He launched his own business around 2 years ago and has been quite successful.

One accomplishment I couldn’t help but noting is that he works with some of the biggest brands our community has to offer. Brands that, if you’re from the U.S., you’ll recognize immediately (Wendy’s, Cafe Rio, Walmart, and the like) and, for major brands that some of you outside the U.S. will recognize as well (Marriot Hotels, Oreck, and Hilton).

Entrigued by his impressive client list (and having written “Land your first BIG client” recently) I was super-interested in how he managed to get so many top-notch clients–and so many of them at that (he’s worked with probably more than 100 of the biggest names in the surrounding communities).

The short answer: bandwagoning.

The long answer: keep reading.

The bandwagon approach

You know when you were a teenager (maybe you still are one) and your parents asked you something like:

“Well, if all your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you?”

I can’t even begin to count the number of times my parents warned me about peer pressure.

Why?

Because peer pressure is one of the most influential emotions around.

When our neighbor buys a new car, we immediately want one. If investing in stock is a good idea for our brother, it must be a good idea for us to.

See where I’m going with this?

If one major local business is redesigning their facebook page, web site, or logo, that must be the cool thing to do right now.

Taking full advantage of the bandwagon

So how can you take full advantage of this natural emotion almost all of us experience?

All you have to do is land one major client.

Yep you heard me right: just one. (Remember, here’s how to land your first big client)

Once you’ve successfully and professionally completed the work for that one client, you now have a reason to hit up other large clients in your area.

The secret?: stay industry specific for as long as you can.

If you’ve convinced a local restaurant that they need a new menu design, complete the project for them and then call up all their competitors to tell them about the work you just did.

The key is to make them feel like their missing out on added value for their business by not hiring you–because they are!

Once you’ve worked your way through the first industry, choose a new one, find your first big client in that niche, and build from there!

Soon everyone will be hopping on the bandwagon and you’ll have more clients than you know what to do with.

(PS: one word of warning. You have to contribute added value unique to your business for this to be successful. What do I mean by that? Do work that other people/companies can’t easily replicate. Otherwise when the local gym sees their competitor getting a new web site, they’ll just hire any old designer to get the job done for them.)

How are you going to take advantage of bandwagon marketing? Let me know what you think of this approach by leaving a comment on this post.

So when I finally had enough money to make one of those coveted purchases, my heart seized when this thought crossed my mind – “Is it worth it?”

When you can afford it, SHOULD you?

How “worth it” are larger monitors?

Are Pantone color books really going to be that useful?

Will a new portfolio case land you that new client?

That new purchase may seem awesome now, but will you regret spending that money in the next slim month?

No doubt about it, measuring “worth it” is hard. How can you gauge what will have the best ROI (return on investment)?

The Simple Principle

It works for EVERY purchase, from a toothbrush to a new computer to expensive shoes to pricey font packages.

I call it the “$3 per use principle.”

Simply ask yourself this question when making any purchase, “Will this purchase cost me $3 or less per use (or per hour, if that makes more sense)?”

If you can honestly answer “yes,” then it’s a good purchase.

Example 1: You want to buy new monitors for a total of $300. Will you use them more than 100 hours (at 5 hours per day, 20 days)? Most likely you’ll be using them for thousands of hours – they’re a great purchase.

Example 2: You want a $2700 wide-format printer. Are you going to print 900 jobs from it? For me, not a great purchase…but maybe for you, it’s a steal.

The Catch

The “$3 per use principle” has one catch…and I already told you. Did you miss it? Reread the title again (I’ll wait. *hums softly*) That’s right, I said profit. Not income; profit. Those monitors or that printer may very well be a great purchase, but not if you can’t pay the utility bills!

Do you have a purchasing principle when it comes to your business?

How do you determine if your next purchase is “worth it?” Leave a comment on this post and let me know!

Home Office

One of the first priorities will be to either develop a specific area of your home as a workspace, or convert a spare, unused room into an office. Along with actually providing you with a place to do your work, this will also help to reinforce to other members of the household that you cannot be disturbed when you are in your office, and will help separate your domestic life from your professional life.

Communications

Make sure you have a phone line that is solely devoted to your work; by doing this you will ensure that you will only be answering calls about your work when this phone rings rather than taking messages from your kids’ friends and dealing with other time consuming and distracting non-business calls.

Accounts

If you work from home you will have to become your own bookkeeper and accountant. Keep all your work expense receipts; remember that legitimate work costs can be set against tax. Some places also allow you to offset utility bills and other costs associated with running the home office, so have a chat with your local tax office to discover what qualify as valid working expenses.

Time Management

One of the most positive aspects of working from home is that you can manage your own time on your own terms. This means that your family will have to appreciate that working from home does not mean a 24-hour kid’s chauffeuring service or carrying out an abundance of household tasks that you wouldn’t be able to do if you were working in a company office. Plan out every week with the family, and draw up a timetable for non-work activities. The more professional you are with your loved ones, the greater the chances are that you will be able to fulfil both your domestic and professional commitments.

Holidays

Running a business from home doesn’t mean that taking holidays isn’t important. If anything freelancers tend to work so hard that many of them forget that their brains and bodies may well benefit from a holiday. A commissioning company should respect any holiday dates that you give them in advance, and you will return to the fray refreshed and ready to perform once you have had the opportunity to recharge your batteries.

Eating and drinking

When working from home it is all too easy to forget the importance of taking regular meals and snacks. Try not to eat at your computer, and for the sake of your health and safety you should take a least a ten minute break from your computer screen every hour.

Working hours

Many people who run a business from the home find that the early morning is a haven of blessed peace before the hustle and bustle of daily life kicks in. If you are indeed a morning person, use this time to make a list prioritizing your tasks for the day. Alternatively you might be a night bird and find the quiet of the late night is your best working time. Make sure your family is aware when you will be working so that they will not disturb you.

Socialize

Sometimes working in a home environment can be a little isolating, and so it is a good idea to schedule some regular quality time with friends or the rest of the family. If possible, find other freelancers in the neighbourhood and arrange to meet up with them socially; this can also be an excellent way of hearing about more work.

You’ve got your web site up. You’ve got some school projects in your portfolio. You’re ready to start calling clients and pitching your services.

So what’s stopping you?

If you’re like a lot of designers I talk to regularly, you don’t know how much to charge for your first freelance project.

The most common deterrant

Believe it or not, I think this is one of the most common reasons freelance designers don’t take the leap into freelancing.

After all, none of us want to get to the point in the pitch with our potential clients when the inevitable question arises:

“How much do you charge for that?”

If you can’t answer it, you’re in a tough spot. So, today I’ll try to answer the question as well as I can.

The big problem

Here’s the really big problem with this topic:

See, I’ve wanted to write this post for a long time, but I never knew how to approach it because pay rates fluctuate immensely depending on where you live. So it would be hard for me to recommend to someone on the other side of the world to charge as much (or as little) as I do because the price will dramatically affect your business due to where you live.

So here’s how I’d like to solve that problem:

How much to charge for your first freelance project

Here are a few steps you can take to make sure you’re getting the most out of your first freelance design project.

1. Take every opportunity to get real experience that you can.
   First, you want to make sure you bring something of value to the table when you approach a potential client (see step 3).

   In order to do that, make it a priority to get as much real experience as you can.

   If you have to do some write-off-able pro-bono work before you quit your day job just to get some solid portfolio pieces, do it! I highly recommend working for 6 months- 1 year as a full-time (if possible) designer at an agency.

   I know… you don’t want to work for someone else. That’s why you’re hoping to freelance. But consider the 6-12 months an investment in your future business. Treat it like an internship where you can take full advantage of the skills you need to run a successful design business later.

2. Learn 2 things: what an entry-level designer makes in your community and how much money you need to survive.
   Next, you’ll need to find out what a beginning professional designer makes in your community. While considering that number, evaluate how much money you need to survive. You can get rich later. For now, decide how much you need to live comfortably now.

   Why consider these two metrics? If you can find out how much an entry-level designer makes, you know that the agencies they work for are charging significantly more to their clients.

   Therefore, charging that amount (or near to it) will guarantee a positive rate for your potential clients. Keep in mind, most clients will have a hard time paying one freelancer the same rate they pay an entire agency. Therefore, we focus on the going rate of an entry-level designer.

3. Find ways to add value to your services.
   After exploring the facts in step 2, it’s time to figure out why anyone would hire you instead of an agency. What value can you add to the relationship or the project that an agency just can’t do?

   Maybe you promise to be available nights and weekends for emergencies. Maybe your price is incredibly low. Maybe you offer a skill or service in addition to design that your competitors don’t offer.

   Whatever your unique selling proposition is, make it obvious and well known. This one very important step will set you apart from all the other designers out there. (PS. It’s not unique enough any more to “do logos, AND web sites, AND business cards.”)

4. Start small and grow quickly.
   Lastly, don’t be greedy too early on. Having a passion for success is good.

   But don’t let your passion for success be confused with your greed for wealth.

   Start charging a low enough fee that clients will hire you despite your newness to the design field. Don’t cheat yourself and don’t starve yourself. But don’t be greedy.

But what about you?

I’d love to hear your story…leave a comment on this post. If you’re already way past the “getting started” phase, how did you decide how much to charge when you were just starting out? If you’re just getting started, what do you think of the above steps? Will they help you? If you think other designers can benefit from this post, please do me a favor and retweet or share on facebook.

It’s been less than a year since I first wrote them, and already I have reached some of them (and set new ones)! (PS: Preston also posted a video blog about the importance of setting annual goals.)

Okay, okay, so you know you should have business goals, and hopefully you developed some great ones, but now months have passed…

are you sticking to them?

Equally as important as writing goals is sticking to them.

Making sure you don’t cut corners, shred them when times are tough, or scribble them out and replace them with easier goals can be a real challenge in self-control.

So when you’re starting to feel lazy and those goals seem more like dreams, follow these tips to get you back on track!

Think about what works for you.

If you like to cross goals off of your list, write more short-term goals.

If you need to be reminded why you can’t buy the latest $500 gadget, set a goal to look at your business financial picture before you’re allowed to shop, or set a goal to only take enough cash (and no cards) to buy the item you need at the store.

