One thing that’s great about flying solo as a freelancer is all the freedom you have in who you work with, where,…
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Do Freelancers Need Business Insurance?
A mark up, also known as percentage over cost, is one way you can increase your freelance revenue. Marking up is a…
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Boost Your Profits With Mark Ups
Did you know that your creative business thrives because of how you do business and not because of the quality of your…
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How’s Business? Five Tested Ways To Help Your Freelance Business Thrive
If you're an independent creative professional, you probably already have a website showcasing your amazing portfolio. Portfolios are a necessary component of…
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Why Freelancers Should Have an Agency-Styled Website To Attract Clients
Every business needs regularly-scheduled tune-ups. Just like with automobile maintenance, tune-ups keep things running smoothly. They're most effective in maintaining performance when…
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Try This Easy, 8-Point Tune-Up For Your Freelance Business
Building a business requires connection with people: prospective clients, colleagues, mentors, customers, and sometimes even family members. When we connect, we share…
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10 Proven Networking Strategies for Introverts (and Everyone Else)
Because pretty much everything runs on design and other forms of visual communication, the role of the visual communicator (designer, illustrator, photographer)…
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3 Types of Freelance Contracts and Which Ones to Avoid
Have you ever gotten involved on a project and then realized that neither the project nor the client is ideal? The project that…
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12 Questions You Need to Ask Every Client BEFORE You Accept Their Project
If you are a self-employed creative, business networking is a significant part of your marketing mix. While designers, illustrators and photographers naturally get together with other creatives for…
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Tactics for Better Business Networking
Avoid awkward moments and misunderstandings about getting paid for your freelance work. Prepare written agreements for each client that outlines the type of work you will do, how much you will charge for it, and how you want to be paid. You cannot make a living by doing favors.
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Creative Freelancer Q&A: Do Business, Not Favors!!!
Most problems freelancers experience when working with clients are due to contract mistakes. Do any of these statements sound familiar to you?…
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6 Freelance Contract Mistakes and How To Fix Them
A student asked me the same question I asked my teachers: "How do I know if I will be successful at freelancing?"…
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How Do I Know If I Will Be Successful At Freelancing?
There are two ways in which we mix color: Additively, using direct light from an original source, and Subtractively, using light reflected from…
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2 Ways To Mix Color
Have you made resolutions for the new year? What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to change? Where do…
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Set Goals, Not Resolutions
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Freelancing provides more freedom than any other type of work structure. With that freedom come the responsibilities of ownership and reputation. When…
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10 Ups and Downs of Freelancing
Ownership is simply the idea that something belongs to someone. In the case of your freelance business, you own it. It belongs…
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Advice for Freelancers: On Being an Owner
Freelancing is on the rise. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the freelance (contract, temp worker and freelancer — in all industries) economy…
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8 Qualities of Successful Freelancers
I was asked about how to deal with unusual requests. Once someone finds out you are a designer, writer, photographer… any type…
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How To Handle Special Requests From Clients
You need to identify what's at stake. I often reflect on how blessed I am to work the way I've always wanted to…
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Find Your “Why” to Achieve Your Goals
With the excitement and anticipation of embarking on a freelance career, we can easily get caught up in the ideas of freedom,…
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7 Things You Must Do To Start Your Creative Freelance Business
To answer the question, “How much will it cost?”, the question, “What do you want to accomplish?” needs to be asked first. Clients are often…
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How To Budget For A Design Project
The commonly-given advice is: Do what you love and the money will follow. This is a great ideal, because no one wants to…
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Passion or Profit: Should You Start a Freelance Business?
Good clients are integral to successful freelance projects and to your career overall. Beyond the project itself, a referral or recommendation from the right…
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How To Choose Good Clients
In Part 1 of this article I focused on what a brand is, and the visual and conceptual components of an effective…
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How To Manage Your Brand
I wish I hadn't said, "Yes" to certain design projects. It's not that the projects were a problem, but something about the clients'…
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5 Reasons Why I Can’t Be Your Designer
Recently, I met with a start-up business. As we discussed the scope of work and began putting the design brief together, it…
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The Value of the Design Brief
Every design project includes a punch list of required deliverables and a budget. When the budget does not allow for the creation of…
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8 Ways to Cut the Cost of Design
Working with clients can be likened to a downhill race: The designer moves along in her process and picks up momentum as she heads toward the finish…
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Creative Freedom Through Setting Boundaries
The Practice and Principle of Accomplishing Something Upon learning about what I do by trade, an employed acquaintance asked with some concern,…
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Good Success
Start-up businesses and organizations tend to hold themselves back in terms of establishing reputation and solidity by under-budgeting and under-investing in the…
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They’ll Notice
Before working with a designer, a client should prepare for that relationship. Often, businesses will request a web site or a logo…
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Briefly Stated: The Advantages of Getting It In Writing
Working on spec directly contradicts good business practices and does not even promise payment for work performed.
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Spec Work Is Gambling
Not every client relationship is a good fit, and it's just good business to separate.
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Red Flags: Fire When Ready
All too often a business or organization seeks a designer to execute an untested, unrefined idea as quickly and cheaply as possible. A business that's design-oriented will not regard design as an afterthought but as the basis for its marketing communications and brand awareness.
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How Much Will It Cost?
How many people set goals and never achieve them? How many creatives start a business and then watch it fizzle out Are…
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The Importance of Knowing Why
Does it matter if a design is good or not? Before we can deal with that question let's ask a more basic…
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Does Good Design Matter?
Being effective involves doing the right thing at the right time in the right place.
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When It’s Time To Let Go
Setting and maintaining boundaries will help you avoid relationships and circumstances that are potentially harmful.
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12 Rules for Freelance Success
To be promoted in our design-driven culture, a product must be packaged in such a way that it becomes meaningful to the person using it, so that they become an evangelist for it. This requires thoughtful planning and execution of a design strategy
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Loving It: Seduction, Satisfaction and Graphic Culture
It is the responsibility of design professionals, teachers and school administrators to value the next generation of designers so that the profession is respected, appreciated and thrives. Unpaid internships won't accomplish that.
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The Internship Epidemic
Scammers are highly creative in who and how they target. No one is exempt. This design project scam targeting independent creatives has…
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Email Scams Target Web Designers
How can you invest your product or service with “lovability” and create devotion in your customers? Here are some options: Love it…
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Creating Lovability
Graphic design represents ideas and values. A design is not in itself the idea, but the expression of it. Design points to…
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Design As Your Ambassador
Clients have a choice when selecting creative services: They can go the cheap route and buy a logo through a crowdsource or contest…
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Freelancing: In Getting Work, Relationship Counts More Than Ever
Why is spec work so prevalent in the design profession when it's not in other professions? Increasingly, companies - creative businesses included…
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Unpaid Internships Are A Form of Spec Work
Since I established my design studio over thirteen years ago, I have worked with clients large and small, designed for sole proprietors…
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Why You Can’t Be My Client