Looking for Interview Candidates

Hi everyone, I hope you are all well and staying safe.
If you are a small design or creative business owner or even an employee, I would love to ask you a few questions about your business as part of my research project. Your help would be much appreciated.

Send me a message or reply to this post, and I will send you the questions.

Side note: If you’re not in the creative industry, maybe you know someone that is, feel free to recommend someone else who could help.

Just post your questions here and I’m sure you’ll get more answers than you need

Okay, sure, Here are the questions if anyone else is interested:

  1. An overview of your company, the products or services you provide, how long the company has been operating and your role.

  2. What are some of the current challenges and needs of the company?

  3. What were some of the problems faced during and after lockdown?

  4. What do you currently not have time for because of Covid?

  5. If I were to intern at the company, where would I be most helpful?

  6. What research/design skills are the company lacking that I could offer?

  7. How do you make use of online platforms for promotions?

That’s a pretty broad focus. What’s your research project aiming to parse?

Having no idea of your background there’s no way I could guess what you could do to be most helpful. As for research/design skills, same observation.

When Covid panic slowed we got inundated with work. The trouble right now is finding workers. No one wants to work and there are no up and coming tradesmen/women that want to take on the skills needed to do what we do. It’s that way throughout the skilled crafts and trades industry. Printing especially. Carpenters, welders, journeyman electricians, stage riggers, sign makers, production technicians, pre-flight print techs…Nada. Same for most of my outsources. We’ve had job postings for 3 months now and no qualified applicants.

The main focus is on how Covid has affected small design/creative businesses.
Also, looking at some of the challenges small businesses have faced and how I would be able to help as an intern.

Maybe I could sum it up for you?
I have basic knowledge in frontend development, with languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
I am currently in my third and final year studying graphic design. I am most skilled in programs such as Dreamweaver, Photoshop (including photo editing), Illustrator, InDesign, and more recently After Effects.

Here we go…:

#1. Design & Marketing Firm: we provide the following: logo design, print design, print brokering, website design / development, seo, ppc, facebook advertising, lead generation (pay per appointment and pay per lead) and consulting.

#2. Finding competent workers. Fulfilling jobs due to not having enough of the first (competent workers).

#3. Problems during the lockdown: We were ok for the most part, we had 3 previous large projects and 1 new project that pushed us through. Cashflow was tight of course, a lot of our regular (consistent) customers we’re doing anything and were hold their cash tight. Just like 95% of the world.

#4. I don’t have time for stupid politicians playing any more games.

#5. Logo Design, Web Design, SEO

#6. Research: Keyword Research for SEO, On-Page SEO skills (topic relevance, page/content structure)… Design: Logo Design

#7. Platforms? Probably need an example of what type of platform you’re referring to? If you’re speaking of profiles on 5R, upwork, etc - I don’t do those, don’t need to. I rely on referrals and SEO for the majority of my leads.

Hope that helps!
John David

Thank you so much, John! It helps a great deal.

Just one follow up question on number 7, by platforms, I was referring to social media.
Do you have any social media accounts for your company?

  • An overview of your company, the products or services you provide, how long the company has been operating and your role.
    A family print shop from the beginning, started by the mom + dad in 1966, now run by the daughter.
    We design and print anything from business cards to vinyl banners to 320pp catalogues. We specialise in NCR printing. We send out some of the bigger or more specialised jobs like long print runs, carton making and foil blocking.
    I am the head designer.

  • What are some of the current challenges and needs of the company?
    We are doing ok - just bought a new digital printer and a new workstation but we have capacity for more work.

  • What were some of the problems faced during and after lockdown?
    We decided early on to work from home as much as possible. This stopped walk-ins which was actually a good thing. All the design and office side has moved off site. The boss likes it and we will carry on working from home. We had to figure out the best way to organise the workflow remotely but that was straightforward. We use WhatsApp and emails to organise jobs and to send proofs and artwork, and we use a cloud service for sending PDF artwork ready for printing.

  • What do you currently not have time for because of Covid?
    Our business has not been disrupted at all by Covid. Some of our clients lost work at the beginning so didn’t need as much printing, but we are back to normal now.

  • If I were to intern at the company, where would I be most helpful?
    We don’t need an intern, but if we did you would learn everything we do, starting with the finishing department (folding machine, collating machine, stitching, padding up, binding, guillotining, packing). Then the printing machines and then the design part. Design is informed by the demands of the printing and finishing process, so it is important to learn that first.

  • What research/design skills are the company lacking that I could offer?
    We have a good team with 30-40 years experience each, but fresh design ideas are always a good thing.

  • How do you make use of online platforms for promotions?
    We have a website and we get a lot of work via eBay, Facebook etc. and some clients use WhatsApp to communicate with us. We don’t advertise.

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Thank you so much for your input!

Sadly far too many design schools fail to realize this fact.