The point is, the goals that work for me aren’t necessarily the goals that work for you.

Set goals that meet your psychological needs and you’ll have a much easier time sticking to them.

Rewrite vague or broad goals.

Goals must be specific with concrete, measurable details…how else do you know whether you’re achieving them?

If your goal says “a lot of,” think about what “a lot of” means to you, and write that number in instead.

Also, break your goals up into sub-goals if need be. “Learn more about graphic design this year.” is a BIG goal. Break that down into:

1. “Take one class/seminar about typography.”
2. “Hire my web guru friend/consultant for tutoring in basic HTML and CSS.”
3. “Read three books – one about the business of graphic design, one about improving my color technique, and one about whatever looks interesting to me at the time.”

Post your goals publicly.

Its easy to cheat on your goals when you’re the only one looking (or not looking), but its harder to explain to a partner or spouse why you crossed out weekly and wrote annually.

It’s okay to alter your goals, but your reasoning should never be “because I don’t want to fail and I think I might,” or “because it’s really hard to stick to this one.”

Hang them in your office, next to your computer, or in the bathroom so that you (and a spouse, coworker, or roommate) see them every morning when you brush your teeth.

The more you read them, the more you’ll be thinking of ways to achieve them.

Give yourself an incentive.

If you have a particular goal that’s really tough, or that is really important and you want to be sure you stick to it, dangle the proverbial carrot.

Reward your business (not yourself…remember, these are business goals) when you reach that goal – purchase a piece of equipment you’ve had your eye on, take a long weekend, or brighten up your office with new décor.

Failing is okay…learn from it.

Often times we learn more from the failures in our lives than we do from our successes.

Do you remember the client that burned you because you didn’t write a contract? (I do.) Learn from your mistakes, and set goals to prevent you from making those same mistakes again.

How do you stick to your goals? What methods work for you? Leave a comment on this post and tell us how you remain diligent, or how you’re getting back on track.

Why do I love it?

Because now I get to ask you and learn from you!

That’s right. Today, the tables are turning and I need your help answering a reader’s question. Here’s a summary of the email I received from Suzy:

My name is Suzy and I am a graphic designer for a small graphic design business. We were recently exploring our options for backing up our files and were wondering what you think is the best option? We currently use Time Machine, but we wanted to have something else. (We also do CD archives.) What do you think is the most robust backup system to use for graphic designers? What do you think will best serve the graphic design industry? What do you currently use? We love your blogs! Keep up the great work!

First of all, Suzy, thanks for the kind words and for a great question!

Here’s what I do

I mostly design for the web, so my files aren’t quite as large as a print designer, flash editor, video editor etc. So I’m not embarrassed to tell you that I keep all the PSD and Illustrator files on an external hard drive as well as stored online through my hosting services Dreamhost, where I get unlimited storage space for a pretty good price.

But that’s probably not the best answer for a designer or a design firm who does much higher volume thatn I do.

What do you use to store design files?

I’d like to write a post of the top places for designers to store their design files. To have your opinion included in the post coming up, leave a comment on this post and let me (and Suzy) know how you store your design files.

But does location matter? Are freelancers elsewhere enjoying more business success due to their location? Would your business benefit from moving?

Whether you’re enjoying a steady stream of work or hoping for that next client, answer the questions below to determine whether your location is helping or hurting your design business.

Location Considerations

Cost of Living

• Can you afford to live and work in your area?
• Can you realistically charge accordingly?

Clientele

• Is your business geared toward local clients (print procurement, etc.)?
• Are you interested in acquiring more local business?
• Does your area include your target audience or others who might be interested in your services?
• Does your area promote local business through organizations or a chamber of commerce?
• Is your business unique to your area?
• Can local businesses afford your services?

Education

• Are there continuing education classes available?
• Are you within traveling distance to weekend workshops or day-long seminars?
• Does your locale host trade shows?
• Does your library have access to reference or educational books that may interest you?

Business Services

• Do you have access to the local vendors you need (office supplies, printing, reliable internet, business consulting, etc.)?
• Are your local business services cost-effective?

Time Zone

• Do you find that your time zone makes communicating with others difficult?
• Does your line of business often require conference calls?

If your answers about your locale are disheartening, perhaps your location is affecting your work load. Seek out ways to improve your situation or consider relocating to an area more conducive to your business.

What about Remote Business?

In my observation, location has very little effect on acquiring remote business. I know successful designers who live in towns shy of 15,000 people as well as in the midst of millions of denizens and many sizes in-between.

Personally, I’ve found that most people neither know nor care where I’m located; they rather like to know that I can meet their needs, they can afford me, and that we share some working hours for communication.

Share your Locale!

Where do you live (feel free to be as specific or generalized as you prefer)? How do you think it affects your business success and why? Where are most of your clients located? Leave a comment below!

I’ll go first…

I live in Salem, Oregon, which has roughly 150,000 people and is most certainly not a hot-bed of graphic/web design activity. Most of my clients are remote on the East Coast or in California, but I do have a few local clients. Reason? I’ve done extensive networking online and comparatively little locally.

My boyfriend and I are considering moving (for personal reasons), and our top two locales are along the I-25 corridor of northern Colorado or home to the Billings, Montana, area. Using these considerations has helped me write out a list of business pros and cons for each location to help us narrow down our search.

Okay, now it’s your turn, GDB readers! Let’s put my questions and observations to the test in our very own social experiment! Leave a comment on this post to participate!

Today, I want to talk about what I think is the most important part of your design portfolio: the “about” page.

I want to address the “about me” page – or “about us,” “bio,” or whatever you call your “about” page – because I’ve seen a lot of portfolios lately that include their about page as an afterthought and I think it’s a HUGE mistake. Why? Keep reading and I’ll let you know.

Why the “about” page is the most important!

So why do I care so much about this particular page? Here are just a few reasons:

• Potential clients hire you based mostly on experience, history, and you as a person (meaning, if they think you will be a good fit with their business).
• “About” pages are some of the most highly-clicked pages on the web (usually second in traffic only to the home page).
• Designers are usually really bad at “about me” pages because we think visually–not in words.

Clients are hiring YOU!

Let’s talk about the first point. Clients who are reviewing your web portfolio are looking into hiring YOU! They aren’t hiring your past clients. They aren’t even buying your previous work. They care about you as a person almost as much or more than they do about your talent as a designer.

In the world of business, it’s as important (if not more sometimes) to fit in and get along with your client as it is to be able to knock out a logo, bust out a killer web site, or create the most breathtaking business card you’ve ever seen.

So take time to really polish up your “about me” page. Make sure it appropriately reflects who you are and the benefits potential clients can get from working with you.

About page = high traffic

I don’t know how much traffic your portfolio site gets.

But I can guarantee that a good percentage of the traffic (in my experience, 1/3 or more) is focused entirely on your about page. In fact, the only page that usually gets more traffic than your about page is your home page.

Even your portfolio probably doesn’t see the kind of traffic your about page does.

This reinforces my point above: clients want to learn about you. They want to see what you’re made of, what kind of person you are, and if you make a good fit with their company.

If you haven’t taken time to develop your about page, you’re missing out on potential clients.

We’re just bad at about pages

It’s no secret we’re bad at about pages as designers. Why? We’re not writers. Take a look at what I mean below:

We’re designers. We work in the visual space. We’re not writers. In fact more of us probably have the first sentence of ‘Lorem Ipsum’ memorized than can properly copy-edit a news article.

And that’s ok.

So, how can you overcome the writing problem? Well, there’s the obvious choices: hire a copywriter, find an editor, or just continue to not care.

Or, you could get creative and produce a video or design an infographic for your about page.

If you don’t shine as a writer, figure out where you do shine and use those skills to create an interesting, enticing “about me” page on your web portfolio.

If you decide to stick with the written word on your about page, be sure to write conversationally and in the first person. If you met a potential client on the street, you would never say “Preston Lee is a freelance designer who specializes in social media design and web design.”

Instead, you would say “I’m a web designer and I work mostly in social media design.”

See what I mean?

Speak in first person. It’s much more relatable.

What else did I miss?

What other attributes make an “about” page really shine? Let me know by leaving a comment on this post!

I’ve compiled a list of 50 awesome portfolio designs and a short blurb on why I’ve chosen them, categorized alphabetically by awesome design element, to spark creativity for designing or redesigning yours. Take a look and let me know which ones are your favorite by leaving a comment on this post!

Great Use of Color

Authentic Style :: The brown and orange work so well to create a rich, warm experience.

Charlotte Tang :: The color in her projects is so tangible and vibrant due to her muted design.

Chris Thurman :: Beautiful color scheme and easy to follow. I think the sections should be reordered so that his portfolio is higher on the page, but the layout is stunning.

Dreamdust :: Love their use of color on their home page without it looking cluttered. (Wish they would continue it rather than the grey with rollover color in their portfolio!)

Hot Meteor :: His use of red just makes my day.

Matt Dempsey :: Warm and inviting color palette that still focuses on the portfolio at hand.

Ryan Scherf :: This rich, dark background really makes the portfolio pieces vibrant and beautiful.

Yaron Schoen :: Really awesome how the colors on the site change based on the project.

Strong Calls to Action

Jay Hafling :: Instantly you know he’s ready and waiting for you.

Kisko Labs :: Great dark portfolio design with a call to action offset in color.

Laureano Endeiza :: Bright “Available for Freelance Work” right up top, and it’s neat that you can change the design (and language) via the settings in the upper right-hand corner.

Project 365 :: Fun typography and copywriting with a bright orange call to action.

Second and Park :: Questions can make great calls to action.

Theater Website Studio :: Multiple ways to contact them on the home page, and a great use of color, too.

Sweet, Sweet Minimalism

Ben Hulse :: A beautiful example of minimalism with color images.

Hannah Dollery :: Beautiful and simple way to display portfolio pieces with multiple images.

Kyee :: Really simple and elegant one-page design.

Luke Larsen :: Just a hint of design that makes it feel nicely polished.

Lundren + Lindqvist :: The rollover half-tone is a really nice touch, and really beautifully (and simply) laid out.

Nine Lion Design :: Minimalism can utilize (lots of) color. Who knew?!

