For the agencies that launched shortly after the economic crisis in 2008, one thing was certain: generalist firms could not withstand the shifting economy. Instead, providing a niche service would not only ensure an agency could hold its own among larger brands, but when combined with a great process and a talented team, it would help them thrive into the future.

Creative teams of all types rise and fall because of process and talent. Being strong in one arena is not enough to ensure consistent success. Whether you are serving the internal needs of your organization, driving strategy while partnering with a creative team, or developing content for clients, it's imperative that you center your visual strategy around both talent and process equally.

CREATING GREAT VISUAL CONTENT IS LIKE BUILDINGAHOUSE

Consider this: if you were building your dream house, would you skip interviewing architects, creating blueprints, or laying a foundation? Of course not. When making such a sizable financial and emotional investment, it's par for the course to leave no stone unturned. Yet when it comes to visual content, which can yield multimillion-dollar returns when produced correctly, we often cut corners.

While there's not a one-size-fits-all approach to developing visual content, some key steps should never be ignored. I like to compare the process of following and implementing these steps to building a house.

As you consider this process, remember that every role matters. For example, if you are a content strategist, you'll need to rely on a designer to manage some of the steps that follow. If you're a designer, you may need to depend on a strategist and a project manager to own various steps in the process. To help identify where you best fit into the process, keep your eyes peeled for the icon that best matches your role in the diagram in Figure 13.1.

Whether you're creating visual content yourself or working with a vendor, you should never skip these six steps. Great visual strategists build additional steps into their process based on the desired outcomes of the content. For example, if content is animated, then animation should start only after designs are fully approved. The steps of getting a voiceover as well as adding a score and sound design should be considered in the process as well.

FINDING YOUR CREATIVE CONTENT TEAM

Great talent drives visual strategy, but with so many options at your disposal, where do you even start to find that talent? For today's content creators, a consistent battle between in-house expertise, freelance services, and specialized agency work has become the norm. Making the wrong choice can make or break careers, while finding the right fit can catapult a brand.

This changing landscape laid the foundation on which I built my company, Killer Visual Strategies. To ensure it brings you success, as well, you must understand how to best navigate the waters.

Before you start, though, you must know that it takes a village.

It was late in September 2010 when I received our first order for an infographic design. At the time, my company was called Killer Infographics and the primary business model had nothing to do with providing design services. At best, we were critics of the medium, offering candid reviews of those who had submitted their designs to us for feedback. At worst, we were two marketers working out of my old business partner's townhome, learning about visual communication by making our own litany of mistakes.

When the request came through, I chose to take on the design work myself. We were offered $300, provided the exact word-for-word copy needed for the design, and told that we could use online templates if need be (something I would never do today). Our original business model was making only $4,000 per month, which could not sustain the Seattle mortgages both myself and my old business partner had to cover. We were offered the opportunity to make $300 in less than a day, and I couldn't find a reason to say “no.”

The first design was a success, though it was made easy by the client-provided template and data-rich content. The client saw an opportunity to get infographics both fast and cheap, while I saw an opportunity to grow our revenue and do something I loved at the same time. As a result, I spent the next few months pushing for a pivot in our business model so that we could become a specialized and nimble design firm.

Of course, we couldn't sustain a large influx of work if I was expected to continue handling a combination of sales, project management, and design all at the same time. Luckily, I knew some very talented designers who were looking for work due to the down economy and were excited for the opportunity to have some regular income. Given the low rates we were charging, the best business model to pursue at the time was one where we acted as the middlemen between clients and freelancers. We would take orders, build creative briefs, and match the work to freelancers we could trust.

While this seemed simple enough, it was anything but. We quickly learned that it was hard to find a consistent freelancer, especially if we couldn't provide consistent work. More often than not, work would be turned in late or not at all, leaving me scrambling to take on projects myself so as to ensure they wouldn't also be late to the end client. Some freelancers even tried to pass off stock vector assets as their own, original artwork. Left unchecked, this could have put our clients into very precarious situations. Additionally, training designers in the best practices of visual communication seemed like an uphill battle when communicating exclusively via email and quick calls.

Four months into our pivot, though, we were averaging $40,000 per month in revenue! Even so, it was a drastic shift, and not without its many costs. In fact, we were competing on price rather than value. Our relatively cheap offerings brought in business, but that also meant that we couldn't pay our freelancers enough to do their jobs properly. Profit margins were slim, so we also couldn't hire the right staff to play the myriad roles required to create great visual content. We found ourselves at a crossroads, where we could either continue to be the fast food of infographic design or up our prices and provide our clients and their audiences with a far more palatable experience.

Exhausted by the myriad issues caused by delivering on a budget, we chose to double our prices, bring our best freelancer in-house, and hire a hybrid researcher and project manager. While this eased the pain, it didn't alleviate it all together. Over the next few months, we continued to hone our service and rework our pricing to accommodate additional needs. By the time we were finally firing on all cylinders, it had become clear that high-quality visual content required a village to produce.

Two years into our business, our team had expanded beyond infographics to all forms of visual content. We had stopped working with freelancers entirely and had a robust in-house team of visual strategists. To deliver on even small projects, we would employ creative writers and researchers, project and account managers, skilled designers, animators, and developers. As we began managing content strategy and large campaigns for our clients, we grew our marketing and strategy team, added an art director, a creative director, and other roles.

When you consider how to create your own village of experts to drive your organization's visual strategy, it's important to understand that all of these roles are crucial. If you choose to work with freelancers, you will end up having to take on many of these roles yourself. If you choose to work with an agency, it will be important to understand how they value each position as well as what they expect from you. And if you choose to build an in-house team, you'll have to find skilled talent that can lend experience where you might be lacking.

This isn't to say that you can't do it all yourself, but just like if you were building a house, being a one-person show doesn't always yield the best results. You may sacrifice timeliness, affordability, or quality—all of which will hinder the return on investment that your work can deliver. With all of this in mind, I suggest you decide between one of three paths: freelance, in-house, or agency. In the coming chapters, I'll explore these three options in-depth.

If you are a skilled designer looking to build or join a support team, you'll still want to consider how these avenues might affect you. For example, you could consider hiring a freelance project manager. Alternatively, you could be looking to become more competitive as a freelancer yourself. In either situation, the considerations outlined in Chapter 14 will still apply to you, even though that chapter mainly focuses on how a content strategist may hire a freelance designer.

You'll find that similar value can be gained by reading about the other paths one might take. So even if certain options do not directly apply to you, I encourage you to review them so you can better understand the landscape that exists for content creators of all kinds.

But in a world of possibilities, one can easily get lost in a spiral of never-ending options. Navigating the myriad possible paths toward quality visual content might seem overwhelming at best, impossible at worst. In 2010, many of those options were just beginning to emerge, whereas today, specialized firms deliver the majority of the content we all consume.