I recently read an excellent book by David Travis, "The Fable of the User-Centered Designer". It's a short story about a young designer who learns the secrets of user-centered design from three clients of a designer he found in a nearby town. It is a very enjoyable read and the three little lessons learned are great reminders for any designer (or for any executive approaching a product/service design project).

One of my greatest challenges as a proposal manager comes from conflicting priorities between my perspective as a communications professional and the perspective of the subject matter experts contributing to any particular proposal.

Proposal Director Mike Schutz writes about SF330 development: how A/E firms can separate themselves from the pack by handing this standard form properly.

In the rush to the Web over the last dozen years, much attention has been given to the website "user experience". To a certain degree, this extensive dialogue has been reapplied to print marketing pieces as graphic designers strive to combine traditional print design with visual elements familiar to web users.

Here is an example of how the designer can help at a press check. I recently attended the press run of 25,000 4-Color books, which I had designed. After the job was set up on the press, I was called to look at the initial review sheets, and noticed that the registration (the 4 layers of overlapping process colors) was slightly off.

During my (lustrous) career using ColdFusion, I have seen a lot change! One of the most important changes was the introduction of Object Oriented Programming (OOP) interface with ColdFusion 6 in the year 2002. This finally provided a logical way to separate functions and procedures into discrete bundles for reuse. More features and improvements to the OOP interface were found in subsequent ColdFusion releases, continuing up to the present.

Trinity's graphic design process focuses intently on the client's need to communicate its message, mission, and unique benefits to its target audience.

The poor economy has prompted many companies to reevaluate their customer focus. In some cases, companies have had to reassess what customer service means to both themselves and to their customers.

Quality of coworkers, tools, and environment are three aspects of employee satisfaction that will occasionally often be neglected (to one degree or another) by employers. Yet, each has a major impact on staff retention.

Since Trinity Consulting does a good amount of work in both the for-profit non-profit sectors, we occasionally serve as a sounding board for individuals who are contemplating the career leap from for-profit to non-profit. This is particularly true as Trinity assists our clients with staff recruitment.

Trinity's Art Director discusses part of the design process in the creation of the Supplier Management Council logo for the Aerospace Industries Association.

The John Carroll Society, an organization that promotes the enhancement of spiritual, intellectual and social fellowship among hundreds of professional members in the DC Metropolitan area, has commended Trinity for its provision of effective strategic and web design and development services.

Understanding how the government solicits business and evaluates proposals is critical for those who want to win contracts. This was discussed in Trinity's recent Proposals Done Right workshop.

The two largest contributing factors to Trinity's success are (1) the character of our staff and (2) their drive to discover better solutions to problems/challenges.

Trinity reviews Notable, a web application enabling better collaboration/review on design drafts, including web and other graphic design.

In previous posts, I described two tools for ensuring proposal compliance: the overview and the proposal shell. A third tool is the compliance review.

In a previous article, I discussed using the proposal overview to ensure compliance. This article discusses a second compliance tool: shell documents, or the “proposal shell.”

Commercial graphic design is a coordinated process of mutual responsibilities between the client/employer and the graphic designer. This post is intended to be orienting, not comprehensive. However, if the following general principles are observed within projects, you increase the likelihood of getting a superlative design solution in the final product.

Beyond actually having the tools of the trade (or, the ability to produce excellent graphic design), being a good producer of graphic design solutions is about pursuing a true consultative approach.

In addition to being incorporated into our full lifecycle proposal development consulting, Trinity’s review team work will be of service to clients who elect to self-perform proposal management and/or writing.

Graphic Design involves the organization, prioritization, and presentation of ideas, concepts, and information at the service of a defined purpose. If the ideas are many, the concepts are complex, the information is vast, and the purpose is multi-phased—then the scope of the Graphic Design services could be enormous. The cost would be commensurate with the demand.

The basis of Trinity's marketing theory is knowledge gained through self-discovery. The path of vision to self-discovery is directly through the eyes of your market.

Trinity's SharePoint demo highlights some key advantages for generating ROI through proper configuration, deployment, and training.

Many organizations, from small business to the enterprise, are not adding two layers of firewall-level protection to their network.

