You heard they’re useful and all the cool brands are posting them up on their marketing materials. The truth is that they can be very useful and make your brand that much more accessible. But before we go adding black and white pixelly boxes all willy-nilly, we should briefly dive into what these neat little codes do and how to best use them.
You can think of a QR code just like you’d think about a hyperlink online, except that the link is in the physical world and links you to a place in the digital world.
DO:
Use a QR code to link directly from print media to a topical web page.
This is, as far as we’re concerned here, their main purpose is to get the user from the physical print piece to a specific webpage on their phone in a nearly-seamless manner that doesn’t require any real cognitive load on the user’s part.
Use a QR code as a barcode
Totally valid, I’ve seen it a hundred times. They work great for check ins purposes.
Accompany your QR code with a clear call to action.
People simply won’t scan a code that has no context and doesn’t tell you where the link is going. Hold their hand and tell them to scan the code and tell them what they’re supposed to do once they get there.
Make the QR code big enough to be scanned at an appropriate distance.
This is context-specific, but something like a QR code for a menu or on a table tent can be much smaller than a check-in sign. Consider the proximity of the user to the code when deciding how big it needs to be.
Make the QR code small enough to not interfere with the rest of the design.
Don’t make it huge for no good reason.
Send the user to a page that’s mobile-friendly.
Users aren’t scanning these codes with their laptops! If a user scans a code and the resulting site doesn’t appear to load properly, they’ll likely close the tab and move on.
Accompany the code with link text when appropriate.
Some audiences have adopted QR code technology more fully than others. Typically, younger audiences know what to do while older audiences may need more direction or alternatives if their phone’s camera doesn’t natively scan the codes.
DON’T:
Use a QR code when the link you’re going to is simple.
www.yoursite.com doesn’t need a QR code, but yoursite.com/your-event#registration could use one. The idea here is to save time.
Use a QR code on a mobile webpage, except for registration purposes.
You can’t scan a code that’s on a phone screen except with another device. This is useful for registration purposes, but not for links.
Link to a non-specific page.
It’s called a landing page, but I like to think of it more as a “catching page.” Your users need to have a cohesive experience transferring from the physical to the digital world. They need to know where they’re going and when they get there. Even if it’s literally a matter of milliseconds. Never leave them guessing what they’re supposed to do!
Use a QR code on your social media posts
Easy mistake that I’ve seen a few times, but you can’t scan a code that’s already on your phone screen! Just something to be mindful of when you take your content from physical to digital media. Include the URL for content that’s going to be on people’s phones or devices, but a QR code can be used effectively in your print materials.
Hopefully you find this to be a helpful guide on common mistakes when using QR codes.
If you’re looking for some solid design solutions for your business that involve the proper use of QR codes, Why not send me a quick message?
A Fancy Resume Has Never Gotten Me Hired
Alright kids, circle ‘round, it’s story time.
Once upon a time, there was a young, early-twentysomething designer, setting off on his long journey to becoming an art director and maybe someday, if he worked really hard and made some cool stuff, a creative director. He was excited about the world of design, and wanted to convey this enthusiasm in his resume. If the person reading it could feel that energy, well surely they’d hire him!
So he designed the ever-living FUCK out of that resume. Grid system, two columns, a nice information hierarchy with different shades of gray, and a spiffy serif font for his name up top. In a bright yet tasteful shade of orange.
It was glorious. It was a testament to his design prowess, even at that young age. The fonts matched well, the whole document flowed, and it even had a list of keywords and listed out his competencies, expressed on a sliding scale!
But it didn’t get him hired. He hardly got an interview with it.
It was a devistating experience for him on an emotional level. He was the kind of guy who put his heart and soul into his work and design was part of his identity. He had also recently gotten fired from his first sorta-legit design job and that still really stung.
So he went back to the drawing board and did a little soul-searching. What really made him unique among all the other designers? What made him special and…employable?
The process of making a resume and applying to jobs is a nightmare. It’s discouraging and soul-crushing in a way.
“Why should we hire you?”
Hell if I know! I need to pay rent and this is the intersection of my passion and what I’m willing to do for money?
“What makes you special? (300 characters or less)”
Let me just summarize my life and justify my existence for you in 300 characters or less.
Our self worth these days is tied to our economic output and we call it “The Dignity of Work,” so let me digress here to remind you that your worth as a human has nothing to do with your job. Our young hero was struggling with this himself.
Was he special? OF COURSE HE WAS! He could draw, he could code, he could design anything! He could even make little animated videos that explain things. But the question remained— how do you shove the essence of a whole human and their experience onto a 8.5×11” page with margins?
After some extensive thinking on the subject, he realized the secret to the resume: it’s an inherently boring document that reflects only one facet of the writer’s life.
Friends, don’t stylize your resumes. It doesn’t help. Sometimes sticking out isn’t the best strategy. Everything you make has a context and you need to know how to operate within it. So save the crazy concept stuff for your own website, put the nice font and cool new logo on your business cards.
In the end, our young hero made up a really boring black-and-white resume in Garamond. It was a complete snooze-fest, but it got him hired, and it still does to this day.
The resume is an inherently boring document, but there’s no need to try and re-invent it. They’re meant to be skimmed for information, and used as an accompaniment to your portfolio. Nothing more, nothing less.
Good luck out there, I know it can be brutal.
