Posts Tagged ‘industry’

Four years ago, when I started out my busi­ness (or when­ever it was—I always get fuzzy on the dates) I was charging all of $10 an hour (some­times less, as was the case in my first job). Looking back, it’s no sur­prise, really, that by the end of my first solo year I was so broke. Tech­ni­cally, it was more than min­imum wage, so I thought it would suf­fice. Of course, I forgot that around 50% of my time is unbill­able, which has a rather dra­matic effect, either on your “hourly” rate, or on the number of hours a week you need to work in order to be profitable.

There’s a maxim to pricing free­lance work that goes some­thing like this: you can have two of the fol­lowing three ele­ments: fast, cheap, and good. When I first started out, I tried to be all three. Nat­u­rally, there ended up being some com­pro­mise, most notably with respect to the “fast” and “good” ele­ments of the equa­tion. As I grew as a designer and a busi­nessperson (it still sounds funny calling myself that), the scales shifted: my prices increased as the quality of my work and process increased.

For some time, I strug­gled with the idea of offering clients their choice between fast and cheap, but I’m coming to realize that this, too, is imprac­tical on a larger scale—I’m so con­sis­tently busy that it simply doesn’t make sense for me to take on very many lower-paying gigs, regard­less of how spread out their time­lines may be. I really prefer working on projects with shorter time­lines, anyway: the work-to-reward cycle is so much shorter (and thereby more grat­i­fying), and a more rapid cycle of devel­op­ment means that the project remains fresher in my mind—I don’t forget details or need to re-learn any­thing as we progress. So, unless it’s a case ofhey-I-really-did-need-this-yesterday, in which case a pri­ority place­ment and rapid-turnaround can be secured with a rush fee (although I’ve found most clients with urgent projects sud­denly decide it can wait a little, after all, when they dis­cover that it’ll cost more), “fast” is non-negotiable. Quality, nat­u­rally, is even less negotiable

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Bad clients are noto­rious among designers. We com­plain about them con­stantly, we’ve devoted a hilarious-yet-heartbreaking web­site to them, and we swap horror sto­ries like badges of honour, rolling our eyes in empathy and disgust.

We spend so much time com­plaining about the bad clients that it’s some­times easy to over­look the good clients. Lately, I’ve been working with a few really great clients, and I’ve been so happy because of it. Where a bad client can make you feel as though you’re losing your soul, a good client reminds you of why you fell in love with design in the first place and makes you feel as though you’re doing a good job. It’s the sort of warm-fuzzy feeling I asso­ciate with boys who bring me flowers and strangers com­pli­menting me on my shoes.

Win­ning your designer’s love, regard­less of any other fac­tors, will mean that you will receive a level of ser­vice and quality that sur­passes that most Trou­ble­some Clients receive. When I love a client and feel that my client respects me as a pro­fes­sional, I invest more of my mental ener­gies into their project. A good client makes you want to do an amazing job, where a bad client expe­ri­ence will often just make you want to finish as fast as pos­sible and get the heck out.

So, how do you go about making sure you’re the greatest client ever, and ensuring your designer feels as pas­sionate about your project as you do? Here, a few tips culled directly from my Dream Clients:

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Thank you to everyone who responded to my hiring notice; I’ve selected a can­di­date and am looking for­ward to being able to tackle new projects in the very near future, including the much-anticipated (by myself) and much-required over­haul of my web­site. More details to come soon!

I received an absolutely phe­nom­enal response, and was able to meet with a number of really fan­tastic people. (I wish I could have hired everyone!) That said, it was inter­esting being on the other side of the hiring process, and I think if I’m ever in the posi­tion of applying for a job again, I’d do things a little dif­fer­ently as a result.

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I was recently con­tacted by a design stu­dent at Loy­alist Col­lege looking to inter­view a designer for an essay she’s writing. Ego-bloat aside, I do really like it when young(er), just-starting-out designers ask me for a “worldly” view of the industry. (Amaz­ingly, it’s hap­pened more than once!) (more…)

Every­thing seems to be in a bit of a lull. I have so many projects that are almost fin­ished, but need that last little bit of con­tent or that last cycle of feed­back. I’m told that this is normal for the design industry in the sum­mer­time. Regard­less, it makes me feel as though I’m not being pro­duc­tive, even though that isn’t the case in the least. In fact, I seem to be get­ting a lot of my long-term to-do-items crossed off my list, which is a fan­tastic feeling!

Well, I’ve been talking about it for­ever, and, finally, it’s official—resumes are on sale! Get all the details here.

I’m doing a whole host of revi­sions to my custom client admin panel code­base, so anyone get­ting one of those with their new web­site in the upcoming months will be seeing a more ele­gantly designed and more user-friendly inter­face there. While I’m in there, I’ll also be over­hauling the code base so that it’s cleaner and sta­bler, meaning better, stronger, faster web­sites for everyone!

Oh, and there is one new project I can show for the time being: another news­paper ad for the post office space. Coming up soon: an expla­na­tion for why I’ve been stealing stickers off all the apples in the gro­cery store, and all sorts more.

Thanks to com­bined incom­pe­tence at Apple and at my “local” (see: an hours’ drive away, only open when I’m working) Apple retailer, I haven’t had a com­puter all month, which has seri­ously cur­tailed my design activ­i­ties out­side of the gaming industry. I’ve got a few projects on hold and a few nearing com­ple­tion — expect updates soon.

For now, a listing of my favourite Google search terms that have brought people to this website:

• “why don’t humans hibernate”
• what web­site can i go to to make a layout of my bed­room then print what my bed­room would look like?
• jen­nifer arnold dis­play and design
• grunt labourer services
• hrm unorthodox
• “sarah pretty”

Thanks for the com­pli­ment, Google! I think you’re pretty, too!