If there’s one thing that is for sure in the design & development community, it’s the fact that nothing is ever as it seems and every now and again, there will be controversies & unhappiness going around. As a result, I’ve found myself at the center of one of these recent situations.

So herewith follows, an open letter & apology about the cause of this recent, unfortunate situation: TypeFaces.

First off, as leader of the radiiate team, I need to take full responsibility for the whole project, as the idea was mine and I was in charge of the execution thereof. I have no intention of shying away from the public scrutiny that TypeFaces, radiiate & I are under at the moment and I’m content to take all of the flack & criticism that is being directed to our side at present.

Secondly, I’d like to apologize to all of the designers for never asking their consent prior to launching TypeFaces. The project was conceptualized to honour you and it is unfortunate that my own ignorant assumption in this regard, lead me to believe that consent would not be required. Legalities aside (which I - probably,  ignorantly - know nothing about), we should’ve had your blessing irrespective of our good intentions. Sorry for assuming that you’d be cool with it and believing that everyone would regard this is simply a “fun” project that would have no consequence.

Thirdly, to all of the designers featured that I consider friends: sorry for associating you with a project that is receiving bad press. You deserve only respect & admiration and the bad publicity (as it reflects on you) is unwarranted.

Lastly… For me this is a case of learning how not to do things in future. I’m used to not always being liked and have had my share of the odd online controversy in the past; I would however like to believe that every experience has simply allowed me to learn & grow.

There’s a lot more that I *could* say about the project in terms of what inspired it, what our goals / intentions were etc, but I wouldn’t want that to deflect from the sincere apology above (as those things don’t change the fact that I made an ignorant mistake).

Adii

*If you’d like, feel free to read @cobuse’s - one of the radiiate team members - experiences (as a relative newbie) in addition to my letter above.

I recently had two distinctly different experiences as a customer with two brands / companies that I interact with quite often. In both cases, I had a really bad experience in the customer service that we (Jeanne & I) got and suffice to say, wasn’t that happy about either.

After the bad experience, I contacted both companies, as I felt that the owners should know about our experiences, as feedback from customers are always very valuable. The difference thereafter was in the way that these companies responded…

Experience #1: Glasshouse

I’ve been going to Glasshouse for quite a while now, to be pampered every now and again; and for recent visits Jeanne has joined me as well and we make an “outing” of it (and in the process spend a fair amount of money).

When I complained about our experience, the owner responded to my e-mail and apologized for the experience, whilst also explaining the situation that created the problem to begin with. We were also offered a free treatment each on our next visit, which we have received on a subsequent visit. On that visit, the owner also spoke to me in person, again apologizing about the previous experience and making sure that we were happy this time around.

Suffice to say, Glasshouse now has a very happy & extremely loyal customer, because they fixed the situation.

Experience #2: Sevruga

Sevruga is an amazing seafood & sushi restaurant in the Cape Town Waterfront and Jeanne & I have been there a few times, each time enjoying amazing sushi.

So on our last visit, we received extremely poor service from the waiting staff, which included us not getting the correct order and not being offered further drinks or even dessert (all the while, not being able to get the attention of a waiter). The bad service is also significant in relation to the premium prices on the menu, where you kinda expect the service to be just as amazing (as you are paying for a premium experience).

Upon complaining via e-mail, a manager responded to my mail with a vague, impersonal apology, as well as enquiring about the table we where sat at and the waiter that had served us. His response also included an invite to come to the restaurant again, as he believed that they had had an off-day and our experience the next time would make up for our shitty experience before.

His response did not include: a personal response to me (i.e. not just any customer), any kind of actual gesture to apologize or a proper invitation to come to the restaurant again.

Never say never, but we probably won’t ever go back to Sevruga.

Conclusion

I’m not after freebies and I don’t complain simply to get freebies. Instead I’m a firm believer that every owner needs to know when their staff has screwed up, as it gives them the opportunity to rectify the matter with the irate customer.

I also believe that a company that screws up and then fixes it, is a better company than the one that never even screwed up from the beginning; everyone is just human and we expect companies to screw up, which means it’s all about how they fix it.

If a situation is fixed afterwards, I can guarantee you that I will go back to the company every time in future. If however it is left impersonal and open-ended, I doubt whether I will find the incentive somewhere to actually go back ever again…

Read this article by the 37Signals folks and whilst I agree with them 99% of the time, I’m just not feeling very agreeable today…

See, I can agree that an obsession over a product name isn’t worthwhile as that time could be better spent doing stuff (i.e. developing your web app) that will create a bigger return on your investment / effort.

But the thing is, those product names become your brands too, which means you do need to put some initial thought into how you want to brand, market & position those products. If you go with a shitty name from the start (because you’re taking the approach of not obsessing), then it’s definitely gonna limit the space you have in which to tweak & market in future.

In the end, it comes down to finding a balance in terms of the things you spend your time on. So do spend time on deciding your product / brand names, but don’t be overly anal either as that is just valuable time being lost…

So as I’ve mentioned before, I’m really keen to do some angel / seed investing (via iincubate, which will also fall under the radiiate umbrella) in the future and as a result I’ve been following quite a few influential peeps in that space as a way to build up my own knowledgebase.

Up until now, I have zero experience with angel / seed investments and the bit of theory that I do know, I picked up during my graduate studies in Business Management. That being said, I don’t think that angel investing is overly hard to grasp, as it is not much different to any other form of investing (imho as a newbie).

I’d think that it would be possible to make a solid investment decision based on the following two factors:

• Does the idea make sense? Irrespective of how speculative the idea is, if it makes sense and it’s possible to turn it into a sustainable & potentially profitable idea, then your investment should be fine.
• Does the business / revenue model make sense? How dependent are those on external factors & assumptions? What percentage uptake / number of customers do you need to cover overheads?

As far as I understand (and this is my mentality with regards to angel investments), the idea is to take a small percentage of a startup at a conservative price level (so you need to get in early). Based on that, it is thus possible to limit one’s risk exposure with great potential in terms of earning a proper ROI if the idea & business model does gather traction.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, as these are just the thoughts that I have been playing with in my head… I still have a lot to learn obviously and most things I’ll only end up learning with future experiences. In the meantime though, my plan is (as it has always been) to simply wing it and learn on the job…

When I flew out to the UK on Friday I made the decision that I was gonna give Gowalla a full go whilst over here, as it had more spots & users compared to the relatively slow uptake in Cape Town. But to be honest, I just can’t get into it…

For one, it’s quite a mission to check in at every place; not in terms of the process, but more in remembering to do so. And secondly, I don’t see the value thereof for either myself or my followers.

Gowalla has an amazing interface and I can’t (and won’t) knock them in any way, but the service just doesn’t seem to be able to entrench it into my natural ways (as to some extent Twitter has done).

Anyone else feel this way?