Five on Design

As a listener of Five on Design, I wanted to start this episode out by saying thanks. This is going to be my last episode for the show. I want to express my gratitude for everybody who's tuned in, subscribed, listened, left comments and emails this last year.

It's that time of year again, when we all sit back and reflect on how the year went for us. Hopefully this year, has been a wonderful year for you. I hope as a listener of the show that you've succeeded in any goals that you set this year and that you saw amazing improvement in your work.

Among the many focuses I had as a new freelance designer, one of the big things that I was always concerned about was client satisfaction. I never wanted to drop the ball or give clients reason to fire me, or worse, not want to work with me again. As a result, if a client came to me with a rush project, I was apprehensive to charge a rush rate. I'd charge my normal rate under the guise that it was good karma... or something like that.

If you're like me, tracking your progress as a designer can be a challenge. We put so much focus on what we're doing right now, that it feels like we're not making any progress in our creative journey. It's why it's important to look back every now and then to appreciate how far you've come as a designer. On this episode, I want to encourage you to do the same thing.

It's one of the worst feelings on the planet: you sit down to start work on a project and realize that you don't have a single creative idea of what to do. it's even worse when you have a deadline looming, or a client sitting over your shoulder, expecting you to come up with something. Depending on who you work with, you get some rough advice about how you can "just do this" or "just do that" to make it better. But as designers, we know that dealing with designers block can be a frustrating thing.

As designers, there are certain things that we enjoy doing and certain things we don't enjoy doing. This can be a departure from what got us into design in the first place: creating things we like or are passionate about. Getting further into your career, its inevitable that you get a project or two that you don't enjoy working on as much. So how get into a creative mindset while working on something you don't like?

It's easy to see why project management software exists. When I started my design career, I was so frustrated when clients wouldn't read emails, skip steps, or deviate from our design process. I was so excited discovering the world of project management apps—I could finally keep things on track in a structured setting. In my mind, this was going to make my life much easier and I'd never have to deal with those issues again. It was pretty short-sighted looking back.

On episode 92, we had a great show on what to buy the graphic designer in your life. So I figured it would be beneficial to talk about what graphic designers should be buying for their clients.

One of the things that's most exciting as a graphic designer that doesn't involve starting a new project. It's usually starting at a new place of work. It's exciting to get past the interview process and realize that you're the person for the job. So you show up on your first day excited to show off everything, you know that you're a hard worker, and that you're going to contribute right away to a team. But slow down for a minute.

If you've ever worked on a larger project—particularly if you're a one-person shop—the project may have required a sub-contractor to help out. Aside from the first task of finding one, the next question is how to handle the relationship between the sub-contractor and your client.

For years, when I finished up a project with a client, I didn't think anything of washing my hands of it and walking away. However, I learned in the latter parts of my freelance career how important following up is. We often overlook this step—it's easy to. When our service is done, we don't see a need to keep poking at a client. The truth is, there's actually a lot of value that can be extracted when the project is done that can help us down the road.

The holidays right around the corner! You may already be looking at your list of people to buy gifts for and realize that you have a designer on your list. Whether or not you're into design, you may have stumbled across this episode and hoping that it will help you figure out what to buy them. So fear not—on this episode I'm going talk about some great gifts that will make the graphic designer in your life excited when they open them up.

Rates are one of the biggest questions that new freelance designers ask about. How much do you charge? Should you negotiate rates? Are you charging too much or too little? These are usually easy things to talk about. But getting lost in the conversation, is how to talk about your rates with your clients. Some clients see rates as a negotiable item when they're in the estimation phase. A common rookie mistake (and one that's been covered before) is to allow that negotiation to take place.

When you're putting your portfolio together, it's easy to put all of your images on to one page, title it “Portfolio” and call it done. I've been guilty of doing this too. The downside is that this doesn't include anything like what you did or who you did it for. All it does is look nice. But you need to dive in deeper. It's not only important to look nice, but our work needs context. You need a case study.

If you ever read about clients from hell, usually there's a story that involves someone who couldn't make up their mind about a design concept. The story typically goes that the designer showed the client, something that they thought was amazing. 50 revisions later, the sky turned green, and the client was dictating what font should be used. Everything goes off the rails. Design revisions are something that won't be going away anytime soon. As long as we're dealing with human beings, there will be design revisions. But they don't have to be the painful process that client from hell type stories usually spell out.

One of the most vulnerable things you can do as a graphic designer is hand your design files off to someone else. It's the most nerve wracking thing on the face of the planet. It's one thing if you're digging around in your Photoshop file and doing some crazy things. You know what you're doing and you don't always need notes. On the flip side, it's difficult for the person you might hand that design file off to, to figure out what was going through your mind. It's a pain in the butt. You probably had the same feeling when you received a file from another designer. It's a gut-wrenching feeling when you open a file up to see layers everywhere.