Robbie Manson :: Minimalism that doesn’t feel like minimalism with a huge emphasis on the portfolio pieces.

Smart! Grupo Creativo :: The rage these days is grey with rollover color. This site exemplifies a great way to do this and a beautiful one-page design. Also, really neat studio section (click on the team names).

SmearGraph :: This grid/minimal cross really gives the artwork the spotlight to shine in.

Grid-tastic

Alex Dukal :: The rigid design of this site juxtaposes very well with the softness of his portfolio.

Damian Simpkins :: Grid meets minimalism in a nice and simple to navigate format.

Gerren Lamson :: While I’m not a huge fan of his typography headers, I just couldn’t stop browsing.

Jeroen Homan :: His tagline says it all: “Clean, smart & effective web design.”

Seymourpowell :: Beautiful layout and rollovers in their portfolio, and a really nice case study page to boot.

Signature Creative :: They’ve found a great way to keep the focus on their portfolio no matter what link you click.

Visualbox :: Interesting scrolling effect to highlight exactly where they want you to look.

Zync :: I really love that I don’t have to go back to the main portfolio page to view other works.

Fun with Moving Parts

DJNR :: So different and unique, it’s fun. This one stands out from the crowd.

Dumbwaiter Design :: A pretty website with a few interesting moving parts and a nice color scheme.

Ghost Horses :: A lot of moving parts done tastefully.

M1 Design :: Great use of color and fun movement in this (German? I believe) portfolio.

Marc Anton Dahmen :: Flash-based portfolio where each project is a different business card in the mix.

Morten Claussen :: Very cool effects and transitions in this Flash-based portfolio (not as big a fan on information display, though).

Sid Lee :: Really nice and clean side scrolling portfolio, and an interesting touch with the portfolio reel as well as a ‘normal’ portfolio.

Tanq :: I like the bright red rollovers on the home page portfolio pics.

Whiteboard :: Neat layering effect with different background pictures as you scroll. It creates the illusion of movement without actually moving.

Just Neat-o

13 Creative :: Quite the opposite of minimalism, this site fits nicely with her niche.

Astuteo :: Nice layout and easy to read.

Cast Iron Design Studio :: Neat old-timey site design, but an example of where rollover color works against them (if you click on logos, you have to roll over each one to see them in full color).

Cymetriq Studio :: Neat variation on the rollover color that’s not grey. It really highlights the current project nicely.

I am Rahul :: Nice one-page design with really pretty blues and a good dark color scheme.

Jason Reed :: I really enjoy the horizontal slide bars.

Kendra Schaefer :: Great copy and a neat freebies page for fellow designers.

Shannon Moeller :: This one feels fun – supported by the funky grid on the home page.

Tony Geer :: I like how he incorporates his blog on the home page without it dominating the content.

Yodaa :: Colorful and beautifully illustrated site.

In case you don’t make it through all 50…

…here are some interesting notes on what jumped out at me during my research:

• Everyone is using the grey to color rollover scheme. I’m not saying it doesn’t look good when done right, but it’s a big HUGE fad.
• Grey is in. Everywhere.
• So is that little tab at the top of a site that looks sewn or like the tail of a ribbon.
• A lot of designers would like clients to hire them, but they never ask them to! Very few portfolios have strong calls to action guiding clients to contact them.

What do you think?

Which one is your favorite? Do any inspire you to try a different technique or improve your portfolio website? Let us know in the comments on this post!

You sit down at your computer, check your email, check your social media outlets, comment on some LinkedIn discussions, explore some inspirational design sites, read an interesting post on increasing blog traffic, and geez…

…is it already 11am?

This, GDB readers, is what I’ve dubbed “business surfing.” It’s like personal internet surfing but with a business focus, so it’s easier to convince yourself you’re not wasting time.

Why Business Surfing is Good

Spending time throughout your week business surfing is an excellent, productive way to network, learn, and grow as designer.

Great Reasons to Business Surf

1. Education — Whether you’re finding resources on jQuery or getting marketing tips, using business surfing time to increase your business knowledge or design skills is always an excellent choice.
2. Inspiration — Looking at other designers’ work is not only fun, it helps us discover new avenues of creativity.
3. Networking — Become a trusted peer. Contact potential vendors and get yourself known. Participate in a discussion.

How it Starts to Get Out of Control

It just happened to me – as I’m pondering my intro to this very post, I glance at the right monitor. OOOH. I have a new email; someone is following my portfolio. Curiosity piqued, I must check theirs out…

Time-wasting business surfing often sneaks up on you like this. One thing leads to another, and all of a sudden a half hour (okay, an hour) is lost in the wake of interesting links and websites.

Or, at first you’re only spending an hour a day. Before you know it, it’s two hours. And then every time you check your email, you compulsively check three five other things.

How to Use Business Surfing Effectively

To get the most out of your business surfing, use these tips to harness your inner wanderer and remain focused as designer and entrepreneur.

1. Set aside time specifically for business surfing. Plan it into your day or week as a quantified amount of time.
2. Make notes. I used to feel compelled to interrupt my work for a seemingly small tangent because I was afraid I’d forget later. Jotting down a quick note keeps me on task without the frustration of having forgotten it.
3. Check your email, then close it. I must work on one project before I’m allowed to check my email in the morning. If there’s something in my email I need, I copy/paste and close my email so I’m not tempted to procrastinate.
4. Silence new email/text/social media noises. Without fail, when my tablet makes a new email ding, it’s nearly painful for me NOT to find out what it is.
5. Close or minimize all browser windows when you’re working. This way you can’t accidentally begin business surfing in the middle of a design session.
6. Clean up your bookmarks. If it’s a super-easy click away, it might be too easy to just go for a minute or two or ten, especially when your design project requires browsing. Either use a different browser (with no business surfing bookmarks) or hide those tantalizing links in folders to reduce temptation.
7. Use tools to maximize your efficiency. Ifttt (If This Then That) is a great free tool for automation based on specific occurrences you set. LinkedIn allows you to set your groups emails preferences to prevent a bombardment of daily emails. Evernote allows you to make notes and save neat links for planned business surfing. Create email filters that automatically move messages into assigned folders for later viewing. And many, many more – share yours in the comments below!
8. Be diligent and honest in your time log. Not only is it annoying to write down every little switch in my time log, I’m also ashamed when I review it later and resolve to be more focused.

These may seem like no-brainers, but setting a few simple limits has dramatically increased my productivity as a designer and helped me get the most out of my business surfing time.

What about you?

Have you ever been guilty of spending too much time business surfing? Have you used these tips or others to create boundaries for yourself? Let us know in the comments on this post!

There’s one critical mistake that A LOT of designers are making – and it’s losing them clients!

It’s not a hard thing to fix, and it’s not even time consuming. It can be fixed within a few minutes–in fact, you should do it today!

And if you do it, I guarantee you conversion rates on your design business web site will go up.

They’ll have to.

So what’s the big mistake?

It’s simple: There’s no call to action.

As I’ve looked around a lot of design business sites, I’ve noticed a few common trends:

• Our sites look beautiful. Of course they do, right? I mean, after all, we’re designers! Most portfolio sites I look at have a good layout, nice font choice, excellent color, etc.But it’s hard for your clients to want to start a relationship with you based solely on appearance (can you blame them?).They need an invitation to act.
• Our portfolio looks great. Most of us designers are really good at representing our best work in our portfolios. We keep it updated, we add new projects and delete old ones.But after the client is done looking at your portfolio, don’t make them search around for a contact page or a twitter link. Call them to action and then make taking action easy right at the bottom of your portfolio.

Just one click away

Remember, when anyone (especially a client who just happened to find you via a google search) visits your site they’re only one click away from leaving your site forever and never coming back.

What are you doing to encourage them to stay on your site and, more importantly, hire you for their next design job?

Stop losing clients!

Here are a few suggestions for designers who want to stop losing clients:

1. Include mini-contact forms wherever you can. That means at the bottom of your portfolio, on your home page, after each blog post, and multiple times on your about page.
2. Make call to action buttons big and impossible to ignore. The second a client decides he wants to hire you, there should be a very obvious place to get in touch with you. Don’t make them search for a discrete contact page or navigate all your pages looking for an email address.You want them to notice your call to action button BEFORE they make the decision to hire you so that when they do make the decision, they know just where to go!
3. Don’t use “email me” links–use forms instead. If you’d like to give your email address out, that’s fine. But you should include more than just an “email me” link on your site.On your contact page, and throughout your site, include actual forms that will allow your site visitors to contact you (see point 1).
4. Step out of your confort zone. You might feel like it’s too assertive to include multiple contact forms, giant call-to-action buttons, and forms on every page.Stop worrying about it.Your site visitors are there to check out your work and possibly hire you.They know that’s what your site is about. Imagine if you went to the grocery store and the store manager thought it was too presumptuous to put the cash registers right at the front of the store, or thought it might annoy customers to highlight sales and lower prices on particular items.Crazy!

“If people want to hire me, they will” – WRONG!

In addition to being a designer, I have been in advertising and marketing for a long time. And if you think your potential customers are all going to search around and make the decision to get in touch with you just because your work is phenomenal you’re wrong!

Sure, there will be a few here or there. You’ll probably get some good work from your site.

But if you really want to kill it…and I mean boost your conversion rates through the roof… then you HAVE to call them to action.

For more tips like this one…

I plan on sharing a whole lot of tips like this one today as I continue to critique designers’ sites. If you want to get the latest tips and killer advice inspired by real-life portfolios that I’m critiquing, then sign up for the GDB newsletter and you won’t miss a beat! (plus, all subscribers get a free ebook)

If you’re viewing in an RSS reader or email client and the form below doesn’t work, click here to subscribe.

I want to see your calls to action

Leave a comment on this post and let me see what you’ve got on your site to call your clients to action. Leave a link to your portfolio site and tell me what you’re doing to call your clients to action!

Our own logos, collateral such as business cards and websites, and marketing campaigns suffer a bit of (okay, a fair amount of) neglect as we delegate all of our creative energies to our clients’ projects.

What finally got me off my duff and devoting serious time and effort to my portfolio website was finishing the design of my business card.

