An Interview with Tim Watson of Visual Inventor

I went to work for Visual Inventor in the fall of 2000. I was still in school and eager to get started in the graphic design field, and Tim Watson provided me with that opportunity. Tim was the owner/founder of Visual Inventor and had a knack for web design, identity, and typography in particular. I've never met a person who was more adamant about the importance of concept, iconic marks for logos and the importance of the "sketch", and thank goodness. [Aside: with the onslaught of Illustrator and Photoshop, the sketch has lost it's place with many young designers… and sadly so.]

At VI we were designing websites with creativity that very few others were doing at the time– interesting navigations, unique layouts, animations and CSS(before CSS was cool). And with that blank canvas before us, we designed some sites that were on the leading fringe of what was going on in the web design world and as creative as anything I had seen.

As a new employee to a relatively new business, I got to see the growing pains that took place as Tim endeavored to grow a small company from the ground up. As a boss, he was very hands on, demanding, and always pushing you to get better. To push your ideas farther. I remember getting frustrated on more than one occasion with his insistence that I "keep sketching" before getting going on the computer. But one thing he taught me then, that I still go back to on a daily basis, is that embellishment in itself does not produce quality design. Embellishment might enhance a concept, but a design without a well thought out concept likely won't hold up over time. And no better way to come up with a concept than… you guessed it– SKETCH!

Tim taught me an appreciation for a classic icon, the beauty in the details of typography, and a relentless love for u2. All of which I maintain to this day. 

As a small business owner now, I find myself looking back at my history, and wanting to learn from what I experienced at past jobs. What better way to look forward than to look back with an interview.

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SMALL BUSINESS

What did you name your company name:

First company name that was a flop: "Extension: From Mind to Design". It didn't roll off the tongue and was hard for people to get. After that I decided to make it something personal. I always thought I wanted to be an inventor and make things but when I got into school I discovered it was design I wanted to make and not necessarily things. So I put the two together and came up with Visual Inventor.

When did you start your small business?

Officially October 1994 while I was still in college. My thought was it takes about about a year to take flight and so I would have lost nothing if it flopped because when it would have flopped I would have just been graduated college.

How old were you when you started it?

I was 22

What spurred you to do so? Were you working somewhere else beforehand?

I was working like 4 part time jobs in college (I worked at 2 different record stores, the school newspaper and Olive Garden waiting tables) I was kind of supporting myself and loans got school taken care of. So what I made was for me to live on - so making the move to quit all the jobs and do Visual Inventor full time was a NUT job move that ended paying wonderful dividends.

How long were you up and running before you felt like you actually had a grip on what you were doing?

It was like almost a year to the day. It was sometime in October/November of 95 that things really started picking up. It was an awesome blessing because after I gradated in the summer it was rough. I had just gotten married and was living off my wife's salary. It was a ramen noodle type of affair.

How long until you were turning a decent profit?

To make a living that was descent it was like 3 years. Then after 5 years I hired talented youngsters like yourself that taught me a slew of whole new things. One of which being having employees was hard. Harder than I anticipated. Don't get me wrong the talented folks I worked with were incredible and gracious with my missteps but I was learning as I went and made mistakes. I don't regret them because I became better from them but there are times I wish I had a time machine.

What "Hat" did you hate wearing the most?

A. Technician/Designer

B. Manager

C. Accountant

D. Marketer/Salesman

E. Entrepreneur (Big Idea Guy)

F. HR

D. The schmoozer sales guy. I'm just not very much that way. I'd rather have you choose us for our work not because you like my shoes.

What "hat" did you love wearing the most? And if not designer, was that a surprise?

A. Technician/Designer

B. Manager

C. Accountant

D. Marketer/Salesman

E. Entrepreneur (Big Idea Guy)

F. HR

A. Always design was the first love. Entrepreneur having the big ideas was in there as well.  After that managing a large project was after probably.

What is/was the most-challenging area running your business? (Non-design related)

Keeping the sales coming in the door. Chasing your food as I call it. I abhor that. So much so I just stopped wanted to do the business because of it.

What was the single most important rule that you run/ran your business by? Personal "laws" that you would not break no matter what?