A number of years ago, Apple ran their famous Mac versus PC ad. Truth be told, it was one of my favorite ads of all time. It hit home on the competitve nature between Mac and PC users. Fast forward to today, it seems that the differences between running Mac or Windows are mostly cosmetic to the average user. Most applications now run on both systems and do so quite well. For most, they can focus on where the price and specifications provide the best value.

As a freelancer, you're bound to run into a project where you can't do it all by yourself. At that point, you've usually got a couple of options. You can turn around and run or you can find somebody who's able to help you out. In the business world those awesome people are known as subcontractors. They're a super valuable resource. They can help you get through large projects and open you up to new potential business opportunities.

As a new designer, it seems there is a tempting scenario that goes something like this. They don't like a local business's website and decide—with good intentions—that they need to reach out and talk about it. They think they know better. They think it knows just what they need. They go as far as creating a concept with the intention of just presenting it to them. What happens though, is rather than getting an excited client from the deal, they put the owner on defense. The owner might be mad before they've even considered something needs to change. They're angry because assumptions were made and someone is crapping all over what they did. At that point, the bridge is all but burned.

One of the first projects I designed on my own at my first agency job was a simple flyer. I remember the client had a lot of information they wanted on there and most of it wasn't necessary. The poster I ended up sending back was pretty minimal—but it was really effective. The feedback was a stinger: "It looks like something I could have done in Word."

On a recent episode of the Honest Designers Podcast, they had a wonderful discussion about knowing when you're good enough. I was intrigued because its so common that people expect they need a certain number of followers, likes or amount of money to be successful. How do you know when you're actually good at something? I fully agreed with their points and I had my own two cents to add to the discussion.

At some point while you work with clients, it become inevitable that you'll need to bring in a third party product, service, or company to work on the project. Aside from how to hire or find that resource, one of the biggest questions I hear is how to handle paying them. There's usually two avenues you can take: make the client pay them directly or pay them yourself and charge the client back. Both options have their pros and cons.

Whether you're starting out or you're a seasoned graphic designer, one of the biggest headaches you might have is what to put in your portfolio. We get decision paralysis, because in most cases you're pretty close to your projects. It can be difficult to decide what needs to go into your portfolio and what may need to come out.

At some point as a graphic designer, you'll find yourself needing to print stuff. Naturally, there's a whole lot of choices out there. Some are best suited towards a small run project, like business cards. Others favor fancy projects like a brochure with a cutout or spot varnish. Your two options are either finding somebody local, or going online. Each of them has their pros and cons. In this episode, I'm going to go over my experiences with both.

For some of us school was a rough time, especially when it came to things like the playground, when we found ourselves on the receiving end of a bully's wrath. If you were like me, there was always those moments where you wondered to yourself what being an adult would be like. It was easier to imagine a world where you didn't have to deal with that kind of stuff anymore. But bullies grow up like the rest of us and find jobs like the rest of us. And in some circumstances, we're forced to deal with those same people in the workplace.

Sometimes the most nerve racking thing outside of actually doing the design work for a client is handing the design off to them once it's finished. One of the most common questions I see asked by new designers, is what do you hand off when you're finished up with a design project?

If you ever watched a designer or an artist create something super fast and wonder how they did it. If you look up the answer to this question, it usually boils down to experience. And while that's true, there's a few other things that kind of mix into that as well.

As graphic design software becomes more accessible, it's more common that clients and potential clients expect designers to work for cheaper or free. Like others, I always say that you should never work for free. It's called spec work: work defined as producing a piece for a potential client with no guarantee that your work will be chosen and/or paid for.

As users demand more out of their smartphones, websites, or computers, it's becoming even more important for designers to help them get through challenging tasks. It's important that they can take to the interface in a simple, efficient and easy manner that doesn't make them want to give up.

There's been a few episodes on this show where I've talked about how people respond to design. In a couple of episodes, I even talked about some of the feedback. It's a tricky thing to get right. It's even more tricky when people are super-passionate about the existing thing you're redesigning.

As designers, we tend to get a lot of feedback about our design. How well that feedback is depends on who we're getting it from. Some people are great at giving feedback, and others are terrible. It's easy to get angry over bad feedback until the roles are reversed and we're the ones giving it. It's difficult to encourage someone to find their own way while not entirely turning their work into something from a mini version if yourself. So what does good design advice look like?

