There Are No Small Jobs

Over the course of your career, you will be inevitably be tasked with a “small job”. It will usually be presented to you in the following manner:

“Client A wants us to whip up a Project B. Can you have something ready by end-of-day tomorrow?”

It’s the kind of job that neither the client nor the account person necessarily expect much from, and many designers won’t bother attacking it with the enthusiasm that they would when presented with a Peach. (An example of a Peach could be an identity system for a high-profile client where the budget per business card is around $5 per card. A non-Peach, on the other hand, might be something like, say, a moving notice for an engineering firm.)

But attack it with vigor one most certainly always should. Just because a given job’s scope, budget, and print run are relatively small doesn’t mean the thinking behind it should be. On the contrary. Small jobs are a great opportunity to flex your creative problem-solving skills, play with some ingenuity, and — most importantly — impress upon your clients that the quality of your work isn’t primarily dictated by the size of the project. (This alone is worth expending the extra time and energy to deliver above and beyond both expectations and the brief as it builds trust and confidence between the agency and its client, paving the way for a creatively fulfilling and fruitful relationship down the road.)

The added bonus is that you may just come up with something rather brilliant — and that’s an opportunity that should never be taken lightly.

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