Wake

I think it was the fantasy (and fantastic) author Neil Gaiman who wrote that Wake is a wonderful word. It has three over lapping meanings. A wake is what we hold when someone has died, it is what we do after sleeping and it marks the passing of a ship.

What has this to do with graphic or web design though? Well, directly, not a lot, but indirectly I believe a great deal.

It has been two years since the big banking crash and the credit crunch. In my experience SMEs (small and medium enterprises) didn't suffer as badly then as the big businesses, the multi-nationals, the banks. Small business kept its nose down and clean, simply getting on with it.

However, when big business trashes about, like the passing of a huge ship, the wake effects the smaller vessels. It doesn't hit right away, it surges, sometimes slowly towards them and then tosses them around through no fault of their own. Big business, especially the banks, were hit hard two years ago, and now as they try and stabilise and save themselves they thrash around catching the rest of us up in their wake.

This all has had an adverse affect on small businesses at the end of the chain. The banks wont lend bigger businesses money, who in turn can't invest, and thus can't sub-contract to not such large businesses, and they in turn can't subcontract or buy from small businesses. The same small businesses who were doing fine and getting along fine before.

Big business often has a lot of excess fat that can be trimmed. By shaving and saving they can stay afloat. Especially as by their size their cashflow often allows for more manoeuvring with payment. Small businesses do not have this advantage, less to shave and save, and less cash flow manoeuvrability. This has meant that some small businesses have been unable to survive and many mourn their passing.

For example I ran a small local marketing campaign earlier this year, targeting only small businesses, and of the qualified leads I put together 20% had gone under! As they were small, family businesses their passing leaves less of a ripple than the collapse of a big business.

However, as the wake fades to ripples; or indeed a loss becomes a memory, we may find that small business wakes up and looks forward. At this point there will be new marketing strategies, new product ideas, new directions. All of which may well require new design, new graphics, new websites and more.

All the effects described above have been felt here at Gabriel Design and I am looking forward to the future, working with clients old and new and hoping to work on new graphic and web design projects. If you feel your business is waking up perhaps we can 'do breakfast'?