Notes from Notchcode

Compensation: Graphic Designers

2009-07-09T10:55:00.001-06:00

Planet Money asked people how they are compensated, and I added my two cents today, regarding graphic designers. I've posted about this before, but it's a nice (relatively brief) summary:

Compensation for graphic designers is all over the map, depending on how long you've been in the industry, how your shop is set up, and what you have been trained (by either clients or your boss) to expect.

Most designers who work for someone else--in a studio or in an in-house design department--make a salary, like many white-collar workers. Benefits, etc. all depend on the size, wealth, and philosophy of the employing firm. So that's fairly "normal".

Where it gets interesting is when you're working for yourself, or looking at how the client/studio relationship works in regards to compensation.

Crowdsourcing, and Logo "Competitions"
Of late there has been a lot of "crowdsourcing" of logos: logo "competitions", where freelancers submit a design (based on very little info about the "client" company), in hopes of being the "winner" and having their design chosen. The payout for this is usually very small--a few hundred dollars for something that (when a firm does a lot of research, takes time to get to know the client's organization, and so on) potentially is worth several thousand dollars, at minimum. A lot of designers, design advocacy organizations, and professional groups have come out against this model, saying it's bad for both the designer (not getting paid fairly) and for the client (not getting a logo or brand identity that's really all that effective).

Value-based Fees
Typically, a graphic designer will charge a fee based on the value their finished product has for their client. The logo for a small local business with a lower annual revenue has less value assigned to it than a brand identity for a national, multi-million dollar corporation. A lot of time is spent by designers and firm owners figuring out what these values are, and how the value _they_ assign to them fits into the competitive marketplace. A firm may charge more for a given product for a given client than another firm, but perhaps they offer value-added services (additional consultation, an approach that fits the personality of the client better, and so on).

These fees take into account not only the value that the client places on the product, but (internally) takes into account the actual amount of research, concept, design, production, and implementation time for the designer. They know that they can't make less than $X per hour if they want to pay rent on their studio, cover health insurance, buy design software upgrades, and so on. And since on average a designer only does about an hour of design work for every two or three hours spent looking for work (or planning projects, or doing their accounting) the actual hourly rate is lower than the figured rate.

The client usually doesn't see any of this. It's part of the larger calculation that figures in the value of the piece to the client, as well as hard costs of production.

Hourly Rates
Other designers will charge their clients an hourly rate, but in my experience this hurts the client, the designer, and --ultimately-- the project. If you're paid hourly, what's the incentive to work efficiently? If the client runs out of money, does the project stop where it is, or proceed with the designer getting paid less, effectively, per hour? Or does the client cough up more dough?

Setting Expectations
Whether a designer is charging based on value or based on time, a set fee for a project with a defined scope of work is better for everyone, setting boundaries and expectations on all sides, and resulting in happier designers and clients in the end. The AIGA has excellent resources for designers (both those just starting out and those of us who have been at it for a while) regarding contracts, fees, and terms of use; as well as resources for people who need to hire a designer.

Butter, coffee, and business

2009-07-09T10:02:00.001-06:00

I wanted to let all you designer and branding people know about one of my fave places in Northwest Denver to have coffee: Generous Servings. Not only is the staff unfailingly friendly, and not only is the coffee great (especially the vietnamese iced), you can sit and drink your joe, and work, while watching people cook. There's a large lovely window looking into Generous Servings' classroom, where on any given day you can watch folks get ready for that evenings' class. In the morning the Happy Cakes people from next door put icing on their stock of cupcakes for the day, too. Frankly, the coffee shop part of the operation is a great sales pitch for their cooking classes...after watching everyone prep all this lovely food, who wouldn't want to start cooking, too?

Mary, half of the duo of sisters who run the place, has a blog on cooking and running a small business, and her post on making your own butter caught my eye. If you're a foodie, and like to experiment, check out her blog. And stop in for some coffee, too. It's a great example of a place that takes its craft seriously, and also seems to be full of people who are happy. A nice combination.