Monkeys and Elephants
A while ago, I wrote a blog based on a phrase I’ve heard and find to be particularly apt for creative work: “Pay Peanuts, Get Monkeys.”
While it’s been surprisingly well-received, there has been the occasional obstinate internet user who tells me, quite matter-of-factly, that elephants also enjoy peanuts. I mean, like, monkeys eat bananas anyway.
Sigh.
I initially brushed this off as people on the internet being dumb and stretching the metaphor beyond the point where it works. But then I thought about it for a while: OF COURSE elephants like peanuts, why not? But you don’t really think you’re going to get an elephant to do anything for you in exchange for a handful of peanuts, do you?
HELL NO. It probably takes more energy to consume the peanuts than the elephant would get out of them. An elephant isn’t interested in your peanuts. They’re giant creatures that eat at least 150 lbs of roughage every day. They don’t have time for your petty little peanut budget—-if you want good work, you have to pay for it.
And that brings me back around to the original point: if you see design as a cost and try to minimize it, you’ll attract incompetent designers who do mediocre work. BUT if you see design as an investment and maximize appropriately, you’ll attract quality designers who create stellar work which can actually drive your business forward.
These are elephants. Elephants are those professional designers, real powerhouses, but this metaphor holds true for every creative field. Elephants are valuable members of your team because they can pull a lot of weight. In real life, they can lift 300 kg (about 660 lbs) with their trunks alone! These guys know the tools of the trade and can find the resources they need to do a job well. They also know when these things are lacking. Elephants have needs, so if you can’t pay up, they have no problem foraging elsewhere. Oh, and they don’t forget.
Fun Fact: Elephants need salt and other minerals in their diets, but salt is hard to come by in places like Uganda and Indonesia. SO THEY DIG CAVES INTO DORMANT VOLCANOS TO FIND IT! They’re actually mining the volcanic rock for sodium-rich salts. They literally move mountains to get what they need.
So that begs the next question, what’s a monkey? Basically, a monkey is a hack who’s trying to make a buck off of you. There’s no love of design, just a bait-and-switch: they lure you in with ridiculously good prices and deliver sub-par work, leaving you with the bill for deliverables you can’t even use!
A monkey is the designer with the ad with the low, low prices and the website that’s basically a logo-dump. No context, no explanation of any design choices, no commentary on the process, just an endless scroll of logos with colored backgrounds. Quantity does not mean quality here. It’s not hard to come up with a concept for a logo that a client will accept. Its an entirely different thing to account for the client’s goals and problems and create a solution that will continue to drive the company forward for years to come. No, a single logo does not a brand make.
A monkey is the guy with the one-week turnaround and a salesy money-back guarantee and some sort of bullshit seasonal discount. We’re talking about the guys who reply “PM’d!” on every job posting, the ones with the $50 logo specials. If a logo is only $50, you don’t want it. Avoid these people, they will only bring you misery. On a related note, if you hate designers because one of them did you wrong like your ex-girlfriend, you probably hired a monkey. Or you don’t know how to work with designers. (But I have a guide for that!)
But yet a lot of people hire monkeys, and for a variety of perfectly valid reasons: low budget, don’t know any better, or some are even just lured in by the low price, thinking there’s nothing to lose. When you need a logo to represent your company and you don’t have a decent budget to hire a professional designer, it’s tempting to price-shop. I mean, we do it for everything else, right? This is a situation where the monkeys have you…over a barrel. You could even find yourself satisfied with monkey-work. Because maybe it’s not all that bad…considering the price. Don’t go down that road, it just leads to mediocrity. A smart business owner knows better than to make important decisions based on price rather than quality. Be smart. Wait it out.
The next step is actually finding an elephant. You need to offer substantial money, creative control, reasonable deadlines, and for God’s sake, respect the beast because if you mess with the elephant, you get the tusks. You’re also going to need a solid vision and a good amount of work for them to do. Your designer needs to be your partner, not some faceless contractor over the internet. Communicate! Talk about your ambitions and they can help you make them happen.
So next time you hire a designer, take some time to separate the wheat from the chaff. A million monkeys on a million MacBooks will never think through your problem like a single elephant will. So save your time and money in the long run and invest more of it upfront. I think you’ll like the results.
If you would like to invest in my work, let’s talk.
How Much Does A Logo Cost?
Today, we’re going to talk about how much a logo is worth and how much you should pay for one.
First, let us dispel of the notion of a cheap logo. No logo is cheap. If you buy a logo for $250, you’re likely to end up replacing it in a year or less. It’ll be stale, unproductive, it’ll feel aged and corny compared to your competition. You’re going to spend more money patching holes in your brand and compensating with advertising than you would if you just did it right the first time. If you work with a designer to create a unique branding and identity system, you’re going to be the one setting the trends. You wouldn’t go to a job interview or a client meeting in a ratty t-shirt and gym shorts, right? Then why should your business look anything but fabulous in every customer interaction?
Your logo is an organ of the living, breathing, changing system that is your brand. When you put it into this context, would you go price-shopping for a liver transplant?
Let’s think of that in terms of value: a logo is just a vector object, while a brand identity is how your communications look, from tone of voice, to colors, fonts, patterns, icons, logo versions, brand story, and most importantly, strategy.
Getting a brand identity system is like having a specialized surgeon skillfully transplant your liver, sew you back up, and meet with you when you wake up to make sure everything going well and prescribe medications as necessary, checking up periodically to make sure the surgery was a success. A logo alone is like the UPS guy driving up to your door with a box that says “keep refrigerated” and asking you to sign the clipboard.