I’ve been asked for business cards and had to explain why I don’t have any at the moment. (Because my business card has my website address on it, and I can’t very well hand out business cards with a non-existent website. Ouch, that hurts to say!)

So today I’d like to talk about this all-important question that will improve your understanding (and mine) of what content to put on a design business website and why:

What’s in a design business website?

Sure, every design business needs at the very least a home page, some information about the business, samples of past work, and a method for contact. But what else?

This is a HUGE question, so I’ve broken it down into three main sub-questions.

#1 Who is my audience?

Before I can determine what information to put on my website, I need to know who will be reading it and what they’ll find interesting and useful.

The obvious answers are clients, peers, and family. (I’ll add I feel really proud and loved that I have enough family that reads my blog posts to add them in this category.)

My primary focus is on clients (no offense, non-client peers and family) as I want to sell my service of graphic and web design.

#2: What information does my primary audience want to know?

To assess how to present the information, first I need to know what information my clients want to know.

Capabilities: Clients want to know how I can help them. I need to tell them what services I offer and how those services can help their business increase exposure and sales.

Price: Clients want to know how much my services cost. I need to give ballpark figures for my services as a starting point for clients (and a caveat that each project is unique and we’ll need to talk).

Since this is such a controversial issue, I’d like to explore this a bit further (read here for more on this topic). Personally, if the only way to get a price range is to contact the company, I leave the website and look for someone else. Furthermore, I don’t want to waste our time talking about their project if a client can’t afford my services.

Side note: Americans are stereotypically very secretive about money. GDB international community members – is this true in your country as well?

Portfolio: Clients want to see the quality and types of projects I’ve worked on in the past.

Contact Information: Clients want to be able to contact me directly by phone and email as well as possibly view my profiles and information on social media.

Qualifications: More informed clients such as design agencies want to know more about my skill set and how I acquired such knowledge.

Testimonials: Clients want to know that others have been highly satisfied and recommend me.

Tertiary Information: A few clients (and any peers that visit) might be interested in personal information about me, professional updates, and/or links to nifty things. This is primarily flavor text to give the website more character and life.

Can you think of anything else? Leave a comment below!

#3 How do I present this information clearly?

That’s a fair amount of information to organize thoughtfully and artfully enough to entice clients to hire me. Therefore, I’m putting serious effort into this question, as for me it has been the most challenging to answer.

The Header

The header contains the most prized real-estate – the top of every page. Obviously my logo belongs there with a link to my portfolio on Behance – see below – as well as contact information and social media links.

The Sidebar

I’m using a two column layout with a static sidebar. In that sidebar I’ve put my 15-second pitch as well as links to external sites I find educational or inspirational. I’ve also added some flavor text.

The Home Page

In particular, I’m having trouble with the home page. What belongs on my home page and how do I arrange it? Most important, I believe, is a strong call to action. Without being cheesy or a slimy used-car salesman, I need to make a strong case for hiring me and an easy way to do it. This involves selling my services and myself as a knowledgeable designer and great person to work with as well as a very obvious way to contact me.

Portfolio

Ahh yes. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time on this subject and I believe I’ve found a suitable solution to my conundrum.

You see, I already have a Behance portfolio, and I REALLY, REALLY want to avoid having to update two separate portfolios for every project. So much so that I’ve weighed the merits of paying for the Behance ProSite (at $11/month) and adding static pages. However, I’m also toying with the idea of using the WordPress blog feature – more on this below.

Back to the solution I’m pretty happy with. All of the thumbnails and imagery of my work I use on the Greer Genius site will link directly to their respective project in my Behance portfolio. For now, that satisfies me…it remains to be seen how my audience will react.

Static Pages

The rest of the pages on my website seem fairly straightforward – devoted to their respective topics. These include the contact form, an about page, and pricing information.

I’ve also settled on a resume page even though it’s not strictly necessary. Originally I simply copied my resume onto the page, but I’ve decided to make it more interesting by summarizing my skill sets and achievements by general design topic and providing a link to my resume.

Extras

So where does all the rest go – blog, testimonials, anything else?

While a blog is useful for communicating information and current events at Greer Genius as well as neat things I find on the internet, my primary audience – clients – probably don’t care much (just being honest).

Therefore for now this will be a secondary element as my thoughts will impact a much larger audience if posted here at GDB or elsewhere. In the future I’d like to add some information I’ve yet to write about the basics of good <insert design item here> (business cards, websites, logos, etc.).

Testimonials are probably best served either on the home page, the side bar, or scattered throughout.

Are we done yet?

Whew! Thanks for sticking with me through all of that – there’s a lot of information to be digested.

Now I’d like your input, GDB readers. Leave a comment and discuss the following questions with me: What’s missing from my website? Would you organize information differently? Let’s talk about it and improve our design business websites!

PS – The design of the Greer Genius website is done, but I’ve found the content a bit more challenging. While I haven’t yet finished, I’ll be sure to post a follow-up when the site is live! (Don’t know what Greer Genius is? GDB readers have been following me as I use Preston’s ebook to launch my design business the right way! Read about the naming of this business as well as the logo development.)

“Should I charge old clients for re-sending old files?”

I thought it was an excellent question! (Let me know your answer by leaving a comment.)

We’ve all had it happen before:

A client hires you to design a logo (or whatever you specialize in), you send the final files, they pay you and you’re on your way to the next client (unless you tried to upsell them, that is).

Then 6 months or a year down the road, your past client calls to ask you to send the files again.

The reason?

I’ve heard them all:

“John Doe had them and he got fired.”

“We updated our servers and lost them.”

“We just can’t seem to find them.”

The big question

So here’s the big question that I wanted to pose to you today:

Should designers charge their past clients for resending old files?

Not only that, but should designers even have to hold on to files that are so old? Should retrieving them for your past clients even be an option?

I know designers who charge by the hour for something like this and I know other designers who do it all Gratis.

In my opinion, if you don’t charge, they’ll just think they can come back to you anytime and ask for the files again. Who’s to say they won’t lose the files again?

So what do you think?

This post is obivously more discussion driven. I really want to hear what you have to say about it. Go ahead and answer the question by leaving a comment on this post!

Now is the time to land your first big design client.

Sure, you’ve designed a business card for your brother’s window washing business. Yeah, the local donut shop asked you to design their facebook timeline cover. But it’s time to land a big client, a long-term client, a client that you can depend on as much as they depend on you.

Here’s how to do it:

Get some experience first

It’s pretty hard to approach a big-time client and ask for a freelance gig without any real work to show for yourself. Try freelancing part-time for a little while and, once you have some great portfolio pieces, polish up your collection of work and take it to a big client.

If you can’t find enough work to generate a killer portfolio, do case studies. Redesign web sites for companies you wish you could freelance for.

Some designers choose to work for an agency for a few years in order to get some great design experience on their side.

Whatever you choose to do, do it well and do it quickly. The more expertise and experience you can show when approaching big clients, the better.

Do some serious research

Once you’re ready to pitch to some top-notch businesses, make sure you do your homework. When you land a big account, you’ll likely be working with them for a while.

Do some research to find out how they treat freelancers, what their usual going rate is, what other freelancers and employees think of the management, and what their design options look like.

Know the business like the back of your hand.

Prep some work – solve some problems

People at big companies are busy. They have a million things to do and, while they’d love to, they usually don’t have time to reevaluate their web design or branding.

One of the quickest ways to convince a big-name client that you’re worth hiring is to find a need they have and solve it.

Some of the most successful freelance designers I know took this approach and it really paid off! They found a large company whose web site was very outdated. They (free of charge, mind you) sent a document to their head of communications that contained the following and more:

• SWOT analysis of their web site
• A few key, targeted actionable tips they could take to drive more traffic and convert more visitors
• Samples of design enhancements–actually comped out in Photoshop

The most common response? You’re hired!

The worse they can say? Sorry, we’re not looking for a designer right now, but we’ll keep you in mind.

Landing big accounts is harder than it looks

I don’t want this whole thing to seem easier than it really is. In fact, landing big accounts as a freelancer is pretty hard. You’ll fail a few times (maybe even dozens of times) before you hit it big.

But all the work you put into pitching to these big accounts will pay off when you finally get one!

Why do you want a big account?

Right now, some of you are saying “What if I don’t want a big account?”

I get it.

Working with some big company is some freelancers’ nightmare. But here’s why I think most freelancers should try to land at least one big client:

It means steady work and steady income.

I even know a few designers who get paid a regular rate each month regardless of the work or lack thereof they have to do for their client.

It’s a pretty sweet setup.

And you can do the same.

Do you have any big accounts yet?

I’d love to hear your take on this whole thing. Do you have a big account? Are you planning to get one soon? Or would you rather steer clear of any big clients at all?

Leave a comment on this post and let me know what you think!

Lately, I’ve been asking a lot of designers that question because I’ve been offering 5 business critiques per month lately and that means digging deep into how designers build and market their businesses.

But I’m worried.

Because the most common answer I get is something like:

“Anyone who needs logo design, I guess.”

And I have bad news for anyone who gives that sort of answer:

You’re going about it all wrong!

See, it’s your job as an entrepreneur to DEFINE your target audience, not let it define itself. Then, once you define who your target audience is, you go after them, hunt them down, and convince them you’re the perfect designer for them to work with.

In my first post of the new year, I asked GDB readers to contribute a few questions and topics they’d like covered in 2012. Tristan wrote:

“I’ve been freelancing for just over a year now, doing well, building a client base etc.
What I’m struggling with now is how really focus the services to figure out my target market…”

So why can’t your audience just be “Anyone looking for (fill in your specialty here)”?

Here’s the right way to do it

Today I want to share with all of you the quickest way to define and build your target audience:

STEP 1: FIGURE OUT YOUR NICHE
Take a step back and evaluate what you’re really good at–and I mean really good. Because there are a million designers out there who can do mediocre work in all areas of design. But if you can specialize in something and just knock it out of the park, that will set you apart and make you shine when approaching potential clients.

STEP 2: SUPER-NICHE IT!
Finding your niche isn’t enough. You’ve got to superniche next. That means if you specialize in web design, superniche down to web design for non-profits or web design for Fortune 500 companies. (See how we’re starting to get a better idea of our target audience already? Instead of “anyone who needs a site designed” we now search out “non-profit companies who need a new web site”.

