Tale of how we ordered design in America

Creating your project, we got an unforgettable experience with the American design studio, which positions itself as one of the largest, top studios. After working with the Americans, we had a similar experience, but already with Russian designers from the Gorbunov Bureau.

Actually, we are glad to share our impressions - will we arrange a small battle?

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Our project is Getwear . This is a service with which you can create jeans with a unique design that will be sewn exactly according to your size.

The Getwear chip is a convenient site where jeans are customized using a special configurator. From this it is clear that design plays a special role as a project. Therefore, our first task was to find a studio that could create it.

In our first article, we wrote that the choice was between a large American studio (for conspiracy purposes, we call it Stone-Scissors-Paper) and the Gorbunov Bureau. It so happened that we managed to work with the first and the second company.
We compare the experience with each of them.

Rock Paper Scissors

With Stone-Scissors-Paper, we entered into one general contract, and separately under the SOW (Statement Of Work) contract for each work item: technical task, logo and design layouts. They promised To Grow Our Brand Online and Beyond - to grow our tomato so that it will bulge out of the greenhouse. We even signed an NDA - non-disclosure agreement!

The main technical document in the studio was called blueprint. This is a great visual guide to website design, which presents all its pages with detailed comments in the form of mock-ups (called wireframes). Formally, a blueprint is a huge 100-page document that lists with a thoroughness everything that the Paper-Scissors-Stone undertook to do, indicating every little thing.

Blueprint has several separate sections: sitemap, mockups, user scripts (“as a user I can”, “as an admin I can”), and even “funnels” (funnels), which, according to Americans, will be perform Key Actions.

For example, here is the section with wireframes:



In order to create this document, our project description was demanded of us - we sent what we did once. The studio said “Wow, thanks!”. However, when we were finally sent Blueprint, we did not say “Wow!” - we wanted to say another American word.

First, despite the fact that the thickness of the Blueprint could hold the tank shell, it did not take into account a bunch of little things - it feels like our project description was not seen in the studio.

Here it should be noted that when working with Blueprint, Stone-Scissors-Paper had its own characteristics.
We could make our changes to the document only twice, after which it was automatically accepted as accepted, and all subsequent additions became paid. Each revision in the blueprint should have been reflected in the next iteration, but in practice, developers often forgot about some edits. At the same time, if we did not notice this in the next viewing of the bluprint, then in the future the studio demanded money from us for correcting its mistake. It is necessary to understand that the battle was not for perfectly executed Blueprint, but for a functional site - according to the terms of the contract, the Americans did the design of the site exactly following what was carved in the blueprint marble at the previous stage.

To complete the sensation, the logo drawn in the studio just arrived. I must say that in order for the design and logos to reflect our philosophy as fully as possible, we created a nordboard and sent it to the studio. However, in response, we received the following:



You do not need to have an artistic education in order to understand - these are typically sample logos that can be arranged by the manufacturer of women's pads, frozen horse meat or laundry detergent, but not a company specializing in clothing design. And the development of the logo cost $ 3,000! It was clear that the Stone-Scissors-Paper did not even look at the mindboard and the cunning “brand-writing” schemes that we provided to them. All three logos did not suit us at all.

The design of the main page of the site did not suit us either. He, like the logos, was so formulaic that he could only cause disgust for the target audience. We were finally finished by the fact that we used design elements of our ugly description of the project in Stone-Scissors-Paper by simply cutting buttons from a .pdf document using a crop and pasting them into the layout!

It got to the point that Yasha argued with them about the definition of the word “create”, citing as an evidence articles from Merriam-Webster and the British. At the same time, it should be noted, a high degree of pattern and a very low degree of creativity was accompanied by an elephant appetite - the studio professionally pulled money from us for each revision.

As a result, we realized that this could no longer continue - the development budget was already exceeded twice, and the result did not even pull into an intermediate one. Stone-Scissors-Paper sat down in their fortress with spears on the way out, tightening deadlines and refusing to redo the frankly drain work. As a result, we had to threaten the studio with arbitration and part on the threshold of the court. In fact, we spent on them the amount of several tens of thousands of dollars, not getting anything in the end.

For ourselves, we decided to no longer deal with American design studios.
The chance of encountering a global difference in attitudes and mentality is 146%. Americans are very formal - design work turns into dancing over pieces of paper, fighting hundreds of corrections and unwillingness to do something unique. Their own website and presentation can be made perfectly, but they simply do not want to do something original for others.

After the Paper-Scissors-Stone could not do its work, we went to the Gorbunov Bureau.

Bureau Gorbunova

Working with the Bureau begins with conferences and discussions, the purpose of which is to form an understanding of the task. “Understanding” is a fairly detailed conceptual description of what will be done. Since TK Gorbunov is not just not recognized, but is considered harmful, “Understanding” is the main document on which the project will be conducted. Already at this stage we received a lot of valuable advice and thoughts, and completely free of charge: we have not even started working yet. Purely theoretically, we could collect into a fist all that we were told and go to implement the ideas of the Bureau in another studio.

With Gorbunov, we signed only one contract, agreed for a couple of days. The offer of collaboration was a simple e-mail in three paragraphs. This is very different from what we saw before.

Started c logo design. Read on the site the approach of hunchback to the solution of the problem:



The approaches of the hunchbackers to the solution of the problem resemble some kind of shamanism. At first glance, the TRIZ system (The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving ) is a very complex and controversial tool, but in the hands of those who believe in it, it literally works wonders. The philosophy of the Useful Action, which the part uses in the Bureau, really works - the logo turned out to be expressive.

The hunchbackers work according to their own philosophy of organizing a project based on the famous 37signals system “Fix Time and Budget, Flex Scope” , which the bureau calls FFF. It is a bit similar to the progressive jeep method : the project is developed by iterations, for each of which the conditions and time are clearly defined. After each iteration we get a working product.

Gobunovtsy can be commended: they have a conceptual vision of the project, delve into every detail and understand how everything should work. However, this required our thoughtfulness as a customer - for each of our wishes a close, unwinking look and the question “Why Why?” Or “And Why?” Followed. In working with them, you do not need to offer your solution, you need to set a task and explain the concept.

At first, this approach strongly irritated us: it seemed to us that after several years of thinking over the project and working on it, we understand it better than anyone. At the Bureau, our opinion was constantly questioned, so it took a lot of effort from us to strangle our Ego and communicate constructively. As a result, it turned out that this approach was quickly justified.

The output is an absolute unique product. In the load to the project, we received a substantial share of sales and the number of mentions - they got only due to its quality and innovation.

Finally, we can also say that the creation of your project in the Bureau is very expensive. However, in our case it was worth it. It should also be understood that working at the Bureau saves a lot of time, which, as we know, is also money.

We liked working with the Gorbunov Bureau. However, you need to mentally prepare for the transfer of initiative in the hands of the studio. Discussion of the project is similar to collective psychoanalysis sessions. Everything will be questioned. Humpbackers will use their own, sometimes very unusual, methods and approaches. This will require your attention and time, but the final product is likely to be outstanding.

In our story, we do not pretend to objectivity and absoluteness - perhaps it was just us who got into bad American designers and good Russian ones. Do you have experience with Americans? FFF - is it good or bad? Would you agree to work without a formal TK at all?

DISCLAIMER: The Gorbunov Bureau did not participate in the preparation of the post. We write what we ourselves think and, moreover, I have already been written by disgruntled employees.