Freelancing posts

Every time we begin a web design project, we do research. We research our clients, their customers, the website’s target audience, and the competition.

Throughout our careers, we research new trends, techniques, tools, and other designers. We’re always on the lookout for that one new thing which will make us better at what we do, or will make our jobs easier. We love our craft, so we read articles, analyze raw data, consult with experts, and more. What is life without improvement and progress?

But so often we neglect to research the one tool, the one common factor, present in every project you will...

Every now and then, on some blog or design group, someone brings up the question of designers unionizing or having some sort of certification in the hopes of assuring the public that we are professionals and adept at our craft. Can it be done, and if so, how?

The huge response to Monday’s April Fools’ prank on the introduction of certification in the U.S. shows that a lot of people are passionate on the subject.

For many years I volunteered to head various committees and sit on the board of directors for several design and illustration organizations and they have all made the question of unionizing a priority. The Graphic Artists Guild, for one, actually had meetings and outreach to established unions to see if they would either create a sub-chapter, so to speak, for creatives or at least support a small...

The much talked about step of creating professional certification for graphic/web designers looks like it will become a reality in a little more than a year. Having passed the U.S. Senate as a rider to a larger work rights bill, the measure is expected to easily pass the House of Representatives as well as having President Obama sign it into law.

The bill, originally created as a stand-alone measure was co-sponsored by Democratic New York Senator, “Buck” Schlumer and Republican Texas Senator, R. Fredrick Bruz, was intended to help regulate an industry many see as being one of the hopes for the United States to lead the future of technology innovation in the world.

The...

Within the past couple of weeks, I handed in my notice, after spending over fifteen years working in-house as a designer of websites and magazines for a publishing company. This wasn’t a quick or easy decision; but the time feels right to strike out and apply everything I’ve learnt both through the job — and in spite of it — to working for myself as a freelancer.

In the months, even years, that I spent thinking about this change, a lot of thoughts went through my mind about what makes a good freelancer,...

I recently received a call from a young designer who I met when she was in art school. I reviewed her portfolio and several years later at a local graphic design group meeting, she reintroduced herself and thanked me for being kind and helpful in that review. She became an avid reader of my articles on the design business and on one occasion told me that when it came to clients, she needed to “borrow [my] bastardness”.

Apparently she thought I was tough in client negotiations and thought...

Who said that? Both parties often do. Both the client and the designer often accuse each other of ruining a web project. Why? What is it both parties expect that the other can’t or won’t fulfill. Is it a breakdown in communications, and if it is, what can be done to prevent it?

You know all of the funny horror stories. The client doesn’t know what they’ll like until they see it, they have an eight year-old niece who won a finger painting contest when she was only five and is a creative genius, they thought the whole site wouldn’t cost so much to design because their great-great grandfather had an entire web site designed for a nickel in 1903, blah-blah-blah. Well they have their stories and complaints about us, too, only they aren’t creative enough to...

Do you call yourself a freelance web designer? If so, you are only partially correct. The truth is that you also need to be a salesperson.

If you can’t sell your own services, you likely won’t be a freelance web designer for long. A Google search of “freelance web designers” returns 82.2 million results, while the singular term “freelance web designer” returns 99.6 million results. Though some of these hits are articles or blog posts about web design, the majority are websites of designers themselves. Because almost anyone can get into the...

As I put the phone down, I was still shaking quietly. It was one of the hardest phone calls I’ve had to make. I had just told the client that I was tired of him messing me around, that the way he worked was making it impossible for me to produce good work, and I was fed up of haggling over every nickel of every invoice. I’d previously raised all these issues with him, but nothing had changed. So I told him I no longer wanted to do work for him. For the first time, I’d just fired a client.

Every web designer who wishes to get paid for their efforts will almost inevitably need clients, and work for a fee on the client’s website. Building a good working relationship between client and designer is essential for a good outcome and for job satisfaction. But what if things don’t work out, and you find yourself hating working on a project? It’s time to terminate your client relationship.

Firing a client might sound like committing professional suicide, and in...

Even the most creative mind needs a bit of left-brain order sometimes. While more work is what every freelancer and business wants because it means more earnings, it can also mean more stress, more admin and less time to spare.

The answer is planning: making a list of everything you need to do, how long it should take and when you need to do it. Spending time on planning can seem like time taken away from actual work, but it will save you time and stress in the long run. And if a particular job seems large and unmanageable, breaking it down into smaller, bite-sized...

Have you ever just finished a project and wondered: How can I do more for this client? or perhaps you were thinking: Oh darn, now I have to look for new clients.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

The most valuable clients are the ones that stay with you, not the ones that provide one-off projects. So how do you get valuable clients that want to stick with you for the long haul?

In...

Freelancers (and anyone else who works for him or herself) know that the tide of work ebbs and flows. There’s little question, then, that given the rather capricious nature of incoming projects, it’s critical to meet deadlines—after all, there’s no quicker way of losing future work than...