Some of her butter post follows below:

"Butter is my new favorite food. Not ingredient, food. Generous Servings now uses only homemade butter in all our cooking, which gives you another reason to have one of our croissants or scones--they are more homemade than almost anything you'll ever eat.

It is very fun to have a bowl full of ten pounds of butter, as you can see:

And it is very good for moisturizing one's hands. This is not to say that my butter recipe development has been without frustrations. There has been a lot of cream thrown out of the mixer onto the floor. One time the cream never turned into butter, although I mixed it for about an hour and a half (usually it takes 15 minutes). That evening our cleaners happened to be working in the kitchen, and they asked me several times what I was making. I kept saying that I was making butter, and they would look dubiously at the bowl full of cream, which never looked remotely like butter. The next time they came, I was making cultured butter, which requires me to sterilize all the implements I use, so I had an array of big pots of boiling water, alcohol swabs, thermometers, and spoons balanced precariously to prevent their bowls from touching the counter, and a whole area of the kitchen blocked off. Again, the cleaners asked what I was doing, and I said I was making butter. At this point, they think I'm delusional.

"

(Via The Cooking Doctor.)

Passport Stamps for Fictional Countries

2009-07-06T13:50:00.001-06:00

I'm working on a project for a client which has, as a component, stamps for fictional countries. It's a lot of fun, and is a great excuse to look through lots of countries' visa and customs stamps for inspiration. A lot of them are pretty boring (I'm looking at you, United States!), but some are quite fun. Here's an early version of one of the dozen or so I'm creating:

Nearly one in 5 of you Denverites are on Facebook

2009-06-24T22:40:00.001-06:00

...scary numbers, but I suppose not unreasonable.

There are 2,357,404 people in the Denver Metro Area, according to the all-knowing oracle at Wikipedia. And there are 468,902 people in the Denver, CO network on Facebook. Granted that some in the network aren't living in Denver, it's still a big number (19.8906 percent).

As a marketing person, however, I want to stress that this means there are at least four out of every five people in the Denver area that don't use Facebook. And don't see social media campaigns being played out there.

So stick to traditional media, in addition to social. It's still sorta important.

Why it's Awesome to be a freelancer

2009-06-19T06:00:00.000-06:00

While I agree with many of the points Andy makes in 10 Reasons It Sucks to Be a Freelancer, I think (if you are a good fit for the job) it's a great thing to be. With Notchcode going into its tenth (!) year, and with me going at it full-time since 2002, here's my perspective on why being a freelancer rocks:

1. You are your own boss.

This is the excellent part everyone who strikes out on their own sees when they pull the trigger and start working for themselves. Now, by "boss", I mean "someone who sets the agenda, schedule, and priorities in your life". Your REAL boss is your clientele, but that's true whether you're working for yourself or for someone else, so we'll set that part of things aside. What I'm talking about here is the day-to-day aspects of having a job. Don't like working in the morning? Fine: No eight AM meetings, ever again. Like to go for a bike ride before work (as I do)? Go for it. Need to pick up the kids and mind them from three PM till dinnertime? No prob. You set the schedule.
(CAVEAT): This also means you need to be responsible enough to work time into your schedule to actually get the work done, meet with your clients, do your bookkeeping, and so on, at other times during the day. Being your own boss doesn't mean being a slacker--it just means being the master of your schedule.

2. You get more work in a recession.

A cartographer I know is insanely busy this summer. I am busier now than this time last year. Why? A lot of in-house creative staff has been let go. And while I definitely shed a tear for my peeps (I was once one of them, too), it's also an opportunity to get more work. Just because there's a recession doesn't mean businesses and organizations need less creative work. Often, they need more: ad rates are cheaper in a recession, and you can build your brand on less budget--but only if you have the creative content and marketing work in place to take advantage of it. While small shops and freelancers have to pay more FICA, deal with their own health insurance, etc., our overhead in the short term is probably lower than an in-house asset (although losing the in-house body of experience and knowledge is a mighty hurdle to overcome with outside talent). I won't say that a lot of my larger clients are giving me huge projects (because they aren't), I will say that small entrepreneurs are taking advantage of the marketing vacuum right now to launch new projects (which need marketing and development) and larger organizations are doing a lot of smaller, strategic projects with the budgets they have on-hand. And small shops/freelancers are perfect for that.

