A Conversation with Thom Palmer
We received exclusive access to Thom Palmer Writing and Communications World Headquarters, and conducted the following interview.

Q: What’s the most difficult aspect of your business?
TMP: Without a doubt, it’s getting customers to understand that I can help them in a variety of ways. I get almost all of my business through referrals, so people who know me as the graphics guy on a particular project think I only do graphics, and people who know me as a technical writer think all I do is technical writing. Sometimes I get pulled in on a project just as a desktop publisher, and a customer thinks, “Okay, he’s a desktop publisher.” And when I tell them, “Hey, I can help you get these documents into shape in more ways than just formatting; I can see that you can use some editing help, or some rewriting,” they don’t always get it or believe it.

Q: It’s like getting typecast.
TMP: Exactly. Some customers affix a certain role to you, and they’re reluctant to see you any other way, as if you couldn’t really have multiple skills. But I’ve been doing this work for a long time, and I have pretty senior level experience. That includes managing projects, coordinating proposal teams. Now with some clients, with whom I’ve established a strong relationship, I can sometimes just step up and take on a task without fear of cutting somebody’s grass, as they say. And with smaller businesses, too, once I get involved, I can tell they’d appreciate a broader bit of help.

Q: For example?
TMP: Well, some small-business customers, particularly in the government contracting space, are eager to have someone take hold of a proposal effort and run with it, because they often don’t have that expertise in house. I mean, they know how to develop proposals, but it’s not necessarily their strong suit. They’re the subject matter experts (SMEs), they’re the folks that will oversee the contract work and fulfill the requirements. It’s a great help to them to have me coordinating the proposal effort for them, building a scheduling, organizing the prop, bringing all the pieces together, giving it a common voice and a standard look-and-feel. It frees them to concentrate on addressing the technical requirements for fulfilling the contract, which is the heart and soul of a proposal.

Q: So of your various capabilities, what types of work do you do most often?
TMP: I’d have to say that, over the years, it’s pretty evenly distributed. I’ll go through periods where it seems like I’m working on one proposal after another. Then suddenly I’ll have a spell where I’m doing more creative projects, marketing communications things, art, and Web design.

Q: Do you have a preference?
TMP: Really, I don’t. Every type of project has something to recommend it. Proposal work and producing certain kinds of technical documents are always heavily deadline driven. There’s something a little more… stimulating, you might say, to working against deadlines.

Q: Stimulating? Not stressful?
TMP: Nah, I’m a contractor. We don’t get stressed.

Q: Ever miss a deadline?
TMP: Once. In college. I was the editor-in-chief of the college paper, The Pitt News. Back then, we didn’t have personal computers. We produced story galleys on phototypesetting equipment, and one night our film developer broke down at 10 or 11 o’clock at night, while we were in the midst of production for the next morning’s edition. It really wasn’t a 24/7 culture in the early ‘80s like there is now. There was no way to get a new developer or get that one fixed until the next day. We even broke into another university office that we thought had a developer, but it wasn’t compatible. So we couldn’t get the flats finished and to the printer in time. I think it was the first time in something like 70 years that a paper didn’t go out on time. I was in charge, so it was my fault. I was not happy.

Q: You’ve never run into a situation like that with a proposal?
TMP: Oh, proposal efforts are just as susceptible to Murphy’s Law as anything else. Sure, I’ve seen last minute printer breakdowns, a much-revised electronic file suddenly become corrupt. But so far, in all the proposal efforts I’ve been involved in, we’ve managed to overcome the 11th-hour catastrophes.

Q: So the creative projects aren’t quite as stressful… er, I mean, stimulating?
TMP: Creative projects are stimulating in a different way. And that’s usually in the beginning, when you, as the designer, are trying to figure out what in the world you’re going to do. For instance, when someone commissions a Web site redesign, a new graphical look-and-feel. It’s not really about deadlines, though you have to tell people when you’re going to deliver a design. There’s always that moment when you think, “Boy, how much time can I give myself, how much time will the client bear?” Because you often start out with no concept of what you’re going to do. You probably have an idea, based on your conversations with the customer, and they may show you different sites that they like. But what original idea are you going to come up with for them? You may start down a path, based on your understanding of their preferences. But sometimes, after several hours of traipsing down that path, you realize that you’ve gotten to a dark place where nothing works, and you’ve got to retreat, start again.

Q: So where do you get your ideas for something like that?
TMP: It’s often not so much about a fully formed, concrete idea as it is inspiration. An aesthetic direction. Sometimes it’s a color palette, sometimes it’s a graphical concept. Some folks think that a designer trying to come up with a Web design looks at a lot of other Web sites. But the last thing you want to do is come up with a design that looks like some other Web site, right? That doesn’t inspire me.  So I often find myself looking at a variety of other media: television, photography books, interior design magazines. The opening credit sequences of movies: there’s some pretty dynamic graphic design going on there, text in motion. It all doesn’t directly translate to a Web page design, but there are graphical elements and design concepts that are like flints: they throw sparks.

Q: Sounds like each type of work poses its own challenge.
TMP: Or their own rewards, is another way to say it. But yes, there are different dynamics, and I feel very lucky that I have the opportunity to engage in both the technical and creative disciplines. It’s a nice mix, it keeps one fresh. And really, the particular requirements of one informs and, I think, improves one’s performance meeting the requirements of the other.

Q: How so?
TMP: The steady discipline required in deadline-driven technical work is a useful mindset to bring to a creative enterprise.Get things done. Look, if you have all the time in the world to come up with something, you will indeed take all the time in the world. I believe that creativity is about limitations: how to make something beautiful out of what you have, in the time you have. What can you accomplish within a particular set of restrictions and limitations. Sometimes you surprise yourself, and that's always satisfying.

Similarly, ranging across different concepts is a very expanding perspective to apply to strict, structural, technical work: the beauty of science and the rigors of art. The technical world and the aesthetic world have more kinship than people commonly realize. They are disciplines, and they have their precepts, but in terms of execution they are remarkably similar. People who do creative work are, by necessity, very analytical, or should be. It’s about sense and patterning—creating something coherent out of abstract concepts. Well, when you’re doing technical work, producing technical communications, thinking analytically is a pretty essential skill. And it's not a coincidence that much technical communications uses the language of creative writing. When you sit down with a team to plan proposal development, the first question that goes around the table is "What story are we trying to tell?" "What is our theme?" We build "storyboards." The elements of craft cross disciplines.

Q: It sounds like you think about this work a lot and that you take it very seriously.
TMP: I want my customers to feel like they got a lot more than they bargained for, a lot more than they’ve ever gotten from any other contractor—more ability and commitment and loyalty than they could reasonably expect from someone doing what I do. But that’s just part of trying to do the best that you can do at whatever you do. "Good enough" rarely is. I once heard the poet Donald Hall say that everytime he sat down to write a poem, he tried to write the greatest poem ever written. He knew that, in the scheme of things, that was pretty much an impossible benchmark, but his point was, if you try to do something great you're more likely to at least accomplish something good than if you merely try to do something good. Now, I know I'm not going to win a Guggenheim Fellowship or a Pulitzer for writing a proposal, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't go at it like I might. And I might just win the respect and sincere appreciation of my customer. In the dailiness of this kind of work, that means a lot more than some kind of award.