Which is more valuable to you as a patient?
You’re not a surgeon! And even if you are, self-operation is pretty hardcore. I’m here as a branding designer and consultant to help you map out a path to success with your business. A significant part of that is visual identity and communications, and that’s one of the areas where I can really give you an edge. In fact, a good brand, including an excellent logo, can actually make you money.
What? A Logo Could…Make Me Money?
YES! That’s what I’ve been saying! Design work is an investment in your company and its future. Having a well planned and executed brand and strategy is essential if you want to grow. Just like it’s more expensive to invest in Apple or Google on the stock market because they’re dependable and predicted to grow, getting a significant return on your branding requires a significant investment. A $2,500+ branding system is going to help you out more than a $250 logo ever could, because it comes installed and with instructions!
A strong brand means continued business. If you do great work, treat your customers well, and look professional in your market, you will have continued success. Looking successful and professional makes you more attractive to your audience, leading to more business and continued success, starting the loop over again. You need great products, great service, and great branding. All three ensure that you’ll grow and prosper in the future.
When we think about your brand in terms of the value it can provide you, it turns the typical client-designer relationship on its head. Instead of the zero-sum game that currently exists, you’re equal partners with your designer and you’re both focused on the same goal: creating value and finding the right solution for your brand and business. And that’s how its supposed to be. I’m your partner here, you’re an expert in what you do, and I’m an expert in making you look fantastic while doing it.
In the end, the question is not “How much is this going to cost?” The question is “How much is this going to make for me?” The price of a branding project is a function of its value to the client. That’s it. It’s just a fraction of how much it’s going to make you. That varies widely from client to client and even project to project. That’s why I price out projects on an individual basis. Everything I do is custom work and you will never find another brand like the one I’ll craft for you. That’s a promise. I work very hard to come up with the best solution for your business, to help you get from where you’re at to where you want to be. Because that’s what a good designer does. I provide full branding strategies, not logos. Bare logos are for businesses that cut corners and try to scrape by with spending as little as possible. This is a mindset of scarcity and compromise, not one of growth, and your audience can tell. In order to grow, you need to think in the long-term and plan for the future.
How much can a logo make for you? We’ve touched on this a little here, but we’ll really break that down next week as talk about the value of brand perception and a few strategies to increase brand value.
Want me to know when I post that next blog? Follow me on Twitter.
How to Hire a Designer
Here we are. You need something designed – a logo, a t-shirt, a website, an app, whatever – and you don’t know where to go. So you do a quick Google search and sites like 99designs come up. You’ve heard of those contest sites and know to keep away from them. But that still leaves you wondering—how do you get quality design work?
The secret of getting the most out of your designer lies in planning out your project and good communication. I’ve outlined some of these points in an earlier blog, but what about just getting in touch with a designer? That’s what we’re going to tackle today. This may be a long blog, but at the end, my goal is to inform you well enough about finding and hiring a designer that you can go out and do it yourself. It’s not that scary, I’ll take you through this in seven easy steps.
Set the Stage
Every successful design project starts with the client clearly defining what they’re looking for. So what do you need? Why do you need it? How much are you willing to pay for it? These are your three most important questions; they determine the quality of work you get as well as the kind of experience you have with your designer. Let’s put all of that information into a powerful little document we designers call a “creative brief.” I’ve mentioned creative briefs before, and I promise that I’ll write a whole blog taking you through that some day soon, but I’m going to give it a quick overview for now:
The Creative Brief
General business information:
Name, City, What you do.
Target Audience:
Who is going to be using your product or service? (“Everyone” is the only wrong answer to this question)
Tell me about your brand:
Your brand positioning, mission statement, all of those values that you’re trying to project
Competition:
Who are your competitors? What are their brand positions?
Objectives:
What are you trying to accomplish with this project? Better notoriety? More conversions? Design can help you achieve your goals, but your designer needs to know your goals in order to help.
What makes you different?:
Hard question, right? Take your time. Really dig into your values. Tell me what makes you special.
Define success:
As a follow-up to your objectives, how will you know when you make it there? What does halfway look like? How long are you willing to give it before judging success or failure?
Message/Call to Action:
In a few words, what are you trying to say? What are you trying to do?
Specifications:
Physical sizes of deliverables, number of pages in a website, platforms for an app, anything technical. Your designer will likely have more questions about your specs, but this is a place to get them started.
Timeline/ approval process:
How much time do you have for this project? Outline an approval process. How often do you want check-ins and progress meetings with your designer?
Examples:
Are there any brands out there that catch your eye? They don’t have to be in your industry, but throw in a few inspiration pieces to get your designer going in the right direction.
Budget:
How much are you willing to spend on this design project? Remember that your budget is a huge factor in the talent you can attract with the job—pay peanuts, get monkeys.
The creative brief is an opportunity to focus your vision and clarify your goals. It’s also the BEST time to wrangle up everyone involved in the project and get their input. Getting everyone’s opinions now is the best way to streamline edits and allows your designer to hit the mark more quickly. There’s nothing more annoying than some manager or higher-up rushing in at the final rounds of edits with some brilliant idea that needs to be implemented or some additional goal that needs to be added. This is why I recommend that you ask these people’s opinions now.