What was the best/most effective practice/system that you put into place?

It was probably T.O.M. our office management system. That thing kept the whole shop running along. It was a beast of a website that we fed our time into and it spit our estimates and a whole slew of other things. It was wonderful and antiquated and a behemoth but it worked.

Any systems that you care to divulge that were particularly effective that might help other small design business owners out there?

Get a good start to finish flow that works for you is my suggestion. For us it was TOM for someone else it might be basecamp. Allow tools to help you do better business.

What has been/was your biggest mistake in relation to running your business?

Renting office space for as long as I did. I'd get a real space paid out right next time.

Were there any break-through moments that you had? If so, care to name one or two?

All of them ... had learning points in them. I spent many a night baby sitting web servers when I should have been with my family - I regret that.

A break through for me on the positive side personally was doing my first website in '96 and realizing there was something there I liked about trying to break those rules. That was a great moment.

What's the one greatest life-lesson you learned from running a small business?

The time to do something is when others say you shouldn't. ... And snarl like Billy Idol after bad client phone calls.

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DESIGN:

Favorite Font(s):

Publicate - my own design

Favorite Designer or Inspiration:

Neville Brody, Tobias Frere-Jones

I remember once you said that you never met a person who was "punny (a lover of puns)" that wasn't a good designer. Why do you think that is?

I don't know but I love that you reminded me of that. Humorous people make for good design maybe? I wonder how many other nuggets you have that I have forgotten. I wish my memory were better.

How important is sketching in your process?

Still is insanely important. I love the sketch. There is something that only lives in the sketch that once you capture in the machine has a 50/50 chance of being lost or taking flight. I like seeing the 50% that takes flight.

Favorite to Design: Identity, Print, Music, Web/Multimedia, Environmental?

I love a wonderfully simplistic icon. I also always love seeing my stuff ginormous but I love a site that has tons of traffic so I'd say web, identity/logo and environmental are all tied. I get a different kind of kick out of doing each of them.

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MISC:

Top 3 Bands/Musical Artist?

1. U2

2. - has changed - Pixies

3. R.E.M.

If you could do anything (besides design) as a career, what would it be?

Professional typographer or design teacher.

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My special thanks and sincere gratitude to Tim Watson for taking the time to do this interview, and for the inspiration. 

Tim can be found on twitter @wittmason

What's your company's greatest asset?

Daniel Tardy of Dave Ramsey's EntreLeadership asked this question (@EntreLeadership on twitter) yesterday and I did my best to try to get past the obvious answer: People.

A team is only as strong as it's members. We all know that to be true. But, if we look deeper, I think we can come up with a guiding principle in business that may make this answer sound almost cliché and not thought out.

Take a tree for example. The limbs/leaves while vital to the life and prosperity of the tree, are nothing without a strong base. What is that strong base? Could that be the answer to "what's your company's strongest asset?"

I'd argue that without a company culture that resonates with it's employees, that even great workers are left to wither without a cause for which to fight. We are only as strong as that which leads us. I would go so far as to say that your company's greatest asset is it's leaders, and their greatest asset is a positive "can-do" attitude. And let us not forget who's job it is to inspire our leaders... A positive attitude starts at the top.

As a friend of mine and I often joke... "Can't never could."

The iPad Backlash

I was having a conversation with friends about the iPad the other day. A revolutionary product that has very little true significance in terms of necessity for advancement of productivity, yet will once again change the way we use media. One friend brought up a point, that hit me like a ton of bricks... an "Aha" moment if you will, that to me spoke more about the idea of social media in general than about the iPad alone. 

His thought about the iPad's usefulness in a nutshell was this:

People who spend the majority of their day behind a computer, do not want to go home and "play" on a computer. Or rather they DO, because they want to consume media, but it needs to be different in some way... Enter the iPad.

What strikes me about this tweener device is this backlash of sorts to the trend towards a paperless society. Apple has in essence said, you still don't need paper, but we're going to give you a tactile user experience more than just typing keys on a keyboard. Now you can flip virtual pages, browse a website by clicking links with your fingers, moving around the page, zooming in zooming out, etc. 