I've had my fair share of interesting client stories over the years. There's one I latched on to that I ended up laughing a bit at. I had a client who got excited about the design process and decided to try their hand at design alongside me. You can imagine my surprise sitting down for one of our regular status meetings and they walked in with a bunch of paper under their arms. On the paper was a variety of logo concepts. They didn't feel like they were getting their point across and decided that rather than hurting my feelings, this was the route to go. Most of the logos were a copy of ones they found via Google Images.

Whether you design full-time or part time, setting prices for your design services is a nerve-wracking task. You may have a good idea of what your value is and how much our design is valued. It's a fine line between finding good clients and clients who are happy to pay your rates.

One of the worst experiences I ever had as a graphic designer was when I had someone approached me who wanted a website created for them. They didn't only have a website they wanted to create, they had a specific website they wanted me to recreate: their competitors.

At some point or another, you might feel like you hit a rut. It's not burnout, but you don't feel like you're doing as well as you should be as a graphic designer.

As your design career progresses, you'll find a variety of resources that allow you to do better, quicker, and more efficient work. As this begins to grow, you begin to rely on it more and more. When you're starting out, it can be difficult figuring out where to go to build up your library of resources. So here's my list of resources!

This year marks 15 years since I last used a mouse with my computer. When I made the change then, a lot of people thought I was crazy for not wanting to use a mouse.

I still remember working with the first client who didn't see eye to eye with me on what the final design we were working on would look like. I wasn't freelancing—it was a studio job, and I didn't have much choice in working with them. All I could recall was vowing to “train” my clients moving forward to spare myself the frustration. A few failed attempts later, and I learned that clients aren't puppies. You can't train them like one.

Staying creative. It's one of those things as a designer that we're all tasked with doing. There's moments in our work day where we feel like there's nothing we can do wrong. Then there are the moments that drag on forever and feel like we don't have any good ideas left. As frustrating as it is, we do have to find ways to stay creative— after all we need to keep a roof over our heads. So what do you do to stay creative?

My ideal evening involves relaxing by myself or with close friends. I'm not the type who enjoys going out and being around a giant crowd of people all the time. If this sounds like you, and you freelance, you can likely relate to the difficulty this presents if you attend networking groups. It's difficult to walk in by yourself and not have the confidence to strike up a conversation with someone. At best, we find an extrovert buddy who can help break the ice and introduce us to a few new people.

If you've been on the internet for some time, you've probably read a client from hell story. While some clients are just that impossible to work for, I sometimes look at the stories and wonder how often it was communication that sent things off the rails.

For a number of years. I never put much stock into joining professional networking groups. Starting out in my career, I knew just enough people in my hometown to make things work and find a job after I graduated from school. However, as my career progressed, I realized I couldn't keep relying on the same people all the time. I needed to stretch my wings and find new people and other designers.

Once upon a time, I made the big decision to move away from where I grew up. Leading up to this, I had a decent job at a studio, but I was looking to move to a larger city and bigger opportunities. Naturally, my boss didn't take it the best when I told him that I was leaving. Not that many would. Rather than wishing me luck and being done with it, he did something a bit different. He asked if I'd consider working as a remote freelance designer, continuing to do the work I was doing as an employee. Rather than a paycheck every two weeks, I'd send an invoice.

Anytime you start working with a client, it's pretty obvious that both parties want the project and the relationship to succeed. Unfortunately, it doesn't happen that way every once in a while. In (hopefully) rare instances, you might be forced to re-examine working on the project. If things are going south, it could mean cancelling the project and not working with them again.

Adobe won't relinquish its grip on our industry anytime soon, but already there's a few apps out there worth giving a look to. In the past, Inkscape and GIMP have tried, and Pixelmator had a moment of glory a few years ago too. Sketch and Figma are really popular in the web and UI design circles. I tried Sketch in the past, but I don't do enough web work to have a solid opinion. But for this trial, Affinity caught my attention.

Most of the topics on this show revolve around designers who are working in an agency or as a freelancer. This time, I want to flip that around and talk about what it's like to work in an in house design role.

One of the most frustrating things when you're a young designer starting out or you're beginning your freelance business, is getting clients to take you seriously. It can be difficult trying to figure out your career and how you want to work with people on top of getting respect from them all at the same time.

One of the most exciting parts of starting a freelance business is naming. Conversely, one of the most nerve wracking parts of starting a small business is naming it.

At some point in your design career or owning a freelance business, you're going to run into a client that doesn't want to get back to you right away. They might be lagging on agreeing to a contract or getting assets to you. No matter what the case is, it's super frustrating to be in that position of having to wait. There's nothing worse than feeling like you have no control over the situation.

Whether you're starting out as a graphic designer, or you've been at it for a few years, like me, you're always looking for ways to improve your craft and improve your design.

I remember the first job at the first agency that I had ever worked for. After I graduated, we were working for a local restaurant. They were going through a branding phase as they were building their business up.