You can even super-niche it further focusing on non-profits that need a redesign instead of a site built from scratch. Or non-profits that need a redesign, have a budget of $2,000 or more and have been in business for at least 5 years.

Get it?

Niche down as far as you can.

STEP 3: FIND YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
Next, you need to find your target audience and figure out if there are enough of them to keep you in business.

If there are, find out where they spend time online, what advertisements reach them the best (newspapers, community newsletters, forums, social media) and then get involved in those spaces.

STEP 4: FOCUS ON YOUR AUDIENCE
Just because you’ve defined your target audience doesn’t mean you can NEVER accept work from anyone else. At the end of the day, money is money and work is work.

But you’ll find you’re spending your time and money more effectively if you focus your marketing efforts solely on your target audience.

Sure, you’ll get spill over. But focus on your target.

Like a dart board

Have you ever thrown darts at a dart board? If you have then you can imagine exactly what I’m saying here:

You always put your full effort into hitting the target, but you will always have a few darts in random places on the board. These darts still bring you points and your other clients still bring you income.

But you always want to shoot for the target.

Are you going to do it?

If you take action today, I promise you’ll start seeing more clearly how you can grow your design business more quickly and start making more money doing more of what you really love.

Share with me who you think your super-niched target audience is by leaving a comment. I’d love to hear what you think!

What would you do if something happened and you needed to take some time off?

If you can’t pay your upcoming mortgage?

If you realize you aren’t able to survive solely as a freelance designer?

Today I’ve got three solid tips for ensuring you can survive those lean months, unplanned expenditures, or unexpected life events.

Save. Save. Save.

When business is good and the payments keep rolling in, it’s hard not to buy that latest gadget or splurge on a hobby.

Before you reward yourself for a job well done, though, set aside 10% of your income in savings.

Can’t afford that yet? Set aside 5%, or 2%, or $10.

How much should you set aside? If you’re purely self-employed, a good benchmark is a year’s expenses in liquid assets such as CDs or a bank account with the best interest rate you can find. I know, that’s a LOT of money to accumulate, but set goals and work your way up.

Remember, life is a series of peaks and valleys, and when you hit that valley you’d better have something left over from the last peak. One day you’re going to be really thankful that you have money set aside for a new refrigerator, hard drive, or a week off of the grid with your hospitalized grandmother.

Create Multiple Sources of Income

As entrepreneurs, both our personal and professional lives are directly affected by a lack of business. Therefore, it behooves us to find several sources of income so that when one goes dormant we can still eat. Try some of the ideas below to diversify your income.

• As Preston has promoted in several posts, generate passive income. Read this post for more tips on how to find successful methods of passive income.
• Seek out a temporary or contract design job. It can be a lot of work, but it’s temporary.
• Work a full-time job and freelance in your spare time. This is a great option for those who aren’t sure if freelancing is for them. It can be exhausting to work two jobs, but your freelance income is probably all profit – save some of it!
• Work in a totally different field. Example: I officiate local sports. It pays decently and the world of sports operates independently from design, so the chances of both tanking at the same time are nearly nonexistent.
• For more, read this post about Preston’s secret to making steady income as a freelance designer.

Make a Backup Plan.

In the event that things really go south, you need to know what you’re going to do besides begging your parents for money and a roof over your head (although this can be a last resort, I highly recommend exploring other options first).

A backup plan is unique for every situation.

Are you going to tide yourself over with any job you can find?

Will your spouse’s income tide you over for a month?

Two months?

What expenses can you cut?

Do you really need the most expensive cable TV package?

Can you survive on unemployment?*

You don’t have to have your plan all sorted out tomorrow, but start answering these questions to work toward a more secure future. Often times you’ll find you can immediately find savings!

*Note: In my experience, filing for unemployment in the US while making some (but not enough) money is really, really difficult due to the amount of forms and hoops you have to jump through on a weekly basis.

You might be thinking these tips seem like common sense, but you’d be surprised how many entrepreneurs (as well as the general population) forgo this type of preparedness.

Okay GDB readers, it’s your turn.

What does your backup plan include? Do you have multiple sources of income? How do you save rather than spend? Let us know by commenting on this post!

If you don’t yet, I would recommend you read through some of her posts here at GDB. She’s quickly becoming a seriously great author on this blog.

Not only does she write about some awesome stuff (as evidenced by the number of comments, tweets, and shares that her posts get), but she’s also a great business person. (At least I think so, after you read this post, let me know if you agree or if I’m completely off my rocker.)

Why April is a good business person and what you can learn from her…

I learned just how awesome she is recently when we had a business discussion of our own.

After she wrote a great guest post, I decided to bring April on to write a post about once a week here at GDB and we agreed on a price that worked for both of us.

Then we agreed that after 90 days, we’d talk about our arrangement and see how it works out. (This is a really long lead in, but I’m getting to a super-helpful point here.)

Turns out, that 90 days expired recently and April emailed me to catch up.

I told her I couldn’t raise my pay right now since the blog just couldn’t support it to which she came back with this reply:

“Glad you want to keep me around! I’m really enjoying writing for GDB….So another contract for 90 days?”

See what she did there?

Did you catch it? I almost missed it.

At first I thought she just committed me to another 90 day agreement.

But that’s the genius part of it (get it?) – she wasn’t only committing me to the next 90 days…more importantly, she was saying:

In 90 days, we’ll talk again about how much you’re paying me.

(That’s right, April. I’m on to you. I’ve got you all figured out.)

What this means for you

So what does this have to do with freelance designing or running your own design business?

Imagine you have a client who you do steady work for at $100/hour.

Have you ever realized that, after working at that rate for a while, you need to increase your rates in order to stay profitable?

That leads to a very awkward conversation.

So how do you avoid the awkward conversation? Train your client to expect to discuss money with you on a regular basis. For April and me, it’s 90 days. In 90 days, I fully expect her to contact me and ask how we’re doing money-wise.

And it won’t be awkward.

Now, I’m not saying you’ll necessarily get more money out of your client. But if you know (and your client knows) that you’ll be talking about it every three months, the likelihood of a rate-raise happening when you need it is much more likely.

A caviat

I can already hear some of you saying: “But this only works with long-term clients. I only have short-term clients.”

I get it.

But if you only work with short term clients, then just raise your rates whenever you need/want to. You don’t have to charge every client the same fixed rate.

This is a great solution for long-term clients: the ones that will be paying you on a regular basis for continuous work.

Does this work?

Thanks, April, for such a great idea. What do the rest of you think? Will this work? I haven’t personally tried it, but I’m definitely going to with my long-term clients! What about you? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

“I hate it.”

Those are pretty harsh words to swallow for any designer, especially coming from a client I don’t know very well. Part of me appreciated his honesty (so we could go about making something he does like), and part of me was, well, a little crushed…and scared I’d just lost a client.

My Response

I asked him what he didn’t like about it, and in which direction he’d like to go. His answer (condensed for relevance) surprised me.

“Well, actually, I like the color…and the font. The text looks pretty cool overall. But I don’t like the center element. Maybe all of the elements should be the same height. Oh, wait, these companies that I like have different sizing…so maybe that’s okay. I think just the center element needs to be fixed.”

That’s a far cry from “I hate it.”

In my book, “I hate it” means let’s throw this away and start over. However, clients are people, too, and people don’t always mean what they say.

The Lesson

What clients say and what clients mean can be totally different (I’m sure you each have a zillion examples). Your reaction to their unpleasant criticism can either make or break not only the project but also your relationship.

Beneath that strong opening opinion lies valuable information about how to create something your client does like.

Good designers keep their emotions in check and gather that data. Narrow down what, specifically, they do and don’t like.

The font?

The colors?

Just one color?

The right-justify?

The orientation?

The placeholder photo?

Often times, clients can’t see the forest through the trees. They get hung up on one element of the proof they dislike and struggle to look past it. I think that’s what happened to my client. He saw the one element he didn’t like and dismissed the entire proof.

Through a little bit of perseverance, I was able to decipher his generalization and identify which element to improve.

(P.S. – The rest of our conversation was rather pleasant; we’ll be conferring again in a week over version two.)

How do you handle harsh critiques from clients?

Have you ever had a client criticize your work harshly? How did you respond? How did your response affect the project and relationship? Leave us a comment on this post!

Image credit

But today, I wanted to answer a question I hear all the time from freelance designers: “Do I really need an accountant?”

Can’t a competent freelance designer just do their own taxes?

Today, I’d like to take a stab at answering that question and then turn the mic over to you so you can share your experience and opinion with me.

I’ve never used an accountant

Here’s the deal:

I’m cheap.

I’ve been freelancing for a while now and I have never hired an accountant to do my taxes. Not one time.

But every April, I find myself sitting at my computer with some free or cheap tax assistance software with bloodshot eyes cursing at the screen because I can’t seem to figure it out.

Revenue and expenses? Piece of cake.

Assets, amortization, depreciation of company property? Not even close to cake.

Why I’m using an accountant this year

But this year is different. Last year, I had the highest growth in my design business, my wife and I bought a house,  and it was the first year in a long time when I worked a full-time job other than freelancing (remember, don’t hate).

So this year, I want to make sure I get it right. I want to make sure my finances are in order as much as possible.

Which means I’ve hired an accountant.

Worth the money?

I guess I’ll know after this year if it’s worth the money to hire an accountant. If you’re still trying to decide, keep this in mind:

Every minute that you spend working on your taxes is another minute you’re not working on your clients’ project. Working on taxes are not billable hours.

Each of you has to ask yourself if it’s worth the money, but as for me this year–I’m getting an accountant.

What are you doing this year?

Do you hire an accountant during tax season? Why or why not? Do you think it’s worth the money? Have you had any good or bad experiences? Leave a comment and let me know if I made a good decision!

Maybe we just bumped into one another in line at the supermarket. Maybe we’re both regulars at the local coffee shop waiting for our morning latte. Maybe we’re riding the elevator together in a skyscraper downtown.

For whatever reason, we introduce ourselves and shake hands.

Now you’ve got about 15 seconds to tell me what you do before we part ways: Go.

