About Colleen Eakins Design

### The Start of Colleen Eakins Design In 2002, Colleen started Colleen Eakins Design as a part-time business, when she was mid-way through her graphic design program in college. She started the business as a way to earn extra money and to build her portfolio with real-world pieces versus the class projects that typically fill new design graduates’ portfolios. She felt it would help set her apart from other job applicants when she finished with her degree program. For years, Colleen used the business to freelance, earn extra income, and gain additional experience in other sectors and industries outside of what she did in her full-time designer role in Corporate America. While working as a contract designer for 3M, she decided to take a leap of faith when the contract ended and take her business full-time. In 2011, Colleen Eakins Design was fully instated. ### What is Colleen Eakins Design? Colleen Eakins Design (CED) is a design firm that specializes in print and digital marketing collateral & assets for small to medium size businesses. Capabilities include web design, logo design and branding, and printing for select collateral. The mission of Colleen Eakins Design is to help clients achieve their visual marketing needs and reach their marketing goals with the visuals provided through effective graphic design. *“Anyone can make a pretty picture, but is it effective?” Through CED’s approach of graphic design from a marketing perspective, the answer to that question is “yes!”* Colleen Eakins Design’s unique selling proposition is through the treatment of our clients. We value their industry expertise to inform our initial discussions and adhere to a very communicative and open environment to ensure the best service and product of each client need. ### Make-up of Company and Staff As a fully distributed company, staff is fully remote and located through-out the country, although, mostly situated within the Midwest and Eastern Coast of the United States. As the owner, Colleen operates as Sr. Designer and Art Director of Colleen Eakins Design. Pending the needs of clients, there are up to three rotating design contractors, along with a part-time Project Manager/Content Specialist to facilitate the design of assets. With such a dispersed staff, certain programs are needed to effectively communicate and facilitate the flow of projects. The two main programs used in CED are Slack and Basecamp. Slack is an instant messenger that allows team member to speak to each other about quick needs of projects. Basecamp houses all project details, tracking information and provides the ability to directly communicate to the client on updates and reviews. ### Wins & Work-Improvements Overall, the client experience is of the up-most importance to the team at CED. This is what differentiates CED from the competition. Client pain-points from competitors are unclear communication, long lag-times for communication/feedback from the design team and often times, the disappearance of the designer. From our client feedback, clients like the systems, process, and workflows we have in place. Top professionalism, easy to work with, and personable staff to build strong relationship with each client. Prompt and quick communication is also an aspect of business Colleen Eakins Design prides itself on. With every success story, there are ways for a business to improve. Although rare, misunderstandings of design can happen from either party, due to the subjective nature of creativity. Opportunities of how to alleviate the possibilities of miscommunication are always under review internally to better serve our clients.

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