Define the Discipline(s)
There are literally a million different kinds of designers: branding designers, print designers, web designer, UX/UI designers, packaging designers, etc. Look back at your creative brief and figure out what kind of designer would help you get what you want. Need an app? UX/UI designer. Need a print campaign? Print designer. Need a website? Web designer. Need a brand/logo? That can involve all of the above, sometimes called branding or logo designers. Need something drawn or depicted? You need an illustrator.
Seek and You…May Find
Now that you have your creative brief in hand (or, in the 21st century, on file), let’s find you a suitable designer.
Just kidding! I’m not the guy for everyone’s design needs.
Let’s start local. Do you have a friend (even just on Facebook or LinkedIn) who runs a business? They may know a designer or two that they would recommend. From a client’s perspective, this route is generally preferred, because it gives you pre-vetted candidates who have at least a few common contacts. Search your Facebook and LinkedIn contacts as well as anybody you’ve done business with. If you see a local small business come out with a new logo that you like, perhaps you can contact them and ask about who did it (In these cases, it’s likely a small agency, but it’s worth asking).
Now, if you can pull this off, you can skip the next step. But I suspect that the reason you’re reading an article about how to hire a designer isn’t because you know a bunch of people who know designers. I’m also sure the idea of asking your friends and contacts for help finding a designer has crossed your mind before, probably early in the process. If your network fails to net you a designer, its time to ask for help from our good friend Google.
“Freelance + [discipline] + design + [your city]” should yield a few results. These are mostly, in my experience, web designers with a knack for search engine marketing and optimization. Perhaps this is what you’re looking for, but for most of us, this is kind of like searching for your lost keys only under streetlights. Or however that one goes. Of course you’d find web designers who are good at SEO at the top of your Google search. But don’t worry, I have a few more tricks up my sleeve.
Let’s visit Behance.net, Adobe’s design and illustration portfolio platform. Go up top to the “Discover” heading and select “Search and Explore.” Use the drop-down menus to select your kind of designer and geographic location. Check out a few portfolios. Definitely go to the designer’s websites if it’s listed as well. Look around and take note of the designers who already work in the style you’re looking for.
Is Behance not doing it for you? Want to look a little deeper? Check your r/forhire or r/designjobs on Reddit.com and search. Check your local Craigslist as well, but let the buyer beware over there, ifyouknowwhatimean….
Despite what you may think from the outside, this is the last resort. If you think you’re lost now, it’s just going to get worse from here. I would attempt to explain the onslaught of designers offering to do your project for dirt cheap, but I feel that this GIF sums it up better than I ever could:
There are two parts to putting up a good ad: writing the ad and picking your platforms. Your platform will influence how you write your ad, and posting on multiple websites may require editing and re-wording for optimum results. Find your favorite classified sites (Craigslist, Reddit’s /r/forhire and /r/designjobs, local newspaper classifieds, even Behance has a section where you can post jobs), and post away.
A Few Tips on Writing Ads…
Use an active voice. There’s nothing worse than reading “Graphic Designer Required,” as if the Gods above commanded that you find a designer and you’re just obliging.
Show that you’re engaged. Give examples, draw from your creative brief for information. Give lots of information. In fact, post your creative brief on Google docs and link to it.
Post your budget, or at least a range. Otherwise, you’ll just get a bunch of messages asking about your budget. If you’re looking for bids, at least have a range in mind. DO NOT go with the lowest bidder, there’s a reason why they bid the lowest. This is an estimate of what you think you’re going to pay. It will likely need to be adjusted later.
List any relevant experience that might get a candidate noticed.
Post your ad and be ready for a TON of responses. Most of them are crap, but you have to sort through them to find the gold. What is the “gold” in this situation? A genuine, thought-out response to your ad, with at least a hint of a solution peeking out. Just a thought, but if I were hiring a designer, I would look for a good mix of portfolio quality and communication ability. By this, I mean hiring foreign designers with broken English isn’t necessarily bad, but a language barrier is just another obstacle on an already difficult journey, especially if you’re communicating over the internet by email.
Portfolios!
Once you post an ad, you’re going to get a million responses. As I said before, most of them are thoughtless. But there will likely be a few good replies from competent designers who really want to help you. These are your top candidates. In the spirit of fairness, you should check out every portfolio and offer and judge objectively. However, life is hardly ever fair and I’m sure you’ll at least subconsciously start filtering by the initial message, and that’s certainly not unheard of. But this part of the process involves looking at a LOT of portfolio sites and it’s pretty unavoidable. It’s needs to happen, you need to visit these sites, just try and make the most of it.
From here, take note of your favorite work. Email these designers back and start up a conversation. Ask questions about how they plan to solve your design problem, as well as their previous experience. On behalf of all designers, I ask you to keep this part short. Nobody likes talking to a potential client for a week just for them to drop off the face of the earth when they go with someone else. Freelance design isn’t a particularly stable form of income, so please don’t make it worse.
When you’re talking to a handful of designers, you’re trying to get some idea of how you’ll work together and their ideas about how to solve your design problem. Ask how long they see the project taking, ask about their process, and finally, ask for a proposal.
At this point, you may need to adjust your budget to reflect the price range of the candidates you’ve chosen. It’s not a big deal, most clients’ initial budgets are too low to demand great work. The smart clients adjust accordingly, in order to get the best work out of the best designer that they can afford. The range of prices should be much closer together than the replies you got from the ad, and give you a decent idea of how much your project should cost. But again, DO NOT go for the lowest bidder because they’re the cheapest. Design is an investment in your business, not a choice among products at your local Wal-Mart.