What did you tell me? Did you stumble over your words? Did you have to think about what you were going to say before you said it? If your 15-second pitch didn’t roll off of your tongue easily and comfortably, this post is for you.

The Short, Short Version

It’d be great if everyone were as interested in our design businesses as we are, but the reality is most people are going to wander off or interrupt even if they do have 5 minutes to listen, and you’re going to sound a bit egotistical.

Nowadays, too, you’ll be lucky if any person with a few extra minutes isn’t lost in their phone.

This is why it’s important to summarize your business and abilities as efficiently and engagingly as possible.

Start with the overview.

The first thing your pitch needs is what, overall, you do.

I start out with, “I’m a freelance graphic and web designer.”

Dig deeper.

Give your overview some details. Speak in terms most people (non-designers) will understand. Notice in my sentence below I relate my work to visibility and profit instead of just talking about the projects…making that type of relation is key.

“I work with clients to increase their exposure and improve their sales through a variety of projects such as infographics, posters, brochures, websites, and identity packages.”

Wrap it up.

You have the option of one more sentence. This gives them the opportunity to ask questions – and hopefully for your business card! – or for you to politely return the favor.

“I also write a weekly blog post about the business end of graphic design. What about you?”

Practice Makes Perfect

Spend about 30 minutes to an hour perfecting your 15-second pitch, and then go practice in front of a mirror, your best friend, your spouse, or your pet.

Try different intonations, reword tongue twisters, and smile when you speak.

You want to sound relaxed and confident, not rehearsed.

Other Applications

Not only is your 15-second pitch useful for face-to-face conversations, it’s also a great short spiel for your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter feed, in a response for quote (RFQ) email, or for phone conversations.

What’s your pitch?

Do you have a 15-second pitch you’d like to share with the GDB community? Post it in the comments on this article so we can all hear it! Got tips for how to improve a 15-second pitch? Leave a comment with your best business-pitching tips.

As a graphic designer, having a fantastic portfolio may be impressive but nothing will beat potential clients seeing your work in person. A great way of ensuring this happens is by designing display stands for clients who attend trade exhibitions. With so many companies in one room, prospective customers are all around.

How to find your next great clients at a trade show

An easy way to scout for business is to walk around an exhibition and pick out stands that you do not feel are making the most of their display.

Once the exhibition is over you can approach these companies and say that you noticed them at the exhibition and feel their stand could be made much more appealing and suggest that you pitch a different design to them before the next trade fair.

The designing of a display stand can be very creative and will allow you to come up with interesting and stand out designs that will draw people in, this may even result in companies coming to you to design their stands if yours catches their eye and gains a lot of interest.

Design a standee that knocks their socks off!

Many exhibition stands can be large structures with integrated lighting, projections and videos, but it is important to remember who you are designing for at all times.

While these technologies will of course get you noticed they inevitably cost money so when planning your design be sure to tailor it to a realistic budget for your client.

There is no point designing a stand for a small business when the ideas are clearly outside their financial means, but if you are lucky enough to land a pitch with a national, or even international company, you can let your imagination run wild and let your creativity create something spectacular.

The most important factor to remember is that a display stand is to promote your client first and you second.

Don’t get carried away with design ideas if they will not fit the company’s profile.

For example if you designed a stand for Coca Cola, you would not make the primary colour green, as their signature colour is the dramatic red that everyone recognizes. Your design must reflect the company and the self-promotion which you need will be gained from how well you transfer a business’s brand to the display.

How to cold-pitch to potential design clients

When pitching an idea to potential clients it is vital to have detailed plans and drawings to hand to show the company, but this is a given.

What will really impress is to have a model of what the finished stand will look like so that the clients can visualise it more clearly and point out what they like about it and what needs to be tweaked. This should also put you ahead anyone else who happens to be pitching for the same opportunity.

By creating a stand out design for one client, many more design briefs could come your way. A trade exhibition really is the perfect place to find new clients and show off your design skills.

Have you tried this? Are you going to?

(A note from Preston:) Have any of you guys tried something like this? It seems like an untapped resource that I didn’t even realize existed. If you’ve had success with this sort of thing, please share it with us by leaving a comment! If not, or if you still have questions about it, leave a comment on this post and Laura or I will respond as best we can.

Time is often the culprit and when combined with a little procrastination and a healthy measure of freelancing fear, we can soon land with a full inbox.

Some of the most important lessons I’ve learned about running my web development business successfully have come from my own experiences as a customer.

I recently moved house and I wanted to get my new place professionally cleaned before I moved in. I called quite a few local companies but ended up cleaning the place myself. My experiences weren’t great and made me think seriously about my own customer service.

My top tips (now hanging next to the phone in my office)…

Be there

I worked my way through the phone book. If there was no quick answer, I hung up and moved on to the next supplier. If possible, supply a landline as well as a mobile number, because it shows you have a permanent base, which can help to garner trust among clients.

No black holes

One receptionist told me the service I was looking for would require a specialist quote (even though one-off cleans were specified in their ad) and that I would be called back by her manager.

I never received the call.

Advertise what you sell – no more and no less

Another company didn’t cover our area, even though they said they did.

It’s important to be clear and honest about the services you offer and know your boundaries.

Don’t try and get business you can’t handle, whether it be location, timescales, scope or expertise – even if you are just trying to cast the net as wide as possible, the customer won’t thank you for wasting their time.

It’s potential business… don’t play hard to get!

No one I spoke to sounded remotely happy that I had called!

When I hear from a new customer, there is always lots to think about: how will I plan the development of their site? What features might they need? What’s their brand? What are their expectations?

It’s important to show enthusiasm as a part of building a business relationship.

Even if it’s not the most exciting project, the paying client deserves to know that they have the benefit of your professional attention and efforts. While you may not want to seem too eager, in my experience, clients are far more responsive when communication is dynamic and upbeat.

If you take a week to reply to each phone call or email, it’s hard to keep enthusiasm and momentum going.

Be upfront and confident with pricing

When I phoned every cleaner within a 10-mile radius, I wanted to know two things: could they do it and how much would it cost?

I know that design is a different industry but, offensive it as may be to a designer’s sensibilities, cost is still likely to be a very important consideration for your customer.

I found that many companies were cagey about pricing.

In many cases, once I had battled through to an actual price, it wasn’t as high as the salesperson’s hesitancy had implied. Rather than being a good thing, I wondered if she thought her prices weren’t justifiable. If you aren’t being greedy, you shouldn’t need to hide behind vagaries.

Keep in touch

It sounds so obvious, but when speaking to new customers on the phone, spend time taking down phone numbers and email addresses carefully so that you can be proactive about getting back in touch if necessary.

Ascertaining how they got your details can help you to find out which kinds of advertising and promotion are working best for you. If you have an ad that’s offering out-of-date services or pricing, it’s important to know that too.

Crucially, we are all consumers as well as providers of products and services. If we feel entitled to gold standard customer service, we also ought to be providing it.

Your turn to talk…

Now it’s your turn to talk. How do you guarantee a good customer experience for your clients? What other tips would you add to the list? Leave a comment on this post and let us know.

We want as many people as possible to view our LinkedIn portfolio, visit our blog, appreciate our Behance project, and contact us for work.

We have no qualms about exposing our names and contact information, and we often forget that others have different privacy preferences.

Really?!

You mean there are people, or even entire companies, in this day and age who don’t want their information spread across the internet?

Shocking, I know.

They are more than just our grandparents, albeit they are generally in the older generations, and they may have legal or internal company restrictions of which you’re not aware.

And it was for this reason I was groggily answering the third phone call in as many minutes at 8:30am the morning after I had just posted and promoted a portfolio piece I was particularly proud of.

The Wake Up Call.

My distressed client was calling me to ask me to please take the project down.

It had the company’s contact information (address, phone number, email, etc.) and my client is very particular about online privacy. He felt very uncomfortable about his contact information being available to everyone who would view my portfolio (how generous of him to assume a large viewership!).

I won’t lie…I was a little dumbfounded.

I’m in the ‘Check out my portfolio!’ category.

I also accept that if someone wants to find me via the internet, they can.

It’s something I’ve lived with most of my life and thus grown accustomed to.But I respect my client’s difference of opinion and wishes. Therefore we worked out a solution: I could post the project so long as I changed the contact information to dummy text or blur it out.

The Realization.

That morning I realized not all people are have the same comfort level when it comes to online privacy.

Posting projects in my portfolio might be taking liberties with my clients’ privacy, and that’s not my decision (legally or ethically) to make.

What you need to do today:

After updating my portfolio to reflect my client’s wishes, I immediately drafted an email to all of my other clients in my portfolio asking for their written permission to post their work.

I explained the reasoning for my request and saved all of their responses in their client folders. (All of them agreed, although some requested their contact information masked out.)

I also wrote a new clause in my design contract stating that I may showcase their project(s) in my portfolio, and to specify in writing what, if any, limitations or requests they may have.

You need to do the same sort of thing right away!

The Reasoning.

This way, I’m protected.

I have proof that my client agreed to the public showing of their projects in my portfolio. Therefore I can’t be held legally accountable for illegally posting the project, and I won’t be subjecting myself to the possibility of an ugly matter.

But this never happens, right?

That’s what I thought, too. Who doesn’t want their company to gain more exposure? But I was lucky:

• My client isn’t a major corporation who now wants my head for posting their latest project before the release date (unbeknownst to me).
• My client isn’t in the middle of an infringement lawsuit and very sensitive about company exposure.
• My client’s CEO wasn’t angrily calling to inform me that their internal document was seen in my portfolio and now they’re getting calls from customers.

My client just politely asked me to respect his privacy wishes.

99.9% of us will never encounter a problem.

But with so much recent interest and concern over the legalese behind Pinterest (read “Pinterest and legal issues: Read this before you pin anything” and “Why I tearfully deleted my Pinterest inspiration boards”), take into consideration your clients’ wishes prior to posting their project.

You might save yourself an early morning phone call, an argument, a client, or in the worst case, a lawsuit.

What about you?

Have you ever had a client ask you to remove his/her project (or contact information) from your portfolio?

Have you ever had a client tell you that the work you’ve performed is for internal eyes only and therefore not to be published in a portfolio? What did you do about it? Leave a comment and let’s talk about it!

