04 September 2007
We all have problems, and all things being equal the simplest solution to your problem is usually the best. Sure you can get a smart phone, but it won't be as useful as a pad of paper and a pen. Simplicity works. This is something I have learned the hard way... usually when trying to appear clever, and occasionally at great expense.It's a fact. It's one of my little rules of life... and over the past week or two I've been happily breaking it.About three years ago I ran out of "Nick Warren" Business Cards. Not a huge calamity for a company like ours, but annioying. There are occasions where a smile and a witty remark feel like they fall short... often when we are dealing with bigger businesses than ourselves... which is almost everybody.
I have "coped" with our lack of cards in various useless ways from the classic, "We are getting some more printed", to the unbelievably dumb, "We don't really do paper". I shudder to think of the stupidity of that last one, especially because the lady in question had just given me her card. I might just as well have tattooed the words "pretentious ***ker" on my forehead*.
But I digress. The lack of cards stems from the other issue that's been facing us for the past three or four years... being constantly busy. We've been so busy doing the urgent that we rarely get around to the important... something that I'll be writing about here soon. Our business cards were always important, but never urgent... so they never reached the top of the pile. That is until our friends at Printing.com branch hit me with a time-limited half-price offer on 1000 of their high-quality business cards. One week to go! That got me moving.
The only problem was one of timing. We had one week to get the designs in and Mike (our designer in chief) was on his hols. Never fear. Here at Semantic we are CAN-DO with knobs on.
"Pffftt", I thought, "How hard can it be to design some business cards? We'll just keep it simple."
To be continued...
*Happy ending. Fortunately the lady took my choice of words as stupidity (which it was) rather than an attempt to make her feel small and old-fashioned (which it certainly was not)... and allowed me to continue. It was classy of her. Fortunately, over the next hour I got my mojo back, and we won the business.
Posted by Nick Warren at 6:56 AM