As a side note, are you a designer reading this and wondering how to make a killer portfolio of work? I’ve got you covered.
Pick One.
You have a handful of designers you’ve been talking to for a few days and you’re ready to pick one. Who you chose is really a personal decision, but I recommend that you factor in portfolio quality, how well your conversation has been going, and the designer’s proposed price. At this point, there’s probably one or two that really catch your eye and you can see yourself working with them. That’s your designer. Email him or her and ask for a final contract. Contact the other candidates and let them know that you appreciate their time, but you’re going with someone else. It’s only polite. Keep their emails and websites, though. Next time someone you know needs a designer, perhaps you can be the one to hook them up.
Contracts
You may have your own contract for the project, and I recommend it, but your designer will have one for sure. Read it carefully and sign or edit/negotiate as necessary. This is a binding agreement that basically says that you will give the designer money and they will give you work in exchange. It is a legally enforceable document, intended to protect both parties. Make sure final payment and handover procedures are clearly outlined.
There’s something you need to know as a client, because I feel that it can change client-designer relationships for the better: your designer has no interest in withholding your deliverables, they just suspend them to make sure the client pays. Once you pay the final installment, the work has no value to the designer and they’re looking to get it off their screen as soon as possible and move on to something else.
Now that you’ve signed your contract, set your expectations with your designer, negotiated your timeline, and paid half the fee upfront, you’re on your way to a successful design experience. If you’re looking for further tips about how to work with a graphic designer, see my post about how to keep your designer happy.
If you have any questions, or would like to skip steps 2 – 6, you can contact me here.
The Painless Portfolio
So you’re a budding designer looking caught in the classic catch-22 of freelance work: you need to show work to get work, but you need to get work in order to show it. The typical thinking is to lower your costs and advertise until someone takes you up on that offer. The line is usually something like a “Young Designer Looking to Fill Up Their Portfolio, Will Work for Cheap!” sort of thing. There’s a number of huge problems with this approach that are pretty much going to make your life hell. For starters, by lowering your price range, you’re de-valuing your work in your clients’ minds as well as your own. It’s enough of an uphill battle selling design work, so stop making it harder for us (and your future self). Second, the clients in the lower pay ranges are usually full of hot air and sky-high expectations for their small budget. They don’t like spending money and they sure as hell don’t like you. Working with them is largely not worth the money you get for it, and since it’s basically self-initiated suffering, you’re not getting any good karma for it either.
But there’s another way! Think of it like this: when you freelance, you are making yourself your business. A business needs investments, usually in the form of money, which is a physical form of value. The fun thing about having a skill is the ability to convert time into value. As designers, a smart investment of time in the right places can pay off great dividends in the form of a professional portfolio with meaningful work, sharper design skills, real client experience, better self-value, and you don’t have to screw anybody over or compete for the jobs. What’s the catch? Well, you have to take on the cost in terms of time uncompensated by money for a while and look elsewhere for monetary wealth. But only for a little while.
Okay, ready? Here’s the Fritz Five-Step Plan for making an awesome portfolio that will have clients coming to you asking for work.
1. Start Building A Website
Your Behance page is cute and all, but it drastically lowers your value to potential clients. If you can’t brand yourself and design your own portfolio, why in the world would I hire you to handle any of that for me?
So buy yourself a domain name and hosting, design that site, and print out some matching business cards. Make them look good, because you’re a designer and there’s no excuse for a crappy card*.
*VistaPrint prints some really crappy cards no matter how you design them, so pick somewhere else to get those done. Low quality prints further lower your perceived value.
“But I don’t have any good work to put in my portfolio yet!”
Yes I know, we’re getting there. There’s no reason why you can’t make up a few wireframes and start mocking up the template. Get a leg up on this now and figure out how you want to present yourself before you put in any projects. It will help focus your work and your target audience will become clearer. Get an idea of what kind of projects you want to do in your career, in terms of medium as well as industry. Also check out other portfolios of designers and artists you admire and steal everything you like. Look into the source code and see how they structured it, what platform and plugins they used, see if you can get an idea of their mindset as they put their site together.
As a note on this point before we move on, I mean that you should have a web presence out there with your name attached to it. It doesn’t matter how it’s made, I’ve seen good portfolios made from Tumblr blogs, it doesn’t what you use. Nobody is expecting you to make the whole site from scratch in HTML and CSS. That’s not really our job as designers, and that’s something that took me a little while to realize, but it makes a lot of sense: nobody is expecting us to make our own paper from wood pulp or run the press that produces our print work, right? Those are both jobs that we leave to specialists. Designers are specialists in their own right, too. We specialize in making things work well and look good. It doesn’t matter so much how that’s done. This site, for example, is made with the Twitter Bootstrap framework because making a website without some sort of framework and/or CMS with today’s web is a very daunting task and it’s only going to get more difficult. You could even make it in the built-in website designer that comes with your hosing account for all it really matters. (Don’t actually do that, it’ll look awful)
2. Brand a Nonprofit
You’re not going to get any money out of this one, but it’s going to be the center of your portfolio and a piece of which you’re particularly proud, if you pull it off. Start by looking around your community for small nonprofit organizations that need design help (Hint: they all do). Call or visit their office and offer your services in sprucing up their logo and branding in exchange for a letter of recommendation and a nice review for your website and LinkedIn page. Land yourself a pro bono client.
