ISSUE 010

SOMETHING LOVELY
​that I saw

This made me want to start a sketchbook of patterns pronto stat!!

SOMETHING USEFUL
​that I recommend

A researcher called Gloria Mark, from UC Irvine, studied what happens to people's brains after an interruption. I think we all recognise that when you're right in the middle of something, and you get 'pulled' out of it, it takes a hot minute to get back to where your head was at. Turns out it takes 23 hot minutes!!

So that "quick" 15 minute chat? It's not 15 minutes… it's 15, plus the 23 it takes you to find your place again in that floor plan or that spec sheet you were deep in. Gah!

It's a tricky tightrope we walk as designers, wanting to be available and helpful if clients have questions. And as far as clients are concerned - they're navigating something (usually) completely foreign to them, and they know you're the person with the answers…so they call.

And now we know - even if by some miracle it IS only a 15 minute call, the cost to your time is much bigger.

But you can get ahead of it. The key is to be proactive about your comms plan with your clients. A few things that have actually worked for me:

1. Give them somewhere else to send questions. A shared portal, a google doc or spreadsheet - anything that isn't your email inbox or your phone. It gives them somewhere to point their question AND it means you've got one central place tracking every query instead of fifteen scattered texts.
2. Build a weekly check in into your process (and into your fee, too). Because if a client knows they'll get time with you in three days, most of them can wait three days. Especially once they've got that doc to dump questions into in the meantime.
3. If they still want to talk now, give them fifteen minutes on Zoom or Teams. Try and avoid an open-ended call. There's something psychological about a short booked call - it gives everyone permission to be efficient. Plus it gives you a polite way to wrap up and point them to the weekly check in if there's more to cover!!

You want to give your availability purpose and structure, and by sharing that structure at the start of the project, most clients will appreciate that back. Because they're busy too, right? If they know the boundaries of what the project communication will be caged in, you set up a respectful two-way conversation which is better for everyone.

SOMETHING RANDOM
​that I thought this week

I was double screening while watching something on Netflix this week - as you do - and fell down a colour rabbit hole this week trying to figure out where 'greige' (or as a friend of mine calls it 'greige-ine') actually came from.

Turns out the (boring) beige-grey hybrid that is now synonymous with every new-build wall in the Western world has a fairly recent and slightly boring origin story. It crept in during the 2010s, mostly off the back of house flipper/renovation TV shows wanting the safest possible resale colour. Grey felt cold, beige felt dated. Someone, somewhere, mixed the two and greige was born.

It quickly went from "fresh and neutral" to the default setting on almost every quick reno or new build you come across. Let's also have a moment's silence for the white subway tile (usually slightly too large, or inevitably paired with a feature tile that's a bit meh) and the Edison light bulb (featured in a café near you) are two other specs that are victim of the neutral-but-over-used-graveyard.

In the meantime - viva la colour!! How about we aim to collectively stamp out the greige, and re-classify some colour as the new neutral!!

If my CDS content or newsletter has taught you something you didn't know before - coffee's always appreciated.

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