Why I Love My Graphic Designer
Linda Powers
If you’re a business owner like me, you need to work with a graphic designer who has these specific qualities:
- Gifted with design skills
- Easy to work with
- Responsive to your needs
- Understands your personal quirks, idiosyncrasies, and style favorites
- Works triple fast when schedules demand it
- Is always professional in her conversations, emails and other personal dealings with you
- Has fair & competitive pricing
- Turns your work around faster than you can imagine
- Indicates in every possible way that she wants to work with you, not for you
- Goes the extra mile in everything she designs for you
- Knows print as well as the web
Luck is my middle name, ladies and gentlemen, because my designer has all of these qualities and more. Linda Powers of Powers Design has worked with PBI for 10 years, and I was recently reminded of how incredible she is.
When preparing my presentation on “The New Breed of Print Buyers: Reaching & Teaching Them” for this week’s Graph Expo session, I hit a PowerPoint wall. I hate PowerPoint with a passion. Had I the time to learn a new app, like Prezi, I surely would have. Maybe next time.
Anyway, my PPT needed a sprucing up (or so I thought), so I sent it to Linda, asking her to “make it look better.” Without making me feel like the clumsy nondesigner that I am, she gave the file a complete makeover. Overnight. When I saw it, my heart jumped. It was easily 300% better than what I’d sent her.
Linda’s one of those humble designers who never gloats or brags. She takes pride in helping her clients produce beautiful materials. She never loses patience with me or lets ego come between us. What’s not to like about her!?
In the past, I’ve worked with lots of graphic designers. Many of them had their own design agenda, wanting to impose their style on mine. Sorry, but as the customer, I have a sense of what fits my company and my personality: I don’t want someone else’s tastes rammed down my throat.
A great designer has a way of introducing better use of color, type and imagery so that you, the customer, sit back with awe and admiration and say, “YES!! This is perfect for me!” This particular skill of “customer handling” is underappreciated. Linda’s got it in spades.
So I encourage you to find a designer like Linda Powers of Powers Design for your materials, whatever they may be. She will listen. She will make time for you. She will make smart suggestions. She will source the print if you want. She will work hard. She is the perfect designer.
I imagine, if she’s reading this, she’s shocked. I haven’t told her that I’m featuring her this week. The photo I’m using is one she sent me of her and her beloved boxer Sully. (We’re both huge dog fans.) I am not gaining anything from this – no income, no leads, no personal gain. It is purely a professional shout out for a designer who shines.
Linda Powers, designer, whose late father was also a fantastic designer, is, as they say, as good as it gets.
© 2012 Margie Dana. All rights reserved. You’re free to forward this email. However, no part of this column may be reprinted without permission from the author.