If you’ve ever wanted to get more from your GDB experience; if you’ve ever felt like you could use some customized, detailed instructions on how to take your design business to the next level, you’re not the only one!

In fact, I’ve had so many requests lately to personally and individually critique beginning design businesses, that I have decided to take on 5 premium critiques per month.

Read on to find out how to get your design business critiqued.

Design business critique

I’ll provide a full-fledged, in-depth custom critique to help you build your business, find more clients, make more money, and live your dream.

I currently only offer critiques for beginners: designers who are struggling to make their business really take off.

(In the near future, I will offer advanced critiques that focus on helping design firms and well-established designers take their business to the next level.)

What you get with your paid critique

• An in-depth report containing solid advice, actionable tips, and business-changing tactics that you can act on immediately to start seeing a positive difference in your design business.
• Complete analysis of your branding, client-building tactics, and the overall strength of your design business.
• Each critique will likely spark new content on GDB and any reference made to your design business will include all appropriate links and publicity

I GUARANTEE you’ll receive at least one actionable piece of advice that will dramatically improve the path your business is on–making you more money, finding you more clients, creating more free time, or all of the above!

BONUS:

I want to see you succeed from your critique so, for a limited time, I will also exchange up to 5 follow-up emails with you regarding your critique at no extra charge! You’ll exchange emails with me personally at any pace you prefer–giving you a chance to test my advice and ask any follow up questions you’d like!

Only 5 available each month

In order to maintain an extremely high level of quality when offering these premium critiques, I am limiting my total number of available critiques to 5 each month. If you want to get your critique soon (before all the slots for this month fill up), sign up today!

What to do next…

If you’re ready to take your design business to the next level for only $250, fill out the information below and I will be in touch with you shortly with further details!

You probably liked helping people as well. You got great satisfaction from seeing clients pleased with what you’ve produced. But, you soon realized that there is more to being in the design business than what you thought.

What I realized, rather quickly, is that we are not solely in the design business. We are in the business of selling.

We are in sales.

That’s it.

Now, you may be saying, “Well we still have to design, you know…do the work.”, and that’s true. But hear me out here…

The main function of your business is sales

You sell prospects on the benefits of working with you, you sell your design work to your clients, you sell your ideas and strategies, you sell yourself on the value you bring, you sell old clients new services, and the list goes on.

Your business depends on this more than anything else. Without sales you don’t have a business!

It’s really that simple.

I really didn’t want to sell—at first

Now, let me tell you, I’m no expert salesman, but I’ve learned to embrace sales as a core function of my business.

I was very apposed to the idea of ‘selling’ at the beginning of my freelance career. It sounded really cheesy, and just plain…not my style. It was very difficult for me to come around to the idea that I HAD to start selling.

What changed my mind was my first slump.

In the first little while of my business, things were humming along. My network of friends and associates gave me a good stream of business. I had it pretty good in the beginning.

The problem was that I had it too good.

I literally felt like the work would just keep coming! Boy, did I need a dose of reality! Then my first dry spell happened.

It was rough.

I almost had a panic attack. I questioned everything. I wondered if this career was really right for me.

I’m not normally that much of a drama queen, but it was tough. I had a family to support.

Luckily, I was smart enough to have a savings buffer of a few months, so we weren’t crushed finically (another good tip). What I realized in that time is this, you have to sell, all the time—it is essential.

I really had to banish my fears and misconceptions of selling.

You don’t have to be a stereotype

Selling doesn’t have to be a pushy, in-your-face type of activity. In most cases, that is a technique for failure. Selling is simply finding people who could benefit from your services and convincing them that you can help them and better their lives.

That’s a much better way to look at selling. After I got that, it made the idea of integrating selling into my business life much easier.

Here’s the deal. You probably love helping people’s businesses and organizations succeed, and you love doing design. Now, to do more of that, you must sell. You can’t help many people if you don’t sell to them.

The fact is, you’re in sales already!

You convince others to your way of thinking all the time. When you want to go to a certain movie, you try and convince the others in your group as to why that movie would be the right choice.

That’s sales!

It took me a long time to figure that simple truth out. Once I did, however, it gave me a lot more control over my business.

Here’s an example

The other day a really great client of mine sent me an email for a small job. It was a small advertisement design for a mailer. I knew that a lady in their office had expressed interest in blogging for the company, so I asked if now would be a good time to get the blog up and running?

He agreed that it would be a good idea to set that up. Now, that small job turned into a larger job just with a little suggestion. I wasn’t pushy or rude. I didn’t try and guilt them and make them feel that if they didn’t go with a custom blog that they would lose business. I simply suggested it, and mentioned some benefits. That’s all.

When I started out, I wouldn’t have even suggested the idea for fear of being to aggressive. I’m certainly glad I changed my mind!

Start taking sales seriously

Things don’t always go well, even when you sell to your current clients. Rejection happens. People seem like they are interested and then they simply lose interest and fall off the face of the earth.

Many times you do have the power to turn it around, but don’t get discouraged if you can’t.

Keep pushing and selling your ideas, and your business. Read those books on sales and personal development that maybe you thought were corny before.

There is a ton of wisdom out there to help you better yourself in this area. Most of all, keep a positive attitude. You’ll be able to do more of what you love and make a good living doing it.

Now, to you!

Have you ever had a fear of selling? How do you overcome it? Share stories, tips and advice in the comments on this post!

In a freelancing forum recently, I came across someone with this question:

“Do you use a contract for every job, even if it’s a repeat client?”

The question really got me thinking about the best way to approach this sort of situation and I wanted to pass the question on to you to get you thinking too and also to hear your solutions.

Leave a comment on this post and tell me: should repeat clients have to sign a new contract with each new project?

Why I would say “no”

To get the conversation started, here’s what I think: if they’re a repeat client–and I mean new projects every few weeks, not new projects every year–and have been working with you for a long time, they probably deserve a little bit more trust.

With that being said, contracts aren’t just there to ensure everyone’s honest. They also establish guidelines for the project and make sure all parties are on the same page for each new project.

If you decide your repeat clients don’t have to sign a new contract every time you work with them, you should probably have a blanket contract (one that you reexamine every year or so) that explains the terms of your relationship.

Why I would say “yes”

I’m a huge advocate of contracts. You know that.

I have been taken advantage of one too many times by clients and I have decided that I will never work on a design project without a contract again.

Does that mean I have to draft up a 100-page document? No. Sometimes the contract is one page. Sometimes it’s 3/4 of a page.

But I always have a more successful project when we’ve come to terms of agreement before the project ever starts.

It allows me to explain deadlines, needs, costs, and expectations–things that, in my opinion, need defined for each new project whether the client is new or not.

So what do you think?

Well, where do you stand on this issue? Should repeat design clients have to sign a new contract for every project you work on together? How do you work with repeat clients? Leave a comment and enlighten me. I’d love to chat with you about it!

“…I regret to say that I have made some mistakes in my youth, and have burned some bridges. (Bad client relationship because of slow work pace, ‘bad attitude’…) Is there any way that bridges can be repaired? Should they be repaired? Or is it better to just move on and avoid burning more bridges?”

I’m sure Fion isn’t alone.

Whether it’s a client, a peer, or an online discussion group, the problem with a burnt bridge is that you’re very unlikely to be hired ever again by the offended party(s). Let’s take a look at how bridges get burnt and what might be the best course of action going forward. It still might not get your business back, but it might lessen the sting of their experience with you.

First things first.

The first thing to do, regardless of offense, is to apologize. Be honest, be sincere, and acknowledge the mistake(s) you made. Humility and humbleness are good traits to have. No one is infallible, and it makes you look terrible to pretend as much. More importantly, an apology might prevent the offended from telling everyone they know what a rotten experience working with you turned out to be.

That said, a statute of limitations does apply. There’s really no need to bring up an angry conversation from 5 years ago and remind the offended of your misdeed. Hopefully by now you’ve all moved on.

Assess the situation.

To asses how to go about mending the situation (if that’s possible), first you need to understand where you went wrong.

There are two major components to every business: product and customer service. In the design business, our product is the final piece and the process with which we arrive, and our customer service is how we treat the client along the way. I’m also going to lump networking discussions gone bad or inadvertent insults in with customer service, as they’re all related to you rather than your product.

In every business relationship, either one (or both) of these can fail, potentially burning a bridge. The likelihood of repairing the relationship depends upon which of these components did not succeed.

Product failure:

Okay, so you’re wonderful to work with but you missed the mark on the design. Maybe you took a job that wasn’t your forte or you got overbooked and this was the something that had to give. Suddenly the client isn’t so interested in the next phase of the project they were so excited about 2 weeks ago and have stopped communicating with you.

Is it likely that you’ll regain their business? Not likely, but it depends on the severity of their unhappiness. With a discount proportional to offense, you might be able to convince them back, but make sure their business is profitable enough for you to chase after them. In other words, don’t dangle a carrot in front of them if all you expect in return is a peanut.

Case in point: The local Fedex office I worked with fairly regularly on a contract job royally fouled up a very time-sensitive print job. The text was illegibly blurry and the colors were hideous. I contacted the service representative and gave him a decent piece of my mind (why didn’t they stop and call me?!). He apologized profusely and promised if we’d give them a second chance that he’d give us a 50% discount on the next print. We did, and the next one turned out great.

Since the company I contracted with gave them a significant amount of repeat (and rush) business, eating half of the costs of the next print job for their continued business was a smart move.

Customer service failure:

You insulted the client by remarking how lousy their previous design was…that was designed, unbeknownst to you, by him. He loves your final product but really doesn’t love you.

Is it likely that you’ll regain his business? The amount of attitude a client/peer/vendor will tolerate is related to the quality of the product. If your client is absolutely smitten with your work, he’s much more likely to put up with your tardiness, off-color remark, or ‘better than thou’ attitude.

Case in point: My boyfriend and I purchased some pants on sale at a Men’s Warehouse while out of state. At our local store, the sales lady very rudely and brusquely claimed that one of the pairs of pants wasn’t purchased at one of their stores and “she’s worked at Men’s Warehouse for over 18 years and they’ve never sold that brand in any store,” so the hem on that pair would be $10 more. Afterward, Eric found the exact pair of pants on the home page of the Men’s Warehouse website. When we returned to pick up the hemmed pants, we complained and showed the manager.