I work behind a computer pretty much all day. When I sit on the couch at night to watch tv, and want to tool around on the internet, my only option is the family laptop. Which is fine, but reminds me of work I could be doing, thus not appealing. 

iPad, different story altogether. 

Which brings me to social media. Social media does not generate tangible sales. Your presence on twitter or facebook or YouTube however, might. I have a number of clients who can't understand the who/what/why of twitter or facebook, because at the end of the day, you will likely NEVER see revenue coming directly from your being there. To simplify: in and of themselves, social media are NOT a revenue generator. 

Here's the caveat and where they become like the iPad. Social media is the backlash at the depersonalization of a paperless/computer-based society. It is an effort by people (more isolated than ever) to reach out... and in terms of business, learn more about who they are buying from/ consuming media from. And in that way it is a very valuable tool. Social media affords you the platform to be more than a logo and website. It allows you to connect with consumers, to affect the way consumers view you and your brand. It's making the connection that you make when you walk into a store and meet the owner, and over time learn the story behind the people who deliver the goods you consume. 

Embrace it.

COMMUNICATE PEOPLE!

Allow me a rant if you will.

• If you're not communicating, you're not serving your clients well. I don't care how good you are at what you do. 

• If you're not communicating, your clients don't feel comfortable. 

• If you're not communicating, you come off as unreliable. I don't care if you DO meet the deadline, if I don't hear from you until 2 minutes before something is due, it reflects negatively on your performance.

• If you're not communicating, I don't care how good you are.

• If you're not communicating, your expertise and knowledge is forgettable.

I would rather hire someone to do a job that will reply to an email within 8 hours, but costs twice as much—ok, maybe not twice as much, but you get the idea.

Here's the bottom line. There is a chain of command here, that you may not at first see, but a lot of times, our goal is to make our clients look good to their bosses. And that goes down the line. If I hire a contractor to do work for me, but I can't get them on the phone, they miss deadlines, they don't tell me when they are overloaded, etc. I end up looking bad to my clients, because they start looking bad to their clients (their bosses). 

Clients remember. Their bosses remember. Communicate. It makes you more than simply desirable to your clients. It makes you valuable.

Be in it, not above it.

I'm not "too good" to design anything... what I am "too good" for is not giving something the attention it needs because it's not creative or exciting enough.

Let's face it, if all we wanted to do was the MOST creative projects, we'd be fine artists. We're problem-solvers. It's our job to make the trivial beautiful.

There are lots of days that we (small business owners) are faced with tasks that seem trivial. Whether they be design-related, or working on the business within the business. Be too good for anything less than your best effort. 

Lastly, remember "giving it 110%" does not exist, but 100% does. Act within yourself, but push yourself as far as you can, then delegate it, manage it, if you need to... but don't settle. This is your business, your NAME, your baby.

I used to think graphic design was all about the project. Now I know it's all about the solution.

When I first started out on my own, my pride rode high. My designer-snob was in full effect. I had a view of what my business was going to be, and it was determined wholly by the projects I focussed on. I called it "Branding" but now I know that what I was branding was a too-good-to-design-for-you image that was more about pleasing other people than satisfying my desire to make the world a better place.

As designers, at any stage of your creative life, whether in school, first job, 50th job, running your own small biz, I think we suffer from a distorted sense of entitlement. (Can you hear all of the account managers of the world pounding their desks?) My point is not that we need to be more submissive to clients necessarily, though there may be some truth to that as well. My point is that we need to be more submissive to the project.

Here's what I propose: Fight the idea that tells you I am better than this project. Fight the idea that an artist of my talent, wouldn't waste his/her time on this. Embrace the solution. Embrace your inner problem solver, and excel at each project, no matter what capacity it requires your attention.

After all, you are only as successful as your clients are happy with your solutions. When I began designing, I thought that the ultimate job, would be one in which all the projects were what I considered creative. Where I was constantly being asked to stretch myself creatively, in an artistic sense.
In a way I was right, but what I didn't understand, was that being a creative problem solver has less to do with the project, and more to do with the solution. After all, that's the only part I can control, so why shouldn't I do my best to excel in it?

Great article on the ill-affects of multi-tasking

Work Smart: Stop Multitasking and Start Doing One Thing Really Well