Month: February 2022

What does it take to earn a place on a prestigious New York Times Advertising Externship? The skills I gained at Sketchfolio certainly helped! Having learned even more from T Brand Studio, the custom content agency for the NYT, I’m bringing my new knowledge back home.

At Sketchfolio, we keep it fresh. We pride ourselves on our core values of innovation, smart design, and giving back. Staying relevant to new trends and capabilities is crucial to our business and we love learning from other agencies in our field, so I’m excited to share my new skills as I resume my internship.

T Brand has set itself apart through its mission to “craft stories that help brands make an impact in the world.” At Sketchfolio we produce products that both beautify and functionalize our clients’ spaces. I learned from T Brand how to break rules and reset the mold. I was inspired by their satiric Dropbox campaign that poked fun at corporate lingo and outdated team activities. This encouraged me to think outside the box with our solutions as well as utilize audio in our campaigns.

The Sketchfolio internship program has given me the opportunity to share my own knowledge of this ever-changing field to improve our content and team culture. I hope my contributions can add a new perspective to the amazing work that Sketchfolio is doing!

Has your project spiraled out of control? Whether you’re an agency or client, you’ve probably experienced this at least once, and want to keep it from happening again! But how? We’ve got a quick checklist to keep your project on time, under budget, and with fewer roadblocks.

1.  Is that feature still needed?

Maybe you learned something during the course of the project that changed your initial assumptions. There are so many situations where a client comes to the table with ideas, then finds that some of their ideas are not as important as they thought. Or maybe the agency provided some different solutions to their problems, and some features can be dropped from the “must have” list.

2.  Can that feature wait?

Delaying implementation of nice-to-haves can get a new project in front of customers sooner. Say your client wants the screen to have a confetti explosion when a customer order is submitted. Sure, that may be an awesome feature, but if it takes an extra two months and twice the budget to complete, is it worth it? Or does it make more sense to deploy with a simple order submission screen, and add the bells and whistles in Phase 2?

3.  Have you gotten feedback from anyone outside of your team?

Fresh eyes are a great way to validate your progress. The old saying “You can’t see the forest through the trees,” definitely applies here. It’s easy to get sidetracked when a project is the main thing on your plate, but getting reviews from outside your team is a great way to ensure you’re sticking to the script.

4.  Have you kept tabs on features that could break your project?

You’re only able to plan for the risks you know about. For example when you’re creating a new website, some themes allow tons of customization, while others have stricter limitations. It’s easier to identify what could cause your project trouble down the road than find huge issues later.

5.  Can you measure the impact of individual features?

Removing features that aren’t engaging your customers is a great way to prepare for future growth. So many clients have a vision of features that could make their project stand out. But sometimes those features that seem cool provide little value to the end customer. Be sure you aren’t spending a lot of time and money on a feature that doesn’t contribute to your end goal, whatever that may be.