How to attract, develop, and maintain strong business relationships
13 Jul
New York graphic designers Raven + Crow share tips for attracting likeminded clients for long-term partnerships
As self-employed graphic designers who land creative projects with some of the most forward-thinking organizations around, Troy Farmer and Katie Frichtel know what it takes to run a creative small business.
Raven + Crow designers Katie Frichtel and Troy Farmer in their Brooklyn studio
And as a married couple who spend the better part of 24 hours a day together, they must be doing something right on the work-balance front as well.
Together, the duo operates Raven + Crow, a Brooklyn-based design studio that specializes in corporate, small business, and non-profit branding. They specialize in logo development, illustration, data visualization, and art direction for print and Web.
Raven + Crow designed the Web site for Barnegat Bay Partnership, a National Estuary Program in New Jersey. Raven + Crow refined their brand and messaging by renaming the group, redesigning their logo, and giving their site and materials a more modern look.
Here, Frichtel and Farmer share their startup story and advice for maintaining relationships with customers you proudly call co-workers.
DIYBA: What kind of work do you do, and who are some of your clients?
Raven + Crow: We work for a lot of great organizations and businesses that do wildly admirable work: Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s leading farm-animal protection organization; the United Nation’s Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs, which coordinates on-the-ground responders in humanitarian emergencies; the Food Empowerment Project, an organization that focuses on food-access issues; New Yorkers for Parks, a citywide independent organization that champions quality parks and open spaces for New Yorkers; yoga studios; vegan shoe stores.
We’re just huge fans of so many of our clients.
When, why, and how did you start Raven + Crow?
Our studio became an official LLC in August 2006, but we’ve been doing freelance design and working together in one way or another since 1999. We started the studio out of the basic desire to do good work for good people.
Things were slow at first, working mostly in the wee hours and weekends when we weren’t at our full-time non-profit jobs. Then, in 2006 and 2008, respectively, we hit two of those leap-of-faith moments where we had to choose between 1) cutting off all safe sources of revenue/health insurance and 2) making a go of it.
They were scary but easy decisions, really. We were presented with the opportunity to do what we love for cool clients that are doing amazing things all over the world. And we got the best possible co-workers by default.
A promotional brochure Raven + Crow created for OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
What is your work dynamic like? As in, what’s it like to work as a husband-wife duo, and what’s a typical workday like?
We have very distinctive but complementary design styles. Rather than stepping on each other’s toes, we often split up the client list and manage our own set of projects. When starting branding work with a new client, we’ll both present ideas and designs and let the editing process decide which artist will be the primary contact. It’s usually pretty evenly split.
In the case with clients with very heavy workloads and tight deadlines, like the United Nations, we work together to complete the project. We discuss our clients frequently and often collaborate on the art direction for larger projects. We may manage our own projects, but we understand that we’re a team and that bouncing ideas off one another makes our work that much stronger.
We’ve also mastered the art of evaluating and constructively critiquing each other’s work. This is really important when you’re married to your design partner. You don’t want hurt feelings following you home.
Shoe boxes for Novacas, a NYC-based vegan shoe company, which Raven + Crow designed after rebranding the company’s logo and creating their Web site.
Aside from the creative work, how do you delegate administrative tasks?
As for running the business, it’s been a huge learning experience and we’ve had to evaluate our strengths and weaknesses in order to see how best to fill in the gaps when it comes to responsibilities that fall outside of the design realm.
For instance, we’ve learned that it’s best for one of us to handle IT, while another manages the bookkeeping. The business is on our minds often, but we have a separate studio space, so we’re able to physically remove ourselves from the workday.
And, yes, we’re around each other all. the. time. That sometimes blows people’s minds, but we love it.
Some of the many print products Raven + Crow created for Farm Sanctuary after redesigning their logo and working with them through a rebranding process
What are your top three to five pieces of advice for finding, developing, and maintaining a strong relationship with your client?
1. If You Make It Awesome, They Will Come.
We’re not saying you can just kick back and wait for clients to come to you, but we’ve found that one of the most beneficial practices to our growth has been doing great work, being nice, and letting our happy clients do the rest.
A lot of our client base has come from simple, old-fashioned word-of-mouth. That obviously takes time to build, but we’ve found slow growth to be beneficial to our company model, allowing us to have more of a say on who we work with day-to-day while keeping much of our work within issues we really care about (for instance, animal rights, the environment, and humanitarian issues) and avoiding the need for costly, high-risk loans.
2. Make Relationships Mutually Beneficial.
Make sure there’s a mutual respect. It’s totally impossible for us to care about the work and create the best possible product if we don’t agree with what the client’s doing, or at least have some interest in it. We know that and have turned down clients for that reason in the past. The other part of that is that you need to have respect coming from both ends, both in the sense of skills and work and in the sense of appropriate levels of compensation, be them fiscal or not. Most often, someone who doesn’t pay in some way for a product isn’t going to value that product or the producer.
3. Think Long Term.
We’ve lost track of how many of our now long-term clients first came to us for a one-off illustration or a quick brochure. If the project’s a success and the client enjoys working with you, it can eventually lead to new work, either from that client or someone they refer.
4. Be Realistic.
This goes for both sides of the relationship. On your side, make sure you can deliver on what you promise. It’s great to stretch yourself with certain projects, but you need to make sure the client’s going to get what she pays for.
On their side, the client needs to be realistic on projects goals—timing, budget, impact, etc. A lot of those realizations may need to be sussed out from your end, especially for clients who haven’t managed similar projects before.
It’s important to have that conversation as early as possible, before unrealistic expectations lead to a total project meltdown.
5. Be Sincerely Social.
Holden Caulfield had it right. No one likes a phony. Be your honest-to-goodness self in your client relationships, both in the real world and via social-networking tools. Sincerity reassures your client that you’re being upfront and honest with them, and it’ll give you confidence in your relationships.
Food Empowerment Project’s logo, which Raven + Crow created during their branding process with the California non-profit. Raven + Crow also designed their site, www.foodispower.org.
Do you have any “don’ts” for developing a client relationship?
Don’t be a jerk. Life’s too short, man. And no one likes working with a jerk, right?
Never phone it in. Take the time to create work that you are proud of. We’re neurotic about only presenting designs that we really, really, really like.
What’s your ultimate goal and/or what is your wish-list project/client?
Wow. Guess it’s cliché to say world peace?
Honestly, our ultimate goal is pretty modest—we just want to make sure we can keep doing what we’re doing, for the reason we do it, as long as we can. As far as clients and projects go, we’d love the opportunity to do work in the realms of women’s rights and—especially in New York right now—marriage equality. Those issues are really close to both of our hearts, and we’d love to contribute to their success.
We’ve also thought it’d be great to be part of an awesome product collaboration—a line of super-cool T-shirts, wallpaper, stationery, or the hypest key fob you’ve ever seen. That kinda thing.
Oh, and we’d love a yacht. Like the one in Overboard with Goldie Hawn. That’s a given though, right?
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