Total Quality Management in Design and Advertising

     The design and advertising industries share a unique challenge in the corporate world. The skillful balance of creative employees, client deadlines, and quality output is not easily obtained. Managers must not only find a happy medium between the artistically driven and the business-oriented, they must actually find a perfect solution if they want to attain the highest quality in their services.

     Creative employees can be an interesting bunch. Many of them view themselves as artists, and when this is the case there is a certain level of individualism that they want to put into their creation. They can literally fall in love with a project that they are working on, and if their process is pushed too far due to client or managerial decisions, they can get very irritated.

     The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a very important tool when trying to understand employees of any type, especially creative ones. There are sixteen different behavioral types that determine how the individual reacts to his or her work environment. Teamwork, deadlines, stress, criticism, and all sorts of other factors are handled differently by each of the sixteen types of behavioral patterns.

     Teams are the most complicated when it comes to creativity. Very few people would disagree that working in teams on creative projects is better than working alone. Teams offer a diversity of ideas and a synergy that would not be possible otherwise. The complication derives from team members with different behavioral patterns. One member may insist on working hard right away and finishing the project, while another may think his or her best ideas come out at the last minute. However, these variations can actually produce the best results, it just takes longer for the group to become functional. If teams that are largely similar in their types of behavior start working together, it is easier for them to overlook possible alternatives or even get in the dreadful rut of group-thinking (Kummerow, Barger, and Kirby 148-149).

     Deadlines and stress are often the largest gaps in the behavioral theory. Everyone handles time management differently. Like I mentioned above, some people like to finish ahead of schedule while others find creativity in the excitement of pushing the deadline. “What one person considers a major source of stress, another may hardly notice,” state the authors of Human Behavior in Organizations (Hellriegel, et al. 200). As a manager focusing on total quality management (TQM), it is very important to know your employees' preferences and provide them the leeway and time to produce at their optimal level. Otherwise they will get upset, stressed out, and thus not be able to concentrate on the creativity that drives their motivation and the company's reputation.

     Nearly all design and advertising companies have adopted the “always overestimate” rule. This theory uses past experiences to provide a time frame for current jobs that allows time at the end of the project for any difficulties that may arise. Yet, with my discussions with professionals in the design field, their estimations still do not offer enough time for sketching and experimentation. “For me it is a tremendous time-saver to skip that phase [sketching] - and time is one of the major commodities on which my income is based,” claims highly published logo designer Jeff Fisher. Every designer and artist I have talked to about this subject wishes that they had more time to sketch ideas, experiment with processes, and work and rework their comps. However, they feel that they are compromising their ability to attain new clients if they demand an extra amount of time for these steps.

     Allowing room for this experimental free time not only feeds the artists creative ability, but in today's technology-based industries it offers a much-needed break from the computer. Milton Glaser, celebrity designer, in his interview for the book, Design Dialogues, states that computers have caused designers to become more interested in “effects” than content, which is detrimental to the integrity of the business (Heller and Pettit 153). Not to mention the physical and psychological drain placed on those who stare into the rays of the monitor all day long in a position that is usually not ergonomic. According to a NEWSwatch article by Visual Arts Trends, our new technologies have increased stress and addiction, and have deteriorated personal lives as 91% of workers are working overtime. Since a business's most important asset is the people who are in it, these are very important concepts to keep in mind!

     All of the ideas expressed so far in this essay are the basic building blocks of gaining TQM in the creative industries. I have discussed how to focus on keeping the artists motivated, happy, and at top performance. I have yet to talk about the equally important business factor of customer satisfaction.

     In the past it has been the clients that have caused the near-extinction of the sketching and experimental phases of creativity. Clients will go to the design firm or advertising agency and need something next week, or worse, today! Particularly when the market isn't strong, the firms have no choice but to throw something together in such a limited time. A very lucky few feel that they have the opportunity to refuse such jobs. Unfortunately, when a firm agrees to jobs solely based on the need for money, two things happen: this mediocre work becomes known as the quality that the firm produces lowering its reputation, and the client tells others about how quickly the firm puts out work, causing high expectations from new clientele. If the firm fails to keep up the pace the new clients will be dissatisfied and will find another firm that will do the job more quickly.

     Very recently there has been a wonderful occurrence in the world of big business. The huge conglomerates and other powerful businesses have finally started to buy into the value of “good design.” Nike, Budweiser, Gateway, and many others have shown the business world that good design can revolutionize a company. In the case of Macintosh, design has been a tremendous factor in saving the dying company and has brought it back to a flourishing market of new computer users.

     This juncture in time, where design is starting to be respected, may be the perfect opportunity for the firms and agencies to take back their full integrity and demand that their clients give them more advance on their projects. Good design equals higher revenues and a broader client base, which any manager would want. Happy and relaxed designers often equal better design and communication strategy. And, more time equals more diversity of conceptual ideas that work.

     When businesses realize that, given more time, a firm's output is more productive in terms of sales, they would actually want to give the firm more time. Then, the firm's reputation for quality will increase, drawing in bigger clients with more money. This allows the firm to pick the projects that they want, and then can maintain a smaller clientele that allows even more creative freedom.

     The epitome of TQM in design and advertising is a self-fulfilling theory. It takes a lot of courage to begin the process, but it is firmly rooted in the idea of “more risk, more return.”

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