Can you change this? Oh, and that?
I had the pleasure recently of working on a project with a committee of about six people. We had to create a 24-page booklet for an event. Needless to say as the event grew closer the emails were flying fast and furious with last minute changes and revisions to our booklet. The order of events on the agenda, the spelling of someone’s last name, which page each ad should be on, the spacing on page 5…among many, many other things, were changing almost by the minute.
I have literally hundreds of emails about revisions for the booklet, many of them containing one single change.
For some projects I get paid by the hour. If I was my client I would take my own time to compile the changes and send them in one big email. It is more efficient, more economical and leaves less room for errors. Think about it. If I receive all of the changes at once I can print one email versus 50 emails. This saves paper, ink and time. With one set of changes I can open, revise and save the document once, rather than 50 times. If I need to double-check something I can find that one email, rather than searching through 50 of them all with the same subject line. If I am the client who wants to go back and make sure my changes have been made, wouldn’t it be easier to have them all listed in one place?
Some people like to fire off emails as soon as a thought hits them. In the case of a project which requires review and revisions, this isn’t a good way to work. It’s why many graphic and web designers say that their price includes two rounds of revisions. They don’t say that the price includes 50-100 individual little changes!
If you don’t care about how much it costs, then sure, have your designer organize your revisions for you. Also, if you don’t care how much it costs, I would love to meet you! If, however, you are like most people and are looking to make the most of your budget, try to do things efficiently. It will save everyone time, money and frustration.