3. Pick your clients.

Granted: When you're starting out, it's really hard to pick and choose whom you're working for. Nevertheless, one thing I've learned is it pays to be picky. If you sense a prospective client is going to be too high-maintenance, isn't a good fit for your capabilities or style, or doesn't have the budget for what you think the project needs, sack them before you get going (nicely. No need to be impolite). You'll find that as you build your clientele with groups you enjoy working with, they refer other good groups your way (mostly). It's a positive feedback loop that makes both you and your clients happy. If you like to do work for hot air balloonists, you'll probably find a lot of other hot air balloonists calling you after you do a great job for your first one.

4. You can work from anywhere, with anyone, in any location.

I work out of my home, my favorite independent coffee shop, my car, a park--anywhere I want. It allows me to put myself in the best place to get work done and to be creative. If I find things too distracting in one location, I pick up the laptop and the client folder and head somewhere else. Some companies enable this with a more open attitude, but not many. You can also find yourself working with a wide variety of organizations in lots of different locations. From my home base in Denver, I've done work for clients in Oregon, California, Washington, D.C., Iowa, and across Colorado. I've worked with vendors from all over the place, as well, which is another cool thing, if you like to see how people in other places do the same thing your usual vendors do. There is the time zone difference to consider, but it's never been a deal-breaker for me.

5. Set your price, your standards, and your scope.

We all know that the market has a say in how much you get paid (on average, anyhow); but there's a lot of latitude. If you are an expert with years of experience in a specific area of graphic design, or web development, for example, you can command a higher rate. You can also be more flexible than a larger firm can (less overhead for you to consider) when it comes to striking a deal with a client you really want to work with. And you have the satisfaction of being the person who sets a monetary value on your worth. You also don't have to do something you don't want to do. You don't have to settle for less, which your boss may want you to do if you're running over on time, for example. And you can define your practice to fit the specific scope of work you enjoy doing--and are awesome at. If you only like doing user experience work, just do user experience work. Refer your clients to someone else for the rest of the project (or better yet, bid on the job together and get a package deal).

Those are just five reasons why it's great to be a freelancer. There's lots more. I started being my own boss, exclusively, in the last recession, and haven't looked back, and am loving it. If you find yourself spending your coffee breaks, day after day, considering going solo: do the research, make a plan, and go for it!

Tag-clouding to visualize your follower's typical profile

2009-06-10T07:07:00.000-06:00

Twittersheep automatically generates a tag cloud based on the bios of your Twitter followers. It's an interesting way of looking at who your audience is. In mine (below), there aren't many surprises: designers, social business people, marketers, coloradans, Denverites, and others.

For a visual thinker like myself, it's a lot more helpful to see info this way than merely as a set of rows and columns of stats.

The need for social relevance on your front page

2009-06-09T15:33:00.001-06:00

How necessary is it to show off your Twitter feed, Last.fm music updates, or other social media on your front page? I imagine it's helpful to garner more followers who are finding you via your site, as opposed to visitors to your site who find you through Twitter... but I don't have the analytics for this. If anyone does, tell me your story; I'd be very interested in what the prevailing opinion is (and more importantly, what the hard numbers recommend).

CoTrip.org has a new interface

2009-06-01T06:23:00.001-06:00

For travelers in Colorado, the state's Department of Transportation has given you a little gift for your summer journeys: an updated user interface at their site, CoTrip.org. They've smoothed out user interactions for finding traffic cameras (something I look at when planning a ride in metro denver, or heading up to the mountains to go skiing), and the programming seems to have speeded up load times as well. At first glance, it's a great improvement over the functional but hard-to-navigate version I was looking at just a couple of weeks ago.

