The Unknown Studio

My business – and that of many of my friends, colleagues and tweeps – quite often involves responding to requests for proposals (RFPs). It’s a necessary process for getting new work, new clients and tackling new challenges. And it can be a fairly arduous process. It takes time to craft a response that’s detailed enough, but not so detailed that you actually find you’re already a quarter of the way through a project you haven’t even been awarded yet.

Over the last month, I’ve put together myriad proposals – some large and some small. And while most RFPs carefully spell out the requirements of a project, there are many out there that are so poorly written (or so obviously boilerplate with little thought given to the exact requirements of the particular project they’re meant to address) as to be nearly impossible to properly respond to. It is the poorly-written or unclear RFPs I want to discuss in this post. Read the rest of this entry »

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As someone who considers himself schooled in the art of the English language — a riotously funny statement for me to make, but certainly well in line with how highly I think of myself — I can be pretty self-conscious about the words I choose, it turns out. Lately, in particular, I’m finding that I use certain meaningless, cliché words to express my sentiments over weighty things. Try describing to someone you’re really into them, without spending hours spewing douchey prose about flower petals and clouds and shit. Pick one word to describe why you’re into someone, like a significant other. Read the rest of this entry »

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