Movie buffs may be familiar with the 1965 classic The Agony and the Ecstasy, starring Charlton Heston as Michelangelo and Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II. If my memory serves me correctly, the movie portrays the painting of the Sistine Chapel, including the intellectual relationship between the two lead characters.

One of the unique challenges of business is to step outside of the usual operating mode in order to focus on your marketing message.

"If the customer wants the responses written in quill, printed on papyrus with a bow around it, please conform."

The proposal cover letter, properly constructed, is a vital part of the proposal that should not be neglected.

It can be a great benefit to have your veteran graphic designer attend the "press check"-the last phase of production for print communications.

Outside of Christian expression, the title "evangelist" is one that has been applied either in an official or unofficial manner to the professional product enthusiast.

I’ve been working with non-profit organizations for 14 years. In that time, I’ve compiled a matrix for non-profit formation built not only on my own experiences, but also on expert consensus. This structure, called the Non-Profit Best Practice Concurrence Matrix%trade; (The Non-Profit Matrix™, for short), was first composed in my thoughts and project notes, subsequently researched, and then finally assembled into structured document/presentation form in early 2009.

Trinity's fondness and sympathy for non-profit concerns stems primarily from one source: our staff, who genuinely care about the greater good, and desire to make the world a better place.

In business as in life, the space between the current situation and an improved situation can seem very far. I think it is important for business development consultants and their clients to keep this in mind: not everything needs to happen at once.

Commercial printing has not "gone away" as some cyber publishing enthusiasts predicted. Environmentally friendly inks, high efficiency paper recycling, and state of the art presses have allowed commercial printing to remain an invaluable business communications medium. So, how do you get an important communications piece designed and printed? You enlist a print-savvy graphic designer and engage the Print-Design-Production-Cycle.

The promise of Trinity’s marketing approach is that it is based in truth. There’s no such thing as a “one size fits all” marketing approach. Who are you? Who does your customer want you to be; i.e, what is the truth of your situation? That’s what dictates your proper approach.

One of the important ways in which Trinity helps clients is by developing a "language" which the client uses to express its vision of itself—including its core beliefs, competencies, and products/services.

This year marks Trinity's thirteenth year in application development using ColdFusion. In that time, Trinity has written more lines of code than anyone at the company can count. Trinity has improved business processes for multiple organizations, and has served multiple different industries.

The SEE part of “See, Transform, Act” presents a roadmap for growing business through an effective market approach. In the TRANSFORM part of the model, the company readies itself for this approach by applying necessary internal change.

Trinity Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Pablo Gomez, led a roundtable discussion titled "Doing business with the Federal Government". This first in a two-part series focused specifically on best practices in Business Development and Capture Management.

Trinity Proposal Director Ryan Callaghan led a roundtable discussion titled "Doing business with the Federal Government, Part II". This second part of the presentation series begun in December 2008, focused specifically on proposal development and management best practices.

Trinity Consulting, Inc. (Trinity) is holding a two day "meet the experts" event to welcome members of the business community to meet and learn from Trinity's experts in the Strategic, Design, Web, Information Technology, and Proposal solution areas.

Trinity Consulting’s Meet the Experts event on May 12, 2010 proved a success, as members of the Northern Virginia business community gathered to learn more about Trinity’s consulting philosophy, expertise, and experience.

Within each subcategory of the uber-category "Business Development" there are many professional business consultants providing an extreme variance in value accompanied by an extreme variance in pricing.

Web Development is about conveying a message not about looking good. Very often the primary goals of web projects are focused on improving look and feel.

In this workshop we focused on presenting some of the online applications/tools that Trinity has used to improve its own business operations, and how they may do the same for our clients.

As mentioned in my last post, here is the second half of my review of some web tools that Trinity uses to facilitate business success in the areas of Time Tracking, Web Conferencing, and Online Office Productivity.

During strategic engagements, Trinity encourages its clients to pursue development strategies based on honest self-knowledge.

The proverbially tough proposal writer should keep these observations in mind when going through intense periods of challenge in the proposal season.

Here are five specific ways in which White-hat Reviews increase proposal development effectiveness, providing added value to the client through lower costs and a superior final product.

While Windows 7 is, in many respects, a great leap forward in terms of application compatibility, every so often we'll discover a basic functionality that Microsoft or a Microsoft partner has inadvertently run into the ditch.