A few other items worth noting: all the most-accessed info is now right there on the front page, including latest road conditions/weather, traffic speeds, and alerts.

The Principles of Open Space

2009-05-29T10:45:00.000-06:00

John McCrea, of Plaxo, is posting notes and images from the Internet Identity Workshop. This is my favorite image so far:

Very Zen.

Follow his musings on his blog.

Papyrus

2009-05-29T08:43:00.000-06:00

Ah, XKCD, you know us typographers all too well:

The Hit List: Still in Beta, but a good list-maker all the same

2009-05-27T08:08:00.000-06:00

I downloaded The Hit List, a list-making tool in the Getting Things Done style, today. And even though I've only been using it for about five hours, it's about ten times better than the stock iCal To-Do offering, and at least as good as the Kinkless GTD system for OmniOutliner I was using a few years back (this was before OmniFocus). I expect to work up a more comprehensive review of it after I've had some time to really test drive the thing, but for now I'll leave you with these reviews.

Plaxo is becoming the key to my Internet-based Perpetual-Motion Machine.

2009-05-26T20:00:00.001-06:00

I think it says something about both Facebook's confidence in being the social network leader (read: hubris) and Plaxo's desperation to get more people to use its platform that Plaxo has reached an agreement with Facebook to allow people who use FB and Plaxo to automatically send FB updates to the Plaxo service.

First I can allow Twitter to update my Facebook status, so I don't have to use Facebook. Then Facebook will update Plaxo. But wait: Twitter already updates to Plaxo. The mobius strip or gordian knot or infinite loop will be complete once Plaxo starts updating my Twitterfeed. Indeed, it will become the perpetual motion machine I've been waiting for.

Geekchart: a confluence of infographics and geekdom

2009-05-26T10:02:00.000-06:00

Want to chart where you spend your time on the social networking inter-tube/?Check out Geekchart. It has listings for almost all the social media portals, including Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, and more (Facebook isn't on there, yet).

Mine's embedded below:

Bucknam's Geek Chart

Thanks to Cool Infographics for the link.

Remember to Remember

2009-05-25T09:58:00.001-06:00

Happy Memorial Day.

photo of the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial by Rob Hogeslag

NY Times tries AIR-based subscription content

2009-05-24T20:09:00.001-06:00

I get my Sunday New York Times hand-delivered, via deliveryperson, via local printing plant, via electronically-transmitted layout files from the Times' layout desk. Looks like now the Times is trying (again) to come to grips with the fact that, while some of us enjoy reading a physical paper once in a while, it's not paying the bills the way it did before Craigslist came along:

The ad copy states:

It reads like a newspaper. Updates like a Web site. And delivers like The New York Times. The new Times Reader 2.0 delivers the entire day's Times in seconds, so you can carry it wherever you go.

The good news for me is that, being a current physical paper subscriber, I get this for free. I'll let you all know how it feels to read the "paper" this way, and if I think it's worth the three bucks or so per week they're charging -- especially when the mobile version of the Times site is so good (which, interestingly enough, detected I was loading from a desktop browser and redirected me to the regular site), not to mention the regular version.

How to make your children make your Art Direction Better

2009-05-21T22:16:00.001-06:00

Of course someone in the advertising industry would leverage their children to benefit their performance. As for myself, I will henceforth be training my sub-six-year-olds to play the role of the Client as well.

Bonus: TIny Art Director has a book deal!

Wet-plate photography from my alma mater, SCAD

2009-05-18T13:33:00.001-06:00

Check out this series of wet-plate images made by Ellen Susan over at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Professor Craig Stevens (pictured) was my mentor there, and he has a long love of historical techniques. If things keep going the way they have been in the photographic industry, pretty soon any of us who like using film will end up making our own negatives...because at some point companies will stop mass-producing them.

No pressure to get this COMPLETELY PERFECT

2009-05-17T22:29:00.000-06:00

A bookbinder recently cataloged their work in re-binding a 1518 edition of Ovid. Unlike me, I imagine they don't allow coffee on their work-surfaces.

link via BoingBoing.

