Question

Topic: Other

Sales Person Who Thinks She's A Designer

Posted by Anonymous on 1/18/2008 at 8:36 AM ET 125 Points
I am the only marketing person at my job. There are 3 sales people. Part of my job is to create marketing materials for the company (fliers etc) Before I started here there was no marketing personnel and the sales team created their own fliers for various promotions using Publisher with clip art (I have see some of them and they are not very professional looking and do not follow any rules of design etc). I do not claim to be a Graphic Designer but I have a degree in Marketing, have taken several graphic design, Desktop publishing classes, have read books on design, visit forums on design and marketing and have a boyfriend who is a graphic designer who I often bounce ideas off and have him provide me with feedback on my work.

I created a flyer for one of our shops ( we have several) and the sales person associated with that store took me aside yesterday and told me that 1. the flyer looked too much like Christmas and since we are getting into the Spring that I should use more Spring colors and 2. Our Company name should be part of the headline. (ie "ABC Company is Moving" not "We are Moving" like I have it currently)

She then asked one of our Customer Service Agents what color she thought the flyer should be. I was pretty upset but am not naturally an assertive person so I basically told her I would work on changing the colors. The more I think about it the more upset I am about how I handled the situation. I Was very proud of this particular piece and I believe I used my knowledge and background to the best of my ability to create a visually pleasing piece that gets the point across to our customers. I feel that it DOES NOT look like Christmas and that the headline does NOT have to have our name since the headline draws the eye in and will intrigue the reader to read further.

The piece is a small flyer that will be passed out to customers in our shops and also the clients the sales woman visits informing them that one of our shops is moving.

This sales woman is not my superior. My superior (VP of company) loved this piece. I feel that my knowledge is greater than the sales woman in this area and that her giving me (un solicited) advice on my design is like me going and telling her what to say to clients on her sales calls ( I wouldn't because that is not what I was hired by the company to do)

At this point I am thinking of emailing her and telling her that I decided to leave the piece the way it is because from a design perspective and with my background I feel that it looks best the way I have designed it.

I am also doubting my judgement for this particular piece and was hoping to get some feedback on it. The red circle is a map and the little red boxes is the company logo.

[inactive link removed]


Also, how can I deal with this woman without "causing problems?" Should I talk to her directly or talk to my boss about it?

[Moderator: Inactive link removed from post. 2/14/2011]
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 1/18/2008 at 9:08 AM Accepted
    If you showed the piece to your boss and he/she is happy with it, then I would leave it as is. I would tell the sales woman that you appreciate your input, but that the piece has already been approved by your boss, but you will take her suggestions into consideration for future work.

    As for the piece itself, I don't care for the balloonish text or the white bubbles. Also, the colors are a little bright and clash with the colors in the image (sorry, just my personal opinion). I do like the image of the boxes, but I would use colors that coordinate better with the tones of the image and also used a more sophisticated font for the headline.
  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 1/18/2008 at 9:28 AM Member
    Just a suggestion...whatever you do. Don't email her. Call her.

    Email is too often used as an avoidance mechanism. It can also be read the wrong way, creating an even bigger problem. It can also be forwarded with comments like, "Can you believe this?"

    Call. Do not email.

  • Posted by michael on 1/18/2008 at 10:00 AM Member
    Personally I don't care for it (but don't take it personally) unless your store sells products for young girls.

    Ask the sales person to meet with you and your boss. If you're confident that she/he's clueless you'll make your point. The real test is the results. If you've gotten results before your opinion is probably right for your employer.

    IF you did this in publisher you might want to talk about getting a nice mac and some better programs. If you like the design part of marketing it'll help your career to have experience with mac.

    Michael
  • Posted on 1/18/2008 at 10:27 AM Member
    No matter what you do with look and feel, someone will always have another opinion or idea of how is should be. And when you create something, it's personal, it's your baby, and when someone says your baby is ugly...well it hurts.

    I always try to suck it up and write down at least 10 reasons why they might be right and 10 reasons why I'm right. Many times I get a better product.

    As for the headline, personally I would put, ABC is Moving, instead of We're Moving.

    I want to recommend a great book on the subject: Creating Successful Small Business Advertising by Jerry Fisher https://www.nmoa.org/catalog/fisher.htm

    I think everyone in your type of position should read it. Lots of pictures, reworks and examples.

    One last thing. I really don’t think the program you use for creating something makes a big difference. One program or another may give you more tools to work with, (if you know how to use them) but the actual work comes from your mind, and if the program you use has the tools available to create what you see in your minds eye, then the software is fine. I’ve done plenty of work in Publisher in past years before going to Corel.
  • Posted on 1/18/2008 at 12:14 PM Author
    To answer some of the posts

    The color red was chosen because that was our company logo.

    I did not show the piece to her. The shop that I made it for showed it to her.

    I did not mean to imply that Publisher work is bad, but that her stuff usually had no contrast, repetition or alignment such as I have tried hard to incorporate into my work.

    Someone mentioned that it looked like "little girl" colors. The sales woman wanted it even more "girlier" with more pastel "Spring" colors.

    This was created in Photoshop/Indesign.

    I do not think that I need to put that ABC company is moving because our company name is pretty long and I think that as long as the headline draws the reader to the text than that is enough.

    I did have this looked at by two other graphic designers(my bf and a friend) who liked it.

    I will however, take the advice and work on the colors but I will not be making them more "spring"

    My intention was to create a fun piece to make it seem like we are excited that we are moving. I think the bubble letters helps to accomplish that
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