How To Work With Clients
10 Best Practices For Building Reputation and Relationships When you accept a client’s project, you need to make it your own. While you’re not creating for
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Shift Your Freelancing Into High Gear
ARTICLES.
Tips and Insights on Mission, Mindset, Mechanics, and Marketing for Freelance Creatives
Creating Freelance Road Trip
Filling the Gap Between School and Career So you’ve gone through school and developed a creative portfolio. You’ve tweaked it up one side down the
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Stepping Out: How To Get Unstuck
Creativity requires action and effort to actually make something. We can mull over our ideas all we want, but to make a difference, at some point
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How Much Will It Cost?
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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From the Client’s Point of View
From the client’s point of view, there are two crucial criteria in deciding what designer is awarded the project: 1. Does the creative understand what’s
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Why You Need To Love Your Tools
A colleague recently switched from the PC to the Mac, from Windows and Android to OS X and iOS. There’s always a learning curve when
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Should Part Time Freelancers Run A Business?
As a part-time freelancer, knowing the difference between having a hobby and running a business might seem confusing. And actually running a business might seem unnecessary. The thing is, it’s more necessary to have a bona fide business as a part-timer.
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The Designer and the Relief Pitcher
If you know me well, you know that baseball is my favorite sport, and I often employ baseball analogies to explain concepts to students and
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Designing For Non-Profits
A significant percentage of my clients are non-profit enterprises. I have had many opportunities to design campaign materials, annual reports, and graphic assets for non-profit
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3 Reasons Why Creative Freelancers Should Go Bold Or Go Home
A long time ago in a faraway place called Pasadena, CA, I sat in a classroom and heard my instructor say, “You can’t sit around
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The Value of the Design Brief
Recently, I met with a start-up business. As we discussed the scope of work and began putting the design brief together, it became clear that
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4 Onboarding Steps For Successful Client Relationships
So you have a brand-new shiny client that you’re excited to be working with. You’re looking forward to helping them achieve their goals. They’ve accepted
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How To Go From Being A $25/Hour Freelancer To A $100.00/hour Freelancer
Do you feel like you’re stuck in a rut with your pricing? Do you want to charge more per hour or per project, but for
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Good Success
The Practice and Principle of Accomplishing Something Upon learning about what I do by trade, an employed acquaintance asked with some concern, “But will you
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GDPR Compliance Steps for US-Based Freelancers
The European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation goes into full effect on May 25, 2018. The internet and blogdom are all abuzz about getting
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Freelancing: In Getting Work, Relationship Counts More Than Ever
Clients have a choice when selecting creative services: They can go the cheap route and buy a logo through a crowdsource or contest web site where
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The Importance of Knowing Why
How many people set goals and never achieve them? How many creatives start a business and then watch it fizzle out Are you someone who,
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How to Avoid Spam in Your Blog Comments
One thing I really appreciate about using WordPress for my website platform is the multitude of time-saving plug-ins available. One plug-in I really appreciate is Akismet. Akismet recognizes and
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Idling and Acceleration: The Four Cs of Moving Forward
I’ll get to it when I’m ready. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of planning to get something done and then putting it off until
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7 Reasons Why Freelancers Should Not Discount
With value pricing for design and illustration projects, I am able to custom-tailor my services and fees to fit each client and project. But even
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When It’s Time To Let Go
Being effective involves doing the right thing at the right time in the right place.
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Contracts Protect the Freelancer and the Client
As I write this article I’m in the middle of a contract negotiation involving copyright and licensing of one of my character designs. I worked with
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Staying Motivated When You Don’t Freaking Feel Like It
As the owner of an independent creative business, you are responsible for absolutely everything creatively and managerially. The whole thing’s sitting on your shoulders, and
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Passion or Profit: Should You Start a Freelance Business?
The commonly-given advice is: Do what you love and the money will follow. This is a great ideal, because no one wants to spend the majority
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