It really had nothing to do with the $10 or the hem on the pants; we felt insulted in how we were treated. That the manager was apologetic and the pants are perfectly hemmed means that we’re likely to shop at Men’s Warehouse in the future.

Product and customer service failure:

If the customer likes neither your final product nor the way you treated them, you’ve really botched the job and you’d better fix something or you’re going to be out of clients soon. Often this happens to new designers who get defensive about a design or idea to the point of rudeness.

Is it likely that you’ll regain the business? No. Make as good of a peace as you can, wish them well in the future – it’s harder to carry ill will toward someone when they’re being nice in return – and move on.

Case in point: The company that installed my air conditioner installed a leaky unit. My puron leaked out and I had to purchase more the next year, even though the company couldn’t find the leak. The following year the same thing happened and after over 5 hours of searching, a bad seal on the unit was found. I got charged full price for the time and the fix because the warranty on the install was now expired and the warranty on the unit didn’t cover the leaky part. I was VERY upset, to say the least. I told everyone I knew how awful my experience was, I wrote a scathing letter to the local newspaper and the Better Business Bureau, and I gave a poor review on Yelp.

Had I gotten an apology and a compromise, I wouldn’t have shouted from the rooftops what a lousy company they were. (I’m still bitter.)

To recap: people will tolerate a total jerk for exquisite work, or average work for a wonderful experience, but not poor work and a crappy experience.

The best solution:

Don’t burn bridges!!! The only way to win is not to play. – bonus points for the origin of this quote!

Your reputation and your network are some of your most precious (and nonrenewable) resources…and the world is smaller than you think. Act like an adult and a professional in all of your dealings to keep them in pristine condition.

Have you unburned bridges?

It’s time for your input, GDB readers. How have you unburned bridges with clients or peers? Do you move on or do you repair? How do you run damage control on a burning or burnt bridge? Leave a comment on this post!

Author’s Note: A huge thank you to my boyfriend, Eric, for his thought-provoking insight on this topic. My post is at least 100 times better because of our discussion. Thanks, dear!

But have you ever reached a point in your freelance design career where you find yourself asking the following question: “Should I branch out and do more?”

Earlier in the year, when I asked what you’d like to read this year, April wrote the following:

I’d love to read an article about branching out into an aspect of design that you’ve never done before — trials, tribulations, successes, thoughts, building confidence, etc. How do you price out a project you’ve never done before? How can you be sure you can produce results you’ll be proud of?

What a great set of questions! Here’s my best stab at answering them. If you have anything to add, please leave a comment and teach us!

First, should you even think about it?

If you haven’t already faced this sort of question, you will. Companies do it all the time and freelance designers are no exception.

But should you even consider branching out and trying something new?

Here are a few signs you should:

• You’re bored with the work you’re currently doing.
• You can’t pay the bills with the clients and projects you currently have.
• You aren’t working on projects you love.
• Demand for your particular niche has diminished dramatically.
• You’re too niche to bring in lots of clients.

On the other hand, here are a couple signs you shouldn’t think about it yet:

• You’re swamped with the work you already have. (You won’t have time to branch out if you hardly have time to complete your projects on time.
• You find it hard to be passionate about anything but your current niche.

Ok, you’re gonna do it! But how?

If you decided not to branch out yet, that’s ok. Bookmark this post and revisit in a few months when you find yourself asking the same question.

But if you decided maybe it is time to branch out and widen your freelance design business, here’s how you ought to do it:

1. Find something you excel at.
Don’t waste your time trying to build your business by doing something you’re clearly not good at. If you’re interested in it, make it a hobby first. Then, once you’ve mastered it enough to make it profitable start pitching it to clients.

2. Find something supplementary.
When branching out, try to find a services that’s supplementary to the work you already do. If you design logos, for example, try branching out by designing stationery and business cards–not programming wordpress sites.

Baby steps, my friend.

3. Find something in high demand
The hardest part about branching out will be finding clients who are willing to take a chance on you. Find something you can be passionate about, something supplementary to your current services, and something in high demand.

This ensures you’ll have a fairly steady workflow.

If not branching out, what?

Not sure you want to branch out yet? There are other options that can help you build your design business. Try one of these:

• charging more for your work
• working with other designers to supplement your skill set
• finding more clients
• firing 80% of your current clients
• or working on your passive income as a designer.

Will you be branching out or not?

What do you think? Will you be branching out to build your design business this year or will you stick to your niche and try to grow in other ways? Leave a comment on this post and let me know!

Today I’m going to tell you all about my process in developing my logo in hopes that when it comes time for you to design (or redesign) yours, you have some solid tips to start from. (To see more pictures of my process, visit my portfolio.)

Step #1: Be your own client

What do you do when designing for a client?

For me, it’s ask questions.(PS. For more, read “55+ questions to ask when designing a logo”)

What adjectives describe your business? Who is your target audience? What do you want people to say about your logo? How do you want to use your logo?

So, myself and I had a meeting and came up with the following guidelines for the Greer Genius logo.

1. Professional but not stodgy. Creative, simple, yet engaging.
2. Imagery must reflect the name and be purposeful.
3. Flexible for a variety of applications, sizes, and substrates.
4. Work well in a one color and reverse treatment in addition to full color. Would really be awesome to have a flexible color scheme, but not required.
5. Incorporates the Greer Genius name and tagline (“brilliant graphic & web design”) to establish my business and brand.

Step #2: Sketching

I started where I always start with my projects when it’s time to get down to business: the sketchpad.

I doodle, I write words that pertain to my subject matter, I brainstorm.

You’ve heard this a million times by now, but it never fails: you’ve got to get all the mediocre and bad ideas out of your head so that the good ones start flowing.

With a name like Greer Genius, my doodles included light bulbs, poorly drawn brains, gears, links, and exclamation points; and words such as idea, thought, intelligent, inspiration, spark, bang!, mind, brilliant, and so forth.

I drew the words ‘Greer Genius’ in cursive, in all uppercase, in all lowercase…you get the idea. Wonderful what a page of sketching (even stick-figures) will do to get the gears turning.

Step #3: Font Selection

Right, so I had direction and the creative juices were flowing.

I opened up Illustrator and started with the business name: Greer Genius.

I began at Agency FB (the first font alphabetically in my character panel) and went through each one, copying and pasting ones I liked for future testing. After Zapfino Dingbats I had about 12 Greer Geniuses lying around, so I split my font favorites into two groups: serif and sans serif.

I had no idea which one I preferred, but these were the fonts (of all of my fonts) that I liked, and it seemed to make sense to me to separate them in this way.

I really started to assess what I liked/disliked in each of the fonts.

Berlin Sans FB Demi Bold was too cartoony; Trebuchet MS too blocky (see i) and normal. In the serifs I was primarily concerned about stroke width.

I liked the vowels (e and u, particularly) in Constantia but the capital G feels like it’s got a pointy serif about to strike the crossbar. I wasn’t crazy about the upward serif and rounded r on the Georgia font, and Calisto MT’s e is too top-heavy.

My top picks? Serif: Palatino Linotype. Sans-serif: Candara.

Step #4: Adding Imagery

With my sketchpad of ideas next to me, I started working with imagery: brains, gears, light bulbs, lightning etc.

I put the brains in the gears and the gears in the brain. I tried silhouettes or cutouts and introduced colors and tones. A lot of my ideas were unimaginative. But I kept on with the mediocre and bad ideas, knowing that the good ones were on the way.

The moment of inspiration hit me at the very end of my second brainstorming session.

I developed the first draft of the burst logo you’re seeing today. I didn’t give up on my brain logo, but something drew me toward the burst.

Step #5: Setting it Aside

As I have mentioned before, I don’t make long-term decisions quickly.

So I didn’t even look at my logo ideas for 2 days.

I wanted to, but I didn’t.

I wanted to test my emotional reaction to the logos I had; let my brain subconsciously chew on the pros and cons of each logo and how each fulfilled my criteria. I liked what I remembered seeing, but would I when I returned?

Step #6: Refining

After careful reflection, I settled on the burst logo and started refining the concept.

I took out the stroke separating the name and tagline. I played with the justification, letter forms, and tracking.

I tweaked the burst in (almost) every imaginable way. I played with color schemes and gradients. The logo began to feel as if a complete physical checkup would involve less poking and prodding.

When I had exhausted the derivatives, I had 15 different versions of my burst logo, and probably 20 or 30 more that went to logo heaven. Of those 15, I narrowed it down (pretty easily) to 2 versions, and from there made the final decision on the logo you see below.

Step #7: Analysis:

Let’s take a look at my guidelines and see how I’ve done. Parts of this process are totally subjective, so I’ll try to define and explain my positions.

1. I feel I developed a very simple yet professional logo. The font (Candara) is robust and stalwart with just enough friendliness and creativity in the slight concavity of the strokes while the burst gives life and energy to the logo.
2. The burst emulates, to me, that spark of inspiration, that breakthrough “aha!” moment one experiences during a brainstorming/development session. The gradient gives the burst movement and energy, as if a light were shining outward from the center.
3. This logo will scale well and work in embroidered, printed, or on screen applications without losing or obscuring elements of the design.
4. I absolutely love the color flexibility in this logo. It’s beautiful to me because I don’t really have to choose one color scheme for forever; I can choose the most appropriate color scheme for the application. Brilliant! I am so pleased with this flexibility.
5. Obvious. The name and tagline are in the logo. However, I like how the hierarchy plays out and the readability of the text. Many people feel small caps/all caps are difficult to read, but in this situation I feel that this treatment is the simplest, cleanest, and easiest to read.

It really was a scary prospect of designing something for myself. There’s no one to make the final decisions for me, and really, what good designer can’t make her own fantastic logo? That fear of failing myself in my own livelihood made me feel really put on the spot. Ultimately, though, the pride of a job well done prevails!

Speak up, GDB readers!

I’d love to hear your input on the logo itself, my process, my rationalization, or a good business card printer in the comments below. Leave a comment on this post–I’d love to talk with you!