If that fails, you’re in a remote area, or you just don’t want to get off the couch, you can also make a quick post at /r/nonprofit explaining your situation and offering your services for a nice testimonial. Remember to get that testimonial! Otherwise the piece you end up with is only half as valuable. It’s certainly not the end of the world, but you can’t go wrong with a glowing recommendation!
The great thing about working with a nonprofit to get portfolio work is that they’re grateful for the work and you get a lot more creative control than most projects. This gives you a great portfolio piece for a great cause with a lot of meaning, and gives the nonprofit a really great brand unsullied by too much client input. Start them off with a mood board and take them through your whole design process. Make sure you get approvals ahead of time and wrangle boards and committees as best as you can. This is practice for the real world, but it also gets to see the light of day. It’s really kind of beautiful to be able to put something out there that you’re really proud of. I’ve found my nonprofit work has the most heart to it, out of my whole portfolio. It’s also a great confidence booster to have good work under your belt.
3. Personal Projects
Another great way to show off your chops is to do a personal project. Brand your hometown and surrounding cities into a county or state-wide logo system. Make new covers for your favorite books. Do a series of something, make a really great illustration piece. Check out design and inspiration blogs for what’s popular and steal what you like to make it your own. Are you interested in lettering? Do a series of quotes from an author in a style that you like. Make a new movie posters for all the Tarantino films or redesign all of the Beatles’ album covers. Make a comic. Make a video in After Effects explaining something that you know a lot about in under two minutes. Take things you like and incorporate them into your work and use them toward a personal goal. You can display that work as a testament to your skills as a designer. And someone has to make all those beautiful pictures we see on FromUpNorth and Abduzeedo, right? Why not you?
4. Fake Brands
Have you ever came up with the best, punniest name for a company, or a really fitting logo for a particular industry, but don’t have anybody to give it to? Invest it in yourself! Make up the rest of the brand and show it off as a portfolio piece. Make the logo, website, and business cards. Most of it can even be in lorem ipsum, but bonus points for witty copy rife with jokes and puns. For example, when client work slows down, I have plans to make logos and a website for the fictional Axi-Dental Insurance Co. Little things to amuse myself and keep my skills sharp. If it turns out well, it could be a nice little portfolio piece and a mini site I can show to potential clients in money-based industries like insurance and banking.
5. Redesign Ugly Things
There’s a lot of really ugly things out there. As designers, ugliness hurts us just a little bit more than regular people and that drives us to have standards for our work. Because why would you make something ugly? Find work out there around you that looks like utter crap…and bring it up to your standards. Do you have an app on your phone that serves an important function, but it’s ugly? Make a new interface! See a particularly bad advertisement? Redesign it. Is the packaging for your Do the illustrations or font in a book really rub you the wrong way? Illustrate it anew and reset the type for a few pages. Just remember to mention in your write-up on the project page that it’s a concept project and was not actually commissioned by, or affiliated with, the company you’re using. Other than that, it’s your work to use as you please: self promotionally, as a portfolio piece.
Alright that’s the Fritz Five-Step plan for building your portfolio. Take the pieces you’ve made and put them into your site with little write-ups about everything. You don’t have to work for peanuts and you don’t have to undercut any other designers. Once you have your portfolio set up, you will have better ground to stand on when pitching and bidding for projects, and some clients will even start coming to you. Which is a strange and wonderful feeling that I hope all designers get to experience in their careers.
If you’d like some tips on explaining the value of design work to clients as well as dinner ideas, check out my article on Design and Pizza.
Also check out my blog on why a great logo costs more than $50
If you’re looking for some design work yourself, let’s talk.
Or just check out my work.
Pay Peanuts, Get Monkeys
Every designer has experienced this problem before: a potential client contacts you about making something for them. It sounds like a nice opportunity, quick work, good deal, right? Except that the client has, for whatever reason, big plans with a tiny budget. They’re offering “exposure” for your work. Exposure is for cameras and I’ve got that down just fine, thankyouverymuch.
Personally, I’ve stopped working for clients that don’t have a budget. Agreeing to work for them just shows that you’re willing to compromise for less than you’re worth and that you’ll allow people to take advantage of you. But are they really bad people? I’d sure like to hope not. The viewpoint of lowballing clients is skewed and based on low perceived value of design work. There are a handful of reasons why they think that a logo should only cost $50 and there’s a million more reasons why designers should be paid fairly. So sit back, Mr. “I-Only-Have-A-Couple-Bucks-to-Spend-on-this” client, this one’s for you.
I have a shoestring budget, but a great idea!
Consider a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign or a sponsorship like TechStars. There’s also Seedups, Y-Combinator, 500-Strong… If you’re serious about your business and have a great idea, there is funding out there for you. It can go to you or to someone else, but it’s out there of rate taking. Take it. Then you can pay your people what they’re worth and they’ll work better.
Design doesn’t add to my business, it’s just decoration.
Not so! Design is all about the experience. Let’s say you live in a tight-knit neighborhood where people hold barbecue parties on the weekends. You’re a bit of a penny-pincher, and while you can grill a mean burger with the best of them, your neighbor Jim has a greener lawn, a nicer house, and a big ol’ flat screen in the living room to watch the game. Guess who’s house we’re all going to be at this Saturday?
