Every holiday season I try to draw a set of Christmas comics. For whatever reason, it was harder this year.

SIMON: Do you still pick up the pen?

SPIEGELMAN: I pick it up, but it’s a very heavy instrument right now. And I’ve got little notes and little doodles and drawings. I have no idea what they can come to, and I’m hoping that the pen gets lighter if I get to use it every day and build up my finger muscles, you know?

Art Spiegelman on the re-issue of his book ‘Breakdowns’

I think in the new year I need to find some other way to pursue inspiration. And I have an idea, but will talk about that in January.

For now, I hope you’ll find at least a chuckle or two in this year’s set.

Zero Carbon Santa

I wonder what Santa could use instead of coal.

Inbox Zero

Santa probably gets a lot of emails. But I doubt he’s the one reading them all. Some elf probably has that responsibility…

Ugly Sweater Contest

There was an ugly sweater contest at my office last week. I forgot about it but went to work wearing a sweater. The sweater wasn’t ugly, but it did inspire this cartoon.

Day Rate

When I talk to other indie consultants, especially new ones, my key piece of advice is that your hourly or daily rate doesn’t really matter. Budgets matter a lot more.

Take reindeer for example, they only one day a year. They might get a really good rate for that one day, but is it enough to keep them in reindeer food and shelter for the remaining 364.

Logic model is a little too simple.

Trying to think of evaluation stuff I haven’t talked about during past holidays. This one is based on the idea that a lame logic model can lead to a lame evaluation. Also, these are elves, but I think we’re a little too zoomed in for that to be noticeable.

Annual Reports

Do you think Santa makes the elves deliver a year end annual report? Seems like it would be a little bit of stressful deadline to me.

I hope you have a fantastic holiday!

Whatever holiday you celebrate, I hope it is a good one. See ya next week

In today’s post I talk about an upcoming change to how I blog and why writing for Google works, but for me, shouldn’t be the point.

It works. But that’s the problem.

There is pretty simple logic behind writing for Google.

People use Google to find information, often in pursuit of answers to their questions. If you can do an adequate job of answering those specific questions, you will likely start showing up as results in the search engine.

For instance, if you search for Canva Accessibility, you’re likely going to find a blog post by me ranked fairly high on the Google search page.

Same thing happens if you search for how to convert Canva Reports to Word.

Now I’ve been doing this strategically over the past year (answering questions people have so that they rank high on Google). As such, I’ve had a big increase in my website traffic. My website has become a resource for people looking to improve their design skills.

As an independent consultant I had convinced myself that this was a good thing. If I could be a design resource it would lead more people to my workshop or towards hiring me for gigs as a web, graphic, and data designer.

But the more I reflect, the more I think it’s flawed logic.

I have fallen into a trap.

When you write for Google, you write for discoverability. You write to offer out resources into the world that can help people in need of those resources.

But here is the problem. Resource articles that do well on Google might be useful to the people with those questions, but they’re often pretty boring. They serve mostly an audience of strangers. But for the people who don’t care about the specific question, they offer nothing.

I’ve been playing the Google game successfully, and my Google score has been going up. But I’m not sure that makes sense for me and for this particular site.

Why not write for the people who already know I exist?

Most of the people who become my workshop participants or clients knew me first as a cartoonist. Or they saw a presentation I delivered at a conference or on a webinar. They didn’t discover me through Google.

And by THEY I also mean YOU. There are plenty of exceptions, but YOU likely “met” me first as an evaluation cartoonist.

Now that doesn’t mean you are only interested in the cartoons. The comics are really just reflections of the important but sometimes absolutely ridiculous things that we see in our field. The blog posts that do best for my existing audience are the ones that dig deeper into my life and reflections as an evaluator and designer in the 21st century. And then go deeper into what you yourself might be able to draw from these lessons.

But these posts don’t do well on Google. Because nobody is actively searching on Google for my cartoon illustrated reflections on the modern data world.

More like a columnist, less like tech support.

So what does this all mean?

Well, I made a decision. I’m going to stop writing for Google and focus more on writing for you (and me). This space is going to be a blog again.

In other words less tutorials, more essays.

I’ll still teach design, but intentionally through my workshop not here on the blog.

Have any thoughts?

I am curious about what you think. This will likely be the way I move forward for the next few months regardless of feedback, but any feedback I’m given is always appreciated and considered.

Thanks for hanging out with me, -Chris.