Shiny Things...

How often do you find yourself doing a job that you wished you had never started? You started a seemingly simple job, but now you’re lost in the weeds chasing a wild goose that has dived down a rabbit hole with a loose thread in it beak.

At No Class we recently began a redesign of our website. You can't see the old one, it's dead to us. It had done us proud but as our portfolio grew, our services multiplied and our team expanded and the website had become the digital equivalent of a undergraduate’s bookshelf; colourful, cluttered and chocked full of interesting looking items that weren’t being used.

Like many creative SMEs we are cautious with our budgets and so decided to take on the task of redesigning the site ourselves. We even used every podcast listener’s favourite advert as our web builder (I think by this point I must have listened to more Squarespace adverts than shows themselves).

Our approach was shaped by the brilliant brain of Louise Cowley, whose expertise in design, brand, marketing and communications strategy was invaluable to getting us off to the right start, giving us a clear end goal and targets to hit.

This start was then strengthened by a short and enjoyable burst of research to help shape our vision. Always a fun process, this essentially boiled down to pointing at shiny things and saying “ooh a shiny thing”. The trick was not to spend too long on this…getting obsessed with other people’s shiny things can be ruinous, just ask Moana. 

Next up came the second of the Cowley sisters, as Rachael Cowley and I began to write the copy for the various features and pages we knew we wanted the website to include. This was a surprisingly enjoyable stage, providing us with a genuine opportunity to reflect on some of our successes and achievements in an honest way. Like many creative SMEs we are ambitious and always striving to do better, so it was uplifting to spend a short while looking backwards and describing the journeys of some of our favourite projects. While it was tempting to use every internet user’s favourite AI at this point we found that the genuine and authentic tone of voice we wanted required — funnily enough — a genuine and authentic person on the end of it. Perhaps Chatgpt will improve to do this job for us, but for the moment we need to feed it so much input that it just reminded us of the needy Johnny Five, only without the cute VCR face.

The bulk of the layout, design and organisation of the site was then done by our BBC Apprentice extraordinaire, Ben Fortnam. I like Ben, he’s been great and done some fantastic work with us but he must have thought we were punishing him for something when he sat down to Squarespace for the first time. I’m not saying Squarespace is frustrating, but I before I used it I had a full head of hair. 

Fortunately Ben dug in and persevered (and as of this morning, still has happy healthy hair follicles) and pretty soon our vision started to take shape. The design was coupled with the stellar work Elena Bytyqi had done to cut our latest batch of showreels and we had a very pleasing looking site. We were basically 90% of the way there, which to my impatient January brain meant we were basically done. Oh poor innocent foolish January brain.

I have come across the 90/10 rule many times before. This rule states that “90% of the work takes 10% of the time” and conversely “10% of the work takes 90% of the time”. I’m sure there are management training courses in exactly this. Probably plenty of books too. Definitely a few business podcasts (complete with Squarespace ads). I’ve experienced it in the creative journey of writing, shooting and editing. You hit the flow, get some excellent work done, and then seem to suddenly stumble at the final hurdle. There can be different reasons for it, but the 90/10 rule is a trap that we have learnt to expertly dodge or deal with when working with our clients. It’s a trap that is the antithesis of everything No Class stands for.

There are a number of reasons for the name No Class. One of these is because of our belief that the arts should not be governed nor separated by class; we are all lovers of both ‘high’ class and ‘low’ class artforms and think divisions are nonsense. The other reason is, of course, Lemmy Kilmister.

Motörhead were a band that did wonders for the music scene. Not only did they play rock n roll, not only did they unite the rockers and the punks, but they did so while combining a fearless attitude with a relentless work-ethic. There was no 90/10 rule with Motörhead, they operated at speed, with Lemmy even writing lyrics moments before recording them.

Filmmaking is a long game and you can’t approach it the same way as a rock song, but the name No Class is a constant reminder to try and imbue what we do with the same fearlessness. We don’t always manage it, but when we do we are bold, brave and decisive. It’s when we have the most fun and where the best work is created. We love taking clients along on this ride with us and they usually enjoy it too!

What we came to realise was…we are experts in avoiding the 90/10 principle when working with our clients, but terrible at it for ourselves! The final 10% of the design took us far too long, with tangents, pitfalls and mistakes. What was supposed to be a moment of triumph then became a moment of relief as today we finally shoved the finished design out of the door.

I’m writing this with my tongue very much in my cheek. I am proud of what we have done and very grateful for the support we’ve received, however it might have been built on a false economy. We are a creative SME and cautious with our budgets, so took the decision to push at the edge of our skills and do a big job in-house, rather than hiring outside specialists who could do it for us. The trade-off was our time versus the cost of web design. I think we did a good job (if I do say so myself) but was the decision worth it? I haven’t totalled up the hours to find out, but the fact that I’m avoiding that should tell you where my gut lies.

I wonder how many times No Class are on the opposite end of a similar decision making process. How many companies feel like filmmaking is ‘close enough’ to what they do that they take a job in-house, only to find themselves wading through the work? How many organisations ‘fancy a go’ at filmmaking, only to discover it was harder than they thought? It’s an understandable decision, especially at this time of year in this economy when everyone’s budgets are stretched, but it does make me realise how much more productive businesses can be when they are working well together.

Needless to say I would love you to take a look at the fruits of these labours and get in touch if you think No Class could help you out. And if you want a website designing, you should probably look elsewhere!