Do’s and Dont’s

So what happens when your client is late in paying you? What do you do to handle this? Biting the hand that feeds you is no way to get more to eat. (Or more design work in this case.) I recently had a contract client that was late in paying their invoice, and I...
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I was sitting in a doctor’s office the other day and the only magazine that wasn’t too “girly” for me to look at was In Style Magazine. But as a designer, anywhere you can find a chance to scope out good design, it’s worth the time. On page 178 of their January 2007 issue...
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When I worked for Omniture as their Creative Director, I would often check the web analytics that we ran on our corporate website to see where people were coming from (referrers). Occasionally I would find several page views that were sent through from what I like to call “Website Pirates”: individuals who would pillage...
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I ran across a blog post the other day, that prompted me to think about what was good and bad about my personal experience on being a freelancer. The post, entitled 7 Habits of a Highly Successful Freelance Web Designer was written by Andy Budd, the managing director of a user experience consultancy in...
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So I ran across an interesting site tonight called NO!SPEC. The site’s mission is to educate both clients and Visual Communication designers (also known as ‘graphic’ designers) about the nature of speculative, or “spec” work and how it effects us all in the design community. The site also serves as a vehicle to unite...
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Calling all in-house designers! Yeah you, I need your advice. Following my illustrious one year stint as a freelance designer (a fantastic year that was proceeded by nearly 3 years of agency work) I went to work for MyComputer.com as their one (and only) designer. No, I hadn’t read the book about being an...
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When I partnered with some friends to create a small agency back in 1999 called Gear Media, I found that many download meetings with our clients would end up being stretched out and repetative. I found that the same questions were asked over and over again, and it ended up being a waste of...
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Here’s a handy little tip for all you freelancers out there. I ran across this article from a link on Performancing.com and had a good laugh, since most of these I’ve heard before in my freelancing days. NEVER believe them… they may literally have good expectations when they tell these lies, but it’s not...
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