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19 Apr
20 Reasons You Shouldn’t Be a Freelancer
Blogging, Business, Corporate
150

We’ve all read countless articles on the reasons you should consider freelancing.
They often make it out like anyone still working in the corporate world is just a schmuck with no ambition. But the truth is, there are plenty of reasons not to start freelancing.
Below are twenty such reasons, all laid out so you can make an informed decision about whether freelancing is really something you want to do in your career.
There’s nothing wrong with staying in a corporate job, just as there’s nothing wrong with setting out on your own. But it’s a choice every designer and developer needs to make for themselves.
One note: when we talk about “corporate jobs”, we’re talking mostly about design firms with multiple employees (whether they’re corporations or not), but most of it also applies to in-house design teams at large companies. Read more
11 Mar
How to Be Corporate and Still Be Creative
Business, Corporate, Creativity
38

If you’re like me, you graduated from art school and had dreams of working as an art director at a small agency. You envisioned having your own office on the top floor of a loft with 30-foot ceilings.
Designers would play ping-pong below; people were allowed to drink beer at work; and brilliant ideas would flow effortlessly from your mind into multi-million-dollar campaigns for clients like Nike and Coca-Cola.
In fact, you got a job at a large corporation and were shown to a desk in a sea of light-gray fabric-covered cubicles. Instead of 30-foot ceilings, you have surprisingly low ceilings, covered with a substance that you could swear is asbestos.
You were given a 90-page handbook on how to create drop-shadows and sent off to populate templates for product brochures.
Sounds like hell. But outlined below are a few ways to improve your outlook on work life, foster creativity in you and the business and, most importantly, bring some fun into your corporate job. Read more
4 May
7 Mistakes To Avoid On Your Next Job Application
Business, Corporate, Freelancing
36

Whether you are a web designer or a copy writer, if you’re going to freelance, you need to learn how to look your best on a job application.
Having worked on both sides of job applications, I’ve seen enough to recognize what gets a person through to the interview and what gets their applications tossed.
I’ve even been able to go back over some applications I’ve sent in the past and determined what may have affected my chances for being considered. In a blatant attempt at reverse psychology, here are some of the major mistakes I’ve seen made, and made myself on applications for freelance work. Read more
14 Apr
50 Excellent Corporate Website Designs
Corporate, Inspiration, Webdesign
181

Web design is all about conveying information to the users in the most direct, clean and usable manner.
A corporate website also needs to capture the feel of the company and its purpose, while remaining professional in order to attain a solid and lasting impression to its customers.
Graphics, layouts and color palettes are all essential in how the customers perceive a company when visiting their website. Dark color designs, for example, can be interpreted as serious, while blue hues give a feeling of trust.
Here are 50 corporate website designs that you can use for inspiration in your own corporate designs. Read more
19 Mar
5 Things Your Clients Should Know
Business, Corporate, Freelancing
30

Do you ever feel like you are endlessly repeating the same day? I do, every time I attend a kickoff meeting with a new client. Each time I find myself covering the same old issues from explaining the client’s role, to encouraging investment in content. I find it incredibly frustrating and this is what ultimately led me to write the Website Owners Manual.
This is not a criticism of clients, however. There is so little information that clearly defines their role. Sure, there is no shortage of material on usability, accessibility, online marketing and copywriting, but who has the time to read all of it?
The problem is that the client does need to have a very broad understanding (certainly more than can be communicated in a single article), however I have found that understanding certain key issues can make an enormous difference to the efficiency of a client.
What follows is a list of the 5 things that I believe will have the biggest impact on a client’s site. At least they should, if the client understands them and chooses to implement them. Read more
30 Jan
6 Ways To Kickstart Your Customer Service
Business, Corporate
27

Most web design companies are one or two person operations, with little to no free time for items like after-sales service.
You are usually so busy with current projects that answering calls from past customers can seem like an unnecessary and non-profitable chore.
Here is how you can plug back in to your client base and turn customer service into the profit center that you never thought it would be. Read more
8 Dec
Pass or Fail: The Top 30 Technology Company Homepages
Corporate, Design, Webdesign
60

Although there are lots of posts that evaluate different design blogs, I haven’t seen many that focus specifically on corporate websites.
Therefore, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the homepages of the Top 30 technology companies (the order of this list was determined by the InfoTech 100 from Business Week), and assign them a PASS or FAIL rating based on the quality of their homepage design.
Click on the screenshots to check out each website.
Read more