This is obviously a case of direct competition; if you have your market cornered and you’re happy with how your business is now and forever, you’re probably not thinking about design. But in any situation where you can be directly compared to your competition, good design can give you an edge.
A well-designed brand says to your customers that you take pride in your work and that you’re concerned about how you come off to others. In the same way that Jim’s nice lawn, nice house, and flat screen TV communicates that he cares about the comfort of his guests and about their experience, your brand needs to tell people that you care about their interactions with your company and you want then to be positive.
I have other stuff to do—function over form!
Your brand is your face. You need a face, because without a face, nobody knows who you are, and only associate you with a bloody, gaping mass of muscle and teeth where your face should be. Sorry, that got dark fast…
I could go to Fiverr and get one for less than what you charge!
You go do that.
Okay, FINE. How much does it have to cost? I don’t want this cutting into my budget!
Well that’s not an attitude that’s going to get you great creative work! Remember that money isn’t the only form of wealth in this world. Ideas, images, emotions, experiences, skills, and even material items are also forms of wealth. Alan Watts explained this very well one time, saying how silly it is that we all get depressed paying for groceries. Sure you don’t have that $30 anymore, but the real wealth is right there in your cart!
Your finished brand is just as much a form of wealth as the money you pay for it, and there is direct correlation between value paid and value received, as with all things in life. Would you pay $50 for a used car? Not if you reasonably expect to get out of the parking lot… Would you trust a $100 computer for all of your working files? No! (learned that one the hard way…) Your brand is wealth, which can apprecaite by careful application of your brand according to the guides and standards set out by your designer. That wealth can be transferred into social value, which in turn ends up as business, which gets you monetary wealth. Your designer is giving you something that’s worth far more than you’re paying for it.
Finally, your logo is going to cost more than $50 because $50 would almost buy an hour of my time in Illustrator. You don’t want someone working for you who is less than fully invested. You don’t want anybody working on your brand for less than top dollar. I first heard a saying when I was working retail for $7.40 an hour that really resonated with me: “Minimum wage, minimum interest.” This applies to you, no matter who you are or what you do; you don’t get quality for cheap, and if you only offer chump change, you’re only going to get chumps working for you. That’s the rule of employment! As my friend Dr. Polar Humenn says, “Pay Peanuts, Get Monkeys.”” That’s why a great logo isn’t cheap.
Contact Me About A Project
How to Keep Your Designer Happy
Have you had trouble in the past working with designers? Expensive, irritable, and flaky, right? Not necessarily. Here are six insider tips to make your next creative project go smoother and to get the best work out of the creative you hired. Spoiler alert: it all involves being reasonable and keeping them happy!
1. Make Money Easy
As a designer, I don’t like to talk about money. That’s what bankers and investors and financial advisors talk about. I talk about design concepts, ideas, process, work…but I hate talking about money. Be up-front with your budget and timeline. Don’t drop off the map when the invoice is due. Don’t haggle. Don’t request a bunch of revisions right at the end of the project to extend the time you have to pay. Make sure you have your budget defined and set aside before the project starts. Don’t send my invoice through your whole corporate rigamarole and tell me vaguely that “it’ll be taken care of” without an expected payment date. If there are payment schedules for your company that you need to work around, please be upfront about them. Get checks ready to send out in advance if you can. Allocate the budget before you sign the contract.
Also remember that you get what you pay for. Would you trust a $500 used car? Hell no! Would you trust it if they guy selling it said he was a student doing it “for his portfolio?” So why would you trust a $50 logo? Why would you trust anybody working for less than $100 an hour with the look and feel of your business? If you don’t have the money to do it right, you best have the money to do it again.
2. Be Consistent
You don’t have to have a great artistic vision or anything, but do be consistent. This means being consistent in terms of what the end product is going to be, as well as keeping down the number of people communicating with your designer. Committees are where good design goes to die. Get pre-approval for the project if possible. Take committee input at the beginning of the project. Make sure there’s only one or two points of contact for your designer and that they’re saying the same thing. See to it that everyone is on the right page and you speak to your designer with a unified voice and clear vision.
Flip-flopping is for sandals, not clients. If you have two competing ideas for a project, that’s fine. We can work with both, up to a certain point. But at some point, both parties need to commit to a direction and finish the project.
3. Be Reasonable
Our work isn’t immediate. Design doesn’t just manifest itself on our screens so we can sell it to you. Designers have to work long hours to make things look and work right. When you ask for a revision, take into account how much work you’re asking for—it’s always more than you think you are. Websites are a complex and often fragile assortments of pictures, code, and documents and any little adjustment has the potential for derailing the whole project. In print design, space doesn’t just create itself, and it doesn’t just disappear either. When you add elements and text to a print piece, adjustments need to be made and it has to be somewhat redesigned. Illustrations, depending on the medium, can be very difficult to edit, often requiring extensive photoshopping or even just remaking the piece from scratch.
I’m not saying that revisions are bad, designer-client communication and collaboration is a beautiful thing. But I am saying to be conscious of the ramifications of any edits you request and remember that it can take time to complete them. Also remember that you’re on their list of clients and you may not be at the top right now. How do you make sure your designer is working your your stuff?