Tell me why you use the RSS feeder that you use, and win a pony.

2009-05-16T22:27:00.001-06:00

Well, Okay, you won't really win a pony. But my analytics show a quarter of you using Netvibes, another quarter using Google News Reader, some using NetNewsWire (my favorite), a few Bloglines peeps, Firefox Live Bookmarks, and a ton of "OTHER".

So: why do you use the newsfeed reader you use? What makes it easy to use? What are the limitations? Post in the comments so we can all hear ya!

Bespoke cases for your MacBookPro

2009-05-15T20:14:00.001-06:00

Vajahas a lovely, well-designed case for that special laptop of yours. Cutouts for access to ports, allows the Mac to open up without removing the case, and looks better than anything else out there I've seen in a long time.

Available in dozens of colors, inside and out, from about $280.

The new MacBooks are here! The New MacBooks are here!

2009-05-11T14:41:00.001-06:00

I feel just like Navin R. Johnson in the Jerk, when the new phone books arrived with his name in them. Except for me my excitement comes in the form of a new 15-inch MacBook Pro. I just finished migrating all my files, etcetera, over from my 12-inch PowerBook G4, and am going through the applications and making sure everything works well.

If anyone has any tips on migrating from a Power-PC-based Mac to an Intel-based Mac, send me an e-mail or drop me a line over at Twitter with your thoughts. In the meantime, I'm going to play with my new Thermos, with vinyl and stripes and a cup built right in, until my eyeballs fall out.

Friday Fun, in honor of the new Star Trek Film

2009-05-08T04:53:00.000-06:00

All I have to say is "Thanks! Now I have the A-Team theme song stuck in my head for the rest of the day."

Check it out on the You-Toob.

Thanks, I think, to Joel Finkelstein for the link.

Guest posting now at BigBrainTheory.com

2009-05-05T15:45:00.001-06:00

My first post over at the collaborative blog BigBrainTheory.com just went up. The blog is the, er, brain-child of the folks over at Collaboration Lab (whose brand identity I created earlier this year). It's an expanded take on one of my earlier posts on Twitter.

Go check it out, and let me know what you think of it!

Just a reminder as to how the internet can help people

2009-05-03T23:30:00.000-06:00

...if you think the Internet is just there to satisfy your personal desires and needs, keep in mind that it also connects to what is the most human in all of us.

The example I'll give today is people who are fighting or are affected by cancer. Check this out:

On twitter, I (along with a bijillion others) follow Lance Armstrong. No stranger to cancer, he is sorta one of the big peeps out there committed to finding a cure for it. I saw this post this evening:

...which led me to Jonathan White's twitterstream:

As someone who has lost a father to cancer, and who has a brother riding in the Livestrong challenge to help people with and families affected by cancer, a wife who works for a great cancer research fundraising organization, and a father to three young daughters, I am incredibly impressed by this kid. I don't know a lot about him, but the fact that he is putting his life, cancer and all, out there for millions to read about and experience, is incredible. It deserves our attention, and our awareness. In the context of the current recession and financial crisis, it's amazing just how (relatively) insignificant the funding is to CURE CANCER is. $335 billion to cure it. The first steps have been taken, and organizations like Stand Up 2 Cancer and Livestrong have raised awareness through social media like Facebook and Twitter. Listening to Jonathan White isn't too much trouble. It's an obligation. And a call to action.

CHeck out the photo in Jonathan's profile one more time. That's him. He has over 13,000 people on Twitter pulling for him. Even if you don't give a dollar to fight cancer, follow him on Twitter and tell him he's fighting the good fight. Technology only has a purpose if it helps us to be more human.

Helpful Web Site tells you if you have Swine Flu

2009-04-30T10:56:00.001-06:00

I suspect the CDC has a different take, but this one was straight and to the point:

doihaveswineflu.org/

Thanks to @petermeister for the tip.