wishart’s vision and imagination
I have worked with wishart on over 20 different client campaigns. While each client was different, the basic elements of the campaigns were identical. I was always impressed that wishart treated each client and every campaign as an absolutely fresh, brand new campaign. They put the same amount of thought and the same high level of creativity into every single effort. I never saw a recycled idea from the past brought forward to a new client. And the depth! The truly remarkable thing about wishart is the depth of thought that goes into their work. I have never met another design firm which puts that much thought into their work.
How wishart works under pressure
John and his team work extremely well under a great deal of pressure with a very wide range of clients with an equally wide range of personalities. And believe me, one of my clients would have tried the patience of a saint! John and his team have always been unfailingly polite, pleasant, cheerful, and appropriate in all my contacts with them.
wishart’s ability to meet deadlines
John and the wishart team do an excellent job of meeting deadlines. Often a client would miss a deadline but wishart would find a way to keep to schedule. Even when clients were unreasonably late on timelines, wishart still managed to turn out excellent work quickly.
wishart’s attention to detail
I am a fiend for detail. When I make a change to something, I always keep a copy and then double-check to ensure the change has been made. In eight years of working with wishart, I cannot recall a single time when they have missed a change unless it was poorly marked or confusing. Furthermore, it’s not unusual to receive an email from wishart which includes a message like: “In reading over the text you sent we noticed a grammatical error so we changed it in the proof and highlighted it in magenta. If you want us to change it back, we can.” I have never met another design company with such extraordinary attention to detail!
wishart’s sensitivity to cost
All of the clients I have worked with wishart on were charities. Because of that, John was extremely conscious of cost and always ensured that he used photo agreements for our materials that benefited the client. For instance, if we did a photo shoot, John always got the photographer to give the client ownership of the image. That way the client charity could reprint and re-use the image without paying royalties. I have since learned that most design companies do not operate this way; they “own” the photo and sizable royalty payments can continue in perpetuity. wishart’s commitment to doing the right thing for the charity client (which means less money in wishart’s pocket), really caused me to admire wishart.
wishart’s integrity and business ethics
wishart maintains the highest ethical standards. Several examples come to mind. Once we had a situation where a printer did not pack a brochure order properly. Over 75% of the brochures were damaged. The printer refused to reprint the damaged brochures so John elected to pay for the cost of the reprint, $14,000, out of his own pocket rather than give a client a substandard product. Another remarkable example was with a very difficult client. The client wanted their brochure to look “exactly like this one” from another charity in another city. So, I got a copy of the brochure and sent it off to wishart. When the design arrived, I was surprised that, while similar to the brochure I had submitted, it was in no way identical. The designer patiently explained that to copy a design exactly would be considered “idea theft” and that if we wanted to copy the design exactly, I would have to get written permission from the original designer. I had never really thought about this issue, prior to that conversation but it made sense and seemed to me a great example of very high ethical standards.
In conclusion, let me state again that wishart represents the best of what you could hope for in a design firm: they maintain a very high quality of work, they’re sensitive to costs, they work hard and love working WITH a client (rather than forcing a client to mould to them), and they provide the highest ethical standards of any company I’ve ever worked with. I recommend you hire wishart for your next job!
Sincerely yours,
Ann Rosenfield, CFRE