4. Check in, but don’t be Intrusive
Unless you’re actively engaged in an email discussion with your designer, you should check in once every two or three days at the most. Sometimes problems need to percolate in our minds before the most elegant solution presents itself. In most cases, your designer will contact you in a timely fashion because they want to move the project along and collect the other half of payment before rent is due. If you find your designer’s response time to be sluggish, consider your latest communication with them, and feel free to check in if you haven’t been annoying, intrusive, or needy. Keep your expectations reasonable, especially with how long things take.
5. Listen to Your Designer
I’m a shitty carpenter. I built a bookshelf once, but it very nearly outlasted my patience. Don’t ask me about how to build a house, and by all means ignore my advice on the subject if I give it. There are people out there who specialize in these things and they’re paid well to do so. I specialize in design. Ask me questions about design and branding. Ask my opinion about your current logo. And when you do, listen. Every project comes with options, but only one is the best option and the designer always knows which one it is. If you’re in doubt, ask us and trust our response.
6. Act like you’re excited about the work we’re doing for you.
You don’t have to live and breathe design—we do that already— but you should at least act excited to see us and about the work we’re about to do for you. In a very real sense, the reputation of your business is in our hands and you should pay attention and be a contributing part of the experience. Remember that real wealth is in things, ideas, and love. Wealth is not money, so think less about the money you’re spending and more about what you’re getting for it and how it can last you for years if used properly.
If you’re thinking of putting these tips into practice, why not
“Hey, can you whip this logo up for me real quick? It’ll only take like fifteen minutes, so I’ll pay you like twenty bucks on PayPal.”
Have you ever heard a more uneducated and unattractive proposal for work? I used to work as a pizza cook at a bar for ten dollars an hour and not once did someone try to negotiate their bill or assume they knew how long it took to cook a pizza. This is because I was an obvious authority to the customers: I make pizzas, I’ve been making pizzas all night, and everyone else seems to like the pizzas they received.
Yes, people know what they like on their pizza, but that’s only superficial. What they don’t know are the ingredients of the dough or how long it’s been set to proof, the herbs in the sauce, the butcher that supplied the pepperoni and sausage, where the green peppers and onions came from, or even the kind of cheese the pizza joint is using. The customer has no idea how hot you have to get the oven to cook the crust properly. Nor do they know that breadsticks are just plain crust with garlic butter and parmesan, but let’s just keep that between us.
You see, it’s these little things that nobody notices or care about, which matter the most. Inferior sauce or crust is enough to close down a restaurant if there’s a good competitor nearby. As Papa John’s says, “Better Ingredients, Better Pizza.”
While I’m more of a Dominos thin crust sort of guy, I feel that the “better ingredients” idea translates well to…you guessed it! Graphic design!
Think about a brand as your dinner. You begin the night with an idea of what you want to eat. Is it fast food tonight? Are you feeling a pizza and a beer? Maybe some Italian, maybe something even more high-end with a prime rib and red wine? Is it just you eating, or do you have a date tonight? As such, you begin your search for your brand with an idea of what you want, and that often reflects the goals of your organization. For example, if you want steak and you go to McDonalds, you’ll end up with a Big Mac or McRib or something else equally as unsatisfying and probably gross. But you wouldn’t do that because you know where to go for dinner, since each restaurant specializes in something and they all advertise it.
Graphic designers actually do the same thing. Look at our portfolios as abbreviated menus or advertisements that show potential clients what we tend to make. If you’re wealthy, you’re probably not going to McDonalds every day because you can afford better food and go to better restaurants with nice things like “ambience.” If you’re a multimillion-dollar client and you’re looking for a re-brand, you’re not going to go to Fiverr, you’re going to research design firms and agencies in your area to see which one fits your company best, come up with a list, and get quotes from the firms on that list. This is like checking Yelp for reviews before getting in your car and going out.
At the mid-level range, a hungry diner with some cash to spend might want to go to a nicer restaurant or bar in the hopes of impressing a date or meeting some contacts with more money who are interested in what he or she does. This is where freelancers thrive. Do you have a few hundred dollars or a couple thousand to devote to your brand? Are you looking to impress people who are a little higher-up than you on the corporate and social ladder? Hire a freelancer. The good ones used to be in agencies or want to be hired by them, so work can be comparable. The down side is that it takes longer and freelancers are a little harder to work with because it’s literally a one-person operation. A freelancer is an easy ticket to visual legitimacy and recognition for your brand if you don’t have the funds for a design firm.
And what about those of us who only have $50 to spend on a logo? Well, that’s the reason for places like Fiverr and 99Designs. They are the cheap fast food of graphic design. Asking someone to make your logo for any less than $250 is like going to a steakhouse and asking if they have anything for about $3.50. You’re never going to be taken seriously in that context. Don’t bother offering a percentage of profits either, that’s going to that same steakhouse and telling the waiter you’re going to take the meal home and sell it, and you’ll give him a cut of the profits if he’ll forget to charge you. The concept is absurd and quite unappealing to designers.
So instead of telling your designer how much time something should take and how much it’s worth, tell them how much time a project has or how much time it can take, and how much the finished piece is worth to your company and business goals. I don’t mean to hammer the metaphor to death (actually, I totally do), but this is important: quality service should be rewarded with sufficient monetary compensation. A McChicken is worth about a dollar. A roast chicken dinner with all the stuffings is worth considerably more. If it’s prepared by Gordon Ramsay, it carries an even higher price tag. This is completely just and on-purpose and should be considered when commissioning design work.
