we would expand on. And work that seems interesting and relevant to you.

Happy Reading.

👋